Fwd: Trade deficits, not robots, are costing us jobs

[peopleunite]

Sent on my Samsung Galaxy S® 5

-------- Original message --------
From: Economic Policy Institute <newsl...@epi.org>
Date: 08/16/2015 8:12 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: peopl...@verizon.net
Subject: Trade deficits, not robots, are costing us jobs

View in a browser  |  Forward to a friend  |  Unsubscribe

August 16, 2015 We’re Losing Manufacturing Jobs to China, Not to Robots U.S. manufacturing employment has declined since 2000 because of trade deficits and the collapse of manufacturing output after the Great Recession—not because of gains in productivity due to technology, according to a new EPI report. Manufacturing job losses are thus not the inevitable result of technological progress. “We are not losing manufacturing jobs to robots, we’re losing them to China,” said Robert E. Scott, the report’s author. Enforcement of fair trade laws, rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, and taking action to end currency manipulation are ways to reverse manufacturing job losses. OVERTIME 6.9 Million Women Would Directly Benefit from New Overtime Threshold This week’s Economic Snapshot shows that women are especially likely to benefit from raising the overtime salary threshold to $50,440, as proposed by the Obama administration. Under the proposed threshold, the number of women eligible for overtime pay based on their salary alone would rise by 6.9 million, from 2.8 million today to 9.8 million. Of this total, more than one-third, 3.4 million, have children. FERGUSON EPI’s Richard Rothstein on the First Anniversary of the Ferguson Protests For the first anniversary of the Ferguson protests, EPI research associate Richard Rothstein addressed the Changing America One Community at a Time conference in St. Louis to discuss how race-conscious public policy created segregation and concentrated poverty. Watch Rothstein’s video explaining how Ferguson became Ferguson, and read his report (The Making of Ferguson: Public Policies at the Root of Its Troubles) and article (From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government-Sponsored Segregation). IN THE NEWS Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times turned to key findings in EPI’s signature CEO pay report. Several top media outlets, including the Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, CNBC, and Fortune, also featured EPI research on CEO pay. | "Why Putting a Number to C.E.O. Pay Might Bring Change" » The New York Times’s Teresa Tritch cited EPI’s report on the consequences of irregular work scheduling. | "Unpredictable Work Hours, Chaotic Life" » "Generally, the black unemployment rate moves by 2 percentage points for every 1 percentage point change in the overall rate," EPI’s Valerie Wilson told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "That is true in bad times and in good times. When the unemployment rate is rising, the black rate is going to rise faster.” | "Black unemployment rate has decreased, but still more than double that of whites" » EPI analysis of the July 2015 jobs report was covered by top news outlets, including the Huffington Post, Politico, CNN Money, and “PBS NewsHour.” | "Steady Job Growth Is Still Not Boosting Workers’ Pay, New Numbers Show" » The Washington Post and New York Times cited EPI research on how children of parents working nonstandard schedules are more likely to have inferior cognitive and behavioral outcomes. | "The consequences for kids when their parents work irregular night shifts — research" » From the EPI Blog Robert E. Scott By Devaluing Its Currency, China Exports Its Unemployment Alyssa Davis Job Openings Data Suggest the Economy is Chugging Along, Albeit Slowly Daniel Costa On Immigration, Bernie Sanders is Correct Elise Gould Slow Wage Growth is Certainly Not a Sign of the “Some Further Improvement” Needed for the Fed to Raise Rates Elise Gould Prime-Age Employment-to-Population Ratio Remains Terribly Depressed Elise Gould Paid Sick Leave is a Win for Workers and the Economy Claire Sleigh Exploring EPI’s Minimum Wage Tracker Elise Gould What to Watch on Jobs Day: Preparing for September’s Fed Meeting Donate

Working for people who work for a living. @EconomicPolicy Facebook You received this email because you are on the mailing list for EPI News. If you received this from a friend and would like to subscribe, click here. Click here to unsubscribe. Economic Policy Institute 1333 H Street, NW Suite 300, East Tower Washington, D.C. 20005

[Donald J Donaker (Don)]

 

Are you aware of the new word added to the lexicon of English language here in the US, which is reshoring (indicated as a spelling error here).? Not as bad as another new word (cybernation), entered in the Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in 1962, but never hit the main stream media, yet it was a rage within private manufacturing discourse. 

The market is competitively driven by a constant reduction in price.  The exponential trend is that the conversion of manufacturing to robotic production reduces the cost of production thereby allowing the lowering of the price on the market. There is ample information available to attest to that.

...

[Andrew Gunderman]

Isn't there more than one incentive (that is, other than reducing the cost of production) for manufacturers to locate here?
 

---

Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2015 07:25:25 -0700
From: ddon...@comcast.net
To: workers-internation...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Trade deficits, not robots, are costing us jobs

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Workers' International Industrial Union" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to workers-international-ind...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[David Canning]

Is this at all surprising to anyone? Automation of industrial production has been going on since the 19th century, but it's only recently that manufacturers have fled to countries where they can pollute the environment and exploit their workers without repercussions. Just a coincidence that since the 1970s, barriers to international trade have been eliminated. If a union goes on strike or demands better wages and conditions, a company can just high-tail it to Mexico or Indonesia, where workers have even less protection. 

...

[Donald J Donaker (Don)]

 

Promoting WIIU to fellow workers. Fellow workers are far from knocking down the door to get into the WIIU. How do you expect the need to know workers to receive needed information when you have volunteered to join their ranks as a recipient of need to know information in order to make an informed decision to join the WIIU. To make it short, you should be able to answer their questions. If the case be that you need to know, then you should avail yourself of the basics that the WIIU was founded upon. 

On Saturday, August 22, 2015 at 3:08:37 PM UTC-5, Andrew Gunderman wrote:

Isn't there more than one incentive (that is, other than reducing the cost of production) for manufacturers to locate here?
 

---

Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2015 07:25:25 -0700
From: ddon...@comcast.net

To: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to workers-international-industrial-union+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

[Andrew Gunderman]

Eh, no. Producers re-locate, i.e. re-shore to the U.S. because we have a deeper manufacturing base, cheaper energy, and a more creative workforce. From a capital perspective I think U.S. corporations have more ready-to-reinvest cash on hand than ever. And those are the principal reasons for re-shoring. This is not to say that lowering unit labor costs isn't their highly valued goal, but I don't think it's the main force behind the re-shoring process.
 
For lower labor cost they headed out to China and elsewhere during the previous millennium and encountered issues: technological theft, rising labor costs, higher transaction costs, to name a few.
 
By the way, whomever posted the trade deficit article from E.P.I. - it was good. Thanks.
 

---

Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 03:56:53 -0700
From: ddon...@comcast.net
To: workers-internation...@googlegroups.com

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to workers-international-ind...@googlegroups.com.

[Donald J Donaker (Don)]

 

Evidently you are passing on what is repeated below.  I know of several persons that disagree with your, "I think," points. As long as such deviations from WIIU's original critique on the economics of capitalism are bandied about, I will refrain from referring these people, my fellow workers, to the current WIIU.

 

"Promoting WIIU to fellow workers. Fellow workers are far from knocking down the door to get into the WIIU. How do you expect the need to know workers to receive needed information when you have volunteered to join their ranks as a recipient of need to know information in order to make an informed decision to join the WIIU. To make it short, you should be able to answer their questions. If the case be that you need to know, then you should avail yourself of the basics that the WIIU was founded upon." 

On Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 5:39:44 PM UTC-5, Andrew Gunderman wrote:

Eh, no. Producers re-locate, i.e. re-shore to the U.S. because we have a deeper manufacturing base, cheaper energy, and a more creative workforce. From a capital perspective I think U.S. corporations have more ready-to-reinvest cash on hand than ever. And those are the principal reasons for re-shoring. This is not to say that lowering unit labor costs isn't their highly valued goal, but I don't think it's the main force behind the re-shoring process.
 
For lower labor cost they headed out to China and elsewhere during the previous millennium and encountered issues: technological theft, rising labor costs, higher transaction costs, to name a few.
 
By the way, whomever posted the trade deficit article from E.P.I. - it was good. Thanks.
 

---

Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 03:56:53 -0700
From: ddon...@comcast.net

...

[David Canning]

There is no "reshoring" happening in Canada right now. The manufacturing sector has been decimated despite the "added value" of Canadian workers who, as corporations acknowledge, produce quality goods. In my own hometown of St. Catharines, Ontario, thousands of jobs have been lost in the last 25 years, as neoliberal economics kicked into overdrive and the political left in this country capitulated and slunk under a rock. When I was a child, seeing a homeless person in this city was virtually unheard of; now seeing less than three homeless people on each downtown block is unusual. My first full-time job was in the General Motors plant on Ontario St. which closed in 2010 (relocated to Mexico, now being razed and replaced by low-rise condos and a shopping centre), just one of many unionized factories that has fled the coop in recent years. This is destroying the Niagara region.

I must say that I find the many threads about whether or not people are being replaced by robots a bit strange. My opinion is that this is a moot point. The process of automating work formerly done by humans has been underway since, if not the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution, certainly the invention of the assembly line. When a person is working in production, he or she is not really operating a machine, but rather is the human component of the machine. Anyone who has worked along an assembly line should understand what I mean. The machine goes at its own pace, and the human operator has no choice but to keep up. Humans at certain stages of the assembly line machinery have been replaced by robots. By nature, the assembly line is inhumane. A great deal of art and literature from the 1930s reflects this. Today, the human role in factories in which I've worked is mostly in the areas of quality control, sorting and packing, maintenance and repair and assembly. The nature of the assembly line makes it inevitable that more of the process of production will be automated in the name of greater efficiency.

The issue that strikes me as more important is the blatant anti-unionism practiced by companies in the production sector. This includes moving production offshore to countries where workers have no protection, closing locations where employees try to organize, disseminating propaganda, free-trade agreements, etc. Robots are highly precise, but in some ways less efficient, since they break down frequently, taking down the entire production line with them. Human operators will always be needed, even where robots are used.

On Thursday, August 27, 2015 at 6:39:44 PM UTC-4, Andrew Gunderman wrote:

Eh, no. Producers re-locate, i.e. re-shore to the U.S. because we have a deeper manufacturing base, cheaper energy, and a more creative workforce. From a capital perspective I think U.S. corporations have more ready-to-reinvest cash on hand than ever. And those are the principal reasons for re-shoring. This is not to say that lowering unit labor costs isn't their highly valued goal, but I don't think it's the main force behind the re-shoring process.
 
For lower labor cost they headed out to China and elsewhere during the previous millennium and encountered issues: technological theft, rising labor costs, higher transaction costs, to name a few.
 
By the way, whomever posted the trade deficit article from E.P.I. - it was good. Thanks.
 

---

Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2015 03:56:53 -0700
From: ddon...@comcast.net

...