> When we speak about “outsourcing” and “free trade

>>1090568
the advantages of free trade aren't obvious like the loss of jobs because they happen slowly and benefit so many people at once

it provides things like overall prosperity, cheaper goods, more investments, higher quality of living, higher productivity

look at protectionist countries and you will see economic despair across the board

>>1090568

It helps developing countries pull themselves out of poverty...then they start getting into advanced industries stealing even more jobs

>>1090568

It provides cheaper goods. The downside for those 1300 workers is felt as a much smaller upside for every one of the company's customers. The increased investment in Mexico will boost the economy there, and help to open up their market to American (and other) companies. Overall, it generates growth. Increasing globalisation has coincided with the largest fall in poverty in human history.

The downside is that shareholder capitalism increasingly has a tendency to suck money away from the middle classes and into the hands of the few. It can have a severe impact on the people left behind, and that's where government comes in with taxes, benefits, education and training. What it has to make sure it doesn't do is engage in growth and competition-strangling protectionism.

>>1090574
>look at protectionist countries and you will see economic despair across the board
Such as... America and Japan which developed entirely thanks to protectionism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_industry_argument

Seriously read Alexander Hamilton's "Report on the Subject of Manufactures" if you want to understand the foundations which lead America to become a super power.

>>1090587
No it doesn't. The "successes" of free trade you can point to are actually failures. Developed nations in the old days used public finance to develop local commerce instead of engineering an export oriented slave economy like communist China. Free trade leads to uneven development.

>>1090568
Unions are fucking retarded. I'm not going to pay $20/hr for someone to screw bolts into an oven.

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>>1090568
>So what benefit does free trade provide to the average worker in a developed nation?

Free trade serves the interests of capital. Not the interests of local workers.

>>1090574
>look at protectionist countries and you will see economic despair across the board
I think the word you're looking for is isolationist. Isolationism bad, protectionism good.

>>1090610
But you'll pay a doctor $300/hr to look at your throat, listen to your breathing and give you some antibiotics even though you probably have a viral infection because of the medical union happily. Such is the life of a retarded cuck.

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>>1090610

It's a double-edged sword because on one hand you need highly paid people in a middle class with some disposable income to actually go out and BUY all of the shit you are manufacturing overseas and making a profit on.

If there is no market for the cheaply made crap, then there is no point to any of this..

Free trade right now is actually against the principles of a free market because it exploits differences in living conditions around the world to extract maximum profit.

There should be tariffs on all products made overseas equal in magnitude to the difference in living costs/GDP or some other broad metric, so that domestic small suppliers can compete on an equal footing with globalist entities that can afford to manufacture overseas.

The entire period since the late 80s when the Chinese market was opened up can be defined as a period of robbing of wealth from North America so that a few people mediating in the transfer of wealth from west to east can skim off some profits.

Thanks Kissinger/Nixon.

We now live in a society of forklift drivers and warehouse staff, moving products from Asia around to giant consumption centers, making minimum wage.

Once everyone is a forklift driver, who is going to consume all of the crap from Asia?

We're already running into major structural problems with the economy (negative interest rates, stimulus etc) and I suspect it is because of this very flawed, superficial driver of growth.

>>1090619
>who is going to consume all of the crap from Asia?
The Chinese, we've been sold out and they're going to provide the new 'Murican middle class. Screencap this post.

>>1090624

The average Chinese person is still poor as fuck. They just have their own set of billionaires too and their middle class is laughable.

>>1090628
You should compare their real median income growth rate to the US.

>>1090602
>It provides cheaper goods.
The larger prices for domestic goods can be justified by other than just mere economical considerations.
>The downside for those 1300 workers is felt as a much smaller upside for every one of the company's customers.
When you have a completely deskilled population competing for jobs at McDonalds that's a problem which is the inevitable result which you have to take into consideration.
>The increased investment in Mexico will boost the economy there, and help to open up their market to American (and other) companies.
Which means diverting private investments away from the domestic market.
>Overall, it generates growth. Increasing globalisation has coincided with the largest fall in poverty in human history
That's because of increased commerce, not free trade per se. You can increase the speed of commerce via other means just as easily.

>>1090610
Wages are a cost of production but also purchasing power i.e. a market. Shrinking wages means shrinking the ability to generate profit domestically. Corporations go to where they can generate the highest profit.

>>1090633
>median income growth
why some arbitrary number like a median?
also why income growth and not icnome+work compensation?

All you will get in your example are skewed numbers that will/wont fit your worldview but provide no help in understanding whats happening

>>1090568

Life is a struggle for existence.

Since this seems to be the de facto free trade thread, I wanted to bring something up.

Last night in the debate, Bernie Sanders reiterated that he is A) vehemently against free trade and B) in support of worker visas for millions of undocumented immigrants.

How can he hold both of those views simultaneously? Free trade is bad because it diverts business away from the US, but amnesty for illegals is good? Wouldn't any money they make just get remitted back to Mexico (or wherever) so it's essentially the same thing?

>>1090693
work viasas do not work like that in US
they are only issued when a company argues that the worker has "irreplacable job skills" and is mostly only awarded to university and master grads

>>1090700
>>1090693
also there are 3x as much people applying for h1b visas as there are actual visas so they simply hold a raffle and u have 1/3 chance of getting it, so it makes perfect sense for US to increase numberf of h1b visas.

But you are correct it does go against his anti-trade narrative

>>1090615

Military isolationism is still a really good idea, though.

>>1090693

1. They're already here
2. Having a bunch or job vacancies open op for picking fruit at $3 an hour isn't really going to help anyone

>>1090568
>So what benefit does free trade provide
For capital? Plenty.

For labour? Zero. Just a global race to the bottom.

When you engage in the economy (working/buying you are consenting to the risks of doing so. Human Labor is a good/service just like any other and as such if Lee in China wants to be competitive and work for half the wage Bob in America would thats fair game. You want to keep your job? Offer something Lee doesn't have.

>>1090693
If they are working within America instead of Mexico then they would be taxed within America increasing national revenue and increasing domestic GDP. You would end up getting a double profit from a domestic buyer and a domestic seller which you wouldn't when you are importing from a foreign nation.

If they send a portion of their wages back to extended family in a different nation it would be no different than if they bought any other non-productive consumer good.

The only real complaint can be that an increased labour-supply could decrease wages but you can tackle that with different means such as increasing the overall demand for labour.

>>1090693
If you read through this, he's vehemently against importing workers but supports letting the people already here eventually become citizens for humanitarian reasons. So there's not much of an inconsistency.
http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Bernie_Sanders_Immigration.htm

>>1090719
>race to the bottom
Precisely, it's not rocket science when the only motivation for corps is profit. Savings are not passed down, why would they be? Trickle down is a logical fallacy.

>>1090733
Oh wow! $15/hr! That's so amazing! That's right at the poverty line instead of below it! That's so amazing! We clearly don't need those evil unions anymore.

>>1090619
>The entire period since the late 80s when the Chinese market was opened up can be defined as a period of robbing of wealth from North America so that a few people mediating in the transfer of wealth from west to east can skim off some profits.
Yeah that's pretty accurate.

Most of our wealth is already gone. Wealth in America today isn't created anymore, at best some of it is passed down or held on to. The only young people I know who have anything are those who inherited something. By young I mean even people in their 30s. They say the average new job created pays $12/ hour and is only like 28 hours a week. $12 an hour today for an adult is poverty tier.

I own a home service business and I fear the day all the boomers die or go to old folks homes because they're the only ones with disposable income. The people under 45 don't have money to spend on things that aren't necessities, and I don't see that changing as they get older.

>>1090619
Well maybe the modern class should modernize. It's retarded to think forcing companies to pay more for the same labor just because it's overseas is fine in any case. Eventually robots will be cheaper, faster, and better at the common tasks than humans, and then what? Propose tariffs on companies using machines?

As much as it hurts conservative sensibilities, either longer or more effective standardized schooling really is critical to the economy. People need to learn skills that can't be exported or automated easily. Just throwing money for free schools is the wrong approach because of how corrupt and wasteful they've gotten, but there needs to be a serious push for Americans to start learning practical things as quickly as possible.

>>1090619
>>1090750
I think the Chinese is the wrong scapegoat. It's more along the lines of Reaganomics that allowed wealth to concentrate with those who need and use it the least. The 1% contribute much less than the rest, especially because they only hoard wealth, not spend it.

>>1090568
Trade trade works like this.
>employer sees competition
>fires you and you have to work at Starbucks
>but it's okay because tendies are cheaper now
>meanwhile most of the gains are for the employer who hires Mexicans at $2/hr to make your tendies
>also some of your wealth goes to the Mexican, while the employer gains more

So basically
--> wealth is disbursed among all workers (this is why the middle class is fading)
--> most of the gains are for multinational companies
--> your wealth gets eaten away by taxes, while the employer get to dodge taxes and grow wealth at a much higher rate

It's basically global capitalism, but the American worker is taxed under socialist standards.

The only way to level the playing field is with a world government that rules over all.

>>1090705
No it doesn't. The H1b was designed for foreign workers who hold skills that no domestic workers have. Then tech companies flip around and hire thousands of Pajeets at $30k a year for jobs that used to pay 60k. And the Pajeets are terrible at their job, mostly bullshitting their resumes. The only way H1b will work is if the minimum salary for an H1b job is $100k.

>>1090610
Instead, you'll pay that and more to shareholders importing cheaply made ovens cobbled together in the 3rd world.

Stupid, really.

>>1090739
my brother lives comfortably, has an apartment, a car, a gym membership a computer, two tvs, a ps3 and a GameCube. He has a HS degree and no trade skills. Idk why you think that $15hr is that bad. Being poor isn't as bad as it used to be

>>1090605
Listian arguments were only valid during hte historical context in which they were made.

We live in a globalized world. If you don't join the global supply chain, you don't develop. Stop trying to shove the 19th century into the 21st.

If all trade barriers were removed, it would literally save the average consumer thousands a year.

The US needs to be investing in a highly skilled workforce to compensate, which it isn't, and will not. How politicians can simultaneously encourage free trade agreements while discouraging education reform is frankly beyond me.

>“Fuck you” is one of the milder sentiments expressed.

God damnit.

I thought it was the factory management telling the workers to go fuck themselves, not the other way around.

You got my hopes up for nothing.

>>1090785
/biz/ will never speak ill of voodoo economics. Which is funny, because most people on this board are well aware that the wealthy aren't "job creators" and aren't pumping money into the economy. I think they're just afraid if they start taxing them more, when they become rich they'll have no money.

>>1090960
The "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" sentiment is too common here.

>>1090960
If /biz/ understood economics, it wouldn't be 95% shitcoin shilling and questions about how to turn pocket lint into a fortune before breakfast.

>>1090949
>Listian arguments were only valid during hte historical context in which they were made.

Bullshit, they are more relevant than ever. A nation should be viewed in terms of its "productive powers" instead of its current monetary wealth.

>List considered that the prosperity of a nation depended not upon the wealth that it had amassed but upon its ability to develop "productive forces" which would create wealth in the future. These forces included scientific discoveries, advances in technology, improvements in transportation, the provision of educational facilities, the maintenance of law and order, an efficient public administration, and the introduction of a measure of self-government.
>List drew a distinction between the theory of exchange value and the theory of powers of prediction. He argued that Adam Smith and his followers had laid too much emphasis upon material wealth, which had an exchange value, and had not adequately appreciated the significance of the productive powers that create wealth. He praised Adam Smith for breaking new ground with his theory of the division of labor, but criticized him for omitting to explain fully the role in the economy of the "productive powers of labor," which he had mentioned in the introduction to The Wealth of Nations.

If free trade allows you to cheapen the costs of goods but also completely deskills your population and turns them into incompetent morons who can only work McJobs your nation over time will degenerate and die. If you completely disregard the productive powers which are lost you miss the bigger picture. Most young people if they work today only work in the service sector and accumulate no real productive powers, this will deprecate the nations productive powers and result in it being impossible to ever reindustrialize.

>>1090980
All of these things are privately created and privately owned. You really only need a couple of thousand guys with technical skills to organize production and pump millions of McDuck workers to make your B52s if shit hits the fan again.

>>1090954
It's like someone took a bunch of factually incorrect statements and rolled them all into one post.

>If all trade barriers were removed
Virtually all of them already have been in the US, and with disastrous economic effects

>it would literally save the average consumer thousands a year.
Except it hasn't. Prices have remained largely stable and decreased manufacturing costs have gone almost entirely to increasing profit margins. Also, shipping out jobs has caused wages to fall, making everything effectively cost more for the average consumer.

>The US needs to be investing in a highly skilled workforce to compensate
That won't matter when we have no industry left for our engineers and scientists to design products for

If all trade barriers were removed, it would literally save the average consumer thousands a year.

>which it isn't, and will not.
Haha, what? What planet are you living on? College attendance is at all time highs and local community and technical colleges have doubled in size over the last few years all over the US

>How politicians can simultaneously encourage free trade agreements while discouraging education reform is frankly beyond me.
Let me help you understand: these aren't legitimate economic policies designed to promote growth and enrich our country over the long term. Free trade is a shortsighted money-grab by a few very wealthy oligarchs. They don't care about actually making this feasible.

Free trade benefits raw GDP numbers, global raw GDP numbers, the poorer country which provides the labour, and rich ass megacorps. See Apple's $15 in materials and labour iphone which sells for nearly $1000.

Seriously China has goddamn bullet trains. Bullet trains. Does a single western country have bullet trains? How fucking embarrassing is that that a bunch of farmers beat us to having bullet trains.

Make no mistake, industrialisation is what made our countries the most powerful in the world. No country was ever made powerful by serving hamburgers. To give up industry, to de-industrialise, is a big mistake.

>>1090568
>gawker
like we're clicking that

>>1091443
It is but with taxes the way they are, low yield businesses like industry can't compete here. only high margin service industries can.

>>1091443
You can't forget war. War weakened those who would have been more capable of handling opportunities.

>>1090693
Its fucking Bernie Sanders. What else would you expect? The guy literally wants destroy the US economy. Yes literally.

>>1090602
>>1090619
>>1090771

The American lower and middle class is the real victim here. I don't want to say "muh 99%", but really, it's close to that.

It's easy to calculate "overall growth" because of cheaper goods coming in from abroad, but fail to consider that there will be nobody to buy those goods back home if the trend keeps up.

When the buying power of the middle and lower class American is dropping even as the economy grows, it's safe to conclude there's a systemic problem.

As mid-tier jobs are exported, most people will be left looking for menial jobs which require no training.

For those who aim higher, education is insanely expensive and leaves them in crippling debt into their late 20s, which of course you have to pay so you'd have a good credit rating and the banks might allow you to take on the next big debt in order to purchase a home, and maybe down the line you can take a cruise to the Bahamas with your old, wrinkled wife.

The whole system is rigged in such an obvious way that it strikes me as lunacy that you people still haven't gone the socialist route, at least for 1 or 2 presidential terms, in order to at least get some regulation into the mix and loosen the burden on the youth.

>>1092340
>socialist route
The "Socialists" in America are the ones promoting the very ills you're describing.

The closest thing we have to the possibility of a protectionist president is Trump.

All of the arguments for free trade are based on old Ricardian ideas that really only apply to geographically-limited production. For instance, If it takes 2x the amount of land to make Wine in England than it does in France, and 2x the amount of land to grow grain in France than it does in England, then it doesn't make any sense for England to have a protective tariff on wine or for France to have a protective tariff on grain. Instead, each country could completely focus on their specialty and end up producing a total sum of the two greater than with the tariff in place, and then trade wine for grain between themselves.

In modern times, shipping costs are almost completely negligible and factories to produce industrial goods can be set up just about anywhere, so geography is no longer a limitation unless you're extracting raw materials (not surprisingly, most of the world's growth over the last decade has been driven by resource-extraction). Because of this, factories are going to be set up wherever labor is cheapest, and the price will be lower, but the purchasing power of the country that buys that shit will decrease by the same amount as the jobs go away, so it ends up being a rent-seeking wealth transfer to the people who didn't get fucked by the factory move rather than any sort of growth-generating decision.

>>1090587
>It helps developing countries
You can't be serious.

Oh shit, we're on 4chan. You probably are.

>>1090568
Cheaper products.

Its a tradeoff.

Also for isolationism and protecrionism to work all the countries would have to actually work together on it! Ie "only these countries can grow rice and only these countries can build trains" , one country being isolaionist and imposing tariffs just gets beaten by someone else. Of course the above wouldnt work because countries selling raw materials would have shotty roi compared to whatever country got to be the one making smartphones etc


So really its just a problem with late stage capitalism , the increased profit of productivity should be shared with all countrymen as a dividend but instead is hoarded.

>>1090693
No dumbass. They live here. Eat here. Pay rent here. All them being illegal does it make it so they dont pay any taxes.

>>1092214

If only OP explain the purpose of linking it. Oh wait, he did.

>>1090568
They shouldn't have unionized. I had sympathy for them up until he mentions unions. If you work for a union your job will likely be outsourced to cheaper labor one of these days.

>>1092399
Idiots like you should stop joining these comversations. They collect benefits through social security theft. Ffs I know Filipinos who are living under dead people's identities. Your magical cost free illegal doesn't exist faggot. They will always cost America money.

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>>1092421
>i can't edit a link to facebook to get it to post
https://www.facehook.com/ *replace h with b
oh look you're still a faggot OP

>>1092304
>It is but with taxes the way they are, low yield businesses like industry can't compete here. only high margin service industries can.
Kek. More like: with a sea of 2 billion uneducated orientals for competition labour-intensive business can't survive here.

>War weakened those who would have been more capable of handling opportunities.
How/who do you mean?

>>1092383
>All of the arguments for free trade are based on old Ricardian ideas that really only apply to geographically-limited production. For instance, If it takes 2x the amount of land to make Wine in England than it does in France, and 2x the amount of land to grow grain in France than it does in England, then it doesn't make any sense for England to have a protective tariff on wine or for France to have a protective tariff on grain. Instead, each country could completely focus on their specialty and end up producing a total sum of the two greater than with the tariff in place, and then trade wine for grain between themselves.
>In modern times, shipping costs are almost completely negligible and factories to produce industrial goods can be set up just about anywhere, so geography is no longer a limitation unless you're extracting raw materials (not surprisingly, most of the world's growth over the last decade has been driven by resource-extraction). Because of this, factories are going to be set up wherever labor is cheapest, and the price will be lower, but the purchasing power of the country that buys that shit will decrease by the same amount as the jobs go away, so it ends up being a rent-seeking wealth transfer to the people who didn't get fucked by the factory move rather than any sort of growth-generating decision.
Dis.

>>1090568

Manufacturing, pick one:
>$20 - $21 an hour
>Profitable, sustainable business model

>>1093015
>investment class paid billions to lay around and do nothing
>productive economy
pick one you cuck

>>1093015
It's like labor is the only cost of doing business, oh wait it isn't.

>>1093015
Technological progress is actually the prime reason for a lowering of the rate of return on industrial capital.
The proportion of fixed-capital to total capital (including the wage-bill) tends to increase. Since manufacturing is more capital-intensive it has increased depreciation expenses and obsolescence write-offs against gross profits.
In most heavy industries it is common for book depreciation to equal or actually exceed reported profits.

>"The most important confusion concerning the meaning and significance of the marginal efficiency of capital has ensued on the failure to see that it depends on the prospective yield of capital, and not merely on its current yield. This can be best illustrated by pointing out the effect on the marginal efficiency of capital of an expectation of changes in the prospective cost of production, whether these changes are expected to come from changes in labour cost, i.e. in the wage-unit, or from inventions and new technique. The output from equipment produced to-day will have to compete, in the course of its life, with the output from equipment produced subsequently, perhaps at a lower labour cost, perhaps by an improved technique, which is content with a lower price for its output and will be increased in quantity until the price of its output has fallen to the lower figure with which it is content. Moreover, the entrepreneur's profit (in terms of money) from equipment, old or new, will be reduced, if all output comes to be produced more cheaply. In so far as such developments are foreseen as probable, or even as possible, the marginal efficiency of capital produced to-day is appropriately diminished." - KEYNES

>>1090644
Because median tells you what the middle income is, it gives a very good idea of the quality of life for average people

>>1090568
>So what benefit does free trade provide to the average worker anywhere?
FTFY

>>1095325
>Because median tells you what the middle income is, it gives a very good idea of the quality of life for average people

Maybe if income is distributed relatively evenly. If you have a population of 3 people and income is spread between each such that A has $100,000 and B has $100 and C has $100 then the median income would be $33,400 which doesn't really tell you much about living standards. A lower median income could just as easily equal to higher general living standards.

>>1093015
All the jobs that were sent to the third world return inferior products that were once well made. Speak to some baby boomers and you'll see their frustration. Also millennials didn't push for the repeal of free trade that's the fucking boomers. Those guys have a lot of political capital as a generation. Which is why Trump and Sanders are popular candidates. Also outsourcing is costing companies a lot of money, which is why reshoring is a thing now.

>>1095344
Woops, I meant average but median is still a stupid standard that doesn't tell you much

>>1090806
My former employer hired an entire engineering team of Indians straight from India and it was such a disaster half my team left the company. They barely spoke English and just used Google translate for emails, their code interfaced really badly with the rest of our platform, and their variable names are fucking awful, one function would have arguments a, aa, A, AA, plus half the comments were in fucking hindi. Last I heard the company is in chapter 11 because all 4 original engineers left and the product stopped working altogether for almost 2 weeks

>>1095364
This is why cheap labour isn't everything. The high productivity capital which ends up displacing most poorly paid manual labours needs high-skilled high-waged labourers to design, operate and build it. When you start trying to cut expenses there you'll fuck everything up big time in the long run.

>>1095364
This is capitalism where only the investors and owners matter. But these same people later bitch that there isn't "enough" talented technical staff in the market. This is just code for we want you to work for slave wages while I make the big bucks. This is the toxic mentality of the baby boomer of greed is good.

>>1092431
Yeah, as long as they don't pay taxes. They're here anyway, so just let them get some kind of provisional residency and pay taxes so you save the money spent trying to deport them and you get revenue from them

>>1095364
>chapter 11
Good. They deserve to go under.

>>1090663
yeah, and we collaborate to make our lives easier
otherwise we would be stealing and cheating... do we need that?

In theory it isn't even a trade off, I think. We could get rid of the jobs in the USA and give them to Mexico, buy the goods we need for cheaper prices, and then just give the money to the newly unemployed workers and still money left over.

In practice of course countries ahve to pick occasions for protectionism if there are other factors in play

>>1090633
>compare their real median income growth rate to the US.
they are saying they have 8% growth... everything china says about there economy is a lie

>>1092357
>The closest thing we have to the possibility of a protectionist president is Trump.
youre forgetting about cruz, he has told the bush family and the UN to fuck off more than once

see
medilen vs Texas

>>1096359
>they are saying they have 8% growth...
A-are you quoting their GDP figures in a conversation about income?

>>1090793
>The only way to level the playing field is with a world government that rules over all.
or how about cut the bullshit and get rid of nafta and the "save the (insert useless animal)" and start making things in america again.

over regulation and globalisation got us into this shit, going in deeper will crush us forever

>>1090955

What is wrong with you?

>>1095377
that doesnt cover the cost of the services they use. also many send money "back home"

also they do not assimilate into the culture

statistically