The oft-underrated Harold Meyerson points out that “China’s bad economic news is not necessarily good for the U.S.“:
… With labor costs soaring in China and the yuan slowly rising, while in the United States productivity soars and the dollar slowly declines, the economic advantages that American companies reap by offshoring production begin to dwindle. A Boston Consulting Group study released this month on the return of U.S. manufacturing concludes that “re-investment in the U.S. will accelerate” as a result of these trends.
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Great news, no? Well, hold the applause for now.
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The study looks at the change in U.S. and Chinese labor costs and productivity levels over the past decade, and then projects them for 2015. China’s labor costs were 34 percent of U.S. labor expenses in 2005, the study notes, in the two regions the group chose to measure. By 2015, the study reports, the gap between American and Chinese labor costs adjusted for productivity differentials will have so narrowed that China’s labor costs will come to fully 69 percent of U.S. labor costs.
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So what’s the catch? Just this: The two regions that the group compared are the Yangtze River Delta (which includes Shanghai) and Mississippi.
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Mississippi? The state that ranks 49th or 50th in virtually every measure of U.S. living standards? Is Mississippi the new normal for an America that’s competitive in the global marketplace?
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“We made a mistake by picking Mississippi,” conceded Harold Sirkin, a senior partner and managing director at the Boston Consulting Group who authored the study. But the America that the group was measuring, he told me last week, was one defined by Southern labor standards: “fewer work rules, less unionization and lower costs” than other advanced economies. Our economy, he said, is more flexible than, say, the northern Europeans’. “With unemployment at 9 percent, the economy can flex in ways that people wouldn’t have believed. Michigan’s population is declining, while the South is growing.”
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Mississippi, here we come…
kdaug
A race to the bottom, indeed.
Yutsano
You’re therefore welcome to explain why the high-union and oldest sociallist health care country in Europe is kicking our asses. Or why Austria’s economy is so hot right now they literally are about to run out of workers. I know you got a meme to push dude, but you couldn’t find a better example?
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
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History will remember President Obama as the Agent of Change who single-handedly transformed Bush’s Republican policy of Endless War into one of Democratic Perpetual War.
.
.
asiangrrlMN
This reminds me of the kerfuffle in…was it WVA? The IKEA thing where the Americans were getting treated far worse than their counterparts in Sweden.
@Yutsano: Yo. ‘Sup? How you be? I have a plan to get us on the Colbert show, so get your Uncle Sam outfit ready. And thong.
hhex65
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: yeah, stick that in your pipe and smoke it, China!
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: I suppose this will require the red, white, and blue model with the star in front won’t it? I shan’t ever forgive FH #1 for finding that tacky thing.
wmd
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
Lol.
That’s some stank bait der yur trollin’ wit’
Yutsano
@wmd: Now now now, be nice. It probably took him all day to think of that.
Ming
Flexibility is helpful for an economy when it needs to bend over and take it in the [redacted for delicate sensibilities].
Villago Delenda Est
“The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is in the effect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity.”
That quote is from well known wild bomb-throwing soshulist Adam Smith, writing in his revolutionary anti-capitalist manifesto, The Wealth of Nations.
Perhaps Sirkin is not familiar with it?
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I was thinking…this one.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: Uhh…wow. Do you think Colbert’s wardrobe people could get that?
OT: Lexie just mercilessly attacked my shoe. It was epic.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Hell, I’d buy it just to watch you wear it. ::Smirks::
I would salute that flag, any day!
ETA: You’re lucky I didn’t link the one of G. Gordon Liddy. ::Smiles sweetly at you::
And, PICS! Of Lexie, I mean.
Steeplejack
@asiangrrlMN, @Yutsano:
Just dropping in for a moment before heading off to bed. Have to be back at the salt mine at 11:00 a.m. for a rare midshift. But I couldn’t let this all too rare moment of night-shift solidarity pass me by. Group hug?
ETA: Without the thong.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: The last pic I had of her she was giving me teh stare of death. At this precise moment she’s migrated to total ignorance of my person. I’m certain this relates somehow to her food bowl being empty, but it may require further exploration.
@Steeplejack: FWIW I’m fully clothed. You play for the wrong team for me to hug you in any other fashion. I cannot speak for wifey however.
asiangrrlMN
@Steeplejack: Hugs right back atcha, Steepman. I’ve missed you. And, certainly, you may go commando if you like. I usually do. Sleep well.
@Yutsano: Dude. Feed the kitteh. For realz. And, I’m clothed. Mostly.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano, @asiangrrlMN:
Yeah, I could have been clearer on “without the thong.”
Tough day tomorrow, but I hope it will be redeemed afterwards by Mexican food, margaritas and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which I will be seeing in 3-D. Yee-haw!
And I have Friday off. Double yee-haw.
asiangrrlMN
@Steeplejack: YAY! Glad you have a mini-vaca on Friday. Movie looks neat. I hope tomorrow is a bit smoother than you’re anticipating–with or without a thong.
@wmd: Oh my. Good luck with it. I hope it’s nothing too serious.
wmd
@Yutsano:
I’m a bit cranky preparing for a medical procedure tomorrow. No solid food and strong laxatives just don’t make it easy to suffer insufferable fools.
Jennifer
Just confirms what I’ve been saying for years, whenever a winger would slam on me for being from lowly Arkansas (surely we’re all familiar with the geographic basis for determining IQ, right?): Arkansas is a utopia of conservative ideals put into practice. Non-union, low-wage, low social spending, low tax with a system skewed towards regressivity, lax environmental regulation/enforcement, low spending on education, and so on and etc.
And it’s worked out quite well for us – so well, in fact, that in quite a few areas we outperform Mississippi.
Yutsano
@wmd: Sounds gastroentorologically related. Roto-rooting the pipework is never enjoyable. I hope things go swimmingly. And they don’t snatch an organ as payment.
@asiangrrlMN: She’s not making this easy. Now she’s curled up next to me playing teh “I Z NOT SLEEPIES!!” game. And withholding her purring produktiviteh.
EDIT: And of course I feed her and she promptly sniffs it and ignores it. Damn Galtian overlords.
MikeJ
I love that “bad economic news for China” is people making a living wage. Horrors!
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Bwahahhahahha! Yeah, that’s a fun game. Almost as fun as, “I have to be Velcroed to you ATALLTIMES!” game that my Raven plays with me.
Triassic Sands
Funny, I watched Inside Job tonight (finally, though there isn’t much “funny” about the film itself) and when I saw the headline for this thread, I immediately thought of Hank Paulson, Larry Summers, Glenn Hubbard, etc. Then, I looked at the Rall cartoon.
It is good to see that the Ryan plans for Medicaid are beginning to get some attention, because they are even more disastrous than Ryan’s plans for Medicare, since by definition Medicaid patients don’t have the money to absorb any cuts in their coverage. It’s also time for AARP to recognize that Medicaid serves a large number of elderly people (many of whom started out middle class, but ended up exhausting their personal funds on health care and nursing home costs) and they should begin to use their considerable clout to help defend Medicaid against the onslaught from the barbarians.
To me, this fight will go a long way toward determining if there is any point in caring if Democrats are in office. If they won’t defend the most vulnerable among us, then what purpose do they serve? Care for the poor has long been a defining characteristic of Democrats, while Republicans have vacillated between indifference and outright hostility toward the poor. Today, hostility has won out and across the country Republicans propose one policy initiative after another that seeks to humiliate, harm, or even kill poor people. Compromising with them should be unthinkable.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Jennifer:
well, now that screwing the indigenous population is illegal in florida, and their tourist industry will crater as a result, arkansas may be moving up in the world.
Triassic Sands
This would be a good time for the Obama administration to present a detailed proposal for a universal single payer health care system. Sadly, I doubt if anyone has been working on such a proposal, but it would be a good time to present a plan to contrast with what the Republicans have in mind for us, especially the elderly (on hold due to fear of senior voters) and the poor, including many elderly people, who apparently aren’t feared because poor people don’t vote in high enough numbers to threaten the thugs in the GOP.
The Republicans have started to reveal their true vision for the people of the US — a shrinking middle class, more poverty, and less help for those in need — which could put them at a real disadvantage if the Democrats would only have the guts and integrity to confront them directly with an alternative vision. Not some pathetic, watered-down, Third Way plan, but something comprehensive and sustainable.
Triassic Sands
@Jennifer:
I taught for a while in southern New Mexico and we always used to joke — ruefully — about how grateful we were for Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama, for without those states NM would consistently be last in everything good and first in everything bad. Apparently, others find the idea of being in that position attractive and are trying to fashion new ways to reach the bottom of the pile.
Yutsano
@Triassic Sands:
Ahem.
EDIT: it’s Weigel at his douchebag best, but it does say what Sanders and McDermott are up to.
Citizen Alan
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s your own damn fault because you Yankees choose to take us back. If the North had had any sense, they’d have evacuated every slave and every free person who was willing to swear allegiance to the Constitution and then relocated them all out West. Then, they could have built a 30-foot tall fence around the Mason-Dixon line and left the entire Confederacy to rot. Instead, Lincoln went in for a lot of rubbish about “charity towards all” with regard to a bunch of treasonous swine whose descendants have been a millstone around America’s neck for 150 years.
Triassic Sands
@Yutsano:
I meant anyone in the administration. I am aware of the Sanders/McDermott plan, but the problem there is that you have an avowed (if not actual) socialist joined by one of the most liberal of all representatives (opponents in Washington consider him a Communist, which means anyone to the left of Eisenhower). I think the plan would have more credibility if it came from a moderately liberal administration (even if the president is a Muslim Socialist Communist Nazi).
Calouste
The Boston Consulting Group also seems to have missed the news last week that the workers paradise of Germany posted their highest export figures ever, about 20% higher than their imports. Now tell me the last time the US had a trade surplus.
Hill Dweller
Poverty? Trade Deficits? Income equality? Meh.
The country’s biggest problem is black rappers at the White House. Stop that from happening and the economy recovers.
piratedan
@Hill Dweller: watched Stewart’s Daily Show takedown of Faux and the usual Faux outrage over anything the WH negro does, spot on complete with painful white guy rapping. The people at Faux don’t get it, not would they because to do so would be… well heads would explode…..like the end of Scanners
Ash Can
@Hill Dweller: Shutting down Planned Parenthood should create tens of millions of jobs by itself.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
Tourette Syndrome is a terrible thing. I hope you can overcome it some day.
Hill Dweller
@piratedan: Stewart’s takedown of the Fox scumbags was beautiful, but the ignorant, shameless careerists in the press were more than happy to stoke this transparently manufactured bullshit yesterday, bringing it to a much wider audience than the non-story deserved. The damage was already done; and I doubt the press does any sort of follow-up.
Southern Beale
In case anyone missed it, the Fox News fauxtrage over rapper Common’s invitation to a White House poetry reading was deftly revealed for the manufactured piece of political theater we all know it is by Jon Stewart. Watch it here.
ChrisS
So if Chinese labor grows more expensive and plateaued (or declining) oil supply causes shipping costs to go through the roof … does this mean I’m going to have to rely on lazy shiftless southerners to manufacture my electronics?
Pancake
It’s good to see that tasteless piece of shit, Ted Rall, again. Most media have canceled his brain farts and so-called “cartoons.”
grandpajohn
@Citizen Alan: Before you are completely consumed with bile, you might want to check out which states were actually below the Mason- Dixon line Since that would have placed our nations capitol in the evil south.
Actually the purpose of the line was to establish some state borders and was not intended ato be the defining line between north and south although it eventually was looked at in that way. And it appears that maybe there should be some redefining of evil corrupt states since I don’t think that Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio are currently south of that line
Linnaeus
Is it just me, or does “flexibility” only go in one direction? Whenever I read about labor “flexibility”, it seems to mean the flexibility of owners and managers to do things like reduce benefits, demand more work for the same (or less) pay, and ultimately fire or lay off workers. I never see where the workers’ “flexibility” is.
NaveenM
This is fairly obvious to anyone paying attention. The Southernization of the whole U.S. has been going on for a long time. Conservatives won’t be happy until we’re back to a plantation economy, with serfs replacing slaves.