What Jobs are Safe from Offshoring?

A commentary by Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post Online asks Will Your Job Survive? and discusses the article Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution? by Alan Blinder in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. The paper looks at the types of jobs that are vulnerable to offshoring and forecasts how offshoring will affect the U.S. labor market in the future. A free draft version on the paper notes:

So let us take a fresh look at some rough numbers and try to peer into the future, albeit through the usual befogged glasses, starting with the easy cases.

• At the end of 2004, there were 14.3 million manufacturing jobs in the United States. The vast majority of these workers produce items that can be put in a box, and so virtually all of their jobs are potentially movable offshore. (...this is not to say that all of them will be offshored.)...
• About 7.6 million Americans worked in the other goods-producing sectors: construction and mining. Even though these people produce goods, not services, their jobs are not in danger of moving offshore. You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet, at least not yet.
• At year end 2004, there were 22.0 million local, state, and federal government jobs—hardly any of which are candidates for offshoring even though many of them provide just the sort of impersonal services that need not be delivered face to face. (When is the last time you saw an employee of the IRS?) In this case, I believe, politics will prevent the offshoring...
• Retail trade employed 15.6 million Americans at the end of 2004. At present, the vast majority of these service jobs are largely or partly delivered in person, or at least require physical presence (e.g., stocking the shelves). That said, Internet retailing is steadily increasing... Hence, more retail jobs will be at risk of offshoring in the future.

Those are the easy cases. But the classification so far leaves out the majority of private service jobs—some 73.6 million at the end of 2004, including my job (college teaching) and probably yours. Here’s how this extremely heterogeneous group breaks down:

Educational and health services 17.3 million
Professional and business services 16.7 million
Leisure and hospitality services 12.3 million
Financial services 8.1 million
Wholesale trade 5.7 million
Transportation 4.3 million
Information services 3.2 million
Utilities 0.6 million
Other services 5.4 million

It is hard to map such broad job categories into personal versus impersonal services, even under today’s (known) technology. And it is nearly impossible to know what possibilities for long distance electronic delivery the future will bring. But here is my rough stab, reading from top to bottom.

• The health sector is presently about five times as large as the educational sector, and the vast majority of those jobs seem destined to be delivered in person for a very long time (if not forever). But there are exceptions. I have already mentioned ... radiologists. More generally, laboratory tests of all kinds are already outsourced by most physicians. Why not out of the country rather than just out of town? And with a little imagination, we can envision other medical procedures being performed by doctors who are thousands of miles away...
• Educational services are also best delivered face to face; but they are becoming increasingly expensive. My guess is that electronic delivery will never replace personal contact in K-12 education, which is where the vast majority of the educational jobs are. ... But college teaching is more vulnerable. As college tuition grows ever more expensive, cheap electronic delivery will start looking more and more sensible...
• Professional and business services comprise an incredibly heterogeneous lot ... ranging from CEOs and architects to typists and janitors. That said, when you scan the list of detailed sub-categories, it is hard to resist the conclusion that lots of these jobs are at least potentially offshorable...
• The leisure and hospitality industries seem much safer. If you vacation in Florida, you do not want the beach boy or the maid to be in China. On the other hand, reservation clerks can be (and are) located anywhere. On balance, only a few of these jobs can be moved offshore.
• Financial services, a sector that includes many highly-paid jobs, is another area where the future may look very different... To me, it is one big question mark. Today, the United States probably “onshores” more financial jobs (by selling financial services to foreigners) than it offshores. Probably, that will remain true for years. But improvements in telecommunications and rising educational levels in countries like China and, especially, India ... may change the status quo dramatically.
• Wholesale trade seems much like retail trade, albeit with a bit less personal contact, and thus with somewhat greater potential for offshoring. The same holds true for utilities.
• Information services ... comprise the quintessential types of jobs that can be delivered electronically... The majority of these jobs are at risk.
• The phrase “other services” is not very informative. But when you look down the detailed list (e.g., repair and maintenance, laundry, etc.), most of this hodge-podge of services seem to require personal delivery.

The overall picture defies generalization; draw your own conclusions. My own very rough guess, based on the preceding numbers, is that the number of current U.S. service sector jobs that will be susceptible to offshoring in the electronic future is two to three times the total number of manufacturing jobs. That said, large swaths of American employment look to be immune. However, none of us knows what the future will bring. Technology is constantly surprising us... Leaving aside the details and the nuances, the basic argument of this essay is easy to summarize:

• Thanks to electronic communications and globalization, the future is likely to see much more offshoring of jobs in ... impersonal services, that is, services that can be delivered electronically over long distance with little or no degradation of quality.
• Despite all the political sound and fury, little of this service-sector offshoring has happened to date. But it may eventually amount to a Third Industrial Revolution. And industrial revolutions have a way of transforming societies.
• Rich countries will need to shift their work forces away from impersonal services and manufacturing and toward personal services. Unfortunately, Baumol’s disease ... implies that the relative prices of personal services are destined to rise inexorably, so that the relative size of this sector may shrink over time.
• That said, the “threat” from offshoring should not be exaggerated. Just as the First Industrial Revolution did not banish agriculture from the rich countries, and the Second Industrial Revolution has not banished manufacturing, the Third Industrial Revolution will not drive all impersonal services off shore. Nor will it lead to mass unemployment. But the necessary adjustments will be large, complex, multifaceted, and difficult.
• The societies of the rich countries seem to be completely unprepared for the coming industrial transformation. Our national data systems, our trade policies, our educational systems, our social welfare programs, our politics, and much more, all must adapt to the fundamental movement from impersonal to personal service jobs. None of this is happening now.
• Protectionism is not the answer. It will at best slow, not stem, the tide. And it will cause much collateral damage in the process.
• Perhaps the most acute need, given the long lead times, is to figure out how to educate our children now for the jobs that will actually be available to them ten and twenty years from now. Unfortunately, the distinction between personal service jobs (which are more likely to remain in the rich countries) and impersonal service jobs (which are more likely to go) does not correspond to traditional distinctions between high-skilled and low-skilled work. So simply providing more education is not the answer.
• The more flexible and fluid United States will probably cope with these problems better than Europe and Japan will.

Comments

[ChinaLawBlog]

This article makes two very crucial points:
1. Offshoring will not 'lead to mass unemployment. . . [b]ut the necessary adjustments will be large, complex, multifaceted, and difficult.
2. Protectionism is not the answer. It will at best slow, not stem, the tide. And it will cause much collateral damage in the process.
The answer is to educate and to adjust.

[james]

how come all descriptions of outsourcing events do not discuss the role of us corporate tax policies regarding investments made and profits earned outside the united states in promoting/shaping/protecting/influencing the practice?

[claus vistesen]

"The answer is to educate and to adjust."

This is so true yet it still implies that someone will be left behind. The main issue is whether we are ready to accept that not all will be able to adjust and then crucially, who will do what about this?

Government can obviously step in but government intervention on these issues comes in many shapes and sizes.

[me]

Wrong.

"The answer is to educate and to adjust."

This is not the asnwer. I will ask you what I ask everyone that posts that answer, educate for what? Adjust to what? Just cut our standard opf living in half. Give up retirement?

You have been listening to Bush and watchinig Fox News too much.

My job went to India almost 4 years ago. I have learned that once you hit the 50s, you woke up one day and forget anything useful to contribute to the economy.

So what sounds nice on paper jsut doesn't happen in reality. This is the worst economuy and job market of my lifetime. The only time I was unemployed is in my mid-50s, which by the way I wasted 4 years of grad school planning to avoid this situation..

[jimminy cricket]

"The answer is to educate and adjust."

What wimps Americans are! Obviously this is a rapid slide downhill for most of us. And it is likely true that people will do nothing to defend themselves and their families from the depradations of corporatism - those who kiss rich tush get rich tush. Yikes.

The French path is much better: riot and protest.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Let's not forget "insourcing."

Corporate America is also working to take jobs from Americans with immigrants, both legal and mostly illegal.

What kinds of jobs?

Nursing (believe it or not)
Carpentry
Dry Walling
Painting
Roofing
Hospitality and cleaning
Computer tech and engineering
even professors
etc.
etc.

[save_the_rustbelt]

GM/Delphi buying out 113,000 jobs.

Most of the assembly jobs are gone forever.

Delphi will send most the parts manufacturing oversaes, and in fact has been for some time.

The 1500 new Wal-Marts are being assured of a steady stream of employees, who will have minimal health cand pensions benefits.

(Employees will get pension benefits accrued as of the dateof seperation, assuming GM doesn't dump the pension plan on the feds some day).

[Emmanuel]

Economics 101: Services that need to be rendered onsite are safer from offshoring. Hairdressers, manicurists, teachers, doctors, dentists, nurses, car washers, construction workers, rent-a-cops, lawyers, and, er, escort services are but a few examples of jobs that cannot be sent abroad for obvious reasons.

The curious thing, from my point of view, is that a lot of skilled jobs that are supposed to be in the high-tech "jobs of the future" category are those most easily outsourced. Meanwhile, many of the service sector occupations I listed above--some skill intensive, most others not--are being filled by migrant labor. So, it's double jeopardy: jobs requiring a lot of conceptual work are being sent overseas, yet at the same time, many entry-level jobs that cannot be offshored are being filled by migrants. Lose-lose, eh?

[cm]

me: From my dictionary --

adjust: 1. v intr: get over it, suck it up

[save_the_rustbelt]

"Economics 101: Services that need to be rendered onsite are safer from offshoring. Hairdressers, manicurists, teachers, doctors, dentists, nurses, car washers, construction workers, rent-a-cops, lawyers, and, er, escort services...."

Insourced immigrants can fill these jobs, so they are not completely secure.

We have been insourcing doctors and nurses rather than educate Americans. The non-union construction are overrun by illegals.

Any reason you listed lawyers just before whores? :-))

[Emmanuel]

Whores before lawyers, huh? You're probably right, Rust. All the same, we have to be careful about assuming that migrants are necessarily taking away these jobs. When I was in Arizona, my heart went out to the migrant laborers who worked at the car wash in the scorching desert heat at the height of summer. That also goes for a lot of migrant jobs--many of them are those that the gringos wouldn't do.

The same holds true elsewhere. Most American teachers wouldn't want to teach in the inner-city out of safety fears, so many are brought in from abroad. Picking fruit in Florida is not something Americans want to do either, so migrant labor is used. As you imply, being a nurse is not a glamour job, so there's a lack of qualified Americans for those tasks as well.

I know it's tough, but perhaps it's also necessary to downsize expectations about the benefits of education. Many high-skilled knowledge jobs can be outsourced, while these overlooked, less glamorous jobs will likely be there in the future. My heresy: making education the cure-all might have the opposite effect of raising expectations too high about what jobs will be available in the future, creating more, not less, unemployment.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Emmanual:

The problem is that when a manageable shortage develops, nothing is done about education policy.

For example, the nursing shortage has been brewing for 2 decades. The Nurse .... Act passed a couple of years ago spends about .00001 percent of what we spend in farm subsidies. our entire medical school funding system has been dysfuctional for decades, so we import docs.

We are TURNING AWAY students from nursing schools for lack of funding, while we educate hoards of lawyers. This is stupid.

We can do something about some of these issues with some intelligent policy directives.

On the other hand, selling education as a panacea for a unemployed 50-something facotry worker is silly, as we have nothing to educate him for. I agree education is not a panacea.

[donna]

Let's offshore the CEOs. CEOs in other countries are FAR cheaper than ours!

[camille roy]

This entire thread invites the question, why is globalization in the interest of American voters? Wages declining, jobs disappearing, benefit cuts, and comforting words like:

"I know it's tough, but perhaps it's also necessary to downsize expectations about the benefits of education."

If this is the cure, I think I prefer the disease. Or, at least give me a chance to try the disease. This cure is abhorrent.

[ChinaLawBlog]

I concede that even if we educate and adjust, there will still be displacement. What we do with the displaced is a socio-political question. But, the best thing for society as a whole is to adapt. That is clear and comes from more than just Fox News. BTW, lawyers are already being outsourced. Legal research and basic patent work is already being done in India.

[Lord]

Educate for what?

Acting lessons? Music lessons? Entrepreneurship?

Adjust to what?

Sucking up to that CEO down the street and getting him to hire junior.

Just cut our standard of living in half.

If America doesn't do well, then neither will all those countries that depend on us as customers. Many goods and services will become cheaper. Resources will not.

Give up retirement?

Yes. Retirement will return to becoming a forced end rather than a desirable objective.

[yartrebo]

"The same holds true elsewhere. Most American teachers wouldn't want to teach in the inner-city out of safety fears, so many are brought in from abroad. Picking fruit in Florida is not something Americans want to do either, so migrant labor is used. As you imply, being a nurse is not a glamour job, so there's a lack of qualified Americans for those tasks as well."
- Emmanuel

Teaching jobs in inner cities pay very little and are more demanding environments than teaching in other areas. Pay inner city teachers 20% more than suburban teachers and you'll have no shortage of qualified teachers applying. Same goes with fruit pickers. Pay them $12/hour (twice McDonalds wage) and you'll have plenty of willing fruit pickers. Same goes with nurses. Pay them well and you'll have plenty of nurses. Many people are heavily in debt and will gladly take an unskilled job if the pay and benefits are right.

[me]

Just as I thought, cutsy responses but no answers. Educate for WHAT?

[Michael Cain]

When I was in Arizona, my heart went out to the migrant laborers who worked at the car wash in the scorching desert heat at the height of summer. That also goes for a lot of migrant jobs--many of them are those that the gringos wouldn't do.

I'm asking for curiosity, here. If the migrant labor wasn't available, wouldn't the owner of the car wash be incented to some combination of things: higher wages, covers under which the workers could perform the job, water mist to provide local evaporative cooling under that cover? Yes, the price would no doubt be higher and fewer total car washings would be sold in Arizona -- but there would be gringos willing to do the job. I believe that for years the land owners in California claimed that it wasn't cost effective to automate any of the harvest; but once they were forced into it, they found that the right sorts of mechanical help were cost effective by making the workers more productive, reducing spoilage, etc. I am a firm believer in the ability of the owners to be clever once the constraints on the solution space force them into it.

[Emmanuel]

Man, remind me not to comment less in these very active posts about outsourcing/offshoring/globalization, LOL. Before I go off on a tangent, let me try to bring things back to the ideas in the post -

Yartrebo--right on; I agree completely. Low wages and grunt work make for an unattractive combination, and that's not likely to change much with offshoring.

Michael Cain--I am no expert on car wash economics (!), but some of the tasks cannot be automated. Cleaning auto mats cannot be done by machine. As far as I know, applying Armor All to tires cannot be done by machine, either. While many tasks can probably be done cheaper when automated, there are some tasks that have to be done by hand. And that, I think, is the whole gist of things: some tasks cannot be done yet other than by human beings live and in the flesh. BTW, the Valley of the Sun is a great place to be--I hope to get back in a couple of years' time.

[th]

The rich are getting filthy rich. The future is to acquire skills to allow you to provide services to the rich of a type that they are not comfortable having done by immigrants. Maybe admin. assistant/personal secretary; event planner; driver; golf pro; waiter; hairdresser; concierge; private tutor; chef; caretaker at the weekend estate etc.....

[SS]

Regarding the insourcing issue,
The solution may be along the lines of Congress changing the law so that for every job cut in the USA , the H1 visas need to be reduced by the same amount.

This will stop the M$FT, Intel & IBM for lobbying an increase in ceiling every year.

[Michael Cain]

I am no expert on car wash economics (!), but some of the tasks cannot be automated. Cleaning auto mats cannot be done by machine. As far as I know, applying Armor All to tires cannot be done by machine, either. While many tasks can probably be done cheaper when automated, there are some tasks that have to be done by hand. And that, I think, is the whole gist of things: some tasks cannot be done yet other than by human beings live and in the flesh.

Nor am I such an expert. There are undoubtedly parts of the job that (at least to date) require the hand-eye coordination and opposable thumb of a real person to do. However, the same argument was made for havesting fruits and vegetables and such in California, but when the owners were forced into it, there were a variety of aids that made the job less strenuous and the workers more productive. Assume such an aid is possible for putting Armor All on tires -- if there is an unlimited pool of minimum wage (or below, if you take some claims at face value) labor, the owner has less incentive to invest in such aids and as a result, creative minds have little incentive to design and manufacture them.

[Steve]

"Unfortunately, the distinction between personal service jobs (which are more likely to remain in the rich countries) and impersonal service jobs (which are more likely to go) does not correspond to traditional distinctions between high-skilled and low-skilled work."

I just don't understand how an economy more and more focused on personal service jobs will pay for all those "cheap" outsourced goods and services. Unless foreign central banks promise to keep the value of the US dollar perpetually high relative to their countries wages, I suspect personal services "rich countries" will wake up to find themselves beautifully manicured and dirt poor one day.

Rich countries don't need a manufacturing economy. But they do need to offer something to exchange for the goods and services they import from elsewhere. The jobs that others can do for Americans at a distance are the same jobs Americans can do for others at a distance. If Americans, or Europeans, can't compete in any outsourceable tasks, the world's wealth will quite rightfully flow to those who can.

[save_the_rustbelt]

"Same goes with nurses. Pay them well and you'll have plenty of nurses."

Nurses are paid well.

They tend to leave the field early (physicial and emotional exhaustion) and the pipeline for educating replacement nurses is too small.

This is a problem we can fix while educating Americans for secure well paying jobs. Politicians are too stupid apparently.

(Don't have a heart attack after about 2012, the quality of your nursing care will depend on luck).

[save_the_rustbelt]

"Regarding the insourcing issue,
The solution may be along the lines of Congress changing the law so that for every job cut in the USA , the H1 visas need to be reduced by the same amount."

Bill Gates was in DC last week telling the government we desperately need more visas because this country is short of talent.

Gag.

[ken melvin]

Emmanuel represents the Chamber of Commerce.

[partOfMe]

Education is panacea and it has to be. Let me explain why.

Education is not something you need to do only when you are in school. Education/learning/training, whatever you call it is something you need to do as routine in life as eating and sleeping and do until well … you die. Many people forget about education once they get a job. For those who were working at assembly lines for the last 15 years or programming for the last 5 years without doing any learning/training/education to upgrade their skills or their life for that matter, the question ‘Education for what?’ would be tough to answer, especially after they were outsourced and laid off without having resource to support their lives let alone their education.

The prepared workers are someone who do not expect that their jobs would last forever and who educate themselves constantly in whatever area they are interested in learning, following their aptitude and potentials in the areas that may or may not be related to their current job and do it while they have jobs. I personally met many people who introduced themselves as auto worker/drummer, high school teacher/programmer, or accountant/adjunct professor/online entrepreneur, etc. They all started their second or third skills as hobby but honed them for many years and became good enough for second career. I bet that they will have much less difficulties moving on if they get laid off.

Don’t think that the graduate school you, above poster, went through was a complete waste. Your odds of getting a job would be many times higher than those who don’t have any graduate degree.

‘Education for what?’ is as good a question as ‘Now what?’ after stranded on a highway without having a spare tire. Eventually rescue will come but expect to wait for a long, unpleasant, uncertain, and sometimes dangerous time.

[save_the_rustbelt]

partofMe:

I'm guessing you never worked long days in an auto plant or on a skilled trade, let alone had the energy to bounce off to school.

I'm guessing the auto worker/drummer isn't making much money as a drummer these days.

Again, education for what? Ten years ago every blue collar worker was supposed to go to night school at the local community college and become computer literate. For what? The jobs are being outsourced.

A 54 year old former factory worker does not have the time to better himself with a liberal arts degree, and even if subsidized training is available the question becomes "training for what?"

A friend of mine had a high tech manufacturing job for 27 years, and then got dumped so the jobs could go to Mexico. He kept himself reeducated. He went to TAA subsidized training and ended up teaching the class because he knew more about computers than the instructor.

He worked now as a church janitor. While he enjoys the lower stress this will result in a permenantly lower standard of living and retirement.

If U.S. trade policy is going to leave much of the blue collar middle class behind, and a chunk of the white collar middle class, then damnit the politicians should stop lying and just say so.

[im1dc]

James posts:

"how come all descriptions of outsourcing events do not discuss the role of us corporate tax policies regarding investments made and profits earned outside the united states in promoting/shaping/protecting/influencing the practice?"

I side with James.

I believe, but don't know, that the USA is the only major trading nation that treats its corporations as individuals, thus assigning them rights of individuals, as contrasted with treating corporations as entities that serve the policy goals of the state as well as serve their shareholders.

I presume the policy goal of most advanced foreign states is to provide their citizens have good paying jobs with benefits and retirements so they don't become a burden on the Central Goverment.

That ought to be the goal in the USA too and was FDR's demand for all US Corporations in 1932.

We have forgotten that corporations are our creations and we can tell them what to do and they have to comply or cease to exist, or at least cease their operations within our borders.

How many of the world's multinational corps would be willing to stop operations within our borders?

Not many I'd wager and none that we could not easily live without.

[Lord]

Actually I was serious.

In the world of the future, increasingly all jobs will become ones that no one wishes to take. Jobs will offer survival and subsistance but not advancement and affluence. Jobs won't be the way to wealth. They never were although many did provide a comfortable existance and many even become wealthy through their association with them. It is the creative act that will be the way to wealth, whether by individual act such as artist, designer, entertainer, or writer, or by coordinating act through entrepreneurship. Knowledge, while useful, will not be a critical factor. Anyone will be able to buy it, cheaply. It will be the knowledge of that knowledge and what to do with it that will become critical, the concept, the idea, It will become less what you know than who you know and your ability to persuade others of your vision. There will be no shortage of money for them.

Even while large corporations are reaping the benefits of globalization and will become even larger, it is important to realize they are dinosaurs walking the earth. They have maintained and increased their profitability by competitive avoidance, but they are doomed to falling growth and margins eventually. Globalization only happens once, even if it is extended over time. The more successful ones continue to consume smaller, more entrepreneurial firms, but this will become more difficult when their growth fades and their prey become more expensive.

Entrepreneurs can become wealthy by creating something smaller, better, faster, for the vast masses, or for the wealthy elite. There won't be much in between. The mass market will become even more mass and maintaining affordability and uniqueness against competitors will be key. Costs must fall as the ability of the masses to afford it do. The wealthy market will demand custom exclusive service, a market of one. Who you know is critical to getting and keeping the job. Some creations are for mass performances, others are for an audience of one.

As wealth becomes the result of sporadic events rather than sustained effort, preserving and enhancing these windfalls when they occur become imperative. Age will become irrelevant other than how effective you are at capturing these flows. Some may never have to work, or may be able to retire when young. Others may never find that break, or find it only to have it slip through their fingers, and may never be able to retire. How prepared you are to take advantage of these opportunities and how well you can handle your finances will become paramount.

[Emmanuel]

Emmanuel represents the Chamber of Commerce.

I do? If I did, then there wouldn't be much commerce left in America and they'd fire me in a jiffy, given my pessimistic views. To me, it's a combination of things: (1) A good amount of high-skilled work is likely to be offshored, so training for the "jobs of the future" isn't automatically good; (2) There will be certain jobs left in America--some of them attractive, others less so because they require persons on-site.

From my POV, it's a strategic thing. Given these forces, it's best to seek jobs that are relatively attractive and are reasonably guaranteed to remain offshoring-proof in the near future. Be a college professor like MT; be an orthodontist; be an undertaker (!)--they aren't offshoring corpses. There are still good, unmovable jobs out there. Look diligently and seek them out, for, as I always say, only you can set you free.

[me]

"Your odds of getting a job would be many times higher than those who don’t have any graduate degree."

I respectfully disagree with that. In my experience I am too experienced, over qualified, wouldn't be challenged; need I go on? Mid-50s you don't get a job. All of them say the same thing, we aren't paying you and you are too old.

Do you really think Bill Gates can't find any qualified people? I hagve applied to Microsoft and never heard a word from them. If I am not qualified, I can gurarentee you there are few Indians qualified unless it is because of labor arbitrage that I can/will never match, 10 cents on the dollar.

And we still have no answer for education for what. I am 57, should ZI get another graduate degree? BS? In WHAT? I say more education hurts more than it helps.

[calmo]

The answer is to educate and to adjust.
So become that adjustable, educable wrench so that we can figure out how to educate our children now for the jobs that will actually be available to them ten and twenty years from now.
Nevamind about this conflation of education with training --no one is going to hire you smartie pants for nuances. An' some job is better than none so don't gimme that line about personal dignity and jobs you don't like to do. Do them anyhow. Show some adjustability forchrisake.
Speaking of adjustments,(and what 'adjust' means to cm) I am reminded of this mentally handicapped person, Dennis, (honest this was not me, people, I was only visiting) who was bragging up his Dad who, according to Dennis would "Make some adjustments!" when Dennis got out of hand. Yes, a good pants down spanking across the knee which Dennis voluntarily flopped down for knowing it was in the interests of "Making the adjustment!". I'm sure it reduced the frequency of bad behavior and strengthened Dennis's regard for his father, which was not the sado/masochistic picture painted here.
The disenfranchised can say if they are asked "What the hell are you doing with that broom (that C+ certification, etc) man?", that they are "Making some adjustments!", but to get it to sound like Dennis may take more marketing.

[cm]

me: There you go, "th | Mar 22, 2006 12:02:22 PM" responded to your question. But seriously, you are not getting plausible responses because there are none.

Hopefully without offense (and I'm merely some 15 or so years away from your age, and expect to be hit with the same thing eventually), I would like to offer that the predominant reason why older folks (and it starts in the 40's but gets worse in the 50's) are not hired is not any lack in "current skills", but the (often rightful) perception that they have too much business experience, and are not readily bullshitted about how the organization works nor "motivated" by dangling the carrot of "career growth" or job grade/pay advancement in front of their nose. Who wants good solid work, and people who can advise their hotshot project/division managers what works and what not. What is sought is (y)our experience but the naivety of a youngster who is still willing to do as told and not as needed, and won't embarrass his supervisor(s) by questioning decisions that deserve it. Most supervisors are not comfortable with that. Bottom line, they "don't fit" into many organizations.

[a]

ME:
"Educate for what?".

I am sorry to ask: you don't like education for the pleasure of learning?

What if I tell you that most of Chinese people I know, in US or in China are learning at all age of their lives, by attending schools or self-learning through books?

No one can tell what education guaranttee you a "life time" job and after that you don't need to learn any more. You have to learn everyday, and be good at it. If you don't know how to learn, you fell behind and then you are less needed, especially if you work as a knowledge worker.

So what should you learn? Anything you love, anything excites you. In today's world, believe me, if you are really good, you will find reward.

To me, the key to have a good/secure job is constantly learning, nothing else.

I guess that is what education and adjust mean. Not just a degree.

[cm]

partOfMe: After waxing so nicely about training while having a job, why don't you try to map out an example workweek with a plausible work schedule, showing where you would allocate the classes.

Perhaps those of us who seem to not find space in busy evenings can learn something about time management.

[cm]

a: There is the element of luck as well, which often gets attributed as virtue after the fact. And for most jobs in the "official" economy, hiring is by credentials and tangible experience on your resume. Have you ever heard the phrase "demonstrated track record"? "I have read about this at home" is not going to fly with many hiring managers. And I presume you are not over 40, right?

[cm]

a: Which is not supposed to mean you shouldn't continue seeking out growth of the mind.

But the issue is that employers have preconceived concepts about what employees they are looking for, mostly "the cream" of the young and highly qualified. As there are not that many of those, it's "we cannot find talent".

Reading books at home is not going to help with that.

[anne]

What education means:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/30/international/africa/30africa.html?ex=1272513600&en=5c1a0fc83c0b49f0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

April 30, 2005

A Would-Be Pilot, Hitting Turbulence on the Ground
By MICHAEL WINES

MASJAING, South Africa

IN a part of the world where so many young people never get off the ground, 17-year-old James Mokoena wants to be a pilot.

He will fly a fighter jet, but not just to wage aerial battles. Africa is full of hungry people and people sick with malaria, he said. Many of them need a James Mokoena to bring them food and medicine.

"I haven't been in a plane," he said, but dismissively. "I want to be in a plane for four, five years, and to know that I am in that plane - me. That I, James, am driving it."

He is standing outside his cement-stuccoed house, a four-room box on a dirt road in this township of about 30,000 on the Lesotho border. Inside is a single bed for him, three brothers and a sister. His mother is ill. His father never got past the sixth grade. Everything here fairly shouts that James's dream is folly.

Except James himself. Two years ago, having completed his elementary years at the township primary school, he walked the mile from Masjaing to Fouriesburg, the far wealthier town on the other side of the highway. There, he announced that he wanted a better education than he could get at Masjaing's uninspiring local high school, from which few students ever graduate, and that he wished to enroll in the eighth grade.

"I asked him whether he realized there were school fees to be paid, and he said his father would pay them," said Irina Grice, the principal at Fouriesburg Intermediate School. "His father came, but oh, his clothes were torn, and he was very, very poor.

"But the father said, 'The child chose, and he wants to be in this school.' "

One in three of South Africa's 37 million blacks live in townships like Masjaing, slums built to keep them away from white people when they were not mining whites' coal or cleaning whites' houses. Of those township dwellers over age 15, well over half are jobless. Of those with jobs, about 6 in 10 earn less than $250 a month. The townships are economic and social sinkholes, poverty traps in a nation where the rich-poor gap is among the widest on earth.

JEREMANE MOKOENA - he calls himself James, he said, because he dislikes his first name - wants out of Masjaing. He wants out of the underclass that apartheid created and into the world of opportunity that apartheid's demise has opened up for other, luckier youths.

Few of his friends here - boys idling on the dusty soccer pitch and clustered on gravel street corners, clueless about how impending manhood will shut off their escape route - have the pluck for the journey James so clearly craves. For those who do try, success is rare. Failure, and consignment to a life in society's cellar, is crushing.

Slim, with a shy, if broad smile and a tendency to look away when talking, James resembles anything but a pioneer. But nobody should underestimate his grit.

"My father, he works," James said. "He keeps on telling me that life is very strong, like a rock. You have to push it forward. You have to stand for yourself, not just wait to have somebody come and say, 'James, go forward.' "

His father, 44-year-old Petrus Mokoena, is James's unlikely inspiration. A gaunt man in threadbare blue coveralls and a fluorescent red jacket, he works a split shift for the Masjaing (pronounced mush-a-ENG) sanitation department, collecting trash in the predawn hours, catching some sleep, then collecting more trash in the afternoon.

For this, Mr. Mokoena earns under $300 a month. Fouriesburg Intermediate wanted $40 for tuition. Mr. Mokoena paid it. Apartheid, he said, kept him an indentured and ignorant laborer on a white-owned farm his entire youth.

"I want James to see that not to go to school is a bad thing," said Mr. Mokoena, speaking in Sotho, his only language. "I want him to speak English and to write English."

Forty dollars is no small sacrifice. Ms. Grice said she once asked James why he was doing poorly in one subject. "He said, 'I can't finish off the work before it's dark, and we don't have electricity,' " she said.

"So I said to him, 'It's possible to study by candlelight.' And he said, 'We don't have any candles.' " ...

[slink]

hey if they can build
skilled workers cheaper
over there in asia
and they sure can

scrub the skill set upgrade gambit

and prolly adjust
means
find a face to face service
too human for a machine to do

see we're back to basics boys and gals

cave creature comforts
personal service professionalism

[a]

cm, I do understand bad luck.
But I don't understand whining and blame others for your bad luck.

I do wonder, often, if I lost my job, could I still feed myself through my own working ability --- perhaps running a restaurant even, if not freelancing what I do now in my job with small clients, or starting a business on things I find passionate about at work but have no time for...

Perhaps even 're-educate" myself to become a journalist, a lawyer, or a social worker, or teach in China, or in NYC (what the heck), and get a city-sponsored master degree in history...

I do see so much opportunities in life that I can not explore because I have not got my green card and I am not allowed to have a life in US if no corporation hires me. That, hopefully explains my disbelief in ME's comments.

Perhaps ME is not really old (I don't consider 50 somthing old), but he is old in his views? People become old when they don't want to learn any more? With his business experience and technique know-how, can he run a small consulting firm to help small e-commerce? Come on, don't tell me he does not have anything to offer to the society to get reward in return. I don't beleive it.

[a]

I guess my snap also comes that people seem to put "education" to be blamed. So basically they get a computer degree not because they really like the subject but because it once promised jobs. So if the job is gone, then they feel rightuous to blame education.

I happen to be a Chinese and I was taught from very young age that "knowledge is power" (actually by Francis Bacon), and one should respect his teachers, and everyone that teaches you even one tiny thing is your teacher (by Confucious)...

I am disappointed by this anti-knowledge rhetorics. If one thinks he is better ignorant, perhaps "un-educated" would serve him well.

ME: if I offended you, I hope you can forgive me, you can have all your anger at your managers for outsourcing your job at the cost of quality of work. BTW, many companies are bringing back work from India as well. Good luck.

[cm]

a: You call it whining, I call it factual claims. I'm being accused of whining and negativism quite often, and the definition appears to be mentioning unfavorable facts or claims that others don't care to hear instead of glossing over them and pretending everything is apple pie.

I haven't had bad luck (so far), so I'm not complaining on my own behalf really. Nevertheless I can see the writing on the wall. So will you I guess when you will have progressed to an age where this will become a concern. When I was younger I also had a perception of more opportunity, as I figure had 'me'.

[cm]

a: And neither are we anti-knowledge or anti-education. We are anti-bullshit and anti-handwaving and anti-lofty phrases.

In Musical Chairs, when we have the "bad luck" of not getting a chair, we are not blaming the chairs, but we don't appreciate the bystanders remarking that you will always get a chair when you only run hard enough. Or that when you run harder there will be more chairs for everybody. (Well, every metaphor goes only so far.)

And by the bystanders I don't mean you, but those preaching from their lofty government-pension-entitled or corporate-lobbying-sponsored pulpit that others should please adjust.

[calmo]

Adjustment can suggest accomodation, give and take, flexibility (ok, can 'resilience' be far behind?) [no] and not merely one-sided change. The discussion so far assumes that the worker changes and not his working environment.
Is this a radical idea: the work place should accomodate some of the worker's demands?
The re-training, falls upon the worker, not the work place, so much.
Imagine if work places did not have handicapped washrooms and openly discriminated against these people. So, why aren't we making a fuss about the lack of retraining facilities for the workers? Physically handicapped people can be accomodated but the line is drawn there.
Where?
We expect the workers to be mentally fit for the job: happy with their levels of compensation and their efforts to better themselves.
Pay no attention to declining levels of real disposable income amid increasing levels of productivity and profits.
Where? We expect the workers to be compliant --slightly mentally handicapped given the circumstances, no?

[a]

One feature of Capitalism is: we are all workers and in a capitalism system we are nothing unless we sell our skill and labour/brain work for a reward to live on.

Welcome to capitalist America. It is not new. One can debate that with the advance of technology, capital should matter less, and social contract for justice and humanity should matter more. One can also definitely disagree and argue that the rich should get richer, patent holders own technology, because that is the way it is.

The beauty of technology, or knowledge workers in internet time, is that you can start your business serving people with less capital requirement. Acquiring knowledge takes effort, but much less money than acquiring machines (unless, of course you choose to get a degree from private Universities).

What I am trying to say is: education does matter and it would be pivotal for the future of this country.

Yes, politician might be sneaky to tell people to educate themselves while evading their duty to form stronger social contract for the benefit of their constituents. I would blame them for passing the tax cut for the rich, I would blame them for pass laws weakening pension benefit, I would blame them for not invest more in education, but invest so much in arm production and war...

I would just blame different things.
To blame education just sound self-defeated.

[me]

"So if the job is gone, then they feel rightuous to blame education."

Even Forbes has an article demonstrating that a college education no longer a good ROI.

Learning for the sake of learning does not put bread on the table.

"Perhaps even 're-educate" myself to become a journalist, a lawyer,"

You obviously don't have a true understanding of capitalism. What newspaper is going to hire a 55 year old reporter? Your theory and reality have no match.

And let's say I will become a lawyer. Where do I get the money to go to law school? Then I will be 60 or 61 when I graduate. Now who is going to hire a 60 year old lawyer trying their first case? So how is the ROI on that law degree?

I am bitter because I did educate myself. I paid for my own training and I still got screwed.

The rules of capitalism were stay in school work hard. Now the rules are changed.

I cannot think of anything people in this country can get educated in that will not be done 10 cents on the dollar offshore period.

One guy on a post said his daughter was an animator. Well, great future there, Disney closed their animations studio and moved it to China.

Jobs are few in returning and AI would argue that the offshore trend is really just beginning and is moving up the food chain fast.

Startups and new opportunities came from people leaving Microsoft and starting their own business. Now research is moving offshore and so the people that quit Microsoft now will start business in India, not here in the US.

[anne]

What education means:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/09/international/americas/09mexico.html?ex=1270699200&en=002dab476b252724&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

April 9, 2005

At 15, Dreaming Big Dreams: Oh, to Be a Scholar
By TIM WEINER

MEXICALI, Mexico

ALICIA ÁLVAREZ lives two miles from the American border and light-years from the American dream.

Growing up in Mexicali has made her a realist at 15. She has no taste for romances and soap operas. Harry Potter stories and a horror movie at the mall are as far away as fictions take her from her city's heat and dust.

Alicia has a fierce intelligence, and it fires her only soaring ambition: to get a decent education, schooling that could lift her up and out of her surroundings into a better life. It looks to her as likely as a trip to Mars.

"It seems impossible," Alicia said with a shy, distant gaze. She has started high school, having proved herself one of the brightest girls in her city, a straight-A student with an exceptional aptitude for math.

"My family has no money for college," she said. "I probably will never get to a university, though I would love to.

"My education has been hard. My teachers are trained in teaching, not in math and science. It's a struggle for them to teach me what I need to be taught. To learn what I want to know. And I want to know so much."

She finds herself, like her country, poised with one foot in the door of opportunity and one stuck in the poverty and powerlessness of the past. But with her fine mind, the idea of having a better life than one's parents, while distant, is still a shimmering possibility.

Her father, David Osuna, 46, works part time selling used cars. He has good weeks and bad weeks. Her mother, Alicia Álvarez, 48, keeps house. They have provided their children with the basics of life: food, clothes, shelter. Their slender, dutiful, deep-thinking daughter is a bit of a mystery to them.

Alicia's brothers, David, 21, and Luis, 16, are in awe of her intelligence, respectful, sometimes distant. David is the one in whom she sometimes confides her dreams.

ALICIA'S uncle and godfather, Abel Álvarez, 56, knows her aspirations. He grew up behind a plow, and then crossed over the border when he was her age to work the fields of the Imperial Valley in California. He now earns a good living in construction, a self-made man who builds malls in El Centro, Calif., 15 minutes north of Mexicali.

He has watched Alicia grow up with a mixture of pride and worry.

"It's not a lot easier growing up in Mexicali now than it was 40 years ago," he said. "The pie's a little bigger, but a lot more people want a slice. Growing up here, you go up against all that, and with the United States and all its riches just over the line."

Mexico's economy has been flat for almost five years. Poverty is ever-present. The middle class is small; it has been shrinking for a generation. Stealing into the United States is often the only way out.

Alicia has seen what is over the line, having traveled with her uncle and cousins on short trips to Los Angeles, San Diego and Riverside, halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. "I love Riverside best of all, it's so pretty," she said. "So much greenery, so many trees. It's the cleanest, greenest place I've ever seen."

But Alicia says the idea of sneaking across the border to live and work holds no attraction for her. "I don't want to migrate," she said flatly. There is no legal path for her, and she does not want to be an outlaw.

She is a bit better off than many other young Mexicans, especially the millions living in the countryside whose families struggle for enough to eat, and she would not risk what little she has for a gamble in a strange land.

Still, Alicia sometimes feels the walls of her cinder-block house closing in on her. The heat rises above 100 degrees in Mexicali for almost half the year. The house is crowded, and the closeness sometimes chafes at family life and familial love.

"We quarrel sometimes," she says. "We don't always get along. My parents don't always think the way I do." When the little house gets too hot, too close, she finds refuge in books, or when there is a little money to spare, alone at the movies, at a mall a mile from home on the edge of the city, near where the desert begins.

She has become, of late, more of a loner, though she has a best friend, Karen Aguilar. "She is my one close friend, Karen, and no one else," Alicia said. "We grew up together. We shared secrets and all that. We used to spend all our free time together. But now she works, and I have to study, and time seems so short." ...

[save_the_rustbelt]

One major problem is that many Ameicans are paying significant taxes so we can be screwed by our own government.

While people were drowning in NOLA, what was the federal government doing?

Giving no-bid contracts to Halliburton subsidiaries.

More to the point, we are sending another delegation to China to get tough, and they will end up licking the boots of the Chinese leaders, again, on behalf of corporate America.

I think it is time for the political pendulum to swing.

[Betsy L. Angert]

Dear Mark . . .

I recently read a laughable piece on outsourcing; it was unlike the scary reality of the prospect. This essay was written as a press release, and while I read it and smiled, it did stimulate much thought.

I decided to cast my own missive into the Internet juggernaut and see what happens. I share this treatise with you. Please peruse OUTSOURCE US ALL, BEGIN WITH BUSH ©. Hopefully, it will bring a smile to your face. However, please do not let the lightness of the reflection deter you from the truer mission.

Let us, as a people, take the power back. May we remember that the force is not found in saving dollars. When we sacrifice our sanity, livelihood, or a sense of satisfaction in doing a job well, we lose more than we gain. Pennies saved and profits earned do not make a well-honed nation.

Betsy L. Angert Be-Think

[cm]

save_the_rustbelt: Name me one recent administration that hasn't been, or for that matter shouldn't have been, in the business of "China relations".

I do agree with the point though that too much of government revenue is (ab)used for a number of frivolous and/or misguided activities, and people see too little bang for it.

[cm]

calmo: As I see it, the issue with retraining is more "finding" the time than providing the facilities.

Many people are probably busy enough after work with picking up the kids, some grocery shopping, and making dinner. Or I dunno, maybe they drive home, pick up a sixpack somewhere and then hang out in front of the tube, pardon me, plasma.

Anyway, when the company provides facilities, then either they have to let people "retrain" during office hours, or else it's dad/mom picks up junior, brings them home, makes dinner, then scurries back to work for evening classes. Or perhaps they can hire a nanny-driver. There you go, one more job, *plus* retraining.

Of course a central assumption here is that kids being at school/daycare in a location that doesn't allow them to walk home along safe, social-services-approved streets is the norm and not merely a bad choice of some parents.

[save_the_rustbelt]

save_the_rustbelt: Name me one recent administration that hasn't been, or for that matter shouldn't have been, in the business of "China relations".

Every administration should be in the business of China relations.

Given the economic changes since Y2000, the Bush administration needs a spine, however.

The Chinese, with no democratic pressure, feel no need to play by any rules.

Senators Schumer and Graham are in China today, and it will be interesting to see their reaction when they get home.

The Commerce Secretary leads a delgation to China next week. Maybe he has more spine than the Teasury Secretary, but not likely.

Corporate America wants low priced goods and lower labor costs in the U.S., and the Bush administration is their willing agent.

[camille roy]

"Welcome to capitalist America." -a

This isn't the old capitalist America. This is the new globalist, corporatist America, sold to and run for the benefit of corporations. That is the real reason our standard of living is dropping and our jobs are disappearing.

Case(s) in point: disappearing pensions, stagnant minimum wage, declining median wage (esp for college grads!), fewer good jobs with health insurance. Case in point is the yuan peg. As long as it benefits the corporate donors, watch our politicans talk big and play chicken with China. The peg is a scam and it is the workers of the USA who are paying for it with their livelihoods.

[save_the_rustbelt]

The Commerce Secretary gave a speech in Detroit last week, and the basic theme for Michigan was

"we're sorry your economy is falling apart, but we will still be nice to China because trade is good for you."

Trade is good for us how?

[dryfly]

The original entry asks 'What Jobs Are Safe From Offshoring?' I know exactly which ones...

The jobs Americans don't want to do... because those won't need to be off-shored, they will be performed by aliens & immigrants instead.

::::::

ChinaLaw said... "The answer is to educate and to adjust. "

Very true... learn to work for a whole lot less and make the adjustment to that new lower standard of living.

[anne]

"The Chinese, with no democratic pressure, feel no need to play by any rules."

But, there has been and is all manner of public pressure on governing bodies and continual evidence of response even if slow and grudging at times. The problem is not China, but the problem could well be us and the extent to which our governing attention and public resources are given to war and the military rather than improving our infrastructure and competitiveness.

[calmo]

Nice encapsulation (and inclusion of those 11M Mexicans), dryfly.
And what camille said.
And what 'a' said.
The CEO jobs that never make the news (like those outrageous $65/hr jobs on the line with the auto workers)[and it is only sometimes conceded that the figure includes benefits], are they subject to lower CEO compensation pressure from non-US based MNCs? Are their jobs or pay scales at risk from globalization?
Not so far. But of course maybe GM will go the way of American Motors and we can look at its successor, say, Toyota and see some real improvement.
Not likely.

[a]

Save_the_rustbelt: your anger towards to Trade and China is not justified. I know I won't persuade you but just for your information (you sure have all rights to stay angry and be who you are, but I am more convinced that you are not willing to looking at data and make careful conclusion. Being who you are is easy. Wanting to know facts and adjust one's opinion in face of reality is hard.):

from this url:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/feb2006/nf2006028_2804_db039.htm

"
The study concedes that the disruption to specific U.S. industries also is substantial. It estimates that 205,000 manufacturing jobs were lost since 2000, when Chinese exports began to really explode as China prepared to enter the World Trade Organization, and that number will reach 500,000 by 2010. But add in the new services jobs created due to the China trade, and the actual net loss in U.S. jobs is marginal. OEF also acknowledges that America's swelling current-account balance poses big potential risks, but it says China isn't to blame. U.S. exporters have lost market share in most of the world, it notes.

"STANDARD TRADE THEORY." China's trade surplus with the U.S. looks less formidable when put into context, OEF contends. The $165 billion reported by the U.S. drops to $132 billion when U.S. goods shipped to China via Hong Kong are included. Furthermore, while China's share of U.S. imports has risen dramatically -- from 8.2% in 2000 to 14.8% in 2005 -- that's largely because Japanese, South Korean, Taiwanese, and Singaporean companies began shifting production en masse to the mainland in 2000, as they anticipated China's WTO entry. As a result, the U.S. imbalance with all of East Asia has remained basically the same -- around 29% -- for five years.

What to make of these findings? It shouldn't come as a surprise that greater trade leads to higher macroeconomic growth. "Our methodology isn't rocket science," says economist Erik Britton, the study's lead author. "This is just standard trade theory." But the report isn't likely to quell critics who argue that China's runaway trade surplus with the U.S. is harmful to most Americans.

The basic problem with focusing on growth in U.S. GDP, argues economist Mark Weisbrot of the the liberal-leaning Center for Economic Policy & Research in Washington, is that it ignores how that income is distributed. While the richest and best-educated Americans have benefited enormously in recent years, the income of average U.S. workers has grown slowly. "We have had a 30-year period in which the real median wage has grown 9%, while productivity is up 80%," Weisbrot says. "Almost none of that improvement has gone to the majority of the labor force." Indeed, inflation-adjusted median U.S. household income dropped from 2000 to 2004.
"

[a]

ME: I am not suggesting you take a law degree (it is what I want to do). And I don't want to be a journalist hired by big corporations, I want to freelance.

The difference the way You/I view work and education is: I beleive as long as one can contribute to the society, one can get reward, especially in today's society. I don't believe in a guarranteed life-time work from any corporations. They are capitlists, they use you when it is good for them, discard you when it is not.

I don't know what you really love and are good at. It is your call. Think about it, the thing that put bread on your table is that you really like and can do better than most of other people.

You are right for not big on being a real estate broker or a mortgage broker, because the peak may have been the past. Plus, if you don't really like it, why bother.

BTW, do you know that there are many ways to make money on internet? Someone will be willing to pay you to write blogs if you are good... Google it and you will see.

[save_the_rustbelt]

a:

Without knowing who you are I imagine I am far better informed than you are, certainly beyond reading Business Week.

By the way, the numbers in the Business Week article on job losses are not accurate, at least according to the Bush administration numbers. Ohio and Michigan lost more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs since Y2000, the 205000 number is either inaccurate or misdescribed.

I am not opposed to trade by the way, as long as it is fair trade.

I've paid taxes for 40 years and the federal government is not supposed to represent the interests of corporations or the Chinese before representing me.

[a]

The 205000 number is more the number related to export to China, but I think you are right that they did not make it clear.

I agree on " the federal government is not supposed to represent the interests of corporations or the Chinese before representing me". But there is no way the Government is representing China's interest. You have to prove to me that: yes favoring big corporations may seem to favor China om the surface. But the moment there is a conflict of interest between corporate America and China, you bet your government would be on the side of corporate America.

US is the biggest member of WTO and it has tremendous say on how trade should be conducted. If anyone should cry unfair, US is the last one to cry. Plus, International Trade is voluntary, so US are welcome to withdraw from the Trading community. If all the citizens in US concluded so, it is a democractic country and you should vote to get the protection you want.

Blaming China is just too absurd. It divert attention from where it should really be.

[save_the_rustbelt]

"Blaming China is just too absurd. It divert attention from where it should really be."

And where is that?

[a]

I thought you know more than I do... Not sure any more.

[save_the_rustbelt]

a:

You are so clever.

I'm not going to finish your sentences for you or put words in your mouth. That would be rude.

"....from where it should really be, which is ....................."

Please, enlighten us.

[a]

I have finished my sentences.
I have in my previous posts quite candidly written of what I think is the problem ---
1) the income inequality that is attributed to various unfair tax reductions,
2) lack of good quality of basic education to majority of the people (unless you can afford to live in high priced neigbourhood to send your kids to private schools),
3) the mis-matched incentive (massive money goes to industries like Finance and Law (lots of it is to evade tax)),
4) health care costs (Paul Krugman has written about it so ably) which benefits mainly to the marketing department of pharmapseutical companies, not even their research that much...

You are from the Rust-belt, do you known that GM owns RFC, a mortgage origination firm that made lots of money in recent years, and car manufaturers make money from car loans, while losing money from making cars?

If the country's best educated work force work in Finance industry of course your manufacturing sector would be less competitve.

Paul Krugman also wrote about how Toyota located their factory in Canada after searching for location in North America: two main reasons
1) worker's reading ability (EDUCATION)
2) Health Isurance Cost.

Canada is more competitive than US.
It has nothing to do with China.

[save_the_rustbelt]

very thorough, thank you

we agree on law and education

we disagree on China

peace!

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5348&u=17|5|...

Palm Warbler in Apple Tree
New York City--Central Park, Turtle Pond.

The argument here was also useful, especially because it is not merely arguing with oneself as evidently a certain columnist has learned to do so self-convincingly :)

[Movie Guy]

The fact that the subject of "offshoring" does not fade away into the twilight speaks volumes.

As for the title, we have already answered that question a few times.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Finally got a chace to read the Blinder paper (acutally the 12/2005 version in PDF).

One of the most thoughtful pieces I have read in a long time. Many questions, few solutions though.

[Movie Guy]

a -- "Paul Krugman also wrote about how Toyota located their factory in Canada after searching for location in North America: two main reasons
1) worker's reading ability (EDUCATION)
2) Health Isurance Cost.

Canada is more competitive than US."

That's laughable.

The majority of Asian factories located in North America have been built in the USA, not Canada.

Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, and Toyota, among others have recently built facilities in the State of Alabama. Large facilities are located in the State of Tennessee. The States of Mississippi and Georgia are the locations chosen for two recent automobile plant announcements. The latest one will be the Kia automobile plant to be located in West Point, Georgia, approximately one hour from the new Hyundai plant up and running in Montgomery, Alabama. Kia is operated by the son of the man who controls Hyundia. Both companies represent significant challenges for portions of Toyota's market.

The Asian automobile manufacturers may throw Canada a bone for northern production support, but they most certainly love the Southern United States of America. The proof is in the investment and production numbers. Period.

[Blissex]

«Just as I thought, cutsy responses but no answers. Educate for WHAT?»

Educate for government jobs or government licensed jobs. Foreign immigrants can't take government jobs and Indian universities can't grant a broker's licence for New York.

Unfortunately these jobs will go to the well connected and privileged, usually in the same family, as current government or government licensed workers will donate a lot to politicians that will help them put up ever greater barriers to entry.

Another category of people that will be well will be those with very expensive prestige degrees: a Chennai degree is a generic degree worth the same as a generic Miami degree in the eyes of employers, but no Indian university can grant Yale or Oxford degrees. Again, these will go overwhelmingly to the privileged few, usually in the same family.

What about the others? Well, the others will be the servants/maids/lackeys of the privileged few, competing at the bottom of the scale. In the USA this will be a novelty, but in the UK it will be just a return to the ''right order of things'' of before WWII.

Developed countries are undergoing a process of headquarterisation... Once upon a time in large countries like the USA or even in the UK there were local, not national, companies, and then even local stock exchanges and so on. Conversely there were large factories in/around NY city and in/around London to be neat to their headquarters.

Then communications improved, mostly the truck and telephone, and factories moved out to cheaper regions in the same country and headquarters (and stock exchanges) moved in the opposite direction (for example as the result of acquisitions of regional companies) to more sophisticated headquarter cities, which became polarized between the privileged enclaves and banlieus of their servants and lackeys (west vs. east London for example).

So, the same is happening now, except that with containerisation and the Internet factories are moving not to cheaper states/provinces, but to cheaper countries, and similarly the whole of the developed world (USA east and west coast, bits of Texas and Atlanta, the UK) are becoming ''headquarters'' countries.

Nowadays immigrants are still flocking to the ''headquarters'' areas, only they are now poor Latinos instead of poor Europeans, and going to the the USA instead of just NY, and poor east europeans and asians going to the UK instead of poor scots and irish going to London.

The people who will make out are those that have prospered until now in ''headquarters'' cities, the lawyers, the scammers, the stockbrokers, the corporate managers, the lobbysts, ...

[me]

If this labor arbitrage is such a great thing, then why are all the educated people in Europe and the US that are losing their jobs to cheap foreign labor not seeing the light? Why aren't they celebrating the rising standard of living? Maybe the reason is that it is not rising for us/them.

a I guess you are right about the internet:

"Vice President Dick Cheney says it misses the hundreds of thousands who make money selling on eBay. “That’s a source that didn’t even exist 10 years ago,” Cheney told an audience in Ohio. “Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay.”

[me]

So much for education:

Also dying, if not yet also kaput, is the comforting notion that a good education is the best defense against the ravages of globalization -- or, as Bill Clinton famously put it: What you earn is the result of what you learn. A study last year by economists J. Bradford Jensen of the Institute for International Economics and Lori Kletzer of the University of California at Santa Cruz demonstrates that it's the more highly skilled service-sector workers who are likely to have tradable jobs. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of jobs in the United States that require a college degree will rise by a measly one percentage point -- from 26.9 percent in 2002 to 27.9 percent in 2012 -- during this decade.

Since education as such won't save us, Blinder recommends a kind of particularized vocational ed. We will have to specialize more, he writes, "in the delivery of services where personal presence is either imperative or highly beneficial. Thus, the U.S. workforce of the future will likely have more divorce lawyers and fewer attorneys who write routine contracts." Now, there's a prospect to galvanize a nation.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/03/the_future_of_g.html

[a]

ME: you just sound so much desperate to blame education. Impressive.

Small e-commerce does create revenue and technology innovation does create jobs.

Throwing in Cheney does not scare me. If Cheney says hunting is fun, do I need to disagree with him? Not that I like hunting, but it is irrelevant.

I do know an American, a very good friend actually. He was a garbage collector when he was 16, contracted by the city, with good pension (that does not exist any more) after 25 years of service. He worked night and early in the morning and the remaining days, he went to schools. He loves outdoor. He liked his job.

But his father told him, son, you got to have a college degree. That is the future of the job market.

So he got his college degree and went to work in an office.

Many years passed, his buddies from the garbage collection job have "retired" with the good pension and are all happy enjoying out doors.

My friend tells me: I wish I did not listen to my fater. (FYI, he still has good jon and good pay).

So: I agree that education is not for everyone, if it does not please you.

[a]

ME: I have another story, told by an American friend of mine.

A man of a walthy family loves painting (walls, not arts). All he wanted to be was a painter. But his parents said: son, you need education, you have to have a Harvard degree.

He did. He got his degree. He came home, said: mom and dad, here is what you wanted from me.

And he went on to be a painter.

He is the best painter in town. Last time my friend asked him to pain his house, the date he can get is one year later.

[a]

STR:
global competition is not going to roll back. The only way to stay in the competition is to be competitive yourself.

That is why I think you are just diverting your attention from where it should be.

It is laughable to the world to say that US are treated unfairly in international trade.

Peace is good!

[a]

Movie Guy:
I might know much about the competitiveness of US auto industry. I am willing to learn.
Now with GM's laying off (in effect) 113000 workers, I am sure the labour market in Auto industry here is even more attractive to Toyota.
Note, all the companies you are quoting who are competitive in Auto sector are non-US.

Here is Paul Krugman's original article:
http://www.pkarchive.org/column/072505.html

I might be mis-stating that "Canada is more competitive than US", but in that case, it is true. And for good reasons.

[save_the_rustbelt]

a:

Your stories are so touching.

In this part of the world, in the not so distant past, a great many young people, particularly males, were steered away from higher education because they were needed in the factories, and the pay and benefits were decent, so the schools (government) discouraged college.

Now they are being tossed into the street, and the same government says "oops," we are busy enriching Wall Street, you will have to fend for yourselves.

I have no trouble with competition. In the richest country in the world, however, we should be able to clean up our mistakes, when innocent people are injured.

"Do you need a cart today?"

[Mark]

I work in IT and jobs there are not safe either. I used to work for a company that has 5000 employees and about 50 people in IT. The company thought it would be a good idea to outsource all IT to India to save money so everyone was laid off in our department back in February. I have been in contact with most of the ex-employees from the company and I know of about 20 of them (including myself) that have been on unemployment since then. I have applied for over 300 jobs sine I got laid off and received 3 phone calls. YES THREE! Some of the other people have just decided not to waste time applying for jobs until unemployment improves.
Back in 2005 when I took this job, I applied for about a dozen jobs and received several calls and took the one above.
Times are certainly tough and IT isn't safe from a recession or offshoring either.

[MUSO MOHLAHATSA]

I THINK YOU SHOULD OPEN UP A BUSINESS IN LESOTHO THAT HIRES CHILDREN ABOVE THE AGE OF 11 WHO ARE SCHOLARS ON HOLIDAYS AND WEEKENDS (ELDERS SHOULD FILL IN ON WEEKDAYS) DETAILS:SALARY FOR KIDS M1000 ATLEAST