"job losses are an inescapable fact of life in a dynamic market economy"

[bloom]

From the Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies

This is nothing new. It's from March 17, 2004. It was linked to Friedman's It's a Flat World, After All article - which basically says that Americans need to improve their educational systems and become more competitive in the global, digital economy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/03DOMINANCE.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnl=1&incamp=article_popular_3&adxnnlx=1112886244-L3krHmaHjkLqNQVRCZ7hdw

The typical Republican POV... It is just weird to see it so succinctly put. No plans to deal with the job situation for Americans - to actually help improve education access, have any kind of jobs programs, etc. "... job losses are... the source of new wealth and rising living standards..." (for some people - not the ones without jobs).

Job Losses and Trade
A Reality Check
by Brink Lindsey


Brink Lindsey is the director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies.


Executive Summary


Fears about job losses and chronic job shortages are on the loose again. Over the past few years, millions of U.S. jobs have disappeared, and foreign competition is increasingly taking the blame. Manufacturing jobs are supposedly fleeing to China, while service-sector jobs are being "offshored" to India.


Job losses are always painful, and the recent recession and sluggish recovery have meant real hardship for many Americans. It is important, however, to shun hysteria and demagoguery in assessing what is going on with the labor market and why. The employment picture today is that of a temporary, cyclical shortage of jobs caused by the recent downturn; there is no permanent shortage of good jobs on the horizon.


Even in good times, job losses are an inescapable fact of life in a dynamic market economy. Old jobs are constantly being eliminated as new positions are created. Total U.S. private-sector jobs increased by 17.8 million between 1993 and 2002. To produce that healthy net increase, a breath-taking total of 327.7 million jobs were added, while 309.9 million jobs were lost. In other words, for every one new net private-sector job created during that period, 18.4 gross job additions had to offset 17.4 gross job losses.


International trade contributes only modestly to this frenetic job turnover. Between 2000 and 2003, manufacturing employment dropped by nearly 2.8 million, yet imports of manufactured goods rose only 0.6 percent. Meanwhile, despite the new offshoring trend, the Department of Labor is forecasting a 35 percent increase in computer-and math-related jobs over the next decade.


Calls for new trade restrictions to preserve current jobs are misguided. There is no significant difference between jobs lost because of trade and those lost because of technologies or work processes. All of those job losses are a painful but necessary part of the larger process of innovation and productivity increases that is the source of new wealth and rising living standards.

http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/briefs/tbp-019es.html

[tx_dem41]

1. Doesn't this fall under the "D'uh" category?

Now expanding on this idea to try to explain away chronic job loss is just plain wrong.

[applegrove]

10. Growing a heart is a revelation! BREAKING NEWS! & a lie!!

for cato.

[Demit]

2. well sure. "source of new wealth & rising living standards"--but for whom?

[ProfessorGAC]

3. Another Cato Pinhead

These guys are so locked into two dimensions they have become cartoon characters.

Job losses are not at all inevitable. Not macroeconomically, anyway. The elimination of one job in one industry is, ESPECIALLY IN A DYNAMIC MARKET ECONOMY, offset by a job or more in another, more vital and growing industry! What a dimwit!

There is not a shred of data to prove the contention that there's nothing that can be done. In fact, there is a mountain of data that the way the U.S. economy has worked for over 125 years is that as one industry falls into disuse, the number of people needed for the next wave of industrial strength goes UP, not down!

Before petro, we had LOTS of people in forrestry, and coal mining. A much higher proportion of the population than 30 years later. When we found petroleum industry, and we needed more people in that industry, so as coal and timber jobs went down, drilling, rigging, pumping and refining jobs exceeded the loss in those jobs. This idiot needs to look up some data!

The same thing happened with plastics vs. paper and glass. More jobs were created by the plastics industry than were lost in paper and glass when the former became the packaging material of choice.

This guy is a complete buffoon, a total liar, or both.
The Professor

[applegrove]

6. Have not read the article. But the rich need NON FULL EMPLOYMENT

desperately. The price of Oil is just going to go UP UP UP and the only thing that will be the economy from going into stagflation and loosing all the rich people money (and keeping them from getting out of Dodge & leaving behind only the Saudi Royal Family owning the USA) the only thing stopping Oil from total Stagflation Shocks is the lack of full employment.

Lack of full employment is just a "Norm" they need us to accept.

So I will not need the article. It will only be so much propaganda.

If we are going to accept or allow "non - full employment" to keep the country from falling to pieces... what exactly are they, the corporates & the elites going to do for us? NOTHING!

[ProfessorGAC]

7. The Problem Is. . .

. . .there are dimwits like the author who actually believe this economic nonsense (from a theoretical point of view) who aren't themselves rich.

This guy is not one of the wealth/power elites. He is, supposedly, a scholar and academician. He's dumber than dirt, but he's not one of those who will ultimately benefit from the big lie. Yet, he purports to have a special expertise and insight that will make it all better. Really kind of pathetic.
The Professor

[bloom]

8. the employability of the author...

that's one of the things I was thinking about with this - how sure is he that he will continue to be employed. :shrug:

Maybe the author has some big nest egg or something or other - so doesn't really worry about it. Maybe considers those Think Tank jobs to be pretty solid.



There was that Reuter's story yesterday ( i thought was talking about Editors being outsourced - I didn't find it...)

I found this from over a year ago:

http://www.editorsweblog.org/2004/02/reuters_takes_o.html

Wednesday, February 11, 2004


Reuters takes outsourcing to a new level with journalists

Good news for some, bad news for others: journalists can be "outsourced" reports the New York Times and Jacques Steinberg. Indeed, Reuters plans to hire six journalists in Bangalore, India, to do basic financial reporting on 3,000 small to medium-size American companies.
Well, you begin with six journalists, but who knows how many they will be in the future?


And this site (and many similar):

What to outsource to India?

http://www.outsource2india.com/why_india/articles/writing.diversity.asp

[applegrove]

9. I will not read the article if you say it is that bad n/t

[madinmaryland]

4. And how do the jobs created compare to the jobs lost?

That is one thing that is never addressed. Seems like most are in the service industry (Wal-mart, McDonalds, etc.).

[dcfirefighter]

5. Here is what happened and what we need to do.

using economic terms coined by Adam Smith

Labor combines with Land to create Capital
Labor uses Captial to work Land to create Wealth

Land includes land, air, spectrum, oil and other raw, unextracted natural resources. We barely tax the raw use of oil, most of it was given away for a nominal filing charge, and then sold from company to company.

Labor includes brainwork and brawnwork.

Wealth is the made things that people want.

Capital is the made things that people use to make other things.

Since capital is the product of labor (and land) taxing it is a tax on labor.

Taxing labor or capital inhibits commerce, and reduces wages and returns to built capital. Taxing either of these reduces the amount of labor or capital. (It reduces jobs).

Taxing land does not reduce its amount one bit. Infact, if you tax land, you need more use of labor (or labor capital) to get the things we want. And we want a lot. Right now we have relatively cheap, powerful, and portable land, in the form of oil.

If we begin progressively shifting taxes off of labor and labor-capital, and on to land, we will create jobs, encourage competition, break monopolies and oligopolies, and generally foster a better standard of living.

Education is nice, and paramount for a real democracy, but doesn't guarantee good wages. Ask a union crane operater and someone with a Master's in Social Work how much they make. Economically, all widespread education means is a large source of cheap educated labor for landowners to exploit.

Of course, with the government encouragement of widespread homeownership, we have a nation of people with a tiny parcel of land under their house, who consider themselves landowners. Sort of like the 'ownership society' where if you have $10K in stocks, you'll sell your soul to benefit the stock market, when there are folks with $100M who benefit from your choices.

[applegrove]

12. I do not agree. We need to be in the sciences because that creates

innovation and innovation is wealth these days. Land is not so important when we have the internet. Also capital flight (rich people moving to some island to avoid taxes) will apparently leave the USA in the hands of Saudis.

A real pickle USA is in. No money for anything that isn't worth its weight in cold like basic needs, police, health care, education, ...

But why the push to privatize it all? I mean if the military does not have a privatized CIA...why should the people have to privatize SS. We both don't trust corporations to do the job properly and require government intervention in the form of institutions.

You do have to open your markets and borders so that those that will loose jobs in the new world economy can get great deals at local stores... not just walmart. People will have to start small businesses.

stockbrokers will be loosing jobs to India too.

I think to cut down on use of oil the USA is specializing in military production (instead of civil). That is fine (innovation will always belong to the innovators). But you don't have to keep putting off recessions and encouraging middle class people to get into the housing bubble.

I mean how much of the last $80 Billion for Iraq is still in the USA stock market? And then when the wars stop they want to pump it up with 1/3 of SS money? So the stockbroker who bought a $400,000 home 1.5 hours from work... well he is ****ed. He either goes back and studies engineering or he gets a job delivering something in 10 years. The middle class is going through it right now.

I still say - the middle class & working poor are giving up allot and doing their part - oh yes they are.

So what are the rich in the USA doing? Other than encouraging their pharmaceutical companies to discourage universal health care. What are they doing?

Does just the fact that they have allot of money and keep some of it in the USA... is that all they have to do?

We know tax cuts are to make the Middle Class hate the social programs (because they now have to pay for them without the help of the rich).

Should the rich loose the vote? Can we fold those people into their numbered trust funds and 'unhumanize them'? I don't think so. What to do..

[applegrove]

11. Those service industry jobs cannot be replaced. The help comes

into being when the goods become really cheap and you can trade online (in India) for .50cents a trade & you can talk to a psychotherapist is Argentina for $5.

That is how our lives are supposed to get better. Any intelligence or thing that can be done abroad will be. And yes, even editors of the news will be outsourced.

The thing is.. all Americans, the middle & working poor, are doing this to keep America great and ahead of the game (or in the game if you are anyone in the West).

What are the rich people doing?

How are they giving?

CATO should study that!:popcorn:

[BillZBubb]

13. Brink Lindsey's picture is next to "Idiot" in my dictionary.

We've never been this far into an economic "recovery" with such an anemic jobs situation. Something very serious is going on and it's not good. All the Cato happy talk won't change that fact.