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> On the other hand wages in China have shot up and the huge pool of cheap rural labour is mostly tapped out. I would have no problem with that if it didn't ha

by sprash 6y ago

> On the other hand wages in China have shot up and the huge pool of cheap rural labour is mostly tapped out. I would have no problem with that if it didn't happen at the cost of American worker which it clearly did. > Employment in the US and Europe was rising, and came close to 100% before the Pandemic. You can thank the "nationalistic" trade policies of Trumps USA towards China for that. In Europe on the other hand (which had no such policies) unemployment especially in the periphery was and is still sky high and the situation was looking pretty grim also before the pandemic.

adrianN 6y ago
Don't trust employment statistics you didn't fake yourself. I don't know how it is in the US, but here in Germany a lot of effort is put into making unemployment seem smaller than it actually is.
- NortySpock 6y ago
  The US still blames the victim for their own unemployment. We have a long way to go before the US system feels like a a kindly helping grandfather rather than an abusive angry father that blames you for not working harder.
  - akimball 6y ago
    You forgot the rape
simonh 6y ago
Here in the UK unemployment was rock bottom before the Pandemic, we only had a couple of hundred thousand people who had been unemployed for more than a year. As for globalisation, the US became the dominant global economy how exactly? Protectionism, aside from being an autocratic intrusion into the freedoms of citizens, just doesn't work. Take the US steel industry, a main target of Trump protectionism. Yes blast furnace employment is marginally up, but steel mill employment has been hammered because it largely depends on working imported steel. The domestic furnaces can't expand fast enough to meet supply, and don't produce some of the steels needed by manufacturing anyway. As a result manufacturers consuming steel are facing inflated prices and reduced competitiveness. It's unintended consequences all over the place.

by sprash 6y ago

adrianN 6y ago

Don't trust employment statistics you didn't fake yourself. I don't know how it is in the US, but here in Germany a lot of effort is put into making unemployment seem smaller than it actually is.

NortySpock 6y ago
The US still blames the victim for their own unemployment. We have a long way to go before the US system feels like a a kindly helping grandfather rather than an abusive angry father that blames you for not working harder.
- akimball 6y ago
  You forgot the rape

simonh 6y ago

Here in the UK unemployment was rock bottom before the Pandemic, we only had a couple of hundred thousand people who had been unemployed for more than a year. As for globalisation, the US became the dominant global economy how exactly? Protectionism, aside from being an autocratic intrusion into the freedoms of citizens, just doesn't work. Take the US steel industry, a main target of Trump protectionism. Yes blast furnace employment is marginally up, but steel mill employment has been hammered because it largely depends on working imported steel. The domestic furnaces can't expand fast enough to meet supply, and don't produce some of the steels needed by manufacturing anyway. As a result manufacturers consuming steel are facing inflated prices and reduced competitiveness. It's unintended consequences all over the place.