‘Made In China’ Accounts For Less Than 3 Percent Of American Personal Consumption Expenditures
Really long thread here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1708066#1708205
What this kinda implies is that the "made in China problem" is only a 3% problem and thus not a big problem.
However, this 3% is a meaningless number. Most of our spending goes to stuff like paying bills such as mortgage, utilities, and things like that. Those things cost a lot of money to consumers but just how many jobs do those categories represent, versus pretty much EVERYTHING you see at somewhere like Walmart? How many workers are working to produce all those things versus the people who, for example, built the one house that you're paying mortgage on?
This, is a distortion- Government propaganda saying that free trade isn't that big of a deal when it's obvious a Very Big Deal. The status quo is broken, and no chart is going to show that it's somehow not.
There's the argument that "Oh, cheap overseas labor means you get to pay less for goods. This in turn means more money spent on services" which is also meaningless when you consider the people who don't have the jobs are basically screwed out of everything if they're just flat out broke. The argument only works for people at the top of the heap. Sounds familiar?
What is the solution, then? Well, beats me. Even if you regulate the heck out of everything, more jobs are still going to go overseas unless the entire rest of the world suddenly become just as "rich" (or merely less miserable) as we are.
Globalization was a Pandora's Box. Once opened there was no going back. Those "in charge" obviously didn't plan out the whole thing so the "redistribution" would go well for everyone (There's automagically a job waiting somewhere, just not on THIS side of the ocean). Some say to "learn new skills", but to do what? Fill in the jobs that aren't there? Learn how to make shoes and screw together TV sets in a factory once ALL the manufacturing jobs move back? (We'd have to ban robots in factories, of course)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1708066#1708205
What this kinda implies is that the "made in China problem" is only a 3% problem and thus not a big problem.
However, this 3% is a meaningless number. Most of our spending goes to stuff like paying bills such as mortgage, utilities, and things like that. Those things cost a lot of money to consumers but just how many jobs do those categories represent, versus pretty much EVERYTHING you see at somewhere like Walmart? How many workers are working to produce all those things versus the people who, for example, built the one house that you're paying mortgage on?
This, is a distortion- Government propaganda saying that free trade isn't that big of a deal when it's obvious a Very Big Deal. The status quo is broken, and no chart is going to show that it's somehow not.
There's the argument that "Oh, cheap overseas labor means you get to pay less for goods. This in turn means more money spent on services" which is also meaningless when you consider the people who don't have the jobs are basically screwed out of everything if they're just flat out broke. The argument only works for people at the top of the heap. Sounds familiar?
What is the solution, then? Well, beats me. Even if you regulate the heck out of everything, more jobs are still going to go overseas unless the entire rest of the world suddenly become just as "rich" (or merely less miserable) as we are.
Globalization was a Pandora's Box. Once opened there was no going back. Those "in charge" obviously didn't plan out the whole thing so the "redistribution" would go well for everyone (There's automagically a job waiting somewhere, just not on THIS side of the ocean). Some say to "learn new skills", but to do what? Fill in the jobs that aren't there? Learn how to make shoes and screw together TV sets in a factory once ALL the manufacturing jobs move back? (We'd have to ban robots in factories, of course)