More Free Traitor Nonsense: "The Manufacturing Jobs We've Lost Weren't Good Jobs Anyway"

A popular meme put forth by people who feel America benefits by closing factories and putting Americans out of work, is that we don't need those jobs anyway. Or worse, they are bad jobs and we should get rid of them.

Case in point:


Lost Manufacturing Jobs: Good Riddance?

There is no question that the U.S. has lost an enormous number of manufacturing jobs to lower wage countries.  These countries include mega economies like China and a number of smaller countries such as Vietnam that have large numbers of workers willing to work for low wages. Given the current high unemployment rate in the United States, it is understandable that politicians point out that we need to regain manufacturing jobs and that the loss of jobs to other countries is a major problem for the U.S.

But before we accept the loss of many low skilled manufacturing jobs as a major negative for the U.S. and that it should be halted and perhaps even reversed, it is important to put it in the context of what we know about the social impact of simple, repetitive work.  The fact is that this type of work often has numerous negative impacts on both individuals and society in general. This was highlighted recently by the news about riots taking place in Foxconn’s Chinese factories.

Even in China, low wage repetitive work can create major conflicts between workers and corporations and be destructive to society. We learned this long ago in the U.S. and it resulted in major U.S. corporations offshoring repetitive, manufacturing work or upgrading it through technology to the point where it became skilled work. In terms of social sustainability, repetitive low skilled work is a major negative. It causes employee dissatisfaction and turnover, stress-related mental and physical health problems, dysfunctional union/management relationships and large social class differences in wealth.

The bottom line is that instead of complaining about offshoring manufacturing jobs, we should be focusing on keeping and creating the right kind of manufacturing jobs. What kinds of jobs are those? In essence, I am talking about the kind of knowledge work jobs that exist in the high-tech world and the advanced manufacturing plants of some major manufacturers. We can only keep these jobs in the U.S. if we have a skilled workforce who can meet the challenges that knowledge, information technology, and engineering present.

When you hear these arguments, remember there are two obvious fatal flaws in this argument that you probably already know, but haven't been able to point out clearly before:

1) The knowledge economy that these guys talk about, is inherently too small. So is advanced manufacturing. The number of jobs that these fields will produce are high-paying and we do need them as part of our economy and industrial base, but the inherent reality of both advanced knowledge-based jobs and advanced manufacturing is that they are high productivity jobs. Knowledge-based and high-tech manufacturing industries are inherently designed to employ fewer people to do the same amount of work. Take a look around you. How many innovation-based jobs and advanced manufacturing jobs are there? How many people are out of work? The enormous ratio of unemployed people to "advanced" jobs ratio is one that is not going to change by much even in the best of times. These jobs are tragically insufficient in numbers to cover even the people who were put out of work from regular manufacturing by foreign outsourcing.

Simply put there will never be as many of these knowledge based jobs or high tech manufacturing jobs to cover the number of people thrown out of work when we send the lower end manufacturing jobs overseas. Period. No economist can hope to keep a straight face and tell you otherwise. 

The other thing you will want to remind someone of when they spout these stupid arguments is that we already have tons of college graduates in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) industries out there right now, and they cannot find work in the STEM fields. Consider a man who holds a Ph D in plasma physics - not even he can get a job in this so-called knowledge based economy. 

Consider these statistics, too:

There are 101,000 U.S.-born individuals with engineering degrees who are unemployed.
There are an additional 244,000 U.S.-born individuals under age 65 who have a degree in engineering but who are not in the labor market. This means they are not working nor are they looking for work, and are therefore not counted as unemployed.
In addition to those unemployed and out of the labor force, there are an additional 1.47 million U.S.-born individuals who report they have an engineering degree and have a job, but do not work as engineers.
President Obama specifically used the words “highly skilled.” In 2010, there were 25,000 unemployed U.S.-born individuals with engineering degrees who have a Master’s or Ph.D. and another 68,000 with advanced degrees not in the labor force. There were also 489,000 U.S.-born individuals with graduate degrees who were working, but not as engineers.

If knowledge based jobs are the next big thing then why do we have so many knowledge workers who are unemployed or not even working in the STEM industry?

This is where free traitors retreat to their last resort: bigotry against American workers. "They're all incompetent!" 

2) We're already shipping knowledge work overseas. Biotech has research already moved overseas. Intel has moved a major research center to China. And let's not mention the devastation that foreign outsourcing is inflicting upon the knowledge jobs of the tech industry.

The problem with globalization is that knowledge work - innovation and research - is as easily mobile as manufacturing. It doesn't matter if you have a Ph D - someone in India could have a Ph D, too, and do the same work for pennies to your dollar. Free traitors like to avoid discussing this. Remember to hammer them about it. Mercilessly.

3) China faces unrest not because manufacturing jobs are inherently jobs where workers get abused, but because China, unlike the United States, still allows rampant abuse, overworking and underpayment of their workers. America had beaten this problem of worker abuse with workplace safety laws and wage laws, to name a few basic rights that Chinese workers don't have. In China they put you in a dorm and wake you up at random in order to fulfill a company's emergency order for a new product. They can't get away with that in America.

As for the "dissatisfaction and turnover, stress-related mental and physical health problems" - all of which are less severe in American manufacturing jobs, mind you (thank labor unions for that) - there is one other point to consider: does this genius of an author think unemployment causes less of this?

4) Knowledge based jobs and high-tech manufacturing jobs require workers with college degrees. Anyone who tells you otherwise is blowing smoke out their butts. Has this author looked outside for a second to see what the cost of such degrees are, nowadays?

So the plan here is for unemployed American manufacturing workers to run the gauntlet of high tuition costs and massive student debt to get a STEM based degree to compete with the other STEM grads out there who are unemployed and looking for work. And to compete with cheap STEM labor from other countries, too. 

What could possibly go wrong with that?

Rebels vs Hypocrites: The Fight Against #Offshoring Inches Closer to a #REVOLUTION.

As predicted, the wave of anti-offshoring sentiments continues to grow toward the level of an electoral tsunami. Like many tsunamis, this wave began as an undersea political earthquake in 2004 when popular opinions first started turning against foreign outsourcing, and has steadily worked its way to shore ever since. A July 2012 Gallup poll puts "stop outsourcing American jobs" as the third most popular way to improve the economy. 

When Presidential candidate John Kerry made foreign outsourcing an issue in his campaign in 2004, it wasn't enough to put him over the top against George W Bush. However, by 2010, it became evident that there was a political tsunami about to hit Washington, DC. It was at this time that a report by the Public Citizen came out, showing that politicians were starting to attack foreign outsourcing in record numbers. Moreover, the report showed that Democrats who attacked foreign outsourcing survived the GOP landslide at a rate of 3 times the number of Democrats who didn't attack foreign outsourcing. Furthermore, Democrats and Republicans alike who previously supported foreign outsourcing, turned against it in order to win. This is very important, because while many were acting hypocritical in launching political attack ads against foreign outsourcing, they did so in order to win. Why did so many politicians do such an about-face? Because like the animals who fled the 2004 tsunami that killed 150,000 people, it was a successful survival tactic. The politicians who ran against anti-outsourcing candidates, tended to lose.

But, of course, defenders of foreign outsourcing would say this is a fluke, right? That, it turns out, appears to be wishful thinking.

In 2012, President Obama put foreign outsourcing in his gunsights, and then proceeded to crucify Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney over the issue. Of course, Obama has had his own rebel and hypocrite relationship with foreign outsourcing, with his support of the horrendously pro-offshoring Trans Pacific Partnership treaty, juxtaposed with his legion of anti-foreign outsourcing activity: his anti-outsourcing bills and his battles with China, including his solar panel tariffs and his victories against China in the WTO.

And President Obama was far from alone. Public Citizen, again, ran the numbers from the 2012 elections, and it turns out that the attacks on foreign outsourcing by politicians increased dramatically. 

Candidates who voted against Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) touted their fair-trade record. Many candidates, including incumbents who could not claim such a record, touted votes in favor of closing tax loopholes that incentivize offshoring, attacked their opponent on offshoring, or pledged to be "tough on China." The magnitude of trade-themed ads to which the American public was exposed in this election cycle was reinforced by an unprecedented prominence of trade themes in the presidential debates and stump speeches.

Now, for those who support foreign outsourcing, this particular piece of news is terrible. The rebels, those who oppose foreign outsourcing, practically cleaned house.

Among all paid ads used by the 294 campaigns, support for trade deals was limited to one ad in which the GOP candidate for Hawaii's open Senate seat, former Gov. Linda Lingle, attacked Senator-elect Maize Hirono for opposing all three FTAs in 2011 when she was a House member. Despite expectations for a close race, Hirono beat Lingle by 26 percentage points.

In 2012, there were some crushing defeats for foreign outsourcing as far as political elections go.

Of course, there were the hypocrites who hopped on the bandwagon, too - those who previously supported (and perhaps still do support) foreign outsourcing, but then turned against it during election time:

More than 40 percent of House and Senate incumbents in tight races who indicted the trade status quo in paid ads or campaign websites have voted for the current trade model more often than they voted against it. A half dozen Republican incumbents ran ads attacking current trade policy despite a 100 percent track record of support for every single NAFTA-style trade deal arising under their tenure. These include Allen West (R-Fla.), David Rivera (R-Fla.), Bobby Schilling (R-Ill.), Dan Benishek (R-Mich.), Reid Ribble (R-Wis.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.), the incumbent who lost the headline-grabbing battle for Massachusetts' Senate seat. Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) stands out among Democratic candidates who used the trade theme despite a voting record for unfair trade. Last year, Richmond voted for the NAFTA-style deals with Korea and Panama that both include special protection to facilitate U.S. corporations' job offshoring. As well, an increase in the U.S. trade deficit with Korea since that pact went into effect already had cost U.S. jobs. Incredibly, Richmond chose to attack his challenger in a paid ad for supporting offshoring-prone trade deals. Even more ironically, Richmond cited his own accountability: "I've taken responsibility for my actions because public officials must be accountable. And we should hold Congressman Cao accountable for his record: supporting trade deals with China that send our jobs overseas." While the United States actually has no trade deal with China, it does now have job-eroding deals with Korea and Panama, thanks to Richmond's support.

The common theme? They're all turning against foreign outsourcing of American jobs.

What about these hypocrites, who oppose foreign outsourcing during election time, but who support it when they're in office? That's to be expected at the outset of a political revolution. Indeed, hypocrites are commonplace even as an electoral revolution occurs. Eventually, though, what happens is the hypocrites get washed out to sea when a political tsunami hits land.

Proponents of foreign outsourcing have had 30 years to make their case. America has heard it and they comprehend it. Unfortunately, their case has failed the reality check, as the benefits of globalization have failed to materialize in the face of all the drawbacks.

The lesson to take from this is as follows. Whether a politician was a true rebel against foreign outsourcing or they were a hypocrite who previously supported it, the way to win political office is to oppose foreign outsourcing. Openly supporting it is a clear and undeniable ticket to defeat and retirement. The day is not long in coming in which the way to STAY in office is to stay a rebel and not become a hypocrite. That is the day when a true electoral revolution will occur, and globalization will be forced to face the radical reforms it desperately needs.