Re: [Futurework] Where oh where have the jobs all gone?

[Keith Hudson]

Steve Jobs is wrong (that is, if he correctly 
quoted). At a certain stage in the automation of 
assembling iPhones, iPads and whatnots, their 
production could return home. It's silly to say 
that the supply chains are too long or scattered. 
Many of the highest value components of Apple 
products are made outside China -- in Japan, 
Singapore, UK, America itself, etc. These could 
be immediately re-routed and, in due course, the 
sub-factories duplicated in America. This is what 
happened with the reappearance of the mass car 
industry in the UK in the late '80s after its 
almost total extinction (Jaguar excepted) in the 
'70s. At first, Nissan continued to bring in most 
of its components from abroad but, by agreement 
with the government, existing UK component 
suppliers were expanded and new ones established.

Due to the rapidly increasing wage rates in China 
and innovation at home, even labour-intensive 
industries such as cushion-making are now 
returning to the UK. (One would have thought that 
not a lot of innovation would be necessary to 
making cushions. Nevertheless, the [very few] 
cushion factories that had remained in the UK 
continued to innovate while those which migrated 
to China 20/30 years ago remained stuck with their previous methods.)

Keith

At 15:01 02/08/2012, Ed wrote:
From today's Alternet.

Ed


The Betrayal of the American Dream -- A Once 
Vibrant Middle Class Is Now on the Brink



Donald Barlett and James Steele explain in their 
new book how American middle class has been 
impoverished and its prospects thwarted in favor of a new ruling elite.
August 1, 2012  |

[]


economy
AMY GOODMAN: Democrats and Republican lawmakers 
are in a deadlock over whether to extend the 
politically decisive Bush-era tax cuts. The 
Republican-controlled House of Representatives 
is planning to vote this week to extend all the 
cuts, but Obama says those Americans making 
above $250,000 a year should return to the tax 
levels they paid before Bush took office. 
Pointing to the Senate’s passage of the White 
House-backed proposal, Obama called on House 
Republicans to support the bill in his weekly address on Saturday.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This week, the Senate 
passed a plan that I proposed a few weeks ago to 
protect middle-class Americans and virtually 
every small business owner from getting hit with 
a big tax hike next year—a tax hike of $2,200 
for the typical family. Now it comes down to 
this. If 218 members of the House vote the right 
way, 98 percent of American families and 97 
percent of small business owners will have the 
certainty of knowing that their income taxes 
will not go up next year. That certainly means 
something to a middle-class family who has 
already stretched the budget as far as it can go.

AMY GOODMAN: In an interview on Fox News, 
Republican House Speaker John Boehner countered 
that Obama’s tax plan would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs.

SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: President’s plan would 
cost about 700,000 new jobs that wouldn’t be 
created or could be lost by taxing small 
businesses. The House will not do that. The 
House will extend all of the existing tax rates. 
We’ve got 8 percent unemployment; we’ve got 41 
months of it. This is not to be time—the time to 
be raising taxes on American small businesses.

AMY GOODMAN: As Republicans and Democrats 
continue disputing who should bare the brunt of 
the tax burden, our next guests argue America’s 
middle class has been decimated over the years 
due to policies governing not only taxes but 
also bank regulations, trade deficits and 
pension funds. Their new book chronicles how the 
American middle class has been systematically 
impoverished and its prospects thwarted in favor of a new ruling elite.

We’re joined now for the hour by Don Barlett and 
James Steele, the award-winning investigative 
reporters. They have worked together for over 40 
years, first at thePhiladelphia Inquirer, then 
at Time magazine, most recently at Vanity Fair. 
They’ve also written seven books. Their first 
book, America: What Went Wrong?, was a New York 
Times bestseller. They share two Pulitzer 
Prizes, two National Magazine Awards. Their new 
book is called The Betrayal of the American Dream.

Jim Steele, Don Barlett, we welcome you both to 
Democracy Now! Start off by laying out your 
thesis, Don. Start off by talking about the betrayal of the American dream.

DONALD BARLETT: It really goes back to when we 
did America: What Went Wrong?, which was in '91. 
And at that time, people were upset around the 
country. They knew something was happening, but 
they didn't know what. And what made that book 
so successful was that we pulled everything 
together in terms of pensions and pay and union 
membership—and just everything economics. And 
you could see that there was a systematic attack going on on the middle class.

At that time, it was still kind of—you know, 
could have gone either way if there had been a 
political response, which there should have 
been, but there wasn’t. And as a result, when—we 
received just literally hundreds and hundreds 
and hundreds of letters of emails over the last 
several years saying, "Would you go back and 
look at this in terms of what you wrote the 
first time?" And if we made one mistake the 
first time, it was we grossly underestimated how 
fast this country was going to go down the tubes. And we really did.

Back then, there were still defined benefit 
pensions, and people still had a hope of getting 
them. They’re gone. There was one wage 
structure. Now there are two-tiered wage systems 
all over the country. The one wage is gone. 
Income has been flat, for the most part, since 
then. You go down the list, and everything has 
gotten incredibly worse than it was then.

And one of the arguments that was raised by 
critics back then was because this—that series 
ran right at the tail end of one of the 
recessions, and people said, "Well, what’s 
happening now is really related to the 
recession, and once we’re out of the recession, 
everything will be fine." And we made the point 
this was not true, that what was happening was 
totally unrelated to the recession. It was the 
result of structural defects in the American 
economy, and it was going to continue unless 
they were dealt with. Well, they weren’t dealt 
with, and now everything is—you couldn’t even go 
back now to the 2000 level and give people what 
they had then. It would be impossible, given the 
attitudes in Congress, the hardening lines in Washington.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to talk about specifics 
and also go general. Jim Steele, the story of 
corporations tell a very major story about the 
United States, corporations like Apple and 
Boeing. Apple doesn’t manufacture one product in the United States?

JAMES STEELE: That’s correct. That’s correct. I 
think some of the parts—some of the parts are 
made here, but basically the essential products 
aren’t. And we made the point in the book—we 
actually wrote about this before a lot of the 
news surfaced this year—that what was 
significant about what Apple has done is not 
just their working conditions in China, which 
were horrendous by the subcontractors over 
there, but what they did, they completely closed 
down manufacturing in this country after really 
less than a generation. The historic pattern in 
this country was a product would be invented 
here, a company would go into business, they 
would start making it. Up and down the line, you 
had a broad-based workforce for that product, 
from folks on the factory floor to the 
designers, to the salesmen, so on, to the 
stockholders who might be part of that company. 
But ultimately, you had this broad-based 
situation. Apple originally had some 
manufacturing in this country but very quickly, 
in less than a generation, just closed that down 
and shipped most things to China and other 
countries. And it’s just part of that pattern 
where jobs that once middle-class people had in this country are now gone.

You see a similar kind of thing now going on 
with Boeing. Boeing has outsourced all kinds of 
parts of the new Dreamliner, its great new 
aircraft, which of course has recently run into 
some problems with parts of their engines 
falling off, apparently. But Boeing, as part of 
getting into the Chinese market, which everybody 
agrees will be a huge market, has manufactured 
all sorts of things over there. Basically, what 
Boeing is doing, which a lot of companies are 
doing, they are basically showing the Chinese 
how to make airplanes. And what have the Chinese 
done? They’re creating their own civilian 
aircraft industry, where we were told, I think, 
in this country the idea was have some presence 
there so we can sell them airplanes. But where 
is that going to lead down the line if we are 
turning over to them some of the technology that 
will let them build airplanes that are our principal export in this country?

AMY GOODMAN: And how much of that information, 
that knowledge, is taxpayer-financed?

JAMES STEELE: Boeing has of course been a major 
defense contractor over time, and many of those 
contracts have led to all sorts of technology 
that have worked their way into both civilian 
and military planes. Taxpayers have supported 
that. So now you have a situation where some of 
the technology that taxpayers have paid 
for—through Boeing and of course other 
contractors, as well, not just them—is now going 
to be handed over to the Chinese to build 
airplanes to compete against us. And civil 
aircraft is the only significant export this country has.

AMY GOODMAN: And the number of jobs Boeing has moved to China?

JAMES STEELE: The number of jobs is, I think, 
20,000 to 30,000 by Boeing’s own statement. I 
should correct one thing: we have other exports, 
but in civilian aircraft is the only thing where 
we have a surplus of exports. We export a lot of 
things, but—and most of those products, like 
auto parts and things of that sort, the imports vastly overwhelm our exports.

AMY GOODMAN: Back on Apple, earlier this year 
Democracy Now! spoke 
to<http://www.democracynow.org/2012/2/10/apple_accustomed_to_profits_and_praise>Charles 
Duhigg, a staff reporter for the New York Times. 
I asked him about President Obama’s meeting with 
the late Steve Jobs of Apple in February of 2011 
to see what it would take to make iPhones in the 
United States. This is what Charles Duhigg said.

CHARLES DUHIGG: One of the things that President 
Obama asked was, is it ever possible to bring 
back those jobs to the United States, to make 
iPhones in the U.S.? And what Steve Jobs said 
was—I think accurately—those jobs are never 
coming back. And the reason why isn’t just 
because workers are cheaper in China, although 
that—they are cheaper in China; it’s because 
China has established a huge competitive 
advantage over the U.S. There are supply chains 
that exist in China and Asia now which the U.S. simply can’t replicate.

AMY GOODMAN: I also asked the New York Times 
reporter, Charles Duhigg, about the human costs 
of Apple products for workers in China.

CHARLES DUHIGG: What Apple says—and you have to 
take Apple at their word, because this is a 
major corporation, they usually don’t lie about 
stuff like this—is that they say every single 
time they find a violation inside a supplier, 
that they mandate that a change is made and a 
management system is put in place in order to 
prevent that from occurring again. The 
difficulty is, when you look at the aggregate 
statistics that Apple publishes every year, we 
see the same violations occurring again and again and again.

AMY GOODMAN: New York Times reporter Charles 
Duhigg about the human costs of Apple products. James Steele?

JAMES STEELE: I think he’s right that these 
Apple products are not going to be coming back 
here. But the issue isn’t that they’d be coming 
back here; the issue is what happened that let 
them go over there, to begin with. And I think 
the point could easily have been made, Apple 
could still certainly have kept some 
manufacturing in this country—doesn’t mean you 
couldn’t also have some manufacturing elsewhere. 
Nobody has said that. But the point is, they 
made a conscious decision to go over there.

And the reason a lot of companies do that, it’s 
not just the cheap labor. The Chinese have a 
system in place that subsidizes companies—land, 
low-interest loans, a whole range of things—the 
kinds of things that a company in this country 
cannot compete with. So it goes way beyond the 
labor. We talk about free trade in this country, 
but other countries don’t really practice free 
trade. And China is a perfect example of that. I 
mean, how is a company over here expected to 
compete with a company that has that kind of 
support, that can then bring its product back 
here duty-free? I mean, it’s almost impossible. 
And this is true of dozens of products, not just computers and iPhones.

AMY GOODMAN: Why couldn’t Apple build factories here now?

JAMES STEELE: Well, I mean, they could if they 
wanted to, but I’m just saying it’s just not 
going to happen, because they don’t want to. And the problem was—

AMY GOODMAN: But consumers can also make a statement.

JAMES STEELE: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: And make demands.

JAMES STEELE: And make demands, exactly. And 
maybe enough heat will be exerted on them. And 
we got so much mail after our piece on Apple 
last year. People who thought Apple products 
were more expensive because they were built in 
this country, that was one of the most common 
themes we heard from people. And people were 
astonished to find out, no, they’re not. And yet 
they still cost you more than things that might be made here.

AMY GOODMAN: Don Barlett?

DONALD BARLETT: Well, the only thing to add to 
that is if—you need to put controls on 
corporations. Somewhere along the line, we’ve 
reached this point where there can be no—you 
know, no tariffs, no—nothing on corporations. 
They are free to do whatever they want. And look 
no further than fracking everywhere, but 
especially in Pennsylvania, where we’re both 
from. I mean, you grew up in Pennsylvania, you 
remember what it was like—well, I do. I’m a lot 
older than Jim. You went out of the house in the 
morning, it was covered with orange dust from 
the blast furnaces. That was a way of life. Was 
that healthy? No. Should it have been allowed? 
No. But now, that kind of behavior is 
tolerated—not only tolerated, encouraged, 
because nothing is done to prevent it.

I mean, there’s—you have all of this talk on the 
far right about the regulations that are, you 
know, stifling creativity and all this. That’s 
utter and complete nonsense. When it’s put in 
historical terms, it is just mind-numbing that 
we’ve allowed this, because—Jim made the 
distinction: we’re talking about civilian 
aircraft now. The Chinese have just been given 
the keys to the U.S. attack helicopter. What 
does this say? I mean, back—as an old Cold 
Warrior, in which I spent a few years in 
counterintelligence, security clearances would 
have been killed then automatically for the 
corporation. And this is just mind-numbing that 
nobody says anything in Washington. They like to 
pretend they’re in charge of something. They’re 
not. They are just there to do whatever the corporations want them to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Interesting, on that—

DONALD BARLETT: And let me qualify this. This 
is—and this is my mistake more often, when I say 
"corporations." We need to distinguish between 
global corporations and domestic corporations, 
which truly are being screwed in Washington. The 
domestic companies, who—the ones that employ the 
people in this country, have really taken it in 
the ear, and only because Washington is—gives a 
free pass to the international, the global corporations.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Jim Steele, the statement on 
Apple products, "designed by Apple in California"?

JAMES STEELE: Right, but manufactured elsewhere. 
And in the past—I mean, this is the point I was 
trying to make earlier. In the past, you had a 
whole chain of people: you had the inventors, 
you had the designers, you had the people who 
manufactured, you had the people who sold it, 
and then, of course, at the end of that you had 
the consumers that bought that product. And this 
doesn’t mean that you can’t have factories 
elsewhere, but the idea that we do not have the 
capability of building these products in this 
country, that we do not have all the engineers 
to do that, I mean, we just totally reject that. 
I mean, too many people have told us—too many 
people in manufacturing in this country are 
very—who are very upset by this whole trend, 
because they say separating the design from the 
actual manufacturing floor is a huge mistake. 
That’s the way so many great things were done in the past.

DONALD BARLETT: That’s where you got your new 
products from. That’s where you got your 
innovations from. And if you’re not making it on the floor, doesn’t come.

Read the rest at 
<http://www.alternet.org/economy/betrayal-american-dream-once-vibrant-middle-class-now-brink?akid=9155.1074389.Mz_6Sm&rd=1&src=newsletter685406&t=5&paging=off>http://www.alternet.org/economy/betrayal-american-dream-once-vibrant-middle-class-now-brink?akid=9155.1074389.Mz_6Sm&rd=1&src=newsletter685406&t=5&paging=off


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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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