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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPaul Krugman, former defender of offshoring, delivers a steel-toe boot to its Smeagol-like face.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/opinion/off-and-out-with-mitt-romney.html?_r=1Tell you what, I would not want to take a hit like the one Paul Krugman just inflicted right here.
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Romulox
(25,960 posts)If he has had a "conversion", I'm sure he would've written about it.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)every time someone here posts one of his op-eds about what ails the middle class.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)http://www.nationofchange.org/problem-isn-t-outsourcing-it-s-prosperity-big-business-has-become-disconnected-well-being-most-ameri
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Does Romney think we should have an educational system like India's?
Challenged by posts on DU suggesting that Americans can't compete because, after all, we are not as well educated or trained to do the jobs that the Indians brought in on H-1B visas do.
So, here are articles on education in India.
However, India continues to face stern challenges. Despite growing investment in education, 25% of its population is still illiterate; only 15% of Indian students reach high school, and just 7%, of the 15% who make it to high school, graduate.[5] The quality of education whether at primary or higher education is significantly poor as compared with major developing nations. As of 2008, India's post-secondary institutions offer only enough seats for 7% of India's college-age population, 25% of teaching positions nationwide are vacant, and 57% of college professors lack either a master's or PhD degree.[6]
As of 2011, there are 1522 degree-granting engineering colleges in India with an annual student intake of 582,000,[7] plus 1,244 polytechnics with an annual intake of 265,000. However, these institutions face shortage of faculty and concerns have been raised over the quality of education.[8]
. . . .
World Bank statistics found that fewer than 40 percent of adolescents in India attend secondary schools.[3] The Economist reports that half of 10-year-old rural children could not read at a basic level, over 60% were unable to do division, and half dropped out by the age 14.[17]
. . . .
Our university system is, in many parts, in a state of disrepair...In almost half the districts in the country, higher education enrollments are abysmally low, almost two-third of our universities and 90 per cent of our colleges are rated as below average on quality parameters... I am concerned that in many states university appointments, including that of vice-chancellors, have been politicised and have become subject to caste and communal considerations, there are complaints of favouritism and corruption.
— Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2007[23]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_India
Strongly recommending an immediate halt to the system of sitting for a pile of exams, C N R Rao, who heads the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (SACPM), said in a letter sent last week that the American method of holding one national exam before joining university is the way.
Putting it bluntly, Rao told the PM that India is said to "have an examination system but not an education system... When will young people stop taking exams and do something worthwhile?"
Talking about the agony that the Indian higher education sector is in, the SACPM, in a brief document sent to the PM recently — accessed by TOI — noted, "Today there is not a single educational institution in India which is equal to the best institution in the advanced countries".
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-04-14/india/29417206_1_entrance-exams-exam-system-national-exam
I wonder whether India would grant special visas to American teachers who can't find jobs?
From this article, it sounds like India certainly needs the help.
Teachers: Children have the right to have at least 1 qualified and trained teacher for every 30 pupils. Currently, the national average is about 1 teacher to every 34 students, but in states such as Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal 1 teacher works with more than 60 students.
Approximately 1.2 million additional teachers need to be recruited to fill this gap. Currently, about 1 in 5 primary school teachers do not have the requisite minimum academic qualification to ensure children’s right to quality learning.
Sanitation: 84 out of 100 schools have drinking water facilities overall in India. But nearly half the schools in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya do not. Sixty-five out of 100 schools have common toilets in India; however only one out of four schools in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Orissa and Rajasthan have this facility.
Fifty-four out of 100 schools have separate toilets for girls. On average, only one in nine schools in Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur have separate toilets and one in four schools in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand and Orissa.
http://www.unicef.org/india/education_196.htm
India has a larger population than we do, but the quality of their education and therefore the education of their people is probably not as good as ours. The H-1B visas are not really justified by the argument that workers from India are better educated than American workers. Some of them may be, but employers are taking their chances when they hire H-1B workers. Judging from the criticisms of Indian education that Indians themselves offer, employers hiring on H-1B visas and outsourcing jobs to India are buying a pig in a poke.
Nothing wrong with Indian workers in their own country, but it is absurd to think that American kids educated in our schools can't compete. Absurd.
Americans are unemployed because it's cheaper to hire people from third-world countries -- even if it is riskier in many respects including the quality of education overall.
Orangepeel
(13,933 posts)Romulox
(25,960 posts)http://www.amazon.com/Pop-Internationalism-Paul-Krugman/dp/0262611333
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Can you figure out some way in which Krugman is saying that outsourcing is good, from that comment? I sure can't.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)Truth hurts. A lot.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Killer Trade Deficits
I agree with everything this NYT editorial has to say about the economics of widening international imbalances. Where I disagree is on the issue of negotiating strategy. My colleagues believe that we should lecture the Chinese on what a bad thing they’re doing, but not actually threaten sanctions, lest we start a trade war. My belief is that this gets us nowhere.
Right now, China is following a policy that is, in effect, one of imposing high tariffs and providing large export subsidies — because that’s what an undervalued currency does. That should be a violation of trade rules; it might in fact be a violation, but the language of the law is vague on the subject. But leave aside the fine print of the law for a moment: what China is doing amounts to a seriously predatory trade policy, the kind of thing that is supposed to be prevented by the threat of sanctions.
Yet the Chinese have taken our measure, and decided that we won’t act. Until or unless that changes, we’re just whistling in the wind.
I say confront the issue head on — and if it leads to trade conflict, bear in mind that in a depressed world economy, surplus countries have a lot to lose from such a conflict, while deficit countries may well end up gaining. Or to put it differently, right now we’re in a world in which mercantilism works. In the long run we’ll emerge from this kind of world; but in the long run …
China, Japan, America
Time and again, U.S. officials have announced progress on the currency issue; each time, it turns out that they’ve been had. Back in June, Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary, praised China’s announcement that it would move to a more flexible exchange rate. Since then, the renminbi has risen a grand total of 1, that’s right, 1 percent against the dollar — with much of the rise taking place in just the past few days, ahead of planned Congressional hearings on the currency issue. And since the dollar has fallen against other major currencies, China’s artificial cost advantage has actually increased.
Clearly, nothing will happen until or unless the United States shows that it’s willing to do what it normally does when another country subsidizes its exports: impose a temporary tariff that offsets the subsidy. So why has such action never been on the table?
One answer, as I’ve already suggested, is fear of what would happen if the Chinese stopped buying American bonds. But this fear is completely misplaced: in a world awash with excess savings, we don’t need China’s money — especially because the Federal Reserve could and should buy up any bonds the Chinese sell.
It’s true that the dollar would fall if China decided to dump some American holdings. But this would actually help the U.S. economy, making our exports more competitive. Ask the Japanese, who want China to stop buying their bonds because those purchases are driving up the yen.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)conflating two very different things here. Free Trade, as I understand it, is about opening and maintaining access to foreign markets; but does not necessarily entail off-shoring/out-sourcing.
Hydra
(14,459 posts)"Free Trade" is codeword for "access to cheap labor + exemption from taxes and regulation while doing so."
I tend to go on the "nobody is perfect" theory. When people say things that are correct, even when I don't like them personally, they get a thumbs up from me. When they're wrong, I'll say so and how I think they're wrong, no matter how much I think they're awesome.
In that vein: Bill Clinton- I like you as a person, but the Bushes are NOT your friends, and third way is a crock!!!
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Free Trade is not a codeword for anything ... It is about gaining access to international markets. The cheap labor, tax and regulation exemptions are a unrelated corruption of free trade.
Hydra
(14,459 posts)The idea that it can be "free" is absurd. It's even more absurd because the people calling it "free" are actually looking for it to be heavily regulated in ways they can exploit, so ya, I think we can across the board say that it's code for the behavior I listed.
It's kinda like saying that what we have right now isn't real capitalism. It is- this is what happens when one has unadulterated capitalism.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)"free Trade" is not "free"; it is about exploiting the regulations to the corporate advantage ... but as I stated it is not necessarily related to cheap labor. For example, if the U.S. (a high-wage nation) were to impose a tariff on all Germany (another high-wage nation) those tariffs would be the subject of a free trade fight.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Is Germany not a WTO member nation? Do the U.S. and Germany not have trade agreements?
Maybe we are operating on different definitions of the term "Free Trade."
Romulox
(25,960 posts)and membership in the World Trade Organization.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)is only based on that part of the "Free Trade" structure that supports your argument and ignores that part that doesn't?
Really?
Romulox
(25,960 posts)Not worth a response.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Condescension is evidence of a failed/failing argument.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)but if I did, my response wouldbe ...
f@#% you and your sophomoric, yet self-impressing, arguments.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)self-important people always prove (rest) their case ... even when they don't. It's the nature of the beast.
peace.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Trade must be regulated in order for chaos and tragedy NOT to occur. In the purest sense of the word, free trade is not regulated trade; the two are not the same.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)completely. We have not had "Free Trade" since before the modern age.
Free trade, in the modern era, is primarily about open access to foreign markets ... and since access to labor markets has NEVER been a "problem", those regulations serve to affect trade.
joshcryer
(62,269 posts)He argues it on moral and ethical grounds as opposed to nationalist though, iirc.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)Last edited Fri Aug 10, 2012, 01:06 PM - Edit history (1)
that needs to be read and circulated. It completely, and in very simple, understandable terms, destroys romney's "business man that knows what's best on the economy" facade.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)just for that awesomely awesome subject line.
But it's a great post, too. 
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Ron Obvious
(6,261 posts)Like the Smeagol reference!
I'm not entirely convinced Romney and his ilk really are 'people', though. I think they belong to a another hominid subspecies called "Homo Anus Gigantus"
xxqqqzme
(14,887 posts)(Shared)
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Yuugal
(2,281 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)
RainDog
(28,784 posts)
pampango
(24,692 posts)"Now, if the Romney campaign really believed in its own alleged free-market principles, it would have defended the right of corporations to do whatever maximizes their profits, even if that means shipping jobs overseas. Instead, however, the campaign effectively conceded that offshoring is bad but insisted that outsourcing is O.K. as long as the contractor is another American firm.
That is, however, a very dubious assertion."
"Why, for example, do many large companies now outsource cleaning and security to outside contractors? Surely the answer is, in large part, that outside contractors can hire cheap labor that isn’t represented by the union and can’t participate in the company health and retirement plans. And, sure enough, recent academic research finds that outsourced janitors and guards receive substantially lower wages and worse benefits than their in-house counterparts."
Outsourcing - to a domestic contractors in the examples above - is what Krugman states is the tactic that corporations use to see that "as little as possible of what corporations earn goes into the pockets of the people who actually work". American corporations have been attacking unions but this type of outsourcing and moving factory work from the unionized North and MidWest to right-to-work states largely in the South for decades before foreign countries were involved to any significant extent.
"A country is not a company (despite globalization, America still sells 86 percent of what it makes to itself), and the tools of macroeconomic policy — interest rates, tax rates, spending programs — have no counterparts on a corporate organization chart. Did I mention that Herbert Hoover (of Smoot/Hawley/Hoover infamy) actually was a great businessman in the classic mold?"
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)"But one of the main points of outsourcing is to ensure that as little as possible of what corporations earn goes into the pockets of the people who actually work for those corporations."
I would bet money against you that Krugman would not only tell you that this truth applies DOUBLY so to foreign outsourcing, but that he was making a swipe at it with this sentence.
Romulox
(25,960 posts)
Marzupialis
(398 posts)In order for me to be able to take a 10 day vacation, I would have to work 10 years for them.
MNBrewer
(8,462 posts)over "corporations aren't people". I don't think anyone would argue that a corporation is 'a person'.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)Defenders of the "Faith-Based" can get the HELL out of the Big Tent. Right-wing economics can be praised at the unmentionable sites, or Yahoo, or your local newspaper's forum.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)Glad you finally decided to join us, Paul. Just don't try to run in front of the parade and pretend like you're leading it.
