Race to the bottom

[j_b]

"gold-plated European manufacturers as BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen and Siemens, and retailers such as IKEA — increasingly come to America (the South particularly) because labor is cheap and workers have no rights. In their eyes, we're becoming the new China. Our labor costs may be a little higher, but we offer stronger intellectual property protections and far fewer strikes than our unruly Chinese comrades.

 

Don't take my word for it. Check out the study released this month by the Boston Consulting Group, which concludes that when you compare China's soaring wages and still-low levels of productivity with our stagnating wages and rising levels of productivity, the price advantage of manufacturing in China instead of the U.S. will shrink to insignificance by 2015. Investment in the U.S., says the group, "will accelerate as it becomes one of the cheapest locations for manufacturing in the developed world."

Where Europe comes to slum

[prole]

Mmmmm...bipartisan class warfare.

[bstach]

But .....America is the greatest country in the world

[rob]

But .....America is the greatest country in the world

 

yr galdurn right it is!

 

USA! USA! USA!

[JayB]

So, to summarize:

 

-Hundreds of millions of people in two countries that have been plagued by desperate poverty for centuries, and massively worse off than people in the rich world, are now making considerably more money than they would have been able to as little as ten or twenty years ago.

 

-Their wages are becoming so high that it may make sense for manufacturers to source some production/services in the US that they might have previously sourced overseas.

 

Where is the bad news here?

[prole]

 

Link.

[j_b]

So, to summarize:

 

Yours isn't a summary, it's one sided spin commonly found on regressive think tanks.

 

Among other things, what also makes the USA attractive again for low wage manufacturing is because OUR real wages and ability to defend what we have are decreasing (stagnating is a misnomer). Any which way one looks at it, the transition from a would be high tech service economy to low wage manufacturing heaven cannot be good for most of us.

 

As to the benefits of neoliberal globalization, they have to be balanced by the numerous drawbacks it caused.

[prole]

NAFTA's doing wonders for Mexicans.

[prole]

So, to summarize:

 

-Hundreds of millions of people in two countries that have been plagued by desperate poverty for centuries, and massively worse off than people in the rich world, are now making considerably more money than they would have been able to as little as ten or twenty years ago.

 

-Their wages are becoming so high that it may make sense for manufacturers to source some production/services in the US that they might have previously sourced overseas.

 

Where is the bad news here?

 

CAN'T Y'ALL FEEL THE TRICKLE?!

[JayB]

So, to summarize:

 

Yours isn't a summary, it's one sided spin commonly found on regressive think tanks.

 

Among other things, what also makes the USA attractive again for low wage manufacturing is because OUR real wages and ability to defend what we have are decreasing (stagnating is a misnomer). Any which way one looks at it, the transition from a would be high tech service economy to low wage manufacturing heaven cannot be good for most of us.

 

As to the benefits of neoliberal globalization, they have to be balanced by the numerous drawbacks it caused.

 

 

 

 

 

[j_b]

short on words? You could at least say a sentence of what you think these graphs mean.

 

Your first graph agrees partly with E Warren's findings insofar health care, child care, and transportation (2nd car for the 2nd wage earner), regressive taxation, and mortgages costs have gone through the roof in the last 30years whereas food and consumption items like clothes, tvs, etc .. have gone down in cost.

 

The following is warren's conclusion:

"The upshot is that two-income families often have even less income left over today than did an equivalent single-income family 30 years ago, even when they make almost twice as much."