09-20-2018, 02:05 PM
(09-20-2018, 12:40 PM)Benton Wrote: To the bold, we aren't there yet. And if we get there, that's where the balance comes in. Consumers and workers have choices. Government can legislate to encourage consumer decisions that promote American jobs, or they can legislate to encourage consumer decisions that promote jobs in other countries.
Personally, I don't use kiosks. It put someone out of a job in the name of increased profit. If no one used them, companies would be forced to stop doing it or see customers go to another competitor.
Tariffs help. We need more of them. And we need a realistic look at tying wages to the economy, tax reform and other economic foibles otherwise we're going to be stuck in deficit spending forever.
The balance has already tipped to some low margin industries. Robots are the real threat to low skill labor not other countries. The enemy has never been other countries it has always been technology. Technology has killed manufacturing here because we simply don't need as many people here to do labor intensive jobs. Very mundane repetitive tasks that take 4 humans overseas get done by one here using a machine. The funny thing is the Tariffs hurt most the people they look to help in that the increases that get passed on are, in relation to salary, the biggest to the low income. I'd argue we take all the money we are about to lose from the retaliatory tariffs and continue to use it for skilled based job training.
It's a shell game, the retaliation from someone like China cancels out anything we are gaining it's just moving who is affected by it. Everyone still pays in the increased goods department though, some may just not have jobs now to pay the increases. Well unless we bail out every industry like we did the farmers.
