Posted by
Brenda Bee on Sunday, August 03, 2008 1:57:05 PM
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 taken 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."