"You go into an Apple store and you see the future,"

[phantom power]

Jeff Faux, a progressive economist who founded the Economic Policy Institute in 1986, is the author of the new book, The Servant Economy: Where America's Elite Is Sending the Middle Class. "The mantra, as you know, in today's political debate is jobs, jobs, jobs," he told an audience at EPI recently. "Listen carefully because the subtext is low wages, low wages, low wages."

Faux argues that by the mid-2020s, even with the most optimistic assumptions about economic growth, current trends indicate that the average American's wages will drop about 20 percent. One big factor is that more and more good jobs will go overseas, leaving even America's best and brightest no alternative but to enter the service industry.

"You go into an Apple store and you see the future," Faux said. "The future's not in the technology -- the future of the labor force is all in those smart college-educated people with the T-shirts whose job is to be a retail clerk for Chinese goods."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/low-wages-and-low-expectations.html

[Initech]

1. If the Koch shits elect their candidate we can kiss worker's rights and jobs goodbye.

[physioex]

2. Not that I disagree....

But the days of cheap labor in China and India are ending. And the bigger fear will be automation, not cheap labor.

[jeff47]

3. There's lots of other Chinas

There's going to be some poor country that will be our new source of cheap labor.

It was Japan, then it was South Korea, then it was China. Someone else will "step up to the plate".

[ComplimentarySwine]

4. It seems that we've done a lot to help China

I think that it's great that American industry was able to help China raise the standard of living for the people that live there. The problem as some see it is that we seem to have done it at the expense of our own people. However, it may be that the standard of living is just too high here in America. As bad as the problem is with the poor here, I find it depressing that a good portion of our "poor" people are far richer than even the middle class in some of the developing countries.

In my mind, there is just A LOT of poverty to go around, which makes it all the more maddening when you see the excesses in which some people are willing to live.

[quaker bill]

6. Economically

there is no essential need for poverty, and no need for it to be shared. If the excesses were pared back just a bit, say 10 to 20 percent, and this wealth rationally distributed, there would be no significant true poverty, and the rich would still possess ungodly wealth, just not quite so much.

The US GDP is roughly $50,000 per year for every single person, split evenly. So if split evenly a family of 4 would have $200,000, instead of the median family of 4 income being +/- 50K.

I would not argue that things should be split evenly, but it would be no problem at all to split things so that the working poor got another 10K a year. The economy would be fine with just a little less profit at the top.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. Actually there is no other China.

The size of the Chinese labor force dwarfs the rest of the world. While wages are rising a bit in both china and India, they remain a small fraction of labor costs in the "west". What is changing is labor costs in the west, which is the point of the OP. To the extent that any low tech manufacturing returns here, it will do so because local labor costs have reached parity with Asia. The implication to our standard of living is clear.

[jeff47]

13. It doesn't dwarf the rest of the world

It dwarfs other individual nations.

There's still plenty of poor people to exploit. They're just not in one convenient country.

[Warren Stupidity]

14. No really they dwarf the rest of the world as a manufacturing labor force.

Their only rival is India. But don't worry, that was the way things were up until the mid 1700's - 1800's, the west took a technological leap, the east has caught back up and balance has been restored.

[jeff47]

16. I'd like to introduce you to the continent of Africa.

Almost the same population as China, but much more desperate and poor. Toss in some impoverished Asian countries and you've replaced all of China's labor.

This is, of course, assuming China continues somewhat on it's current trajectory. And I've got some severe doubts they will be able to. Their country's stability is based on unsustainable levels of growth. And they've recently reached the "unsustainable" part. Things could get very interesting in China over the next decade or so.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. Let me know when Africa is a nation with a world class manufacturing labor force.

At the moment it is a splintered assortment of generally dysfunctional nations with no ability to manufacture much of anything. That could change. When it does you might have a point.

[jeff47]

18. Because that doesn't describe China a few decades ago.

[SheilaT]

5. In the 1950s and 1960s there was a huge

fear of automation. It was commonly believed that somehow machines would put everyone out of work.

There was also a belief that, thanks to automation, the typical workweek would be 20 hours.

I wonder what happened.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. Marx pointed out that automation is a dead end for capitalism.

The profits obtained from cheap labor drive automated competition out of business. You cannot underpay machines. A society organized around social democratic principles could use automation to extend leisure time for all, but we gave up on all of that.

[reformist2]

11. The amount of labor we need as a society is dropping - and that's a good thing. Or it should be.

The fact that it is not tells us there is something wrong with our economic system.

[high density]

9. China has a manufacturing infrastructure that isn't available anywhere else

Apple wants a team of slaves on reserve that it can wake up at 2am in the morning to start pumping out the latest widgets that it can then sell with a thousand percent markup. Most of their suppliers are already in China, so ramping up the manufacture of new products can happen really fast.

If you want to assemble something other than a car in the USA, chances are most of the components of the product will have to be sourced from China because they aren't made anywhere else.

[originalpckelly]

12. People are cheaper.

You have to pay someone to build and maintain a machine, the people are only too willing to reproduce for free.

[Franker65]

10. Too simplistic

I find his views a little too simple to be honest. Sure there is a serious problem, but don't forget that smart American college educated people designed those goods and are receiving the benefits.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. um, well, don't count on that for much longer either.

And besides, even if design remains here, the number of designers required is not very big. What the heck are the other 150 million people in our labor force supposed to do? Sell each other real estates and haircuts? How long is that sustainable?