General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Free traders will never answer this... if immigrants are needed here... [View all]haele
(12,654 posts)Toss out individual capabilities, toss out degrees of talent, toss out family structure, toss out communities - a workforce and jobs all fungible; they're all just numbers on an economic spreadsheet because the real measure of "Flat Earth" economics is where the GDP is.
See, in the Friedmanite world, a "semi-skilled" labor force (comprised of high-school to trade school graduates) is not really a professionally locked Middle Class as would be a labor force that completed graduate level training; so when a factory employing 1000 line and shop leadership positions moves to Malaysia means that the American workforce in that factor is now free to find jobs in equally "skilled" fields in logistics or similar marketplace-support working class jobs; that the increase lower cost goods in the global marketplace means there should be an increased need for jobs in warehouses, sales, and delivery.
I quote from Thomas Friedman's 2012 New York Times op-ed Made In The World where he discusses the benefits of moving manufacturing businesses and factory jobs to where they can realize the greatest profit for shareholders . (and I used this quote in my final essay on Ethics in Business class a month ago):
"In a world where logistics will be the source of a huge number of (sic-American) middle class jobs, we have FedEx and UPS.
Think about that for a moment. A GDP-focused economic wonk who observes business from the management/profit side is equating a long-term, stable union factory job in which there are generally a good number of employees actually have some pride in the fact that they are accomplishing something tangible and can grow within the system through skill and seniority is on the same level as a job delivering goods through FedEx as an on-contract/at-will driver or working an Amazon warehouse job - or working at a gas station. Friedman apparently believes that all a worker has to do to have living wage employment is to go out and get a job because any job that's out there will do just fine...
Labor is a means for Capital growth, but Labor also is the means of sustainability for over 70% of the world's population - and of that 70%, close to 80% are non-professional/semi-skilled workers.
Capital may be the means of sustainability for organizational functions, but without existence of a strong Labor force, it exists in a vacuum. Without a strong, stable labor force employing a majority of your population, you don't have strong, stable consumer base, and you also can't support stable local governments for Capital to operate equitably in. Basically if there is no concern in maintaining a strong, stable labor force, the majority of people and organizations involved in Capital Markets are reduced to the level of existence of predatory gangs vying for Market supremacy whether individual holders of Capital wish to play the Free Market game or not.
And I'm sure all the professional working Middle Class - the academics, the researchers, the "experts" and others wearing "white collars" rather than blue (doctors, lawyers, engineers, artists) who feel immune to the vaguaries of the Market will also feel that they are immune to instability in Labor. But the reality is that so much of their economic sustainability is based on the stability of both Labor and Capital, and the failures of one or economic short-sightedness of the other will affect them just as catastrophically as it does the side that fails.
We have over 60 million+ citizens in the US; and 20 - 30 million of them are either too young, too old, or too disabled to work (be employed) or participate in any form of economic activity other than as a passive consumer.
So there needs to be an economic (Labor and Capital) structure to for at least 30 million citizens to actively participate (i.e. work, create, develop, manage or invest) in. The economic structure the US has been creating over the past 50 years has been treating the workforce - a good three-quarters of the citizenry - as interchangeable, disposable tools for the creation of Capital.
But since you can't "throw away" or "pink slip" a citizenry or Labor force if there's no place for them to go other than where they have been used - if there's no metaphorical trash can (other than perhaps prison) that takes them off your office floor - you are stuck with a growing stack of very desperate, stressed out extra people that are constantly there.
And history has plenty of examples of what happens when you have a greater amount of desperate, "disposed of" citizens hanging around with nothing to do than you do productive, secure citizens.
I would hope that those who have built themselves their own reality have enough awareness of history to know what they are doing.
Haele