Low Tech Jobs May Be Coming Back to US
Posted in International News
Aug. 3, 2008 at 13:45
by BrendaBee
Good and bad coming out of the energy crisis. Today's New York Times reports on a trend that bodes well for the low tech/skills jobs that may be coming back to the US due to the high costs of energy. This should take care of the high unemployment rate among the unskilled/uneducated segment of the population. Therefore this should prove to be a cure for some of our increasing social ills because employed people are more likely to keep to the straight and narrow and build for a future. Marriages and stable families are more likely to increase among the minorities leading to upward mobility and a better educated second generation. These things that the United States has lost in the last 30 years with a corresponding rise in crime.
It will not however do a great deal to save the high tech jobs that have been going overseas unfortunately. When I call for help with my new Dell computer I get this help from the Philippines.
Then again the United States will undoubtedly continue to be the creators of new technology. Surely ours will be the new technology for alternative sources of energy which will perhaps save the earth from further degradation from fossil fuels, as well as reducing our need to placate the more unstable and troublesome countries who seem to have the lions share of fossil fuels (Middle East, Russia, some South American countries) .
We have always been the inventors and entrepreneurs while other countries have thaken the role of copiers. Other countries reap the benefits of our first rate minds and then out perform us because we have a gigantic gape between our super intelligent inventors and our workers! It would be a joke if not so sad. ( this is of course simplistic because much more is involved that just an inadequate work force that caused jobs to go overseas, but it certainly is a very significant yet unacknowledged reason for being upstaged by others. Americans tend to be a pampered, greedy and very lazy people.)
Anyhow, I have lifted some quotes from the article if you want to read more about it. BB
Headline: " Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/business/worldbusiness/03global.html?th&emc=th
| Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex. |
"The industries most likely to be affected by the sharp rise in transportation costs are those producing heavy or bulky goods that are particularly expensive to ship relative to their sale price. Steel is an example. China’s steel exports to the United States are now tumbling by more than 20 percent on a year-over-year basis, their worst performance in a decade, while American steel production has been rising after years of decline. Motors and machinery of all types, car parts, industrial presses, refrigerators, television sets and other home appliances could also be affected."
"The spike in shipping costs comes at a moment when concern about the environmental impact of globalization is also growing. Many companies have in recent years shifted production from countries with greater energy efficiency and more rigorous standards on carbon emissions, especially in Europe, to those that are more lax, like China and India.o avoid having to ship all its products from abroad, the Swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea opened its first factory in the United States in May. Some electronics companies that left Mexico in recent years for the lower wages in China are now returning to Mexico, because they can lower costs by trucking their output overland to American consumers."
"But with transportation costs rising, more wood is now going to traditional domestic furniture-making centers in North Carolina and Virginia, where the industry had all but been wiped out. While the opening of the American Ikea plant, in Danville, Va., a traditional furniture-producing center hit hard by the outsourcing of production to Asia, is perhaps most emblematic of such changes, other manufacturers are also shifting some production back to the United States."
"But with transportation costs rising, more wood is now going to traditional domestic furniture-making centers in North Carolina and Virginia, where the industry had all but been wiped out. While the opening of the American Ikea plant, in Danville, Va., a traditional furniture-producing center hit hard by the outsourcing of production to Asia, is perhaps most emblematic of such changes, other manufacturers are also shifting some production back to the United States."
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