Wednesday, July 07, 2010

How Obamanomics kills jobs

Imagine you own a tech company looking to open a chip manufacturing facility.

There are several issues that you'll measure to decide where, when, how, & why to place that facility in it's ultimate location.

For instance, you'll review logistics (the ability to move product from Point A to Point B), you'll review the cost and stability of production such as utilities, land, labor etc.

Now your average "progressive" believes corporations are solely out to minimize the costs of production. But if that were the case, wouldn't Haiti or Sierra Leone be absolute job mecca's right now?

But they are not. Why? Because these countries have never developed a work force to be able to accomplish minimal tasks. How could they possibly do the work involved with the production of micro chips?

See, sweat shops have their place in a developing economy. For instance, you don't give your kid a key to a tractor if they haven't shown a modest competence with a lawn mower. After your kid proves they can handle a lawn mower you can move them up to something more sophisticated.

It's how things work. Companies don't locate plants in areas where the workers can't do the work. Depressed areas start with sweat shops, the money their economy earns adds to the standard of living for the area. That allows children to get educated, maybe even allows for them to go overseas for their education.

Then the economy evolves for the next level of jobs.

How does that pertain to Obamanomics?

Every time we pass a minimum wage law, a health care mandate or other unfriendly business mandate, we force those entry level jobs to another country.

Those jobs are needed for our entry level workers to obtain the skills to move on to the next job on the skill ladder.

I remember reading The Jungle in high school and was appalled with the conditions workers in the meat packing business had to endure at that time. But I would offer that without those jobs, Henry Ford could never have set up his first assembly line. First, there would not have been any money in the economy for anyone to buy cars. Second, no one would have had the smarts to actually build those cars in the first place.

Little by little, you are starting to watch the shift of good jobs going overseas. And it's because those economies welcomed the "bad" jobs first.

We currently have a chronic unemployment problem in this country. And in an attempt to "help the little guy", Obamanomics hasn't done anything but push jobs out of this country. The jobs those little guys would be doing.

And slowly but surely, those high quality blue collar jobs will be right behind them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Add to that welfare entitlements. Those are entitlements you lose once you start working. So if you get a job for $10 bucks an hour ($20k a year) but in taking that job you lose 10 thousand dollers a year in welfare checks. Marginally speaking that job is effectively only paying $5 an hour. That's a job killer.