anvi
anvikshiki
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Posts: 4,400
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« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2012, 05:14:32 PM » |
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I certainly agree that the economic analysis of the video is not exhaustive, and ignores a lot of the multiplier complexities of trade and exports in a number of industries. Sure, you get multiplier effects from jobs created in other countries, which is one major factor that makes trade deals desirable. And I agree that competing forces are partly responsible for the situation we are in now. But, another salient detail about the consequences of the export of manufacturing jobs to the domestic economy is that, compared to other kinds of jobs, manufacturing jobs have high multipliers. In addition to that, in what is directly pertinent to the production of iPhones, as manufacturing jobs get exported, so do designers' jobs. In fact, in Isaacson's recent biography of Steve Jobs, it was reported that Jobs, in advocating for more targeted education spending, actually complained to Obama about the surfeit of engineers that were being produced by the U.S., and thus the need to hire more factory workers in China and send designers there to direct them. I guess the ultimate point that the video was driving at, in an overly simplistic way, is that one feature of our present employment problem in the U.S. has to do with a rising number of service workers, with low wages and mobility on one end of the employment spectrum, and highly skilled and well-paid workers on the other, with dwindling manufacturing jobs that otherwise would have high domestic multipliers--to demonstrate what effects this situation has on class mobility in the labor market.
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