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Ah, corporate apologia. > Companies did move millions of office jobs to India, the Philippines and other places where they could pay workers less. But those jo
by dvdhnt 7y ago
Ah, corporate apologia.
> Companies did move millions of office jobs to India, the Philippines and other places where they could pay workers less. But those job losses were more than balanced by growth elsewhere in the economy.
That's like saying there will be an apple shortage but ignoring it because we grew more oranges.
> But many companies discovered that labor savings were offset by other factors: time differences, language barriers, legal hurdles and the simple challenge of coordinating work half a world away. In some cases, companies decided they were better off moving jobs to less expensive parts of the United States rather than out of the country.
The thing is, rents and expenses continued to grow where these jobs used to be but wages stagnated. Offshoring is a contributor to wage stagnation, which would be acceptable if rents and expenses ebbed and flowed at the same pace. But wealth inequality and rent-seekers continue to squeeze the average person. The result is people who are underemployed or working multiple jobs.
> Ms. Lund said she saw parallels between offshoring and automation: Both trends threaten one set of jobs but should make the overall American economy more productive, creating new job opportunities, albeit ones requiring different skills. And she said the pace of change should allow workers, companies and governments to adapt.
Learning new skills isn't free. It will harm workers who have their jobs automated. Our employment system isn't worker-friendly in this instance. Those displaced workers will still need to pay rent and buy food ALONG with buying new skills. They will probably end up underemployed.
- ThomPete 7y agoExactly. Cost of living goes up, you cant save your way to retirement. Thats the wests biggest problem. All we got in exchange for the average citizen is cheaper flatscreens and shittier toys. But sure those of us in tech are good.
- anovikov 7y agoPeople could never save for retirement. Never. Not a single generation did it yet. Just the scale of the problem is now bigger because as the population stopped growing fast enough, we suddenly have a lot of people going to retire.
- fwsgonzo 7y agoMy parents and their parents again did it. I don't know what you're talking about.
- skinnymuch 7y agoI thought the whole point was all the generations before generation X were able to save and/or have a pension or other retirement facility paying enough m. Baby Boomers and before.
- snagglegaggle 7y agoI suggest referring people to http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/ http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/. It has some very good explanations of the flaws in a lot of pro-globalization economic arguments.
- concordDance 7y agoRidiculously superficial. Get a proper book on trade instead.
- snagglegaggle 7y agoI have. The history of economic models is rife with those that were upset by a voiding of a simple inherent assumption, much as the author of that comic addresses. He provides citations, does he not?
- webninja 7y agoRecommendations?
- anovikov 7y agoIs there any empirical evidence that rent as a fraction of GDP, grows? That could happen in case of quick economic growth combined with a lack of major inventions (people get more money but struggle to find what to spend it on - they already have all newest stuff and newer one is slow to get invented - so keep a lot of free cash -> rent grows). But these times aren't like that. So i tend to believe these observations are largely made up. There is no "squeeze" in the sense that economy-wide, cyclically adjusted, rents do not grow faster than GDP per capita does.
- imtringued 7y agoThat's not a very useful observation. Rents decrease in areas without jobs. Incomes increase in areas with jobs. Therefore country wide rent grows slower than GPD per capita as more people moveto the cities.