Sunday, July 31, 2016

TRUMP -DOES HE HAVE IT CORRECT? ( ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 5/2/14)

It will be easy to criticize me for taking a serious matter and trivializing it.  The Russians are holding some Germans as prisoners.  They obviously don't care what Germany thinks.

Any further discussion of Crimea seems to be over and the Russians have walked off with many millions of people.  Europe has no military clout. It is obvious if Russia decides to reclaim Ukraine there won't be anybody to stop them.  We haven't been able to stop the Syrian situation, the Cuban situation, the Iranian situation, the Venezuelan situation and on and on.

The issue is not about Ukraine; it is does Russia have designs on further incursion into Europe?  If it does, no combination of forces in Europe can stop them.  Putin sees that underneath recovering economies and strong stock markets lies a broad undertone of socialist and populist voting positions.

Russia needs a bigger population and its clear they intend to get one, one way or another. Trade trumps threats.  We lose, they win and the long term is unknown.

Welcome to a Putin's Russia instead of a Gorbachev one.


Tuesday, July 12, 2016

JOBS...THIS IS A LOSING ROAD (ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 11/29/11)

There is nothing new about this. It's old hat, it's sad, it's destructive but it's the real story.

On November 22nd we titled a blog "Stop worrying about Globalization...Start Worrying about Ourself". We can't reiterate the importance of that blog except maybe a bit through the following vignette.

We had to make a change in one of our computer programs. We asked the two young people at the American company's service office operating in the Philippines a number of questions. We knew the answers, but we wanted an update.

Some of the questions were: Did you go to college...yes. How old are you...27. Do you like your job...yes. Is there room for advancement...yes. Would you consider yourself upper, lower or middle class...middle.

These young people remotely scurried through our computers with the agility and talent of a computer PhD which they were not. They spent an hour assisting us on the phone, they were extremely polite and the overall experience, from our point of view, was top notch.

THESE PEOPLE WERE PAID THE EQUIVALENT OF $11,0000 USD PER YEAR. If an American college graduate wanted to do this job they would probably earn $50,000 plus per year. This would be an additional $40,000 paid for the same service. It is one of the main reasons why jobs available to Americans has struggled.

Furthermore, as we have stated over and over again, the largest blocks of the unemployed would have no ability to do these jobs. We can create all the technology jobs we want but the minorities unemployed in this country will not be helped for an awful long time. Not only have we lost our manufacturing ability but we have lost the labor cost differential and its not going to change for a long time.

Just remember if you are a foreign company, the probability of giving these types of jobs to Americans is an extremely low number.

We need a government who will support our people's call for the equalization of unfair cost and currency advantages.
 

Shepard Osherow. All Rights Reserved