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"I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

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Re: "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

#51

Post by yongjik »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #45
yongjik wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protectionism may work in some cases, but even when it works, it works by making things more expensive. People don't buy American cars because it's cheaper to make similar cars in Mexico. Fine, so let's force companies to make cars in America. It's now more expensive (otherwise we won't be importing from Mexico in the first place). You add more and more protectionism, it may get some jobs back, but the price is that…

I think all of your points are valid and I can't really see any part if your argument that isn't at least directionally correct. But then I'm left wondering: Why is protectionism working for China?

Okay, I'm really talking out of my ass, but my very uninformed take is:

Protectionism is "working" for China because it's still a poor country, it was much poorer only a generation ago, and when you have no industry, it's easier to deliberately keep people poor for a little longer in exchange for more jobs. Once the pipeline is built, it's just societal inertia.

But I have to wonder how much it working out for China is just "China is still poor, so people have little choice." Among millions of Americans decrying outsourcing of American jobs, how many are willing to work under an average labor condition of China if they were given the opportunity?

Re: "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

#52

Post by OGEnthusiast »

dakolli wrote: post #36
gorbachev wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not extremism. It's plain old American capitalism. Both parties are being funded by the same people, so both parties play ball with the same set of funders.

Its very obvious, imo they are going to have a hard time signing young men up to fight for this country when they inevitably make everyone so poor they beg anything, even a war. But... They'll use profits and greed to alienate the working class further and further, they'll try to get us to go fight wars to capture resources for the KKKapital owners. My prediction is the only war the American people will be willing to…

[dead]

Re: "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

#53

Post by quacked »

yongjik wrote: post #51
xyzzy123 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all of your points are valid and I can't really see any part if your argument that isn't at least directionally correct. But then I'm left wondering: Why is protectionism working for China?

Okay, I'm really talking out of my ass, but my very uninformed take is: Protectionism is "working" for China because it's still a poor country, it was much poorer only a generation ago, and when you have no industry, it's easier to deliberately keep people poor for a little longer in exchange for more jobs. Once the pipeline is built, it's just societal inertia. But I have to wonder how much it working out for China…

That's a critical question that isn't being asked enough.

Americans aren't allowed to compete like that; there are too many labor and environmental protections in place to experience "Chinese working conditions" even if they wanted to. We legally can't work Chinese hours or affect the environment like the Chinese.

So while it's true that Americans aren't really willing to work hard enough to compete on price with the Chinese, it's also literally impossible.

And many outsourced jobs are like this. Americans can't compete because it's illegal to compete. Our hands are tied. We can't bend the local laws to make life cheaper for ourselves, and most of our products are sold to us by people who can and do.

I would be curious what would happen if in order to sell to American workers, you had to meet American environmental and labor conditions. I think that's a total non-starter, but it's a hypothetical that may cause the ponderer to address the huge gap in how competitive other countries are allowed to be to sell to Americans, vs. how Americans aren't really allowed to compete with them.

Re: "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

#54

Post by _DeadFred_ »

yongjik wrote: post #37
quacked wrote: post #4

The two American political parties are so perfectly shielded by their own ideological blinders to avoid any possibility of national protectionism against offshoring and outsourcing that I don't think there will ever be any kind of movement against this. The conservative base is unfriendly to foreigners and foreign cultures, and claims to prefer American-made goods and services, but will immediately guillotine any int…

Protectionism may work in some cases, but even when it works, it works by making things more expensive. People don't buy American cars because it's cheaper to make similar cars in Mexico. Fine, so let's force companies to make cars in America. It's now more expensive (otherwise we won't be importing from Mexico in the first place). You add more and more protectionism, it may get some jobs back, but the price is that…

What happens when you remove the velocity of money from the economy and replace it with companies that count on their employees receiving government assistance in order to be able to live? Are things actually cheaper for the average worker long term in our current scenario? Or is it a temporary affordability in exchange for a worse economic future? It seems like things still have to keep getting worse and worse to be financially viable in our current cycle (clothes are Kleenex quality like sci-fi books joked would be issued in a UBI future, enshitification is in everything).

When a system takes the money from the economy and delivers it to the capital class and foreign workers, what happens to that economy? We don't know. We're gambling it will somehow be ok. We are also losing the 50% of taxes that comes from individual workers, so add in losing that velocity of money vector going through the government as well.

It doesn't seem like a sustainable system, nor a cheaper system. Only a very risky short term gamble.

Re: "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

#55

Post by [deleted] »

OutOfHere wrote: post #17
throwaway920102 wrote: post #13

[flagged]

There is racism all around in America -- every race effectively has some bias to hire its own. To some limited extent they don't. The way I think about it is that if they don't want to hire me, it means I am not offering them enough value to bypass any bias.

[deleted]

Re: "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

#56

Post by _DeadFred_ »

cmxch wrote: post #42
OutOfHere wrote: post #14

Between AI and outsourcing, desk jobs in the US can risk disappearing altogether. Do not count on them, and do not expect you to be owed anything. Go in every day knowing that day can be your last day there, and you will be at peace. Find your own alternate paths.

Can’t offshore cleared government work.

Can't offshore plasma donation, especially when many countries outlaw it or don't let people donate twice a week.

Re: "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

#57

Post by only-one1701 »

yongjik wrote: post #37
quacked wrote: post #4

The two American political parties are so perfectly shielded by their own ideological blinders to avoid any possibility of national protectionism against offshoring and outsourcing that I don't think there will ever be any kind of movement against this. The conservative base is unfriendly to foreigners and foreign cultures, and claims to prefer American-made goods and services, but will immediately guillotine any int…

Protectionism may work in some cases, but even when it works, it works by making things more expensive. People don't buy American cars because it's cheaper to make similar cars in Mexico. Fine, so let's force companies to make cars in America. It's now more expensive (otherwise we won't be importing from Mexico in the first place). You add more and more protectionism, it may get some jobs back, but the price is that…

Yeah I’m sure the savings will be passed onto the consumer, genius

Re: "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

#58

Post by c22 »

apawloski wrote: post #35
lenerdenator wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conservative base is unfriendly to foreigners and foreign cultures, and claims to prefer American-made goods and services, but will immediately guillotine any internal party member who causes consumer prices to raise substantially--which they would have to do in order to support American workers creating products rather than our offshored counterparts. Currently, the head of the party is raising and lowering ta…

Agree. It is harder to manufacture in America when the party leader breaks critical parts of your supply chain with rapid and unpredictable tariff changes. It is impossible to lower consumer prices on a good by raising taxes on it. This is not even mentioning the astounding corruption of a president and his family personally and directly benefiting from these tariffs threats. Does the party not understand the realiti…

I think there are a lot of people who recognize these changes as not very durable and don't see an immediate political benefit to opposing them right now.

Re: "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

#59

Post by lenerdenator »

wat10000 wrote: post #24
lenerdenator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's able to do that.

For now. It remains to be seen how long it will last.

It's been over a decade. He's been impeached twice, lost an election once - and it sounds like the lesson he took from that is "get rid of elections" - been convicted on thirty-four felony counts, charged with even more, mismanaged a pandemic, "shot at", wiped his ass with a number of strategic alliances, sent thugs out on America's streets to harass people for being Latino, and been linked to a cabal of child-trafficking sex offenders.

A few hundred bucks a year ain't gonna move the needle at this point.

Re: "I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]

#60

Post by lenerdenator »

c22 wrote: post #58
apawloski wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. It is harder to manufacture in America when the party leader breaks critical parts of your supply chain with rapid and unpredictable tariff changes. It is impossible to lower consumer prices on a good by raising taxes on it. This is not even mentioning the astounding corruption of a president and his family personally and directly benefiting from these tariffs threats. Does the party not understand the realiti…

I think there are a lot of people who recognize these changes as not very durable and don't see an immediate political benefit to opposing them right now.

Why wouldn't these changes be durable?

We're a product of a very, very strange time and place in history where the average person had at least some recourse against tyrants. From prehistory to about the mid-point of the 20th century, if you were alive on planet Earth, there's a near guarantee that you lived life basically as a possession of some person or family who controlled where you lived, where you could go, what clothes you wore, what work you could do, whether or not you would be educated, who you would marry, if you would have children, which god (if any) you could worship, what you could say, and even whether you lived or died.

That was your existence.

This whole thing where you have some control over your destiny? That's the fragile set of changes. Someone behaving like Trump is historically insanely durable.

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