Mish says you can work for 400 bucks a month

Some mothers do have 'em, and so does
the Internet. I guess you can like the
investigative reporting of one person while
hating their politics. Mish is just such a
guy for me.

He'll say that banks are ripping us off,
but let's not tax the rich. It's regressive.
#sarc

He doesn't like government, or unions,
but without those, you can see how
difficult it is in the US for the worker
to fight against his constructive
destruction from outsourced jobs
by vulture capitalist, to
lost real wages, and blackmailing
with cuts in pay.
And yet, Mish shows no sympathy
to any worker, ever.

So Mish argues the libertarian line,
"if you can be screwed, you will
be and that's that"
He hails the destruction of unions in the US.
He hails workers who spend  the whole
year on the road, like a gypsy, as a solution
to the employment problem.
He ignores the tax handouts that companies
get and their offshoring of profits.

Just because he gets paid to sit at a computer,
he is able to have no truck with the fate of the
Great Unwashed.
I hate that sh*t.

Every once in a while he trips over one of his
ideas in action. If you destroy manufacturing
and unions, you get a lack of skills.
The desire of companies to have highly skilled
Americans work for 10 bucks
an hour finds no employees. The reason is
that it's hard to live on 10 bucks an hour and
also worry about losing a hand, or your job,
every day. That's the result of the race to
the bottom in employee arbitrage.

What's his solution? uhm, more robots:

checkit:  1 Mish  [when the tax breaks for machines lead to one-man factories, what will we do then, Mish?]

Apple to Relaunch Manufacturing in US, Net Result +200 Jobs; Lights Out

In bits and pieces, manufacturing is returning to the US. Unfortunately, jobs (at least human jobs) are not returning as well.

For a case in point, the Fiscal Times reports Apple’s Big Manufacturing Boom to the U.S. — 200 Jobs.

    At the end of last week, CEO Timothy Cook announced that Apple intends to invest $100 million next year to relaunch part of its manufacturing operations in the US.

    Apple and Foxconn, the contractor responsible for manufacturing iPhones, iPads and a host of other Apple products in China and other countries, is expanding its existing operations in America to build Mac computers. How many jobs will it create? About 200—a number that wouldn’t even get you noticed in the Fortune 1000.

    Last year the Boston Consulting Group published a study forecasting a “manufacturing renaissance” in the U.S. as China’s wage rates and currency rise, skilled workers grow scarcer, and U.S. productivity maintains a strong lead over China’s. Apple thus joins a group of U.S. companies—Caterpillar, Ford, NCR—that have already reckoned that “Made in USA” makes good business sense.

    Something important is happening here. With the rapid emergence of China, India, and other developing countries as “middle income nations,” the classic cheap-labor-for-exports model is losing its primacy. So, it appears, is the automatic assumption that wage rates more or less dictate where a manufacturer will locate. As Boston Consulting argued, in the future companies such as Apple will manufacture in China for the Chinese market and in America for American consumers.

    It will be interesting, with these studies in view, to see how manufacturing fares in the U.S. in coming years. We still have 2 million fewer manufacturing jobs than we did pre-crisis back in 2007. And do not forget: Apple is all about iPads and iPhones now; the Macs coming back account for less than a fifth of its revenue. It still promises some jobs. But what is good for Apple may not prove good for everybody making things. This is not the beginning of a gold rush.

Forces in Play

    Rise in labor costs abroad

    Theft of intellectual property

    Productivity

    Automation

    Shipping costs

    Diminishing tax advantages of overseas production

... The actual numbers are irrelevant, the enormous trend towards lights-out manufacturing and robotics is not.

The more robots are in use, the more labor costs are irrelevant, and the more manufacturing will return. It's that simple. 

2 He argues against unions, but unions kept the 
manufacturing employees pay at normal real
levels. For the rest of us, nominal wages have 
stagnated, but inflation (really 5-10%/year) has
eaten up our pay. THanks again, Mish

Mish

Obama to Close "Skills Gap"; Where? How? Why is the Middle Class Shrinking? Living Wages

President Obama says there is a "skills gap". A quick search says that many misguided souls believe the president.

For example Forbes writer Rich Karlgaard says The Skills Gap Exists.

Karlgaard believes the "gap is sure to grow as the population ages and industries from health care to manufacturing are altered by technology. Outsourcing to China won’t be the answer, either. Its population is aging the fastest of all the major economies."

Vicki Needham writing for The Hill says Skills gap is hampering labor market.

Needham, citing a report by Deloitte says "job creation in the United States is hampered by a lack of highly skilled and adaptable workers whose talents don't match current job openings".

... Skills Don't Pay the Bills

The above columnists express widely believed economic hooey.

In contrast, Adam Davidson, in his New York Times column, Skills Don’t Pay the Bills, precisely summarizes the problem in four deep thoughts.

Deep Thoughts

    There is no skills gap.

    Who will operate a highly sophisticated machine for $10 an hour?

    Not a lot of people.

    As a result, there is going to be a skills gap.

Davidson visited the engineering technology program at Queensborough Community College in New York City led by instructor Joseph Goldenberg whose manufacturing classroom consisted of "nothing but computers".

With that introduction, inquiring minds tune in a bit closer to some snips from Davidson.

    Nearly six million factory jobs, almost a third of the entire manufacturing industry, have disappeared since 2000. And while many of these jobs were lost to competition with low-wage countries, even more vanished because of computer-driven machinery that can do the work of 10, or in some cases, 100 workers. Those jobs are not coming back, but many believe that the industry’s future (and, to some extent, the future of the American economy) lies in training a new generation for highly skilled manufacturing jobs — the ones that require people who know how to run the computer that runs the machine.

    Running these machines requires a basic understanding of metallurgy, physics, chemistry, pneumatics, electrical wiring and computer code. It also requires a worker with the ability to figure out what’s going on when the machine isn’t working properly. And aspiring workers often need to spend a considerable amount of time and money taking classes like Goldenberg’s to even be considered. Every one of Goldenberg’s students, he says, will probably have a job for as long as he or she wants one.