Comment by lenerdenator
12 days ago
America?
No.
The shareholder class underestimates it.
A lot of Americans realize that it's going to be hard, which is why we should have made an example out of the first guy to profit off of sending manufacturing off to the shores of a geopolitical rival.
Question: if the jobs were off shored, but the resulting profits were shared more equally, would Americans still complain?
Yes, definitely yes.
America suffers from a flattened income curve. There are many many more people earning $100k+ today than in 1960 (inflation adjusted). America has an envy problem first, equality problem second, spoiled child problem third.
I would not necessarily say that the envy is unjustified. If you live in a rich country you ideally want all citizens to become wealthy. Else, irrespective of income, you will be lorded over by those who are magnitudes richer than you.
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I wouldn't expect "now that you've caught us we'll pay you to shut up" to go over well.
"Caught us" implies that the capitalists, the people who own the manufacturing plants, did something immoral, or illegal or under handed, but in the economic system that everyone championed in America, especially at that time, this was simply allowed. Seems like the fundamental anger is about the injustice of the economic system that leads to such consequences.
Americans also have more free time and disposable income because of that decision, among others. Why would you want them to struggle more?
The people in the areas where things used to be made certainly have more free time, but they don't have disposable income.
Unless we're just here to repeat canards from the 1990s given by financiers which explained why it was good to shut down the main employers for entire towns.
US unemployment rate floats along at about 4%, and is kept from going any lower to prevent inflation.
There are localized problems - and it's all very similar to the post-Thatcher UK - but you cannot be serious in imagining that employment would magically return to the exact spots it left. In fact that's one of the sub-problems OP talks about: so you want a US Shenzen. Where are you going to put it?
(UK equivalent: we're discussing keeping Scunthorpe blast furnaces open, so that we can have a "secure" supply of "domestic" steel .. made entirely from imported ingredients. Because the mines the plant was built to refine are empty)
It's odd how little factories moving from union areas to red states gets mentioned in this context.
Areas gutted, jobs lost and some lesser number of jobs with less benefits and pay created elsewhere.
So many political ideas seem to only be allowed to be discussed if you can add a garnish of racism or xenophobia to them.
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