Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The better question is why is there such a need to create new manufacturing jobs? If the work can be done elsewhere better and cheaper, why shouldn't it be? How is "creating" new manufacturing jobs (which can only be achieved through protectionist incentives - a wonderful idea, since the world community is so in love with us already...) any different than the GOP's subsidizing farmers to buy their votes? The Dems scream about how Bush subsidizes farmers, yet they seem to want to do the same thing for manufacturing workers.
Manufacturing jobs will not come back until the cost of foreign labor makes domestic labor economically attractive. Kerry might try to speed up that reality via legislation, but I doubt he'll have much short term success (whatever protective legislation is passed will be swiss-cheesed with loopholes). That leaves a question that I can't answer... What happens to people who are solely skilled for manufacturing-level jobs during the years while all the labor is offshore? Do they get absorbed by the service industries?
|
That question you can't answer, that's kind of the rub, so to speak. It's all well and good to speak of the efficiency of the market and the invisible hand. But what do you do when confronted with the visible hand of the displaced workers and their families?
Tough shit? They had a choice and they picked the wrong time to be born? This is why we never should have done away with the debtors' prisons?
The real bitch of this being a democratic society is that we have chosen to give our political system a human element.
