@Patroklos
If find your argument that labor pay was too high unconvincing. Because too high for what?
For the market they were competing in.
It evidently worked until out-sourcing became attractive.
Its what made outsourcing attractive. Stuff like that isn't an instantaneous shift. Over years and years workers (and short sighted managers mind you, but their stake is less than the worker in this circumstance) drove their wages up and up, where the margin of profit went down and down. Industry by industry, factory by factory, they allowed themselves to be out competed. One businessman crunched the numbers and discovered outsource made sense. Another talked to the government of somewhere and opened up a better labor market. Another had commodities prices skyrocket on him based on the actions of the other two and went out of buisness.
So on and so on. Labor forces are not magic, they are actually pretty simple. Overhead is this and expenses are that in America, overhead is this and expenses are that in somewhere else.
And it evidently benefited EVERYONE by driving consumer demand through the roof.
Everyone aggregate, yes, but there were individual losers. Whenever economies shift there are going to be consequences for those caught in the middle of said shift. Especially those who can't see or refuse to see that shift coming.
The rest of your response basically says: Economies change.
Duh.
The question is how, why and if there are superior feasible alternative (economic change is for all I can see also on the macro level is not ahistoric - meaning, circumstantial - which suggests alternatives).
I answered all of those above. The world changed, some workers did not change with it or in the worst case exasperated their situation by doubling down on the old model.
The Democrats (and the Republicans when it suits them) like to roll out spots of some factory worker talking about how he works building cars just like his father did. Well guess what, your father was from a different generation and economy. Perhaps you should have a better goal for making a living than "do what my father did." And perhaps we should have a political culture that doesn't seem intent on telling people their specific job is an enshrined national treasure regardless of any economic forces.
Manufacturing is not a dead industry in the US, we still provide the vast majority of our own consumer needs ourselves, but when an industry is a loser it is a loser. Time to find a new winner.
The pre-outsourcing-era suggests: Yes, yes there are
It suggests no such thing. We had the exact same economic upheaval when the shift was from agriculture to industrialization. Did the society as a whole benefit? Yep. Were millions of individuals left doing a factory job making less than they did before using nothing of their previous skill set? Yep.
And this outsourcing thing is not something that started during this downturn either. In the prosperous 90s we were sending jobs overseas as well. Its obvious easier to deal with a change in your own part of the economic puzzle in a time of plenty, but the labor market is not the only part of the economy either.
So even though they were seriously underpaid, you want them to make less so that the US economy can be weakened?
Underpaid people don't get outsourced Cutlass, they get sourced.
But lets do it your way, continue to pay people more than their competition for doing the same thing. Then we will start with the protectionism. We will promise these workers the world despite knowing their wages and very jobs are being temporarily and artificially preserved, and then use their eventual downfall as a political ploy. Because its not like we don't know where that story ends.
By the way Cutlass, why are you not an American steel worker right now?
