Help Not Wanted - Jobs: Where did they go?

[dArKeR]

March 1 issue - It's a set of questions that would make any cubicle dweller a bit nervous. "Exactly how do you do your job? Would you mind writing it down?" When Hank Williamson, a tech administrator at a Virginia bank, heard those questions recently, he took them as a sign his job may soon be going on an exotic trip. The likely destination: India, where a homegrown techie could use Williamson's instructions to do the work for dimes on the dollar. "My job security here is nonexistent," says Williamson, 49, who's still earning six figures but is polishing his resume. He's better off than Lisa Pineau, a mainframe programmer in Plano, Texas. She was forced to train her foreign-born replacement before being laid off in late 2002. Spotting few openings for tech workers, she's considered going into bookkeeping or medical transcription, but now she's worried those jobs are moving overseas, too. "Anything on a computer is getting 'offshored'," she says. So lately Pineau, 46, and her husband Patrick (also a tech worker) have considered switching into a field they figure can't be exported. They want to open a Subway sandwich shop.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4340784/

[MUAD_DIB]

1. Hey, a Subway sandwich shop! That sounds like

manufacturing to me! Bring 'em on!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x6112

[amazona]

9. ho boy, subway is a really bad choice

They don't protect their territories. You buy a franchise, and it ain't cheap, and then they sell another in the strip mall a block away. It just happened here.

It's a scary world where you have to BUY a job, which is what buying a franchise is -- with NO guarantee that you will ever make a profit or be able to pay back your loan. "Self-employment" means you will likely never have health insurance, you will never have benefits -- I speak as one self-employed for 20 years. People don't get into business for themselves for "freedom" or fulfillment, for those things are not going to be found when you're earning (in my case) in the high four figures net profit a year. People are self-employed because they can't get a real job. There's a big reason why women and minorities are over-represented in start-ups, we can't get decent jobs with benefits so have no choice.

The 49 year old will likely never be able to afford insurance coverage again. He would be better off taking what he plans to invest in Subway and moving to Mexico or Costa Rica or another country where a person can re-settle with only a few hundred thousand dollars and still be able to afford health care.

[ghengisjim]

2. So whats the answer?

For our workers to be competitive with foriegn workers, they need to be allowed to compete. If we take that away by protecting them, overall our economy goes to crap, the poor get poorer, the rich get poorer, everyone's standard of living drops, and we start wondering why we abandoned capitalism at all..

[kcwayne]

4. Myopic

Unless you are a member of the elite that own 95% of this country, your livelihood is dependent somewhere along the economic chain on people purchasing something. And along that chain are large segments of people who are being asked to compete against 30 cents an hour labor.

The people making 30 cents an hour are slaving away in an economy that has massive unemployment, tyrannical governments, and exploitative capitalism. As such they have no power to demand livable wages and add themselves to the pool of buyers of products that keep the economic engine running that ultimately drives someone to pay you to perform some service.

While you may feel comfortable today telling someone else they must compete against slave labor, you are advocating against your own interests. Consider what your prospects will be when unemployment is 30-45% because there are no factories, nor opportunities so provide services such as insurance, raw materials, or vending concessions to those factories. Also consider your prospects when corporations have sent all accounting, IT, engineering, and legal work to cheap labor countries. All those people that can't compete are now doing what? They aren't buying anything, and that spells doom for everyone.

Including you.

[brokensymmetry]

5. Well said!

As more and more people are reduced to poverty, the American economy will grind to a halt for everyone. Even sandwich shop owners.

[TheWhitneyBrown]

3. Bush Tax Cuts Create Millions of Jobs - in China

The old theory was that when you cut taxes, people had more money to buy things, which used up inventory, and companyies would then hire more workers to replace it. It's still true. It's just that the idle capacity is not here anymore, it's in Asia.
These tax cuts have stimulated the wrong economy! The Chinese economy is growing at a phenomenal rate, to the point where they are actually bidding up the price of commodities like steel.
We got our three or four hundred in tax cuts, and we went to WalMart and bought stuff like we were supposed to. And we created a bunch of jobs overseas.
Normally we'd just run out of money and be poor for a while. But actually we all have a bunch of extra money in our pockets because we aren't paying the cost of our government.
All the things like equipping our soldiers, inspecting our food, maintaining our highways, and handing out freebies to our farmers and energy lobbies are being paid by those who buy our deficit. Mostly the Chinese, right now.
In old days we had foreign aid: we would loan money at cheap rates to foreign countries so they could buy our goods. We didn't really expect to get it back, but we would trade some surplus capacity for the monthly interest payments. Something for nothing.
Now we're on the other end of that equation.
But I have a feeling the people who are loaning us this dough really think they are going to get it back. And if they start thinking they might not, well, I guess if I were them I'd sell the loan to someone else real cheap.
That's as far as I can figure it out. I may have it all wrong, I don't know, I'm not an economist. Please post and tell me either what I missed or what is going to happen in the long term.
And spare me the Peak Oil conspiracies, please, I don't buy it. Energy is just the result of imagination and money put together, it's limited only by ingenuity and labor.
BTW I love this forum...but it never works. I can't post this as a topic, only as a reply. Why is that? It's very frustrating.

[cryofan]

7. In order to minimize trolling, you need a minimum numbers of replies

....before you can start posting your own topics. 100, i think...

I think you are probably more or less right. No one can look into the seeds of time and see which will grow, and which not (thanks, Will!), but it seems that we are witnessing the end of a economic philosophy, one which is likely presiding over either the demise of, or the transformation of, the greatest economic engine of all time.

[SoCalDem]

8. Welcome to DU, Whitney :)

You summed it up pretty well..

America is living on credit cards and "balance transferring".. As everyone merges, pretty soon there will be no one to "transfer" that balance to.. Then it will be time to pay the piper..

Of course the CEOs are doing great, and the stock market is ok, as long as sticks are cheap enough for the richie riches to buy it up cheap...but if and when the 401-ks of the boomers start cashing out, instead of paying in, look out !!

[mhr]

6. Mass Layoffs In January See

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x385112