Made in America

A local economist whose views I respect wrote an article for today’s Sunday paper saying that there need not be so much gloom over the “giant sucking sound” of jobs being offshored from America. He says that the US also imports jobs; foreign companies—most notably the Japanese auto companies—have built plants here and created a lot of good jobs. He cites auto plants in the South, Midwest and even the San Francisco Bay Area.

While the nation agonizes over the giant sucking sound of jobs going overseas, we must not lose sight of the opportunities of job creation here from attracting foreign companies to locate their businesses and factories in the United States.

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Sunny Days In Snowy Davos

Optimism about The Economy…sort of.

Middle class NDE (part 2)

So what’s this global sourcing of knowledge worders (see part 1) mean for ACS? Well, my experience is that the ACS is pretty much a middle class institution, so the closer the death-of-the-middle-class scenario plays out the more significant the impact. Our income and our volunteer resource comes from discretionary time and money. If sustaining a middle class lifestyle is threatened by new wage medians in a world labor market that are well below customary US salaries, then I don’t see how we could avoid impact. We seem to weather recessions well because we own the brand on a relentless disease. But a long-term downward pressure on living standards may be another matter. People may have to live on closer margins of disposable income or turn to liquidating existing assets to maintain lifestyle. Also volunteer time may be affected if unemployment increases or increased work hours are necessary to maintain living standards. In the long run I’d think the income of the ACS and the US economy have to parallel.

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Middle class near death experience?

The article circulated last week, “The Digital Death Rattle of the American Middle Class: A Cautionary Tale,” really cranked-up the alarm about the possibility of the economic underpinnings of US society being knocked out by low cost information labor in countries around the world. I mean, death of the middle class? That’s the most dire and dour interpretation I’ve seen yet.

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