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The Glory of Globalism
If there’s anything the globalist “free traders” loved more than importing cheap foreign labor to undercut American workers’ wages, it was offshoring those jobs entirely by relocating American manufacturing to communist China. According to the GFTs, there was absolutely no downside to this. True, American manufacturing workers would lose their livelihoods by the millions, but all the cheap Chinese-made crap they could buy at Walmart (once they learned to code and got new high-tech jobs {unless East Indian coders imported by the millions on H-visas undercut those jobs, too}) would raise their overall consumer satisfaction. Also, the GFTs told us… try not to laugh… increasing trade with the Chinese would make them more liberal and democratic.
The former thing is working out about as well as the latter thing; which is why you may have noticed a lot of empty shelves (or, more likely “ITEM OUT OF STOCK” labels on Amazon.) This is reported at multiple sources, but we’ll use the Daily Mail:
Dozens of cargo ships anchored off the coasts of Los Angeles and New York face shocking wait times of up to four weeks and railyards and trucking routes are hopelessly clogged due to the lack of manpower to unload goods – with an expert warning that the government needs to intervene or face spiraling inflation and unemployment.
The backlog of billions of dollars of toys, clothing, electronics, vehicles, and furniture comes as the demand for consumer goods hit its highest point in history as consumers stay home instead of spending money on travel and entertainment.
Supply chains have lagged far behind consumer demand due to a lack of manpower at American ports and the restrictions that came with the COVID-19 outbreak early last year. These constraints, which include social distancing and mandatory quarantines, have severely limited the number and ability of port workers to do their jobs.
I can’t help thinking a lot of this could have been avoided if, you know, we still manufactured stuff in America. Also, if we hadn’t treated an upper respiratory infection with a 99.8% survival rate like it was the second coming of the Black Plague. I vaguely remember a guy who warned us that depending on communist China for our manufacturing was a bad idea. I think he got impeached or something.
Published in Economics
A lot of it was classic first-level thinking. Americans can just stay at home and buy stuff online, with no thought of how all that stuff would be transported and delivered.
No one has the right to use violence to deprive another person of his property rights merely to increase the market value of his own.
Hindsight is a beautiful thing. If you look at the half full part of the glass, the USA is less dependable on oil now than was at the time of the first Iraq war. The US can further improve its energy independence by building Nuclear power plants and start mining rare earths inside the territory of the US. This winder might prove to be game changing, electricity prices are going clime to unseen levels in Europe do to our idiotic green policies (I’m Portuguese). I’m curious to see how we the green European dickheads are going to handle the economic wreckage.
Kevin Williamson, in NR has touch the problem of jobless Americans in a way I find interesting. Not just in the US but in any western developed country, people should move where the jobs are. Why stay in the French or American rust belt were chances of work are nearly zero? There’s a weird Stockholm syndrome. I’ve seen it played time and time again, subsidizing poor communities in São Miguel Island in Azores, in Scotland, or in Arkansas only perpetuates poverty.
I also believe the American jobs situation have important nuances, Detroit went to the dogs long before China had any manufacturing presence, the American car industry was producing shity klunkers that nobody wanted to buy, not because the Japanese cars were cheaper but because they were better. Remember Sony’s stereos and TVs? Do you remember how bad were American tvs? I don’t know why but some of your manufacturing degraded many years bedore China’s rise.
A fundamental issue facing the US today: In a world with global and highly-efficient transportation and communications…and billions of people who are accustomed to low wages…is it possible for a country such as the United States to maintain its accustomed high standards of living for the large majority of its people?…and, if so, what are the key policy elements required to do this?
I discussed this question in some depth here.
Yeah, Williamson has become famous (or infamous) for his “call U-Haul” remark. I suppose it has an element of truth to it. However, it completely disregards the concept of “community”; a concept that is treasured in my neck of the woods. Yes, a person can pack up their families and head to an unfamiliar city where they and their children will be complete strangers. They will simply become statistics; more alienation in which they become strangers in their own country. Just collateral damage, right?
Because of this country’s slavish devotion to globalism (I can’t speak to other countries), my part of the country has lost the steel and coal industries. We are expected to “call u-haul” or accept forms of subsidization. I do not accept your characterzation of a “Stockholm Syndrome”, at least in Appalachia.
If the financial elite of this country (and the U.S. Government) gave a whit for anyone other than themselves they might have considered replacement industries for those they chose to ruin. They did not; it might have affected their bottom line.
Indeed. This morning I was working in my front yard and no fewer than three neighbors dropped by to compliment on the work we are doing on the house and saying how glad they are to have us in the neighborhood. You don’t get that in an exurban condo association where everyone is a transplant who moved for work.
Yeah, and it’s even more important when it comes to kids. When kids get uprooted, lose life-long friends and become the “new kid”, nothing good comes from it. I didn’t know how lucky I had it to have gone 12 years in the same school.
That crap about kids being so resilient is just that; crap. Kids need some consistency in their lives; not only with parents but with their schools and neighborhoods. This seems completely lost to our “intelligentsia”.
Well, if nothing else, “kids are resilient” has made divorce culture a lot easier to sell.
And not just divorce culture. I mentioned recently to a colleague with a young daughter that I was concerned about the impact of all the masks and distancing and isolation on the kids who’ve been suffering through all that. His response? “Bah, kids are resilient.”
It’s an awfully convenient mantra if you want to evade responsibility for what happens to kids. . .
I’m not capable of getting in a big argument about this, but I think he actually was saying people should move away from ***poorly governed*** areas that aren’t dealing with free trade very well.
Having said that, I am on record saying that we have done every single thing wrong in the face of wage deflation and job destruction from globalized labor and automation.
I like cheap sneakers and jeans as much as the next guy. I’m just not willing to bankrupt my neighbor to get them.
Globalized labor and automation force prices down. The federal reserve needs to run with a deflationary monetary policy. 30 years ago.
This is quite the magical solution. It clearly reveals anyone who advocates for such a thing quite out of touch with ordinary people.
1. Moving costs a lot of money. People do move to where the jobs are but usually try to secure the job first. Then you have a reason to move.
2. People have families and extended family and friends.Maybe you are caring for your elderly parents. Your kids are in school and have friends and are on sports teams. They do not want to move.
3. Maybe your wife has a job. You just lost yours, but you can’t lose both incomes.
4. Maybe because of unforeseen circumstances the new place is markedly worse, perhaps in some aspect you didn’t anticipate ( crime, a bad school system, a train that wasn’t running on Sunday when you looked at the place.
5. This places tremendous psychological stress on the family unit.
6. It’s very difficult to make a direct house to house move unless you are upper mid-income with assets.
So it’s probably an interim move into an apartment, placing thing in storage or having a yard sale…
Moving takes a lot of planning and money. It’s a lot of work getting all the new licenses registrations, insurance. Selling your home if you own one.
Most people who could get out of these places already have done so. It’s been decades.
So, for Kevin Williamson to blithely suggest this shows a kind of ignorance and callousness that is unfortunately all to prevalent on the snobby right.
This is exactly how the GOP got Trump. On the the points where they revile him, they deserve it. They deserve every embarrassment they feel. It’s misplaced embarrassment. It should be about how the GOP and our leaders in Congress have shamed themselves. They are . To us, they look more ridiculous than Donald Trump himself.
Who is the charlatan again?
Has anyone else noticed how hard it is to get all-cotton products. Or leather goods? Or shoes on which you can replace soles that are stitched on? I confess that I don’t pay more than $12 for “jeans” or more than $38 for leather shoes and boots, so that limits my shopping experience, but most recently I bought a pair of jeans with “2% spandex” and it’s like wearing ladies tights. They are snug fit except for my ankles. And they want to squeeze themselves down off my waist, so I have to overtighten my belt, and still I have to keep pulling them up.
This isn’t just China’s choice I don’t think. I think it’s directed by the same movers and shakers that say we have to go to a green economy, and said to go from paper bags, to plastic, then to canvas (hemp!), and then with CoV to plastic again. And supermarkets in our area only rarely have any bags anymore, and are deliberately bag free Monday-Wednesday. What’s going on?
Intel is moving more chip making to the US. -upply line issues over the year will likely accelerate that trend, especially if the megalomaniac running China goes full Mao as it looks like he will.
My daughter the engineer works for a company that takes orders for specially designed components and replacement parts and then partners with hundreds of smalL manufacturers across the USA to get them produced. 3D printing has made much of this possible.
There is absolutely no research that backs this policy in any way. I’ve heard some really good podcasts about it and it never gets in the news. That quite possibly could be the most under-covered bad policy in the country.
If 3D printing is coming into its own just as China is cutting their own economic (and other) throats, sounds like serendipity.
But then again…
Aren’t all the 3D printers made in China?
I tried to reply to a couple of posts but I screwed the word count. So, here’s my semi final thoughts. America is a huge country and you are rich both in people and resources. If you built Nuclear power plants and mine your own rare earths you will achieve energy independence. As for industry jobs, I believe things were taking a nose dive before China and with automation the factory jobs had there days numbered. China will face a catastrophic demographic shift, the US is better in that regard in my opinion measures to promote birthrate would be welcomed, namely deregulation in the house market. You are a nation of emigrants, Your ancestors moved from faraway places. So, moving to where the jobs are shouldn’t be an impossible obstacle. My parents moved, from Portugal to Africa and back again, inside the country we moved several times , finally I moved to go to college and stayed because of better job perspectives. My wife also moved from a different part of the country. My great grandfather and great uncles emigrated to the states and most of them returned to Portugal. That’s the philosophy I got from both sides of the family, you moved away from poverty.
I don’t think so. There are a number of large US makers and at least one big one in Europe.
We already had energy independence for years, and were exporters of oil and natural gas, until Biden.
Still doesn’t help if they get their components from China.
Since the first time I heard “paper or plastic?” I invariably responded, “Plastic. The sooner we use up all the earth’s oil the sooner we’ll go to a hydrogen-based economy.” So far no one’s ever laughed.
If there is a cool gadget made in Indonesia, people don’t want their government telling them that they can’t have it because it wasn’t made in the USA. Also, people don’t want to pay their next door neighbor 3,000 dollars for something that an man from Thailand will sell him for 400 dollars.
If you engage in price gouging, don’t be surprised if you lose customers. People are tight with their money and they will shop the entire globe to find the best price and highest quality.
I wish I could give this one 10 likes.
I moved a number of times to further my career in I.T. I always recieved a raise in pay and all relocation expenses were paid for. However, if I would have had a family, it would have been much different.
There’s the rub. The $400 item from Thailand isn’t likely to have the same quality as the $3,000 US item. It may not be only 10% as good, but that’s where it begins, not where it ends.
If people get tired of being ripped off by the guy in Thailand selling them the 400 dollar gadget, they will certainly consider purchasing the high quality gadget from their next door neighbor for 3,000 dollars.
It’s just that people tend to resent their government if their government places obstacles in their path toward purchasing the products and services they desire.
It’s like the Teachers’ Union. They say that public education is better than private education. If so, why are they so afraid of a system where the parents get to decide where the education dollars are spend? I’ll tell you why. It’s because the Teachers’ Union knows that their “product” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
In fact, many public school teachers send their own children to private schools. The hypocrisy is amazing.
The game is to force people to buy their product so that they can just shaft their consumers with a substandard “product” at jacked up prices. People won’t stand for it.
Well, hey, it’s important that the parents have the freedom to find their “true selves”. The kids just get in the way…
Nope, there’s a company here in the town where I live building them.
Where do they get the components?