Good Left/Right wing videos

[Polish_Silver]

Thread to discuss and share good political/econ videos of whatever ideology.

I'll start off with Mike Gravel.

Mike Gravel at 5:00 he totally rips into Obama. Go Mike!

I think he was the one who got the pentagon papers into the congressional record.
He was one of the most prominent anti-vietnam congressman.

He figures in "The most dangerous man in America".

I just love how he demolishes all our pretences--health care, moral high ground, etc.

Just want to get more people like that in the senate!

[Polish_Silver]

Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

Here's Goldsmith on globalization


I've classified him as right wing mainly because he made (not inherited) a lot of money.

Incredibly prophetic.

One aspect of it is that Nafta/China meant investing overseas instead of here.
We lost productive capacity and capital. Hard to put positive spin on that, but people do.

Free markets are a means, not an absolute goal.

Labor should compete across regions with similar standards of living ---whoa on this China stuff!

[aaron]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

The fact that 400 million more people in China can eat now, while Americans are fatter than ever, says to me, that things are not so black and white. As a "Christian" nation, the United States as done the "right thing". Remember, feed the poor?

I am not sure why this fact is not brought up more. I guess it does not really benefit any particular political party or religious "leader".

We have gained a much cleaner environment. If it were not for the fantastically unfair distribution of wealth in the United States, we would be in decent shape and all be more prosperous.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

That's a good point. I think many people would say that China benefited from the deal.

But aren't our leaders supposed to protect the interests of voters? Did the voters really want to be outsourced to help china?

[GRG55]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

...Labor should compete across regions with similar standards of living...

Could not disagree more. Labour should compete across regions on the basis of productivity.

You need to get out more P.S. :-) If you have not experienced, or at least observed first hand the unmitigated disaster that third world labour productivity entails then you will never, ever understand the basis for why the typical skilled US or Canadian worker will always earn, and deserve to earn, more than their typical third world counterpart...including China.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

I have not seen it first hand. But aren't there places where the workers are almost as effective, but earn 1/10 of what the US workers do? I am not necessarily talking about "skilled workers" but whatever it takes to make a product. I mean there is stuff coming out of china, for example, that I can't imagine making it here for that price.

An example would be Apple in China. They had workers up at like 3am to meet a deadline, and Jobs goes praising thier work ethic, etc. He could have appologized for the poor planning that made this work schedule "necessary".

Goldsmiths point was that production would move offshore because of lower salaries. And that seems to have happened.

[jabberwocky]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

We have gained a much cleaner environment. If it were not for the fantastically unfair distribution of wealth in the United States, we would be in decent shape and all be more prosperous.[/QUOTE]


It is true that the American environment is clearner after deindustrialization, but the transferred industrial base is dirtier, so, if we are stewards to the worldwrit large, our overconsumption has made the planet worse.
Without the fiat dollar as global reserve currency, this would not have been possible. As long as it persists, the gluttony will persist, me thinks!

[jabberwocky]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

I agree, PS. And all of the "excess" profits went to the managers. Peter Drucker demonstrated deep insight into these issues.

[GRG55]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

I have not seen it first hand. But aren't there places where the workers are almost as effective, but earn 1/10 of what the US workers do?...

I have heard the same things, but in all my experience overseas I find it is extremely rare in truth. No matter what it is, if it is "cheap" it is not valued and it gets wasted. Labour is no exception. In every single place I have been where labour is cheap the productivity is crap, the quality is poor, and hardly anybody bothers to make any investment in worker training to improve the situation. That's my first hand observation in places like India, Egypt, Nigeria, Central Asia, and all of the Middle East.

I remember hearing someone quoted saying that if cheap labour was the most important thing to building an economy then Haiti should be the fastest growing economy on earth.

I am not necessarily talking about "skilled workers" but whatever it takes to make a product. I mean there is stuff coming out of china, for example, that I can't imagine making it here for that price.

An example would be Apple in China. They had workers up at like 3am to meet a deadline, and Jobs goes praising thier work ethic, etc. He could have appologized for the poor planning that made this work schedule "necessary".

Goldsmiths point was that production would move offshore because of lower salaries. And that seems to have happened.

I am not sure the USA wants to keep jobs making gas emitting drywall and melamine laced baby formula in country ;-)

There's lots of examples of where the combination of high cost and low productivity of unskilled or low skilled labour causes movement of the jobs. Commentators like to focus on only the cost of labour, but no sensible business (and that is most of them) is going to move their production using only cost of labour as the determining factor.

There's a well known story about a USA furniture manufacturer that moved its factory to the Maquiladora region of Mexico. After a couple of years they gave up and moved it back to the USA. The CEO was quoted as saying that it was impossible to achieve the level of product quality needed to meet the expectations of their customers. I am paraphrasing here, but he went on to say something along the lines that despite a huge effort to train these lower cost employees "Mexican workers who live in huts are unable to imagine why anyone would insist on an absolutely perfect finish on a piece of our new furniture and therefore they don't think it's important".

This next example is also from Mexico. Cessna Aircraft sells an advanced single engine light airplane called the Corvalis, which has an airframe structure made from plastic composites instead of the traditional riveted aluminum. In the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2009 Cessna shut down the Bend, Oregon facility that manufactured the airframes and moved the component production to Chihuahua, Mexico (final assembly was still done in Independence, Kansas). During an acceptance flight of an airplane made from Mexican components a large section of the wing skin (7 feet) delaminated blowing the 100 octane avgas in that wing out into the slipstream. The FAA grounded the airplanes, Cessna halted production and ended up destroying every one of the planes made with Mexican components. They decided to try to fix the quality control problems and keep manufacturing in Mexico, but it has turned out to be far more expensive and taking far longer (more than a year behind schedule) to recover from this. No word whether the customer who's wing came apart decided to buy a Beechcraft or Piper instead. The jobs didn't come back to Bend, but you can bet Cessna will think long and hard before they move any more production out of the USA.

These are anecdotes, but they show there really is a limit to what can successfully be offshored, and there's far more to that decision than just the cost of labour. The USA, Canada, Germany and other similar countries are not going to build an economy on minimum wage unskilled jobs making plastic slippers for WalMart to resell. Time for the mainstream media to get over it and move on...

[stetts]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

aaron,
I believe you are confusing the personal with the political. The "feed the poor" concept was directed at individual responsibility and personal conduct. That is a good thing. Forcibly extracting earned money from individuals in order to distribute goodies to others is a political process. This is not a good thing.
Let's say that the fact that 400 M people in China are now better off than they were previously. That was all America's doing? Doubtful. But let's say I agree we did the "Christian" thing. How many Bangladeshi's didn't share? How is that fair? How many Chadians missed out when the Chinese scarfed up the goodies. OMG, how unfair!
My point is governments don't have any magical power to determine the equities. Individuals can do it far more efficiently--and American individuals have done so over and over and over. You hear about it less because there's an obvious political disadvantage for governments to allow such stories to be widely heard. Much better some gov't program gets credit. It's wrong.
Hope this helps. Stetts

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

I agree. Carbon emissions in the US went down, when they went up in China.
(I am not a big global warming alarmist. It's just a metric for offshoring the pollution)

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

But aren't there places where the workers are almost as effective, but earn 1/10 of what the US workers do? I am not necessarily talking about "skilled workers" but whatever it takes to make a product.

Sure there are.

Thai auto workers are a perfect example. Many Thai auto workers are "sub-contractors" making little more than minimum wage (just hiked to 300 baht or 10 dollar per day)

vs.

"Autoworker wages in the United States run from $30/hour for long-time UAW employees at Detroit plants to $14 for an entry-level worker at some U.S. automakers and the Kia plant in Georgia. (Contractors and suppliers who work inside plants get that $9/hour wage). In Germany, wages run about $40 an hour. In Japan, they're closer to the $28 a senior UAW employee earns here. In both countries, governments provide the health care and retirement benefits paid for by the automakers here.

"In Mexico, autoworkers average roughly $3.50 an hour -- and even that wage was under pressure, as some suppliers sought wage cuts to compete with work moving to China where wages can run $5 a day."

The debate as to whether a rise in the minimum wage will increase unemployment is never ending. It will never go away and it will never be settled. It has dominated conversations in Thailand for the last 2 years. Here's a good article in FT explaining where things are as of January, 2013. Notice unemployment at 0.6 %, central bank rates at 2.75 %.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c4a43...#axzz2LD7dWZs1

Most of the people I know of in the US making a minimum wage or very close to it work in retirement homes. They all have long commutes, hold two jobs, are legally in the US. The biggest problem is no benefits. All roads lead back to healthcare.

[Polish_Silver]

Aviation still first world, but not Ipads!

. . .

These are anecdotes, but they show there really is a limit to what can successfully be offshored, and there's far more to that decision than just the cost of labour. The USA, Canada, Germany and other similar countries are not going to build an economy on minimum wage unskilled jobs making plastic slippers for WalMart to resell. Time for the mainstream media to get over it and move on...

You gave some very good examples. Boeing is moving to South Carolina, not Mexico.
(They also needed to cut costs, but previously had problems maintaining quality, so they needed to keep the manufacturing vertically integrated).

It does seem to be different in the micro-electroncs industry. Many companies do the integrated circuit packaging in Malaysia for cost reasons. (the package is a big part of total cost). And it seems virtually every apple product is made in China.

Could it be that it is easier to specify and verify quality control for electronic products, and that's why high quality ones can be made in third world countries?

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Rightwing Videos: Goldsmith on Globalization

Sure there are.

Thai auto workers are a perfect example. Many Thai auto workers are "sub-contractors" making little more than minimum wage (just hiked to 300 baht or 10 dollar per day)

. . .

Most of the people I know of in the US making a minimum wage or very close to it work in retirement homes. They all have long commutes, hold two jobs, are legally in the US. The biggest problem is no benefits. All roads lead back to healthcare.

I agree. The health care cost in the US is killing us!

[Polish_Silver]

Singapore vs Nigeria

. . . Labour is no exception. In every single place I have been where labour is cheap the productivity is crap, the quality is poor, and hardly anybody bothers to make any investment in worker training to improve the situation. That's my first hand observation in places like India, Egypt, Nigeria, Central Asia, and all of the Middle East.

...

GRG55,

I wonder if there are big national differences here. Some of the places you mentioned are petro-states, so we expect a dysyfunctional political environment. Integrated circuits are packaged in Malaysia, but not in Nigeria.

I remember listening to Lee Quan Yew (who ran Sinapore for decades). He had a deliberate policy of educating people so they could do more high value work.
His book was called "Third world to first". Singapore had good governance, good public health, gradually more literate populace, and they industrialized rapidly.

In many of the countries you mentioned, corruption is very high, and they could be described as "cleptocracy". So they can never do high value work.