But no matter: you're all wrong. Or, rather, you are all not tackling the main problem.
If we protect jobs and refuse to outsource jobs then our trade will diminish, the price of home-made consumer goods will rise, and our standard of living will diminish. We will be like the indigenous Tasmanians who were cut off from Australia when the sea level rose. From being hunter-gatherers with many skills who traded their products with others, they became less and less skilled until in the end they were unable even to fish or to make their own clothes.
If we allow outsourcing ad lib then our standard of living rises but the skill-content of a least an appreciable proportion of the remaining jobs must necessarily rise and more people will be left behind. In all developed countries there is now a growing underclass totally dependent on welfare, and a growing sub-middle-class who have to be subsidised.
The reason for all this is that ever since we became man we have treated the natural world around us as capital to be exploited and have thus been able to experience "economic growth" -- particularly since the exploitation of oil and gas fields. (Hundreds of millions of years of concentrated solar power -- all likely to have been gone within a few hundreds years.) Sooner or later, if we are capable of being wise enough (and clever enough), we ought to learn to live off the revenue of this earth as all the rest of nature does -- that is, to learn how to use the prodigious quantities of solar radiation we receive.
Keith Hudson
At 09:35 27/10/2003 -0500, you wrote:
- Arthur,
- You complain about my assumptions but you too make assumptions.
- Why do you assume a radically lowered lifestyle? You seem to imply that this outsourcing to lower wage countries is keeping our lifestyle high. I would expect you therefore to conclude that we should keep doing it in order to maintain that lifestyle -- of which I mightily approve.
- [Cordell, Arthur: ECOM]
- Oursourcing is keeping prices low and protects the bottom line of US firms, at least for a while At some point (who knows where) the number of jobs lost and the quality of those jobs lost will begin to show up in over all purchasing power in the US. At that point our lifestyle will begin to sag, no matter how low prices go from outsourcing.
- Yet, you don't seem to like it. It's a puzzlement.
- I don't understand that whenindustry changes its system to outsourcing, it seems to go smoothly. Yet, should we want to return to the old ways, that would be difficult. That's another puzzlement.
- [Cordell, Arthur: ECOM]
- I am only talking about trade offs. Outsourcing brings something, we also give up something.
- I'm not sure quite how we are going to lose "design capability" from outsourcing. We can always hire some Indians to provide the abilities we lack. They would love to enjoy our standard of living.
- [Cordell, Arthur: ECOM]
- Design capability is a complicated discussion. Let's just say that when it is lost it is almost impossible for the country with that loss to buy intelligently in the global marketplace.
- Or, we could be more basic and get rid of the university soft courses, such as Black Studies and Women's Studies, not to mention the mostly wasted educational time producing ever more lawyers, and replace them all with solid (and difficult) engineering and science courses.
- Incidentally, some of those Indian schools are so tough the average American undergrad would faint if he were exposed to them.
- The GDP is a statistic that suffers from the shortcomings of all government measurements. However I'm very interested in the tenor of many futurework contributions. They seem to favor the simple life with local communities taking in each others' washing so they don't need a Wal-Mart.
- Guess the GDP would fall precipitously -- but then it would be all right.
- Harry
- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2003 1:38 PM
- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Subject: RE: [Futurework] Walmart and the American dream
- Once we have lost design capability the "it" we supply might be quite different than what we wanted in the first place.
- The adjustment problems might seem OK in the abstract but in reality moving the US to a radically lowered GDP and lifestyle only to try to rebuild later is not a simple, smooth or easy process.
- arthur
- -----Original Message-----
- From: Harry Pollard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
- Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2003 3:44 PM
- To: Cordell, Arthur: ECOM; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Subject: RE: [Futurework] Walmart and the American dream
- Arthur,
- If we don't have the purchasing power to buy it, it will stop coming in. Then we'll supply it ourselves.
- What's the problem?
- Harry
- You complain about my assumptions but you too make assumptions.
etc.
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
