« Running with the big dogs | Main | Weekend open thread, 22iv11 »

Black hole

By Owen Paine on Thursday April 21, 2011 02:12 PM

From the prayer tower of Wall Street:

"U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home... The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million ... That's a big switch from the 1990s, when the MNC's added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad...

In all, U.S. multinationals employed 21.1 million people at home in 2009 and 10.3 million abroad."

There you have it, folks: the latest decade of deindustrialization in a nutshell. The MNC's shipped ten percent of their jobs overseas.

We, as dirty pinko sour-appletons of course must append this fact: the number of domestic jobs -- in particular, manufacturing jobs -- blown up by MNC-fostered products and services coming back at us across our borders from various overseas locations is hardly encompassed by this 2.9 million number. Of course not; why, that number is as uncountable as the angels that sat out the war in Heaven.

Comments (9)

op:

a nice scramblers off set
http://streetlightblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-us-multinationals-expand-abroad.html

"The point is not to argue that offshoring never happens. It does. But the pattern of international trade, particularly when it comes to the activity of MNCs, is much more complex and nuanced than that. And the clearest implication of this data is that the primary motivation for MNCs to expand their operations outside the US is not to produce stuff more cheaply there to be sold to the US. Rather, MNCs expand overseas mainly to service overseas markets"

these really silly overly transparent stat jugglers delight me

op:

it surprises me
that the implication of faster foreign sales and production growth of our own home minted MNCs
isn't seen for what it potentially is
US exports missed
as well as US imports produced

now of course this is just the motions not their causes
that is where the story lies

op:

"Over the past year, the unemployment rate has fallen by about a percentage point to 8.8% in March, which matches our April 2010 forecast. Going forward, the new headwinds suggest an even slower improvement in the labor market than what was expected a year ago. "

san fran fed

recall the taboo line
the NAIRU
the non inflation accelerating rate of unemployment
is estimated by white hat econ cons to be 5 %

translation
we got 4 plus more years of sub par employment
ahead of us

translation
of translation

stag wages to the time horizon
nice eh ??
if you happen to be homer simpson
that is
and
recall food and gas prices recently ??
they're not acting friendly

then again
store bought cereal and beef based food and
truck ready gas
are for wage pigs
like homer and me
of course
not for midnight crows
that can live on occasional road kill
not a problem
for the likes
of our smbiva
No Shirts

"why, that number is as uncountable as the angels that sat out the war in Heaven"

Or as uncountable as the actual number of people in the country that would like to have a job but can't find one or have given up looking.

Official stats are complete bullshit, as I know you are well aware. The reality is that we're experiencing depression era unemployment and the only thing between many people and complete despair the fraying social safety net, which both repubs and democraps are working assiduously to dismantle.

Makes me wanna shoot someone in a suit.

David Cay Johnston's "30 year experiment"framing is exactly right, and would encompass all we'd need neat as a hat, if we had a coherent left. And what op-san is mentioning is entirely part of that. Basic as breakfast.

http://wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html

Meanwhile, we have Obama and Erik Olin Wright.

op:

"The reality is that we're experiencing depression era unemployment "

i think we do ourselves a dis service to suggest we are in conditions comparable
to the 1930's in depth of job loss or even more so
depth of needless human misery

difference
then many considered only three options
more diluted depression
ie new deal humane eclecticism
or de facto fascism
ie
putting the economy on a total war footing
in peace time

or
red revolution
---------
we now know how to restore full employment
without resort to either extreme option
thanx to keynesian macro
that we don't implement full strength keynesian remedies
that we have the sort of half assed stalled and stagnating recovery
ie de facto new deal humane eclecticism
--with out ..and this is signifigant
without ..without a WPA ---

-------------------
" the only thing between many people and complete despair the fraying social safety net"
all too true

".. both repubs and democraps are working assiduously to dismantle ..( the safety net as we know it )"

also all too true and its in the
defensive reform arena that this scrap continues between over matched unions and pwog outfits on our side
and the corporate behemoths and a mixed bag
rentier/proprietary rabble
on the other

op:

http://www.counterpunch.org/nader04222011.html

ladies and gentlemen

mr ralph nader :

" It is time to apply the standard of patriotism to the U.S. multinational corporations and demand that they pledge allegiance to the United States and 'the Republic for which is stands…. with liberty and justice for all.'
This July 4, 2011 would be good day for Americans to demand such a corporate commitment. .....
So what is their message to America and its workers ... 'we're outta here, with your jobs and industries' to dictatorial or oligarchic regimes abroad, such as China, that know how to keep their impoverished, and abused workers under control.


--skipping lots of the usual
fan fare and merit class oriented fright whiggery---.

" ....the drug companies no longer have any plant in the U.S. to manufacture essential raw ingredients for important antibiotics like penicillin....the critical ingredients for most antibiotics are now made almost exclusively in China and India. The same is true for dozens of other crucial medicines, including the popular allergy medicine prednisone; metformin, for diabetes; and amlodipine, for high blood pressure..."

"...Who gave China that dominant position? U.S. multinational drug companies, who along with other big U.S. companies, pushed through Congress, with Bill Clinton's support, ratification of both NAFTA's and the World Trade Organization's "pull down" trade agreements. They created the very globalized structure that they now claim they are beholden to in order to meet the global competition. Clever, aren't they?..."

"...Other unpatriotic acts include the oil companies who, despite being given a rich oil depletion tax allowance to invest in energy in the U.S., invested in oil production overseas. .... Don't forget the military-industrial giants that thrive on U.S. military expansion abroad and sell modern weapons to many dictatorial regimes which they use to oppress their people ...."

thanks ralph

.

juan:

not to sound neo malthusian but

senile capitalism has more to do
with unintentional expansion of informal sector
than creation of corp/co. employment

"About a billion people worldwide operate in the informal sector. Davis tells us they constitute ‘the fastest-growing . . . social class on earth’.

In the neoliberal model they are ‘the heroic self-employed’, operating in a paradise of deregulation where initiative and entrepreneurialism will eventually triumph to the benefit of all.

In practice, the growth of the informal sector has not even brought about the satisfaction of rudimentary needs – clean water, medical care, a stab at education – for most people living in the 21st-century slum. ‘Informal survivalism’ is Davis’s expression for the economic regime under which they live.

Even though there are sweatshop sectors and other labour-intensive niches in this informal economy, there simply aren’t enough jobs to go around."
[LRB, March 2007, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/jeremy-harding/it-migrates-to-them ]
By now well more than one billion people in the informal

ilo, june 2009, states that, simply to keep pace w/labor force growth, three hundred million jobs need to be created by 2015 - http://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ilo/2009/109B09_192_engl.pdf

for decades now the cap system has been hitting limits which can't be overcome via dif form(s) of corp organiztion and/or counter cyclic policies...but heck, everyone here already knows this,,,the word 'uncontrollability'
applies.

juan:

progressively insufficient labor value
gives us

contracted reproduction which
can be a type of immiserizing
growth

so just finished looking at
chinese soe profit rates

worse than zero were it not
for big 4 loans

gotta notion the transnats
are notall so hot

blackhole has content

Post a comment

Note also that comments with three or more links may be held for "moderation" -- a strange term to apply to the ghost in this blog's machine. Seems to be a hard-coded limitation of the blog software, unfortunately.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Thursday April 21, 2011 02:12 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Running with the big dogs.

The next post in this blog is Weekend open thread, 22iv11.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.31