Globalization is super nice when you're secure in your job, "hey everything is getting cheaper!" but when your job is the one in the crosshairs what you're feeling is a pressure that is pushing the living standard of the third world and yours together. That's why I find it so annoying that this board is usually against abundant H1B's but for factory outsourcing. It's completely hypocritical.
And before I get jumped on, no I'm not against all trade. What I'm for however is noting that people don't live in the long-term, economically we are firmly short-term creatures. Good policy won't give everything up for the long-term, it will also protect people in the short-term, we don't need an end to trade, we need a curtailing of some trade.
I am for immigration, it's just the pseudo indentured servitude that is H1B that I have a problem with.
As to factory outsourcing, I think it's overall a net gain for humanity. Long term there is a finite number of countries and barring societal collapse eventually they will all end up 'developed'. It simply exposes other problems in the US like our horrible social safety net and endemic corruption. So, a small ~2-5% import tax is probably a net gain for US society.
I am for free travel and work across "national" boundaries. That means I think the U.S. should be welcoming to others, and we should try to work out deals where our citizens can work abroad.
I believe that the best way to avoid war is to invite everyone to the table, help everyone get richer, do better, be more invested in a peaceful world. In the modern world, war is a nightmare solution.
Without immigration the US population would be shrinking. So, we need an endless supply of new immigrants to avoid a host of problems now facing Japan.
Second we directly befit from a mix of immigrants from all nations.
> At what point do you feel the USA will have enough immigrants?
When net migration into and out of the US approaches zero. Until that point it's about how fast we can acculturate newcomers, which judging from history is "pretty damn fast".
> That's why I find it so annoying that this board is usually against abundant H1B's but for factory outsourcing. It's completely hypocritical.
This forum is not composed of US users only. For example I live in one of those countries who benefited from opening up to foreign trade (I live in Eastern Europe) so it would be pretty hypocritical of me to complain about open markets.
This is one of the things I like about HN however. There are plenty of smart people all over the world (Eastern Europe included!). It is great to be capable of having civilized discussions with different viewpoints. If you open yourself to it, it is easy to learn something new from someone with an entirely different worldview and life context than you.
Why should Bubba live a better life then Liu Chu just because he was born in one country and Liu Chu another? Globalization has reduced extreme poverty worldwide, to the point where it will not exist in a few years.
Globalization has very little to do with the plights of blacks in the Mississippi Delta. Old fashioned racism and a lack of jobs in sectors which aren't agriculture have a lot more to do with it.
Well Bubba has no more right to a good life than Liu Chu but if you live next door to Bubba and 7000 miles from Liu Chu I think you have a higher duty to him than her.
Second, you could consider that Bubba has the ability to vote in US elections and Liu Chu doesn't. Making Liu Chu better off is a nice moral deed, making Bubba better off is not just a nice moral deed but also a political obligation.
Help given to Liu Chu will by necessity pass through many hands and you have no control over the ethical structure of Liu Chu's society.
Helping Bubba is something you can verify, and it will also help Liu Chu when Bubba has more income and can afford to help others.
We want all people to do well. But globalization didn't just help Liu Chu -- it helped many people in the U.S. Maybe we should redirect some of that gain back to Bubba.
> Why should Bubba live a better life then Liu Chu just because he was born in one country and Liu Chu another? Globalization has reduced extreme poverty worldwide, to the point where it will not exist in a few years.
Because Bubba is a member of a lucky sperm club. It is neither good nor is it bad. It just is.
Completely open borders and completely open immigration policy result in everyone sinking to the lowest, not lowest getting to the highest.
The writing has been in the wall for anyone to see for decades in most of these industries. An American factory shuttering is a disappointment, but I doubt it's a surprise to anyone, including it's workers. We can make some long term sacrifices to slow the process, but to what end?
There is no endgame. Nobody is thinking that far off into the future.
This is actually a problem in free countries. You do not have a cabal of elite on the throne who see themselves as the rulers forever. Consequently, long term planning is not as much of a concern. In this particular case the shareholders who pressured the CEO to move the labour overseas were only concerned with their short term gain. The politicians who might have endorsed it, were also thinking about their short term gain.
Nobody is thinking about the future until there is clear trouble on the horizon.
When it gets down to it - talking trade balances here - once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here - once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel - once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity - y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery
What I don’t understand are the people who simultaneously complain about poverty in America and see absolutely no reason to apply any kind of standards for the people emigrating to this country (like, “must have an advanced degree”), or even any kind of limits on immigration at all. We are undoubtedly importing more people destined to live in poverty. Save me the rhetoric about every immigrant being a future doctor or engineer, yes there are many success stories but there are also plenty that end up being net drains on society due to, well, not being skilled workers.
Why should Americans hold new immigrants to such a strict standard, when they themselves can probably trace their own lineage back to someone who stepped off a boat on Ellis Island with barely a grasp on English or a penny to their (soon to be Anglicized) name? Why are low-skilled immigrants a net drain on society, but not the low-skilled children or grandchildren of immigrants? There are many, many more of the latter than the former.
The problem of poverty is systemic - trying to link it to immigration confuses correlation with cause.
There was no welfare state for Ellis Island immigrants to fall back on. Indeed, about a third actually returned home[1]. And a large number were actually turned away after they had arrived here. Today, the situation is very different: if you can’t hack it here, why go back? The state will provide for you, probably much better than you could do if working at home (depending on where you came from). How many of today’s immigrants do you think actually go back?
> Why are low-skilled immigrants a net drain on society, but not the low-skilled children or grandchildren of immigrants?
Because those children are a sunk cost: they’re already here. Why compound the problem? The demand to come to the US is far too high to simply accept anyone who can make it here. And the fact that a greater percentage of immigrants are accepting welfare vs “natives”[2] indicates that we really are compounding the problem. We should be going almost exclusively for skilled immigration, like Australia does.
For me, this is a no-brainer. Free-market is an extremely powerful tool, but Free-market itself does not have heart or any respect for Human Rights whatsoever.
If we want to create societies where Human Rights are respected, Free-market need to be operated under constraints. Yes, those constraints will slow growth and, maybe, some rich people will be less rich, but the other option is Neo-Feudalism and Barbarie.
So, the question is: how much injustice are we willing to tolerate for the sake of growth? Every society has a different answer, but you can easily see different models in Japan, US and Europe.
The problem is that every country can curtail trade. The world is far more interlocked now and any country trying to extract itself from that reality will undoubtedly go into an economic recession.
Globalization is super nice when you're secure in your job, "hey everything is getting cheaper!" but when your job is the one in the crosshairs what you're feeling is a pressure that is pushing the living standard of the third world and yours together. That's why I find it so annoying that this board is usually against abundant H1B's but for factory outsourcing. It's completely hypocritical.
And before I get jumped on, no I'm not against all trade. What I'm for however is noting that people don't live in the long-term, economically we are firmly short-term creatures. Good policy won't give everything up for the long-term, it will also protect people in the short-term, we don't need an end to trade, we need a curtailing of some trade.