FQ.07.47: Favorite Quote for This Week

Free trade only costs American jobs if we as a nation are too stupid to re-employ those workers relieved from menial jobs which other nations want to do.
—Dr. Rick Boettger

Comments

[Frank D]

Well ok...but where are the programs to anticipate job losses and train people before they lose their jobs so that they are prepared. I'm sure that the good Dr has never been unemployed. What's the old adage? The best time to look for a job is when you already have one.

Frank D.

[goy]

Frank, to that, I suppose I'd have to say 'look around'. Every time I turn on the TV (which, admittedly, isn't often lately) I see ads for several different trade schools begging for students to learn computer, electrical, HVAC, automotive and other skills. The private college where I just finished paying for a BA recently announced that - without the tuition-payers' knowledge or consent - they've been using 50% of paid tuitions to provide "free" education to residents in the poorest areas around Hartford, CT. School loans are plentiful. If your question is meant to imply that the government should be spending money to implement the programs your mention, in response I guess I'd have to say look at how "well" the Feds' involvement in education is working right now.

But that's not why I stopped by. I'm curious, Steve - is anyone calling it the "Euro-Bubble" yet? Like the "Tech-Stock-Bubble" or the "Dot-Com-Bubble" or the "Housing Market Bubble"? :-)

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/business/ambrosevanspritchard/nov07/europe-exchange-control.htm

[Steve]

Frank D:
Do you mean government programs, or private sector initiatives? Most semiconductor designers, iPod designers, aircraft designers, and heavy equipment designers in this country were educated and trained by non-governmental entities. And if it was possible (years or decades ago) to forecast the need for those jobs or the obsolescence of the jobs they subsequently displaced, it's a safe bet the private sector did the forecasting, not the government.

Usually, the government *impedes* the process, in the name of "protecting" existing jobs. (It's easy for TV journalists to produce tear-jerking interviews with ex-employees displaced from textile and shoe-making jobs, or with ethanol production workers who really need those tariffs and subsidies; but it's impossible for those same journalists to locate and interview any of the people who will, within a few years, be designing and manufacturing hypercapacitors, superbatteries, and automobile drive-train smart chips that will render gasoline and diesel fuel obsolete -- if the government would just stay out of the way.) Consequently, we mostly get the destruction side of the creative destruction story. Government action to reduce job "destruction" is highly visible; the consequence, a reduction in future job creation, is invisible.

goy:
I don't know about a Euro-bubble; all I hear about Europe in that regard is occasional speculation (heading for recession? about to lower interest rates? etc). I also see droves of European tourists in the USA. Wish I knew how to call the bottom for the dollar-vs-euro (...maybe George Soros knows?).

[Bob]

Steve,

Can your point to the full article of the quote? I'm interested in the full context.

Thanks.

[Frank D]

Hi Steve,
I believe that govt should be able to forecast with some accuracy job losses by sector...they publish data each year showing where foreign manufacturers are gaining market share. I'd like to see Govt and private sector work together. For example, if the forecasters believe that there is 40% excess capacity in the U.S auto manufacturing industry over the next 10 years (due continued market share loss to Asian competition), then how about some funding/programs to train those auto workers to become hypercapacitor and super-battery manufacturers? Might not be what the autoworkers want to hear now, but better sooner than later..

be good,

Frank D.

[Gil]

Hows about I put on my Libertarian hat and ask "who are the 'we' who are going to re-employ displaced workers"? After all, why did the companies outsource in the first place? Why should new jobs necessarily magical arise to replace old jobs? What's stopping a new hypercapacitor manufacturing company from starting up in China anyway? What if the only reason companies outsource is due to cheaper labor cost? If so, then there's no reason to set up a hypercapacitor manufacturing company in the West. And, ultimately, if it's all about labor costs then isn't the only way the West can reclaim manufacturing jobs is for workers to work just as cheaply and as hard as the Chinese do?

[A Tanatar]

The first catch is that "the nation" re-employs those people, only not too willingly, at a lower wage and in the service sector. The second catch is that there are no uber-hard-working Chinese workers, but largely there is a government of China and its econimic policy with cheap currency.

[Witheld]

What do you make of this article: http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071125/EDITORIAL/111250002/1013

I understand your arguments that the current national debt doesn't warrant a chicken little attitude, but the future seems quite a bit worse looking at the assesment referenced in the Times editorial

[Steve]

Witheld:
Here's what I think of it:
http://tinyurl.com/ys3v7s

[Delusional Stevie]

Delusional Steve,

You are not the first one wear miniskirts to cheer for a ponzi scheme. You will not be the last. Your faith in something for nothing will get you what you deserve.

Your faith in central pyramid scheme planners will be rewarded appropriately.

Regards