(01-19-2017 09:47 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(01-19-2017 09:36 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  As for the work force issue, we've let the focus get totally on the wrong thing. Seeing up Nikes is labor intensive, therefore it goes to places where wage rates are cheap. The stuff I think we should be going after, upscale producer goods like robotics, aren't labor intensive, so lower wage rates are not a big consideration, but what they do require is a labor force with sufficient capability to execute more complex tasks. You may not create a lot of manufacturing jobs, but the jobs you do create pay well, meaning there is a lot more disposable income to pay to barbers and clothiers and restaurants and entertainment, all of which create jobs indirectly.

My own belief is that the left does not want to admit that our taxes make us non-competitive, so they create this sewing up Nikes boogeyman. In the first place, if sewing up Nikes is our economic future, we are pretty much hosed, regardless. Second, as noted above, the jobs we want are elsewhere.

We can't compete with Thailand for cheap labor. Neither can Germany. So instead of crying over Nike-sewing jobs lost to Thailand, Germany develops upscale producer goods as industries where Thai labor lacks the ability to complete.

I guess I should have been more clear, because we're kind of on the same page. I thought you were suggesting low-skill manufacturing jobs (e.g. the Nike shoe sewing) would come back, which as you said they won't, and even if they did, that isn't really good for us. That's why I hate the whole "Make America Great Again," because it relies on the idea that we just need to make things like they were, despite the fact that the world is rapidly evolving.

You're right that some manufacturing jobs in high-tech industries may come back, but how many left due to corporate tax rates? I know Tesla has not yet moved any of their manufacturing jobs overseas ,and plenty of companies (Boeing, Mercedes, etc) have high-end manufacturing jobs here already, regardless of tax policy.

I've always been of the understanding that the shifting of headquarters overseas (the corporate inversion), and thus the reduction in federal income, was the biggest issue with corporate tax rates, not the shifting of manufacturing/office jobs overseas.

This is all far too subtle for the average populist/leftist, who seems to believe that the principal economic fact of the 20th century is the decline of blacksmithing and elevator operating as occupations.