Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

You can't sacrifice large swaths of the population for the so called "greater" good. Globalisation, as it stands now, is neo-colonialism. It offshores blue collar jobs and concentrates white collar jobs in rich countries. It disenfranchises blue collar workers in the west, and causes brain drain in the developing world. All it's done is benefit the elite. Read progressive economists like Piketty, and combine it with visits to places like Detroit. The current model hasn't been working. I don't think Trump has all the solutions, but he diagnosed the problem better than the smug elites. Same goes for Brexit. This isn't xenophobia, working class jobs are disappearing from the west. It's a real economic phenomena. Maybe one day the world will be united, but its too soon.

View on HN

You could argue that globalization has pulled millions of chinese peasants out of poverty, and helped creating a middle class in China, which is already increasing the pressure on the regime to transition to a democracy.

In any case, as some pointed out here, outsourcing to China is only the first step in the destruction of these jobs. Robotics is likely going to replace many of these jobs in the next 20y, which might bring back some industry into the West, ie more jobs but more sophisticated jobs.

> which is already increasing the pressure on the regime to transition to a democracy

Now is not the time to sing the praises of democracy.

> Robotics is likely going to replace many of these jobs in the next 20y, which might bring back some industry into the West, ie more jobs but more sophisticated jobs.

US manufacturing output is trending upwards, while employment is going downwards[1]. If anything, robotics is going to eliminate many more jobs than it creates, at least in manufacturing. Look at the tech giants today- huge companies, revenue in the billions, and they employ much fewer workers to achieve that output than giant companies of past decades. This is a major driver of economic inequality, and hence populism. But a government or laws or a president cannot hold back technological progress.

If anything, in 20 years, we could witness the end of capitalism as we know it because we can produce more with less employment, assuming current tech trends continue.

[1] https://www.mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output...

> If anything, in 20 years, we could witness the end of capitalism as we know it because we can produce more with less employment, assuming current tech trends continue.

I have to wonder if a capitalist like Trump can be of much help with such a transition.

"We’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet,” Trump said. "We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way."[1]

Trump thinks that talking to Bill Gates will allow him to "close that Internet up". This guy hasn't got a clue about technology.

The issues facing basically the entire global economy are extremely daunting. Our system of capitalism is based around increasing population and GDP leading to increasing levels of prosperity over time. What happens when you can automate large sectors of the economy, and you literally don't need that many people to sustain economic growth?[2]

[1] http://fortune.com/2015/12/08/donald-trump-bill-gates-intern...

[2] One estimate puts 47% of the economy at risk of automation within 20 years: http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2016/01/27/will-ro...

China and North Korea do a pretty good job of "closing that Internet up", all without the help of Bill Gates.

While I doubt Bill Gates would be willing to help with this endevour, it's not inconceivable that someone else will indeed be willing.

I was using that quote as an example of how unsuited Trump would be with dealing with the issue of technological unemployment (frankly, I don't think any political leader would be capable of dealing with it effectively, as no political leader deals with longer term problems, at least not in the western world). I'm not sure you want to comparing the US to China or North Korea. Yes, it's technically possible to Balkanise the Internet to attempt to control the free flow of information, but this would be utterly disastrous for the US economy.

Exactly, Trump supporters are going to be really disappointed

That's an awful easy argument to make when you're an upper-middle class white collar workers. I assure you, the vast majority of the American voting public do not care about the well being of Chinese peasants over their own. It's exactly that kind of Ivory Tower thought that landed us with Donald Trump.

> You could argue that globalization has pulled millions of chinese peasants out of poverty, and helped creating a middle class in China, which is already increasing the pressure on the regime to transition to a democracy.

Of course the college-educated middle-class service industry isn't paying for this in any way, they're the ones pocketing the difference between domestic wages and Chinese ones.

> In any case, as some pointed out here, outsourcing to China is only the first step in the destruction of these jobs. Robotics is likely going to replace many of these jobs in the next 20y, which might bring back some industry into the West, ie more jobs but more sophisticated jobs.

Productivity growth is the lowest it's ever been, and when it was the highest, wages were rising fastest and employment was at its peak. Automation, as it increases worker productivity, should also increase wages - adding to quality of life as people can consume more or choose to work less. The question is whether the government will make sure that a large proportion of the benefits of productivity are distributed to the workers, or will it allow those benefits to be entirely skimmed by the financial industry, creating an increasing hole in demand for anything other than luxury goods.

Globalism shuffled jobs around the world, and trade policies can change that to a modest extent -- one's trade policy can't change the fact that your citizens are too expensive versus Thailand or China. Tariffs against Mexico cannot make a Shenzhen. GM is not metaphorically coming back to Detroit.

US manufacturing employment is going down, and even if / when high tech manufacturing brings production back to the US, it will be robotic production. And with every company in the world racing for machine learning, I don't see how the future looks good for a specific generation of people in history too old to newly take up a globally competitive trade. Also, it's been mentioned around here that driving is one of the most frequent jobs in most states in the US, and that Uber recently made a deliver of beer by automated truck. Uber and every relevant company in the world is trying to destroy a category of worker from everywhere in the world.

Tariffs can absolutely change the fact that your citizens are too expensive. You can argue that the consequences are not worth tariffs, but you can't say that they don't promote production in your country.

The only way for a rich nation to have metaphorical Shenzhen is if they're okay with Shenzhen-style citizens. Tariffs can't make it more attractive for Foxconn to move their factory plans to the US. I'd also say that worker discontent is one of the major sources of Trump support, but the last thing they want are the ecological reasons for making Shenzhen an attractive manufacturing capital. You need an environment where laborers cannot even fathom leaving or engaging in collective bargaining. China is okay with a scenario where much of the nation profits from the backs of abused workers because they have the might to quash malcontent. In a democracy where these abused workers have voting rights, this translates to instability.

The decentralized nature of the economy also makes it so that an overly internal strategy like tariffs are insufficient. If the US stops buying from China altogether, China is still the manufacturing pit stop of the world. The rest of the world has no reason to coordinate the tariff strategy with you. Only your nation artificially sees increased prices. It's even worse if your nation ups production but nobody wants to buy it because it's too expensive. Your production isn't a power unless you export, and tariffs alone won't make you export.

Manufacturing businesses want an environment where (1) citizens are dirt cheap, (2) citizens can be legitimately abused, (3) government is stable and amenable to these practices, (4) the country is connected to global supply chains so you can integrate that country as part of your production system.

Also, if / when manufacturing does come back to the US, I imagine that it will bear the fruits of every company racing towards applied machine learning. It will be robotic labor that outscales cheap labor.

I agree that manufacturing jobs are now automated, so they aren't coming back. But your other points are not true - imagine the US halted all imports. If you halt all imports, companies either produce in the US or don't sell to US consumers - it doesn't matter what labor costs. With tariffs US companies don't have to compete with dirt-cheap international labor. Whether or not this is a good idea is debatable, but you can definitely use policies to promote domestic production.

If you want <exports>, with tariffs, US companies still have to compete with dirt-cheap international labor. This is what I meant by improving production but not production that <exports>.

Because when you export, you're once again selling on the global market. You must compete with all players. If you can't export, if your manufacturing machine is too expensive, or if your output is too non-unique, then you aren't creating the fertile atmosphere of Shenzhen. How is this going to increase export to generate more American wealth?

Having a production machine that makes things only for your nation and nowhere else is just a redistribution of money. Redistribution of money can be very healthy, but why not just do it directly without potentially wasteful intermediary processes?

Also, I mentioned the point of Shenzhen style abused labor manufacturing vs. robotic high tech labor, and that if manufacturing comes back to the US, it will likely be in the form of robotic manufacturing, and it's not obvious whether this manufacturing will have much room for the masses of unskilled workers.

Manufacturing never left the US. Manufacturing in the US is doing just fine. It is, however, as you suggest, automated to a degree that means manufacturing jobs left the US.

>All it's done is benefit the elite.

It's benefitted everyone except the working class in developed countries. That's a lot of people. The great majority, actually.

But not the majority of the United States, apparently.

Clinton voters are by and large an educated, distinctively non blue collar bunch.

Clinton won the popular vote, and Donald Trumps voters were not mostly the poor: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/el...

It has not benefitted people outside developed country either. People are being exploited in mines of africa, in factories in asia (look at the textile industry or high tech)...

The alternative for most of those people is dying of famine and extreme poverty. Nobody is forcing them to work in those factories, they are doing so because that's the best alternative they will get in their countries.

> The alternative for most of those people is dying of famine and extreme poverty. Nobody is forcing them to work in those factories

So if I read you well, you are saying that it's either they die of hunger, either they work in those factories. That sounds a bit like a false choice, of course they are forced to work in those factories, otherwise they die!

The government of China is getting billions of $ because west firms make chinese people work for almost nothing. So chinese gov. isn't going to change anything, it's going so well for them that way. So the west firm are in fact encouraging those very poor conditions of work, they are NOT improving the living of those people.

> So if I read you well, you are saying that it's either they die of hunger, either they work in those factories. That sounds a bit like a false choice, of course they are forced to work in those factories, otherwise they die!

What's the alternative? They are not going to get any comfy middle-class jobs in their neck of the woods.

> The government of China is getting billions of $ because west firms make chinese people work for almost nothing. So chinese gov. isn't going to change anything, it's going so well for them that way. So the west firm are in fact encouraging those very poor conditions of work, they are NOT improving the living of those people.

Western governments or companies can't really do anything, can they? It's not their concern nor their duty to do anything about it. If the roles were reversed, you think that Chinese or African governments and companies would care about workers conditions in the West?

It's very easy to take the moral high ground when discussing this topic. But are you prepared to pay $10000 or more for your shiny new electronics? I'm pretty sure that most people are not. Truth is, as horrible as it may sound, that we all profit from this, and for the people working in those factories it's probably better than the alternative.

Software development and IT jobs that moved to India and China are blue collar? Call centers?

> Software development and IT jobs that moved to India and China are blue collar? Call centers?

They're working class. Maybe not traditionally blue collar, but yes.

IT and software jobs are as white collar as it gets. Call centers, maybe that's a new economy blue collar.

Nope, in the UK any tech job is "blue collar", that's how the old class system still works.

I've literally never seen any evidence of that being the case.

Nobody is talking about the old British class system in this thread so that doesn't appear to be the relevant context.

Of course it is, unless you don't think IT outsourcing is "a thing"? It is literally no different to the factory or shipyard or steel mill closing in country X and reopening in country Y.

We are talking about the US election voting splits, so the British definition is interesting, but not relevant. In the US, blue collar usually means some sort of physical labor. If you are sitting at a desk, it is white collar, no matter how menial the task.

As an American software developer working perm in London for 5 years and now returning to California ( ;_; ) , I can say that salaries are 3-4 times higher in the US for the same role. Just converting the currencies.

Out of topic: I saw your other comment, I can't upvote it because it's dead (probably for other reasons), but thank you very much for your testimonial, support and encouragement.

I hear this a lot, but do you mean more IT/technician jobs than software engineering/developing? I'm reasonably sensitive to class particulars and I'm pretty sure software engineering is middle class. Or at least, exactly the same as mechanical/design engineers

Its still considered a " profession" i.e. in the A or B classification

What's the difference between software engineer and oil or mechanical engineer? Same education, same pay, same collar. Management of any of them would be white collar though. It's not about wether your hands get dirty.

They are white collar as well, I just singled out software engineers because it is a type of job that is well know to be outsourced. Not sure if that is as true if oil or mechanical engineers.

Differential equations.

To me IT is blue collar, even programming is becoming blue collar too.

My friend's words were eye opener. Programming is like welding. Different languages are like different types of welding. You've got your MIG, TIG, Oxy-Acetilene. It's just the matter of learning the API.

Yes, programming is a trade. Which is perfectly fine.

If someone states that programming is only about learning APIs then I automatically assign him to the 'code monkey' category.

By that definition, any job requiring specific skill training is blue collar, accountants, surgeons, lawyers, ..

Maybe the only 'white collar' jobs left would be politicians and sales?

Some people consider public speaking and charisma to be learnable skills.

Lower skill may be the important distinction rather than whether it's manual labor intensive or not like we traditionally view in the US. Sitting at a computer at a click farm in a developing country is completely different than sitting and writing options trading algorithms. On the other hand, I can't think of anyone that became a wealthy by sweeping floors, hammering nails, and greeting customers at the door regardless of their country or region.

See that's the thing, first blue collar, then white collar and eventually the entire economy is gutted to serve the rich who really don't care where the live as long as it's nice and they can remain rich.

All a result of successive trade agreements that destabilize both economies involved to cater to the elite few on both sides.

Think: That "giant sucking sound" crossed with Niemoller.

>...the entire economy is gutted to serve the rich who really don't care where the live as long as it's nice and they can remain rich.

Donald Trump is also rich. What if he also make policies that benefit his organisation and his associates ?

He most certainly will. That's how he rolls.

Maybe. It's possible that this self-obsessed ogre realises through the machinations of the political system that he can still be a "winner" without focusing on the accumulation of personal wealth.

Remember, from January he is running for a second term and he's set a hilariously high bar for himself. If he doesn't make his existing voter base very happy in 2-3 years, he's toast.

By definition White Collar jobs are done in offices; so that includes all IT and Call Centers. Blue Collar is manual labor.

It's probably time to proclaim a new color for working class white collars.

Call centers aren't really offices, though. They look like this:

http://www.savalinews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Call-Ce...

Which look very similar to this:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d4/84/2b/d484...

The main difference is the machine is a calling machine instead of a sewing machine.

Call centers are more like call mills, and those people are definitely wearing shirts with blue collars.

You don't need to sacrifice them, the right wing parties that are being voted in chose to do that and are now being rewarded by the blowback.

Do you not remember the animosity of the GOP towards Trump?

Clinton was almost unanimously favoured by Wall St. and large corporations.

Destroying Wall Street and making life better for working class people are two different things.

I believe that he might destroy big corporations, I don't believe that will be good for the people they employ, or who have their pension invested in them.

Basic left wing ideas of taxing successful and rich people and reducing inequality, supporting those who lose jobs to structural unemployment might have headed this off. I guess we'll never know.

I agree, but want to point out that it is not just blue collar jobs being off-shored. Many white-collar jobs (software development included) are being off-shored, too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com