Globalist leftists?

I have named one--the US, up to at least the 60's.

 

Transferring our wealth and jobs to another country's sweatshop is a price many Americans are not willing to pay. Few Americans are willing to work for $3.90 a day to compete with Mexico, though it would actually have to be down to $3 a day due to higher USA regulatory costs.

Tariffs were first used in the USA over 200 years ago to stop Britain from destroying the American economy with cheap imports from their sweatshop and essentially slave labor in the countries they had conquered and controlled.

The few remaining American industries that remain do so because of tariffs and restrictions - which you apparently do not know exist. Two examples are China wanting to import tires and automobiles. The tire industry was blunt that if China could import tires they all would be out of business within a few years. You claim they should be put out of business to help the Chinese, right?

 

Oh I'm not saying there aren't trade offs, but free trade sacrifices the few for the many, while raising tariffs sacrifices the many for the few. Lowering tariffs not only makes running a business more affordable, but it also reduces the overall cost of living for everyone. Raising tariffs is a tax increase on every US resident.

Economists only support raising tariffs under specific and limited circumstances. As a means of economic recovery it hasn't worked, we tried that during the great depression with the Smoot-Hawley tariffs act. The purpose was to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, but historians and economists both overwhelmingly agree that in the end the raise in tariffs only made things much worse for the US economy.

 

We built our capacity to fight WWII when it was needed. The most important thing we can do on that front today is to maintain a strong economy that joins us with the nations of the world.


Manufacturing PRODUCT in the US recovered rapidly after the 2008 crash and is back on top. However, manufacturing EMPLOYMENT has been on a very slow recovery trajectory. Employers have done an amazing job of figuring out how to be productive without hiring employees.

Today, manufacturing corporations are looking for college graduates who can design, build and maintain automated shops. They have open positions for that. The tragedy in the rust belt is that workers were left behind with no ongoing training and education designed to keep them up to date in their field. Plus, we smashed their unions, so they have little influence in issues of compensation, safety, training, retirement, job security, etc.

We are not going to solve that by "bringing back" manufacturing. Those who "come back" will build new facilities that will be as automated as possible, so that they don't have to hire workers.

When US Steel reopened in the US, they hired 1/10th the people they had hired before, with the employment qualifications being very different. Our manufacturing capability was once an advantage, but now pretty much everyone has caught up to us. Plus, when our manufactured goods have an advantage in the world, it is often because of high tech features of some sort. Boeing sells many airplanes outside the US for ever one sold here - airplanes are hard to design. Apple sells many phones, etc., outside the US for every one sold here. And, that was a matter of getting there early in the software design process as well as innovation. Others can manufacture the hardware.



My own opinion is that we need to focus on getting kids through college, because that's where the jobs are going to be and that is where the international competition is going to be. It will include high tech, innovation, information, etc. Look at what China is doing with solar - why aren't we? Why are their super computers literally five times faster than ours? etc.

We're 5% of earth. We can't possibly remain on top by trying to build trade walls and hiding from the 95%. For every smart brain capable of advancing the economy that we have, the world has 20. Those are staggering odds, and we are NOT going to win by thinking that college is too expensive or that we can ignore science, or that learning to fix cars is just as good as figuring out new energy solutions.

 

Your idea of sending kids to college relies on college being something that can transform dullards into geniuses. College is there as a way of helping the academically gifted in a world of academically challenged.

Sorry, but we have a bit of reality to deal with here. We can compete in certain areas, but there are limitations that can't be overcome by throwing Kelly Bundy into rocket science class.

 

That's ok, neither do they.

 

Alex Jones isn't a conservative he's a lunatic. Are all leftists by default, global in your opinion?

 

Your solutions are for the top 50%. At least half of the US population is not truly college material, by any honest standard, and will never be able to do the kinds of jobs you are maintaining will be the only kind that will be offered in the future.

It is false economy to pay machines instead of people. If this is truly the intention of our dominant social class, it is beyond high time that they stop encouraging our least intelligent, least healthy, and least able to reproduce through our shortsighted programs of welfare for illegitimate births; SSI for defective children; and costly, inaccessible contraception and abortion.

You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear; and no matter how affordable college becomes there will still be a large segment of the population which will not be able to benefit from it in any significant way. To pretend otherwise is cruel. Those people need jobs they can do.

Cultures historically have been able to make sensible decisions to limit their population sizes and technology in the interest of their population as whole. China only recently stopped its "one birth " program, and a very long time ago wisely chose not to utilize gun powder in warfare. At one time wheels were allowed in Japan only for the use of the emperor.

Regarding being "on top"--why should we? We should maintain ourselves in a fashion to keep ourselves safe, but it is not necessary to beat out others to do this. The competitiveness we demand of our remaining work force results in all sorts of costly health problems and early uselessness. People should be allowed to work to live, not live only to work.

 

You can call him a lunatic all you want, but you know what that means in the realm of ideas, right?

Anyway, not all leftists are globalists by default. It's just that they're usually young and not very experienced. They have bleeding hearts for the plight of their immediate surroundings, but have never seen the world or know much about themselves or reality. They have a utopian willie wonka vision of a utopia they would like to see happen, but that's it.

 

Scandinavians are living in utopia dream worlds? I had no idea!

 

Are they? I'm talking about the American left. what I know about scandanavians is that they live in small countries with small populations, and probably doomed if they can't get their thumbs out of their butts and ears. Generally nice, but ill-informed about basic maths or history. Talk to them about the history of socialism and it's like trying to talk to beavis and butthead using formal logic.

 

Kelly Bundy in rocket science class! Now, that's a thought - lol.

I agree with what you are saying. There are a lot of people who would be happier in a vocational or apprenticeship program.

But, today there is significant roadblock to going to college - $$$$

Plus, when kids carry career sized debt when they leave college, they can't afford to take chances on startup businesses etc. In Germany, when kids come out of college the fact that they are debt free means they can try new things at a time of their life when they can take the risk. Plus, fewer are blocked by lack of family wealth.

 

Machines instead of people is a false economy? I don't see corporations coming to that conclusion. And, I don't see employment stats that indicate that, either. For example, after the 2008 crash manufacturing product recovered rapidly and manufacturing employment didn't. And, one key reason is the advent of automation.

Today, even grocery stores automate, with self serve checkout so they can reduce head count.

I'm not suggesting we be unhealthy - I'm suggesting we be educated.


Are you seriously considering giving up on the WHEEL???

 

There are scholarships available for those students who can't afford to enter university, but have the academic ability.

Sorry, but since the left has been pushing for this stuff without thinking about who can actually profit from an advanced degree, and planting their faces onto the hard and cold reality of cement, we are stuck in a situation where people who shouldn't be in college are in college. Since professors can't fail 90% of their students, they resort to bell curves, which ends up gravitating the curriculum towards the mean. When the mean is Ralph Kramden, the future einsteins aren't being taught anything they don't already know.

Sorry, but you can't talk about academic achievement in university without taking into account the reality that most people currently being accepted really aren't cut out for academic achievement. That's why the soft sciences are pumping out SJW snowflakes by the truckload. They should have never been accepted, but since they were, theyre being fast-tracked into whoever wants to teach them.

 

No, scholarship programs of today are a help, but they are not solving the problem.

People who measure progress always see bell curves, because that is roughly what test score data is always going to look like.

And, you seem to think that schools choose their student bodies without looking.

There will always be a wash-out rate - students who want to be biologists, but see evolution as false, or they find beer for the first time, or whatever.

 

I was going to ignore your last sentence as a well-intentioned attempt to lighten the discussion with humor, but I am remembering a recent NPR discussion of the move to lessen the access of wheeled vehicles in some sections of core cities, so maybe even that issue deserves some consideration. Bottom line--it is incredibly childish of "modern" man to continue to be so hypnotized by technology that we allow it to be used indiscriminately...and in some areas of endeavor, such as the production and handling of radioactive materials, we already recognize the hazards and risks and have taken steps to mitigate those. Every society needs to take a good look at the potential of technology to both positively and negatively affect its culture and make appropriate decisions regarding it. One of the benefits of a more nationalistic focus is that this process could become more possible, particularly for smaller societies that presently are under great pressure to "modernize" to their own detriment--Witness, for example, the pressure traditional farmers and their seed stocks are facing planetwide under the financial and political manipulations of corporate GMO producers such as Monsanto. It is not that GMO is always bad, but the unfair and militant way these are being forced on small producers that are presently self-sustaining that is the problem. It is trending toward increased dependency on a limited seed stock that could fail us all in the future and lead to widespread starvation. In general, the "large solution" that excludes smaller ones lessens resiliency and puts human societies in increased danger of eventual failure.

Human society, trade, and commerce were developed for the use and benefit of humans, not machines or only for people that wished to amass wealth. We need to start thinking about what people really enjoy doing with their time, and how that dovetails with the present needs of society and commerce. It is possible that mechanization could free us to do other socially useful things, but those need to be things that society values and is willing to pay for. Decent care for the young and the elderly are two examples.

Just because one can do something does not mean one has to do it. Robots could be used in particularly hazardous or unpleasant operations without eliminating all physical labor, for example. One of the worst outcomes of an over-accumulation of wealth is that it gives "all or nothing" types too much power. Why do you think the Chinese are filling our hobby shops with intricate, but inexpensive handcrafts? They understand that keeping people occupied is a positive thing to do.

There are other values for a wise society to express besides raw profit designed to accrue in the hands of a limited few. If the elites truly intend to replace all human labor and effort with machines, leaving many with no means by which to support themselves. they need to bite the bullet and tell the lower 50% to stop reproducing.

 

I don't believe there are "elites" who are attempting to replace human labor with machines.

Capitalism will always have companies figuring out how to produce product more cheaply and easily - resulting in major changes in the overall job market.

I do think the problem of where employment is going is serious. For example, we need to know how to prepare our kids for the job market of 30 years from now.

But, the idea that old style low automation manufacturing plants are going to start springing up again is just as nonsensical as believing that the next Trump tower will be built by workers carrying dirt in baskets.

 

Nothing nonsensical about that--lower-tech countries do it all the time.

Where there is a will there is a way.

We are fashioning a society that places "ease" on a pedestal --but in the long run, "ease" is not what leads to resiliency and survival.