Recent comments

  • Also as I recall they were sold as great opportunities for women because so few women were in these fields. Instead they walked into a Neutron bomb.

    Reply to: News Flash - Women are Equal to Men - in Terms of Losing Their Careers!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • Last night I pointed to your oil blog post as well over on DU, predicting it would go down when all of the talking heads were talking about $200 oil.

    I agree, NDD is now a must read.

    Reply to: Neutron Bomb over Wall Street?   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • Weren't the "high tech" jobs like IT, electronics, semicon, medical technology, aerospace and so forth supposed to be the jobs that stayed put and replace those lost to outsourcing as promised by the globalists?

    These high tech jobs are the very ones that are leaving our shores in droves, while the grunt labor jobs have been the ones that have remained relatively untouched by the race to the bottom

    Reply to: News Flash - Women are Equal to Men - in Terms of Losing Their Careers!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • I can assure you, the women did not voluntarily leave their Tech jobs. They were forced out in droves. The Tech boom opened the doors to women and blacks like never before in the Technologies Industries. When the bubble burst, "Last Ones In" were the "First To Go". They left the high paying jobs in IT for low paying jobs in industries other than Tech.
    I am one of those women this report reveals. The very month I turned 41 years of age, I was laidoff. Out of work for a full 2 years, I was able to land a few temporary gigs in the Technologies, but a permanent job never surfaced. I ended leaving the Industry in 2006 and since then have worked in Manufacturing, Finance, Education, and Retail. Earning 1/3 the rate of pay from my tech days.

    Reply to: News Flash - Women are Equal to Men - in Terms of Losing Their Careers!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • A number of Big Financial Blogs have been discussing an issue raised by Prof. Brad de Long in a blog entry of July 22, 2008, "The Financial Economy Has Galloping Pneumonia, Influenza, *and* the Grippe, But the Real Economy Just Has a Cold Opinion" based on a Bloomberg news service article of the same day.

    But if you are a reader of Economic Populist, you found that out when this above diary explained it to you on ~ July 9.

    Normally I don't try to toot my own horn, but if you don't have EP on your daily list of blogs to read, well, maybe you want to consider adding it.

    And BTW, what's been happening in the last week to the price of Oil?

    Reply to: Neutron Bomb over Wall Street?   16 years 4 months ago
  • as a result financials are focused in the moment. If they had to report 5 years out, quarterly, what the profit will be, I think that would assist in getting off of this "pop and drop" quarterly, short term business thinking. They think short term in many ways because the stock market is almost a short term monitor. That's my take on it.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Monday: Guess whose making the Prius now? Oh and VWs too!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • I have always been puzzled as to why Wall Street considers job cuts to be good news?

    But this really explains it - "Wall Street rewards these massive cuts, moving jobs around the globe by increasing a corporate stock price. There isn't hardly any acknowledgment on what that does to the future of that company and more importantly the nation where the jobs are"

    Reply to: Manufacturing Monday: Guess whose making the Prius now? Oh and VWs too!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • This is why we need labor laws, unions strengthened. Corporations see workers, including advanced researchers, as heads as something in a balance sheet, something to be traded, discarded. People are simply not commodities and wages are not just an expense to some corporation, they are vital to a strong economy. I agree with you, who is going to invest in themselves to massive debt, only to be cast aside at age 32 without even a blink of an eye?

    Wall Street rewards these massive cuts, moving jobs around the globe by increasing a corporate stock price. There isn't hardly any acknowledgment on what that does to the future of that company and more importantly the nation where the jobs are.

    Our government is beyond asleep at the wheel on this one.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Monday: Guess whose making the Prius now? Oh and VWs too!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • I know of many skilled workers and engineers that have gotten out of the manufacturing business. It is no longer the stable path to middle class existance as it once was - the constant threat of closure and outsourcing, the long hours for little chance of advancement or increase pay/benefits and so forth. I know talented engineers driving trucks, selling insurance and fixing copy machines, welders stocking grocery shelves, electronics technicians running a video store and installing cable and so on.

    many of these guys got out for more stable employment than mfg provides. So yes we have lost much of that tribal manufacturing knowledge we once had. This goes directly to the erosion of our technological and innovative edge as a nation

    And what student wants to spend five years of their lives in college and going thousands in debt studying engineering, only to have the job shipped off to india or taken by an H1B?

    Reply to: Manufacturing Monday: Guess whose making the Prius now? Oh and VWs too!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • As I have mentioned in a previous post, the mobility of labor is really a myth for the reasons you state, as well as the more mundane reasons such as family and community ties that make relocation dificult for all but maybe kids just out of school.

    This also ties into the myth of the skilled labor shortage. Michigan, in one of those Jeff Daniels "pure michigan" pieces, is said to have the greatest per capita concentration of engineers and skilled laborers in the nation, yet also has the highest unemployement. You would think that employers would be falling over themselves to take advantage of those skills, as well as the firmly established manufacturing infrastructure that Michigan and the surrounding industrial states have - but such is not the case is it.

    High transport costs I believe are helping in the localization of jobs and the return of some manufacturing to the US, but its still awfully hard to compete with pennies on the dollar wages, currency manipulation and lax regualtion which are the primary drivers in offshoring on skills and infrastructure alone.

    On a related issue - Ford has announced a major overhaul of 3 of their 8 truck plants to producemaller cars, this is a major undertaking for Detroit. Ford is also fast tracking bringing over some successful european small car and truck platforms for production in NA (which unfortunately includes Mexico for the new Fiesta). The "smart money" is on Ford to make the quickest US turnaround of the not really so big anymore three

    Reply to: Manufacturing Monday: Guess whose making the Prius now? Oh and VWs too!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • In two words, one of the major drivers behind this effort to return manufacturing capacity to the US is transportation cost.

    A week back Manufacture This! had a piece
    up about the effort to move manufacturing back to the US. The thing that separates the real world and Ricardo is that in the real world rapid changes in comparative advantage due to changes in terms of variable capital costs involved large transaction costs in moving manufacturing. For example:

    With regard to a possible revitalization of U.S. manufacturing, Engardio notes that the cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to San Diego has climbed 150% in the past eight years and is now $5,500. A Toronto financial-services firm, CIBC World Markets, estimates that if oil climbs to $200 a barrel, that cost could reach $10,000. Firms would simply find it more affordable to import their goods from Cleveland rather than China.

    Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. American manufacturing has taken a serious beating over the past decade and the bigger struggle would be to ramp back up to full production.

    As the old saying goes, the spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak. In the case of U.S. factories, much of the baseline productive capacity and hands-on experience is now gone, a victim of China’s subsidized, artificially-low productions costs. Engardio quotes James Turk, CFO of the New Mexico-based CEMCO as saying, “American foundries now can compete head-to-head on cost, but there aren’t many foundries, welders, machinists, and quality-control engineers…What we had 10 years ago is gone.”

    Freiderich List must be rolling in his grave seeing what has been done to the American system of Political Economy he revered. Productive power that took decades to call into being has been lost in but a few years. Neo-liberal economists seem unable to comprehend that skills training occurs as much on the job as in the classroom, and that in many cases it is simply impossible to locate laborers with the appropriate skills.

    Take Siemens decision to move tram car production destined for North America from Germany to San Diego. Siemens found that local welders didn't have the specialized training needed to do the job, so they had to fly in welders from Germany to do the training.

    This having been said consider this. The standard 40' container has around 2400 cubic feet of carrying space. Assuming 100% utilization of shipping space, we get the following.

    In 2000, the container cost $2200 to ship, or about $0.92 a cubic foot. So that's the transport cost for a 17 inch computer monitor is maybe $5-6.

    Now the shipping cost is $5500, or about $2.30 a cubic foot. So the same monitor now costs $12.50-15.

    If oil hits $200 a barrel, and the shipping cost rises to $10000 for the container, or $4.17 a cubic foot. The monitor will cost $22.75-27.30 to ship.

    That I think is the point at which companies really begin to move manufacturing back to the US. And the interesting question then is what happens to US wages as the increased cost of transportation lowers the leverage offered to employers who use threats of moving the factory overseas?

    Is the US worker the main beneficiary, or does this kickstart the maquiladores in Northern Mexico?

    Unions in Mexico's auto sector have been forced to accept a two tier wage system like what the UAW and CAW have.

    Wages were low to begin with about $4.50 an hour, and the new contract sets a new second tier at half that. But Mexico's labor force is about 38 million to China's 798 million. So Mexico's labor force is just under 5% of China's .

    Together with the coming demographic decline in Mexico, this is going to place pressure on wages there as well.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Monday: Guess whose making the Prius now? Oh and VWs too!   16 years 4 months ago
  • From what I understand, and particularly with the US auto plants and to a lesser extent Japanese, that plants built and tooled for trucks do not easily convert to autos and vice versa. This is part of the reason that concern reamins of closure for Princeton IN Toyota - that was a truck SUV and Van plant. The Japanese have done a good job with flexible assembly lines that allow for easy switch over to other models, the US plants designed with dedicated modesl in mind have not been able to successfully do this in any meaningful way.

    I agree that the Japanese are bringing good jobs here. My mind was opened on this several years ago working in TN, I asked my coworkers why everyone was driving a japanses brand - he said look around - japanese company here, japanese company over there - when was the last time Ford or GM brought any new jobs here?

    Reply to: Manufacturing Monday: Guess whose making the Prius now? Oh and VWs too!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • In the hearing on China, which I recently covered, there was testimony on how the US doesn't track offsets, incentives in each corporate global contract. You're right, the governor of New York just gave extensive incentives to IBM to make them write a pledge to not offshore outsource more jobs from the state of New York. India and China have requirements to hire their workers, be part of a state controlled enterprise, significant contract clauses to invest or purchase billions with each contract (Boeing) to make the sale, to our famous free trade zones which often mean slave labor.

    No one is monitoring these it appears. I'm not sure about the United States, but he testifies Globally, no one is regulating or monitoring any of it.

    What I find even more interesting is while Toyota is investing in the United States, they also opened up a $100M R&D center in Ann Arbor and here they are retooling, opening up more factories, our lovely GM is simply closing plants and doing massive layoffs..in the United States of course. I would like to see a congressional hearing on why is it GM cannot simply retool those plants and make box cars. Some of the fuel efficient technologies are now 40 years old, the Geo Metro comes to mind immediately, it gets about 50 mpg.

    I find any company at this point investing in the United States, bringing manufacturing to the United States a good thing myself, even when they are foreign incorporated.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Monday: Guess whose making the Prius now? Oh and VWs too!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • I really struggle with the incentives communities give to lure big employers. On one hand many of these communities need the jobs. But on the other we create these roving bands of gypsy companies that as soon as the incentives run out they pack up and move on to the next community. This has happened several times now in my town - leaving the community and taxpayer holding the bag and stuck with a white elephant.

    The other issue is while i applaud the japanese and europeans locating their auto plants here - this is great news, a downside is they typically stick with their own parts and service suppliers rather than domestic ones - so the beneficial ripple effect thru the economy is much less than a US branded plant.

    However the US brands do not have as enthusiastic loyalty to US suppliers as the europeans and japanese to their own suppliers. The Japanese call this loyalty to other japanese companies Kairetsu (sp?)

    Reply to: Manufacturing Monday: Guess whose making the Prius now? Oh and VWs too!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • I wouldn't be popping too many corks just yet.

    These new plants are wonderful but are only a drop in the bucket in replacing the massive job losses in mfg.

    VW's first foray into the US in New Stanton PA ended in failure, with closure after only a few years of making the Rabbit

    Not only has Toyota cut production in Princeton, the rumors persist here in Indiana that they will ultimately close that plant, the oldest in the country. They have also quietly scaled back their aggressive one new plant per year for the next ten years in the US and have been looking elsewhere, as well as pulling some production back to Japan, like Honda has been doing.

    Reply to: Manufacturing Monday: Guess whose making the Prius now? Oh and VWs too!   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • Robert,

    I found your posting on problems involvine IE6 on W2K. (My configuration!)

    I think that is where my problem with the interface lies. (I sent a more detailed email to you.)

    I'll go over and add an introduction and source section to the labor statistics post.

    Reply to: Last Century's immigration policy no longer works for US   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • that's the first time I have ever heard anyone put it that simply. I agree because from everything I have read, unfettered migration and especially illegal labor will put the race to the bottom on steroids.

    But, the way that debate is going right now it sure seems they are determined to really passed unlimited migration, further underground economy, illegal labor and their favorite, guest worker Visas, at least Pres. candidates and Congressional leadership.

    User guide BTW is over in the right hand column below "create content" and I tried to put the most common formatting issues there. The site will do tables. I won't let anyone run scripts though.

    Reply to: Last Century's immigration policy no longer works for US   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • for me. I think you need to go into more details.

    On the image thing on here: Click on the rich text editor and use the image button. There you will see an upload to the site for images on one of the tabs as well as the ability to link/format them into the blog post.

    Then, in the user guide to the right there are more tidbits on "how to". If you're really stuck after that, just email me off line.

    In the user guide is the XHTML tags and format to embed images. (I hope all realize to embed youtubes, just cut and paste the embed code)

    For complex things (like spreadsheets or large papers), just do file attachments.

    Just bear in mind this is a non-partisan "all things economic site" so to make the case on this, you really need detailed stats that are not breakable to make a claim. I'm sure you are aware of the massive amounts of data suggesting that unlimited migration is "all good" so you can also tear those "studies" apart by through solid stats.

    Reply to: Last Century's immigration policy no longer works for US   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • I think the amnesty argument is rather simple.

    If real employer sanctions are off the table, then amnesty should be off the table.

    Illegal labor, detremential to the NAFTA nearshore effort is being allowed as a legitimate deduction from corporate taxes.  The abuses in the informal economy have bled into the formal economy.

    There are studies referenced in Labor Mobility and the Global Economy:  that indicate the that longer a migrant worker is away from home the less likely remittances will continue.  http://www.afsc.org/trade-matters/issues/LaborMobility.pdf

    My opinion: The failure of guest worker programs can probably be attributed to the elimination of per-diem (housing) allowances and the long (too long) duration of the guest worker visas in the high-tech sector.

    Elimination of the housing requirement/per-diem removes the economic stimuli in the U.S., forces the guest worker to become hyper competitive, all the while reducing the portion of income which can be dedicated to remittances.  

    Additionally, poaching of educational resources (guest-worker to permanent migration) is not in the spirit of the GATS agreements.  The WTO is simply disinterested in the welfare of the worker.  see Labor Mobility and the Global Economy: http://www.afsc.org/trade-matters/issues/LaborMobility.pdf

     

    Reply to: Last Century's immigration policy no longer works for US   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:
  • I thought that the statement: <b> BLS Employment Growth over NonInstCiv Population Growth by Decade: </b> pretty much cites the source and describes the mathmatical formula.   

    What I've found with my experiement with citizen research is that shorter is better. (I did this post as an argument to "low unemployment" statistics, as proof that the economy is doing well.) 

     I had problems with this economicpopulist interface in editing my post.

    After the first edit (correcting some info), the rtf editor link is no longer exposed and I couldn't get the image  http://www.economicpopulist.org/?q=content/employmentperformance2gif to display in the post, so I left it as an attachment.

    You might find that the image does include BLS Series Id: numbers and does address retirement age persons in the workforce.  (A blog on aging population might be an additional post -- that could reference this one.)

    The math is very simple, if any one is interested I can upload the spreadsheet to a filesharing host -- if nobody is interested -- I don't see any point as it will be deleted by the host.

     

     

    Reply to: Last Century's immigration policy no longer works for US   16 years 4 months ago
    EPer:

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