Will the jobs return only when they're at the same wage level as for folks in India &

[JackBondLove]

China?

I'm becoming a sever fatalist that the American employer has just decided to replace virtually every employee it can think of with a corresponding employee in India or China, etc. Hence, the "Help Wanted" sign in those occupations that can be offshored easily will only come back when folks are earning the $400 or so per month that the folks in those countries are earning. Heck, someone working at Wal-Mart (not offshorable) would make triple that (i.e., if working full time)!

And of course, it is the higher paying professional and manufacturing jobs that are going out the door, since the costs of offshoring have the highest return on investment. And it seems that the only reason that anyone is still working is that the employer has decided that the cost of moving the work doesn't yet is to high for the savings of offshoring to overcome. But once the employer has decided that some cuts are needed, they'll be the first out the door. And even if the current employees could make it to retirement, since a new American college graduate would have to be brought up to speed just as much as an offshored employee would, any new hire would simply be over there.

[spidge]

Who made all this possible? That is what I want to know. There are endless contributing factors that make companies look for cheaper labor to stay competitive. Argh! I'm just frustrated at all of it. I love the companies that tell their employees they go to great lengths to provide for the employees, yet at the end of the year the company sends out a notice explaining that they may qualify for various tax breaks because of their low income level. There's something a company can be proud of.

PS. I work for the largest food company in the world and we in the US are all bitter.

[shark66]

You can trace all of this back at least to Reagan, his union-busting and the fall of Berlin Wall some time later...when tens of millions of well-educated individuals in Eastern Europe were displaced, one way or another, over the next several years...

Then you have Clinton and NAFTA....another lovely debacle.

The rest is history. As soon we all shall become, the dinosaurs once known as middle class.

Good luck to us all.

[HHM]

Frankly, it is not a matter of the jobs "coming back", it is how will we create new jobs. If you look historically, these are predictable cycles and has NOTHING to do with presidential policies, either republican or democrat.

America is a leader (and for the most part still is) in innovation. We create the NEW industries, vehicles, technology, software, high end legal and financial services, etc. At the infancy and during the growth phase of those industries. the jobs stay local because they are too complex to ship to a country like India or China. As those industries mature and the practices become more standardized, the jobs start moving to areas where production can be accomplished more cheaply.

Any argument about "keeping jobs" or "bringing back jobs" in mature, standardized industries is just folly. It is like arguing that we should have prevented the adoption of word processing software to save typewriter manufacturing, just silly.

Where the US government, under any administration (but democrats more at fault than republicans) has been an obstacle is in the creation of new markets and industries or getting out of the way of existing industries to allow them to flourish (that is more on the natural resource side).

I think people need to realize that with globalization, the US is not going to have much manufacturing and should stop lamenting that fact. And let's face it, the US consumer is not going to buy american, just for the sake of buying american when they can get a comparable product or service for far less if made overseas. That is the flip side of this issue, we still want to save money. So, in that sense, you can't blame a company or government for allowing jobs to go overseas, if they didn't, the company and the product would be killed by competition because of the fickleness of the US consumer.

We are primarily going to be a service economy, and might as well just accept it. We will still maintain some manufacturing, airlines, some cars, defense; but for most consumer goods and for many of the parts that go into locally manufactures products, all that manufacturing is going overseas. All we can do is continue to be innovators and come up with the next NEW industry that will create jobs.

Anyway, rant over....

[JackBondLove]

America is a leader (and for the most part still is) in innovation. We create the NEW industries, vehicles, technology, software, high end legal and financial services, etc. At the infancy and during the growth phase of those industries. the jobs stay local because they are too complex to ship to a country like India or China. As those industries mature and the practices become more standardized, the jobs start moving to areas where production can be accomplished more cheaply.

So you are basically saying that (except for the few good paying service jobs that may be around) the only good jobs that are possible are those that are the innovation jobs (very few of them, especially with Republican led cuts to science and education in general) and for those industries you had mentioned, for the temporary time that those jobs must stay in the USA until the kinks have been worked out, at which time they will go China/India. That's a tall order - there will never be enough jobs from that. Perhaps those jobs could be spread out by having folks work fewer than a regular work week, but that would take a socialistic way of thinking (which is why I like the idea of confiscatory taxes on the wealthy to be redistributed as a way to deal with the jobs crisis.)

[cashless]

No... the jobs wont return.
Our problem started after WWII. That was housing boom number one for the states. Suburbs sprang to life, jobs were abundant and all was good. It did not take long for greed and manipulation to set in, a new market for the bankers. Then to seal the deal on the decline of America, the dollar was taken off of the gold standard in 1972, allowing severe manipulation of the money markets.

Another thing to consider is the fact that our infrastructure was built on $16 dollar a barrel oil. Now our growth is tied to oil prices, if oil goes up it costs more for everyone to do anything, thus making it not profitable. And due to demand and production we do not have to worry about prices going down. The chinease and india markets are just starting to tap into the oil market now that people are working and wanting cars of their own.

I have worked in manufacturing for twenty years now and we are not even close to being able to compete with india or china. In fact, china subsidizes their metal prices, to have an edge in competition. They can build a metal part complete for what it costs a Usa manufacture just buy the raw material for. Think about that. That is like owning a pizza shop and it costs you 5 bucks to make a pizza that you will sell for 10. The guy across the street is selling the same pizza for 5 bucks because his cost is 2 bucks.

[GoingDown]

Who made all this possible? That is what I want to know.

Unfortunately, we did this to ourselves.

We started buying cheaper imported things like clothes and general merchandise at big box stores, and soon all the American manufacturers started moving their operations to other countries to compete.

The American consumer could have stopped this all from happening by simply looking at the labels and making sure that everything they bought was made in America. That would have put an end to all of this long before we got to this crisis stage. At that point, it may have cost a little bit more, but it wouldn't have been such a big deal, and that money would have stayed in this country and it would have employed Americans and kept our robust economy moving forward.

We also allowed our politicians to agree to unilateral "free" trade deals which helped other countries at our expense, and we started tolerating trade deficits year after year, where we as a nation bought more things from other countries than they bought from us.

I want to add that one thing we could all do is look for things which are made in America and try to buy them instead. ABC had a number of t.v. news specials about companies which still sell thing which are made in America. You might look them up and try to get some info from them about this issue. If we all did this, it would be a step in the right direction.

[jacko]

That is why the Germans are still employed. They kept their unions and the gov't funding of vocation schools at the high school level and later for the unemployed to learn new skills. Going into massive edu debt is alien, unheard of. We have only ourselves to blame. I lost sympathy to our plight. Don't get me started on conservative democrats, what a oxymoron if you ask me.

You can trace all of this back at least to Reagan, his union-busting and the fall of Berlin Wall some time later...when tens of millions of well-educated individuals in Eastern Europe were displaced, one way or another, over the next several years...

Then you have Clinton and NAFTA....another lovely debacle.

The rest is history. As soon we all shall become, the dinosaurs once known as middle class.

Good luck to us all.

[spidge]

I am an avid model railroader and recently another major Chinese model manufacturer has closed its doors and laid off 3000 employees. That makes the second in two years. Makes you think there is hope for jobs here in the US. Maybe it is just a cycle as mentioned and we will just have to find or create new jobs here. Hopefully that pay a living wage that does not qualify for some tax benefit from others.

[ValleYum]

I am an avid model railroader and recently another major Chinese model manufacturer has closed its doors and laid off 3000 employees. That makes the second in two years. Makes you think there is hope for jobs here in the US. Maybe it is just a cycle as mentioned and we will just have to find or create new jobs here. Hopefully that pay a living wage that does not qualify for some tax benefit from others.

My hubby is, too! He is into the narrow gauge (HOn3) which seems even harder to find. He fusses all the time and is hoping some now defunct manufacturers will open here in the states.

He has a few awesome 'regular' kits that we tried to sell on eBay last year but people were just not buying 'extras' at any reasonable price and he isn't willing to essentially give them away. I told him to list them now since it is tax refund season!

He is also into building RC WarBirds.

His hobbies are pricey!

[banca rotta]

After the coming dollar collapse and all the turmoil we will endure that will be the point we will hit bottom and then turn things around.

For starters the western world has a huge debt crisis that will NOT go away. They will either print or default to solve this problem.

The US is in a league of it's own. Since most of our debt is external just as most of our assets are external these foreign investors will dump all of their US holdings including their dollars.

This dollar collapse I keep harping on will make the rest of the worlds goods and services much more expensive and re-balance international trade which will force Americans and foreigners to buy more of our stuff (mostly food related).

The big Chinese dragon is more smoke then fire. Their bubbles are currently bursting and as our economy and Europe's continues to tank we will buy less of their crap. Good!

The point is we have to brace ourselves for the coming crash and we will overcome that.

As for now it will be more Obama, Romney BS for the masses to convince themselves things will be alright.

[shark66]

Good luck to us all.

[Flamingo]

Many consumers do not know where most of their snacks, foods, etc. are manufactured and don't realize some of many common brands are manufactured out of the US. Several years ago, it was not that well publicized that the chocolate giant, Hershey, moved its facilities to Mexico while maintaining it's chocolate haven in Hershey, PA. All that chocolate is made in Mexico and shipped to the US. But the big family theme park, hotels, etc. are at its headquarters in PA. There are some surprises out there that many consumers don't know about and have taken place over the past several years as to where the jobs go....

[andy158]

Most countries that have our jobs have:

No unions.
No pension obligations.
No strict environmental regs.
No workers compensation.
No OSHA.
No labor relations board.
No discrimiantion laws.
No child labor laws.
The list goes on and on....

If you were a big corporation what would you do ?

[shark66]

Most countries that have our jobs have:

No unions.
No pension obligations.
No strict environmental regs.
No workers compensation.
No OSHA.
No labor relations board.
No discrimiantion laws.
No child labor laws.
The list goes on and on....

If you were a big corporation what would you do ?

Point well-made, and taken.

What are we going to say about the corporations that are successful in spite of all of these - and I'm not necessarily referring just to the American ones - VW comes to mind...

Once these "big" corporations have become the government, and TBTF...all bets were off...

Makes one laugh when someone mentions the divestiture of The Bell System, that horrible monopoly......now we've got billion-headed hydras everywhere...

What a joke...on all of us...hence

Good luck to us all.