In Towns Hit by Factory Closings, a New Casualty: Retail Jobs

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by LafayetteBis, Jun 25, 2017.

  1. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    From the NYT: In Towns Hit by Factory Closings, a New Casualty: Retail Jobs - excerpt:
    I keep harping about the absolute necessity of making a Post-secondary education free available from state-schools free-of-charge. If not, about 45% of our children will never ever obtain the instruction they need to pull themselves into good jobs at a decent pay. Even those merchandizing workers today and sidelined by Internet shopping will need to obtain a further education in order to keep up. Meaning they are unemployed for longer periods of time.

    All of that ends up at a greater cost than providing free-of-charge post-secondary education (at state schools) just as we do primary and secondary schooling nowadays.

    The handwriting is on the wall. We disregard it at our peril, and that of our children ...
     
    Last edited: Jun 25, 2017
  2. Jimmy79

    Jimmy79 Banned

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    More give aways on the public dime. Is that your unproven cure for everything?
     
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  3. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    (More needless sarcasm?)

    Give backs. Get your English right.

    Taxation on upper-incomes should be increased, and the money given back to offer post-secondary educations that will permit those in need (high-schoolers and the older unemployed cuz their employment has moved to Beijing) the better jobs at higher wages ...
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2017
  4. james M

    james M Banned

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    if new liberal welfare programs worked rather than crippled people all Americans would have been rich and successful 50 years ago.
     
  5. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Saying that rural areas are experiencing an employment crisis and that something urgently needs to be done about it is one thing.
    But saying that generalized education would be the solution to help solve this crisis, that is a different thing, a different subject even.
    I agree something needs to be done and vast swaths of the population in Middle America are suffering. But is more people with more college degrees really going to create more job opportunity for everyone as a whole? I'm just putting out the suggestion, maybe we need to start focusing on other solutions.

    Or start a separate thread to explain why you think free college for everyone would help lower unemployment numbers. Because it seems to me, one person with a college degree is just taking a job away from someone else, basically.
     
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  6. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    THE INDUSTRIAL AGE IS OVER

    No, it isn't. Not at all, and you've missed the point.

    American industries are in place in large cities, in fact "large cities" are large because of large industries (many of which no longer exist). People flocked off the farms to work in large industrial plants in the 19th and 20th centuries. But "Industrialization" is over and done with to a very large extent in the US. Only 12% of the workforce is employed there, and most of that is certainly not on the shop-floor*. (Places like Boeing and Lockheed or large shipbuilders aside.)

    The fact of the matter is if "rural area" are suffering, they should not be looking for "industry" to drop-in and build a factory. At present labor-prices America cannot compete with the Far East - in most but not all industries.

    So Donald Dork stirs-the-shat by saying "Well, we'll change Nafta!" and "I'll tell those SOBs in China that they can't screw Uncle Sam anymore!". Which was all futile bombast, but went over well in "rural areas". That's how the dork got elected.

    If I am suggesting that post-secondary degrees are the ONLY SOLUTION to jobs in America, it is because with such degrees that companies can indeed start-up operations in rural areas - where some people do prefer the living-standards that are better than many large cities.

    But, if we continue to make Tertiary Education an expensive proposition, we cannot expect anybody in a rural area to obtain it and look for employment in the same types of place as from wherever they came. One need not be working in an office 10 minutes from the heart of a large city to interact (via the Internet) with marketing/sales to either customers, prospective customers or fulfilling orders of existing customers - or performing a whole range of services on their behalf (and for a price)! One can be anywhere on this earth!

    (Just go ask the Indians in India - they have been doing it for two decades!)

    The positive side of the Information Age that is upon us is that geography in terms of employment no longer matters. You can be housed at the North Pole and still interact with your customers.

    Well, that IS an exaggeration - but it serves to make my point ... !

    *Boeing in the US and Airbus in Europe are very happy to have the Chinese build copycat reproductions of their airplanes - thus allowing resale at a price-advantage to countries that otherwise would not have bought the airplanes with an American or European price-tag on them! (Btw, the jet engines - for the moment - almost always come from Europe or the US.)
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2017
  7. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Was your primary point of this thread that rural areas wesuffering or was it that you think we need free college education?

    What about just creating incentives for companies to move operations to lower cost of living regions?

    What if these people from rural areas who get degrees and move to the large cities just decide to stay there and eventually start-up there business in the large city?
    Then giving them that degree didn't really turn out to be beneficial for anyone else, according to what you just explained to me, did it?


    Then why did China's economy boom from all that industrialization that got outsourced to their country?
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2017
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  8. james M

    james M Banned

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    Trump was 100% correct as always:
    1) We should change trade agreements so that we can sell in China as easily as they can sell here
    2) We should reduce or eliminate corporate taxes( highest in world) that force manufacturers off shore
    3) we should reduced burdensome regulations that make it unprofitable to manufacture here

    As our Founders warned us, liberal govt is always the source of evil.
     
  9. james M

    james M Banned

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    we don't make it expensive, liberal govt does!! They tried to make education widely available with cheap loans for all. All they accomplished was to make it easier for universities to raise prices. Before liberal govt govt involved college was cheap. Liberal govt is always the problem.
     
  10. james M

    james M Banned

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    yes, a liberal has only one solution to all problems: another govt welfare entitlement!!
    if this worked we'd have achieved nirvana by now!! Too bad liberals cant learn from their failures.
     
  11. Ndividual

    Ndividual Well-Known Member

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    I see there was a complaint about the words 'give aways', claiming 'give backs' to be the correct English. You are correct, you cannot 'give back' something that wasn't taken from someone in the first place. If government were to 'give back' rather than 'give away', a great portion of the population would truly learn what poverty actually is, and perhaps then more would quickly become motivated to find ways to rise above it.
     
  12. Ndividual

    Ndividual Well-Known Member

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    In the 2016–17 school year, colleges and universities are expected to award
    1,018,000 Associate's Degrees
    1,900,000 Bachelor’s Degrees
    798,000 Master's Degrees
    181,000 Doctor's Degrees
    3,897,000 Degrees total

    Using the average 2016-17 years cost of Public colleges $9,650, the annual cost for the total number above would be $37.6 billion, an amount far less than the actual cost as many attend private colleges where the average cost is $33,480 but the real question is "How many of these graduates will actually find a job, and for those who do will it be a job related to their studies and pay any debts incurred while attending college?"
     
  13. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm sure someone must have started a thread somewhere questioning whether more college education is a good policy idea for the country.

    Oh wait, here it is: http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/wasting-money-on-education.239164/

    And for some young people, that college degree might not have been such a good idea: http://www.politicalforum.com/index...nd-no-jobs-for-graduates-thanks-obama.247513/
    Oh, but I forgot. It's not a waste of money if the taxpayers are the ones paying for it. :roll:

    Look, I'm not saying educations can't be beneficial to individuals and society. But we need to stop and think a little bit before we advocate a blanket funding for giving students college degrees as the solution to our economic ills. You can't magically create wealth by simply giving everyone a college degree, that should be common sense.

    Here's one more: http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/is-college-becoming-a-thing-of-the-past.302989/
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2017
  14. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    MY POINT?

    Both. Rural areas are suffering because the jobs they had (within the manufacturing industry) are long since gone. The jobs replacing them (in the same industry) are more sophisticated automated productions lines that require higher-level competencies to manage and run.

    Which has caused concurrently higher unemployment in rural communities.

    This is a long-term evolution and (I am sorry to say) it is not yet over. So shall we get off our sorry-arses and do something about it? Like making post-secondary education free?

    Unnecessary. Survival is sufficient incentive for companies to do what they must do. Admittedly, the more rural a community the more it is dependent upon agriculture as a mainstay employer.

    Of course, if National Education were doing its job properly (meaning at the right price), the states would have adequate levels of Tertiary Education competence available. But, since that education is not subventioned (as Bernie and Hillary proposed by the Federal Government) and since the states do not have the means themselves; then the costs of said education remains out of the reach of most students. (And thus the present indebtedness averaging $35K per student. If you are poor, who is going to give you a loan to enter a post-secondary educational program - without parents co-signing the loan?)

    Neither did it hurt them. You don't go to a hospital for a surgical operation to "get educated".

    Education is necessary also for us to "think larger", that is, give us horizons that reach further. And that is the result as well, as noted by the simple difference we see today when comparing those who live in rural communities to those living in cities (where higher salaries are available).

    Education allows people more flexibility in living their lives. Generally, the smarter one is the better off they are economically. See here:
    [​IMG]

    Because the western-democracies had developed a higher level of production costs. When the Bamboo Curtain suddenly came crashing down in the early 1990s China already had labor-costs that were ridiculously low. Thus, American and European consumers rushed to buy all those nice gadgets at such cheap prices!

    The only challenge facing China at the time was to get their products noticed by consumers in Western Markets. Which is exactly what they have accomplished with lower prices.

    Of course, now that Chinese production costs are higher, more of southeast Asia is partaking in the export boom. (And should they ever learn good-English, they will do what India did and export hi-tech services - by means of the Internet - performed in their country.)

    My Point: Our Information Age is a Brave New World. Get used to it ...
     
  15. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I'm sorry, I'm just not seeing the connection between being able to run more sophisticated production lines and more college education.
    Unless you're talking about specifically educating these people to run those production lines in these factories you say need more skilled Americans.

    Wouldn't it be more effective to incentivize employers to train and offer apprenticeship programs?
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2017
  16. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    What skills or knowledge is so expensive as to be unavailable?
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2017
  17. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I thought you might never ask.

    From here (originally the Washington Post): Dropout Rate for College Students Driven by Income Inequality - excerpt:
    Bernie and Hillary were right. There must be a national Tertiary-level Education (meaning vocational, 2- and 4-year) option subsidized by the Federal government and obtainable at state-run schools for all families (and regardless of age) earning less than $100K a year.

    The money will be well spent:
    *The nation will assure lower rates of unemployment as more people have the credentials for a better job at a better payscale, and
    *The money-spent will be effectively returned to the government in tax-revenues of higher-incomes - that will be made available by a profound rework of the tax-system*.

    *Upper-income taxation must be revised at much higher rates and the "tax boondoggles" (like carried-interest) must be removed. People should pay a tax-rate without incentives to reduce their tax-burden. The US should pas a National Sales Tax collected by the Federal Government (with a portion returned to each state in which it is collected), thus taking the burden off Income Tax and placing it on Sales Taxes. This not an excuse however for reducing the incentive (by raising tax-levels) to combat the type of Massive Bankster Fraud perpetrated by the Sub-prime Debacle.
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2017
  18. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    You quoted my post, but you didn't answer the question it contained.

    What skills or knowledge is so expensive to acquire so as to be unavailable?
     
  19. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    All of them (of any consequence in the Information Age) if one does not have the funds necessary to follow courses, take exams and graduate.

    Bernie got his idea for government-paid Tertiary Education from Europe. He was right to do so - Europe has an Educational System that is working very well at ridiculously low fees (compared to the US of even state-run schools) that most Europeans opt for the far less costly national education system.

    In fact, so much so, that they stay longer at university than need be. Regardless, they are doing pretty good in "catching up" with the US (post-WW2) as regards degree accomplishment.

    See here: OECD - Population with tertiary education - scroll down to the infographic ...

     
  20. james M

    james M Banned

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    yes, since employers know exactly what skills they need that is by far the most efficient way to train people.
    Business does a lot of training obviously and would do far more training if they had too. No business will go bankrupt because it is too cheap to train its employees, and every business would be happy to make govt and employees pay for the training if they can get away with it.

    AT&T is best recent example. They just changed all their equipment to modern digital and need 100,000 new employees who knew the equipment. Such employees were not available on the open market so they retrained existing employees. As pace of technologic change increases this is only possible option since schools would have no idea what new equipment was let alone how to train people on it or who to train.
     
  21. james M

    james M Banned

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    how odd given that Europe always has 12% unemployment and lives at about 65% of our standard of living, and has not invented anything in 35 years!! Even Krugman admits the European economy has Eurosclerous
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2017
  22. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Like math, for example?
     
  23. james M

    james M Banned

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    no doubt about it a govt monopoly run by bureaucrats in education and health care is very efficient which is why we must also support a national automobile manufacturing system!!
     
  24. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It probably would be more effective, in some instances, to incentivize employers (tax write-off) to train employees. But, the problem has been that, once trained, they find better paying jobs. So, many companies figure it is not worth the effort/payback.

    Post-secondary Education covers a realm of competencies. Not just Doctorate degrees. At the other end are a whole host of post-secondary "vocational degrees" that many states think should be taught in High-School. I do recall that once upon a time teaching how to put together printing-type (or some such basic work-skill) was taught in many schools in New England. That is no longer the case due to advances in technology that obsoleted the techniques.

    Which points out the challenge of secondary-schooling. Many people think that if a child is not doing well in high-school they should shift automatically into a skill-based program. Meaning they are too stoopid to get a high-school degree.

    Many others figure (as I do) that the inability of a child to learn is due to its parents, who do not sufficiently exercise parental authority. I tend to agree. We have the blind leading the blind.

    That is, the US over the past 30/40 years has got loosy-goosy about parental authority. Kids are having kids because they play around with sex at earlier ages. Sex education should be a part of any high-school education because the kids are seeking sexual partners at earlier ages. They should be taught the consequences to pregnancy, which are not negligible.

    There are many attributes to the challenge of "education". Offering post-secondary education free, gratis and for nothing is simply a way of assuring that those who want it get it. Because even that hurdle is too high for a significantly larg part of high-schoolers. As I never tire of saying, 45% of our children will not obtain a post-secondary degree affording them the credentials to obtain a good job at a good pay.

    So, what happens to them? They try other alternatives for making money, not all of them legal. Some end up in jail others as vagabonds until they finally realize they've made a mess of their lives and try to settle down.

    There is no reason on earth that opting for a tertiary-level qualification should be so financially onerous in the US. In fact, it's kinda-sorta stoopid of us ...
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2017
  25. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    It's not expensive to educate one's self. In many cases, it's essentially free.
     

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