Why are americans wages diminishing?

[Mace]

they learn how to manipulate babysitters, nannys and teachers.

And if mommy was home, those same miscreants would be manipulating her. What in the world is your point?

I was responding to your insuation that children that have BOTH parents working outside the home learn a stronger work ethic when it is my opinion they do not.


And to respond to your above response, its less likely that the child would feel the need to be a miscreant because the whole reason they were being a miscreant with the babysitter/nanny was to get his/her parents attention. Kids want attention from their parents, and the substitute fill in, ie, nanny/babysitter is not the same thing.

Kids learn a work ethic by working....be it household chores at a young age, mowing the lawn, a paper route, farm chores, doing homework, etc.....whether both parents work, or not, is pretty much irrelevant. The more important issue is how the parents teach these lessons to their children in the time they do spend with them.

[War Wagon]

Kids learn a work ethic by working...

yep.

I had my first paper route by 9, mowing lawns and shoveling snow off sidewalks by 10.

[Trampis]

its less likely that the child would feel the need to be a miscreant because the whole reason they were being a miscreant with the babysitter/nanny was to get his/her parents attention. Kids want attention from their parents, and the substitute fill in, ie, nanny/babysitter is not the same thing.

Kids learn a work ethic by working....be it household chores at a young age, mowing the lawn, a paper route, farm chores, doing homework, etc.....whether both parents work, or not, is pretty much irrelevant. The more important issue is how the parents teach these lessons to their children in the time they do spend with them.

I understand what your saying Mace.


But haveing a job is a tireing and stressful thing. And when both parents are tired and stressed about work, the time they do spend with their child is of lessor quality.

[War Wagon]

But haveing a job is a tireing and stressful thing. And when both parents are tired and stressed about work, the time they do spend with their child is of lessor quality.

Try not having a job.

What kinda' nancy boy are you, Trampis?

Quality time with your children? That's precious... you dumbfuck.

[R-Jack]

I don't mean to offend you.

Don't flatter yourself.

You were the one that made the broad brush statement, not me. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't matter how much you stay at home if you are a shitty parent and a good parent can raise a good kid and hold down a job. My contrast/compare was merely an example of how going out and working hard provides a better example for kids than just staying home and not doing shit. By your logic, a schoolteacher* is a bigger contributor to the decline of this country than fucking welfare queen in house shoes.

Is it better to have a parent at home as much as possible? Sure, if it's a good parent. I hate to tell ya, but a good parent can walk and chew gum at the same time. Funny thing about good parents........what they teach kids when they are home is carried over into school and daycare time. You have clear guidelines on what good and proper behavior is and you enforce clear consequences if those guidelines are not met. Unless you have been blessed with a retard kid, that's about all it boils down to. I have no issue with anyone wanting to stay home and teach the children well, but really, it's not an 18 hour, 7 day a week job if you have a fucking clue.

A miserable cunt of a mother (or father) is not going to be a good parent, no matter how much they stay home. Period.



*yeah yeah, blahblahliberalagendablahblah, swap a diffent occupation in there if it helps.

[War Wagon]

I think that wages for unskilled Americans have stagnated since the 1970's for the following two primary reasons:

1. Intermodal shipping containers and foreign competition. When goods can be transported over great distances cheaply, unskilled labor becomes a commodity and the lowest bidder wins.

What?

Stick to what you may know something about, because you obviously don't know what it costs to ship a container overseas. It's not cheap, going or coming. Shipping costs are immutable and exorbitant. And why you would try to link shipping costs to unskilled labor is ponderous.

Go sleep it off.

[Atomic Punk]

In the 50-60s which are considered our golden age in this area, mom usually stayed home. now she's out there competing with dad for the yobs and simple supply and demand says that will result in lower wages.

why doesn't this get run? is it because nobody wants to appear anti-women in the work force?

88 explained foreign competition and an unskilled US labor force. Wal*Mart out front makes that clear.

Also we have high illegal immigration and I don't see how hospitals stay in business with the tremendous amount of illegals in the waiting rooms. In the rural hospitals there are signs written in Spanish telling the illegals they cannot be turned away.

Many employers have to pay increasingly higher benefits or cut them.

After the women's lib movement, you saw them coming into the workforce in formerly male dominated occupations. A theoretical question to ask would be "What if women always stayed in the traditional role as home maker and it remained that way to this day?" How would that effect the way things are today? I keep thinking of those shows from the 60's and 70's (Dick Van Dyke Show, etc.) where the husband came home to a "happy" wife.

[trev]

I'm not really buying it R Jack, but you are entitled to your opinion. My opinion on the matter is that kids grow up fast and why bother having them if you are going to leave them in daycare. That's just me. Call it a broad brush statement, but aren't kids better off being taken care of by family as opposed to strangers?

[H4ever]

I think that wages for unskilled Americans have stagnated since the 1970's for the following two primary reasons:

1. Intermodal shipping containers and foreign competition. When goods can be transported over great distances cheaply, unskilled labor becomes a commodity and the lowest bidder wins. There used to be a television manufacturing plant about 25 miles from where I grew up. That plant was opened in 1970 as a state of the art picture tube plant. It closed in 2004 forever after being idled and run at 1/10th of its capacity in the 1990's. There was no possible way for that plant to compete with foreign competition, even if it paid shitty wages. That has happened in many manufacturing sectors. Cleveland, which had a population of more than 1 million residents in 1950 now has less than 400,000. And it ain't just the shitty weather. There is a giant pool of unskilled labor outside the U.S. border that is willing to produce the same goods the U.S. used to produce at a fraction of the labor cost.

2. Innovation and automation. If you ever visited a manufacturing plant in the 1970's, you would have seen hundreds of workers on the assembly line performing all kinds of "manual" tasks. Many of those jobs were dirty, loud, and tedious. But they tended to pay fairly well because there was no other way to get the goods produced. But if you walk through those same plants today, you see huge numbers of "robots" (FANUC seems to be a popular brand in this part of the country), which perform the same jobs that unskilled laborers performed in the 1970's. The robots do it faster, more precisely and without any time off, injuries, health care benefits etc. An enormous amount of unskilled labor has been replaced by programmable, disposable machines.

There are other factors. But I think these are the two most significant.

There will always be a huge number of "unskilled" AMERICAN citizens in the work force. There is honor in digging a ditch...there is honor in cleaning a window. We should celebrate any AMERICAN who punches a clock and strives to make an honest living, whatever their capacity may be. Why should corporate whores be allowed to outsource such honorable AMERICAN positions? Answer me that and nevermind your portfolio for a brief, honest moment. That's what I thought....you hate AMERICA. Get out.....traitor.

[H4ever]

they learn how to manipulate babysitters, nannys and teachers.

And if mommy was home, those same miscreants would be manipulating her. What in the world is your point?

Get the corporate cock out of your mouth, Slappy. Why do you hate America? Jam your portfolio up your ass ya unAmerican, Mexico-13 cent an hour lovin- whore for profit margins.

[H4ever]

Why should corporate whores be allowed to outsource such honorable AMERICAN positions?

I forgot to answer your question. My bad. Truthfully, I don't think ditch diggers and window cleaners have much to worry about in terms of outsourcing (both are service jobs and not manufacturing jobs). But I see where you were going.

If you've ever owned a business, you know about competition. To be successful, you have to provide a better product at a better price than your competitors. Otherwise, you go out of business.

"Corporate whores" sometimes have to offshore labor in order to be competitive in the market. I say sometimes because it isn't always necessary, and is frequently done to maximize profit in the business owner's pocket. But isn't that what he's in business to do?

If you don't like the way things are going, you and some friends should get together and start a business here in the United States that makes a product presently produced overseas by unskilled labor. Borrow a ton of money to get yourself going. Pay yourselves an "honorable American" wage. And take your goods to market to compete with everything else that is out there. Who knows, you might succeed.

you love the concept of NAFTA don't you? This is nothing a tariff or two cannot fix.

[M Club]

There is honor in digging a ditch...there is honor in cleaning a window.

well good on honor. doubt that american ditch is going to be outsourced anytime soon. the window will probably be made in pakistan, but once it's been fitted at the new WTC i don't think they're going to ship it to mexico every month or so just to have some future illegal squirt windex on it.

[Dr_Phibes]

If you want to vent anger, get pissed at the dudes who invented giant container ships and intermodal containers.

Or capitalists. Or quasi/socialist economies. All those containers are jammed with product manufactured at a net loss, government subsidises production, non-stop. Compete with that :)

[LTS TRN 2]

Did someone say NAFTA? Well, we better pour a drink..and I'm talking tequila..

First...

Many of the 110 producers do not own their own plant for making tequila, and instead use existing facilities for production. Fewer than that have their own agave fields: many buy from farmers, so production is dependent on available plants, and price.

And..

According to the CRT's most recent inventory of agave plants, the number of new plants going into the ground in all regions since 2000 is rapidly dwindling:

* 2000: 60,032,279
* 2001: 72,736,636
* 2002: 93,033,743
* 2003: 86,002,424
* 2004: 42,021,157
* 2005: 27,988,476
* 2006: 12,865,774

Hmm, wonder why that is...

The Jalisco government's rural development secretariat forecasted the supply of agave will plunge by the end of the decade after the glut works itself out, suggesting another shortage looms.

Wha..!!

Loading piñas at TequilanaBut while the demand appears to be growing as rapidly as ever, farmers are planting corn to sell quickly, both for the production of the biofuel, ethanol, and for food. Right now corn is selling high and growing higher, which is good for farmers but has already caused a crisis in Mexico as the price of tortillas, a staple in the Mexican diet, have more than doubled, generating widespread public protest against the government. High tortilla prices put some Mexicans in danger of being malnourished. The poor eat an average of 14 ounces of tortillas daily, giving them 40% of their protein, according to Amanda Galvez, who runs a nutrition research institute at Mexico's National Autonomous University.

But surely they can dig ditches ..or wash honorable windows, right?

Some farmers see planting corn for biofuel as their only salvation since NAFTA stripped away tariff protection for small subsistence Mexican corn growers in the 1990s. This move allowed U.S. genetically-engineered, highly subsidized corn to enter the Mexican market driving prices down. The Mexican government stopped regulating corn prices. As a result, farmers stopped plating a crop that could not sell. NAFTA favoured corporate agribusiness at the expense of poor Mexican farmers, many of whom sought a better living across the border. But when imported corn prices rose, the cost of tortillas went up with it.


Oh....fuck...but.."right of capture"...right?...


WW

[Tom In VA]

See what I mean Wags.

I learned some unsourced information here AND now will be eating Mexican food this evening.


Thanks LTS

[smackaholic]

I think that wages for unskilled Americans have stagnated since the 1970's for the following two primary reasons:

1. Intermodal shipping containers and foreign competition. When goods can be transported over great distances cheaply, unskilled labor becomes a commodity and the lowest bidder wins.

What?

Stick to what you may know something about, because you obviously don't know what it costs to ship a container overseas. It's not cheap, going or coming. Shipping costs are immutable and exorbitant. And why you would try to link shipping costs to unskilled labor is ponderous.

Go sleep it off.

wags, stick to fork lifting and rice light pounding.

88 is right. ginormous container ships have made shipping ship across the ocean damn cheap. walmart full of made in china shit out front should have clued you into this fact.

[mvscal]

I think that wages for unskilled Americans have stagnated since the 1970's for the following two primary reasons:

It's not just unskilled labor that has stagnated.

[mvscal]

The adversely affected countries slap tarriffs on US goods.

Like that doesn't already happen. Wake the fuck up. Free trade is a fucking fantasy. We need to protect American markets and American workers.

Free traitors should be (and hopefully will be) shot.

[Goober McTuber]

Based on the originator of this thread, the American workforce is getting much stupider.

You've been retired for 40 fucking years, so what in the fuck would you know about any of this?

That's right, fatso. I'm so fucking rich, I retired at the age of 18.

You, in your other hand, will be paying child support and alimony until you keel over from a heart attack that will probably be brought on by Obama's next inauguration.

[LTS TRN 2]

Some farmers see planting corn for biofuel as their only salvation since NAFTA stripped away tariff protection for small subsistence Mexican corn growers in the 1990s. This move allowed U.S. genetically-engineered, highly subsidized corn to enter the Mexican market driving prices down. The Mexican government stopped regulating corn prices. As a result, farmers stopped plating a crop that could not sell.

I know this probably does not appear to be inconsistent to you, but as a sane person, I'm having a little trouble with your take. You first argue that higher corn prices in Mexico have caused farmers to shift away from planting agave to corn, and that higher corn prices are making it difficult for non-corn-farming Mexicans to feed themselves and agave is getting scarce. OK so far. But then you immediately argue that lower corn prices caused by tarriff-free US corn imports are killing Mexican corn-farmers, but do not mention whether agave planting has resumed or whether the lower corn prices are helping non-corn-farming Mexicans feed themselves.

Do me a favor. Pick one of the two arguments and run with it. Arguing that NAFTA drove up the price of corn while at the same time it drove down the price of corn makes no sense to people with proper synapse function. And when you choose which argument to run with, please consider that a Democrat president championed NAFTA and that Democrats continue to champion the use of corn for purposes other than food (e.g., ethanol, biofuels etc.).[/quote]

Okay, try to get this on one bounce...

Millions of Mexican farmers have been driven off their land by falling prices of their crops--while the agribusiness mega farms have made huge profits by going whole hog with Planet Corn. But as with the U.S., it's a situation of a tiny percentage at the top reaping huge profits while the earnings of the vast majority of workers have declined--or disappeared completely. The "either/or" fallacy of calling this disaster a Democrat or Republican issue is once again nothing but a distraction.

And now we're facing a very real possibility of the blue agave plants being effectively extinguished within ten years or so. As you might know, thew only grow in one place on earth.

So...indeed, the NAFTA treaty has been a complete catastrophe for American--and Mexican--workers, while reaping huge profits for the few giant food corporations. Typical neo-liberal, Koch brothers insanity.