On September 25, 2013, Bob Adelmann writes on TheNewAmerican.com:
More than half of 200 U.S. companies with sales greater than $1 billion are moving jobs back to the United States, or are planning to, within the next two years. The announcement by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on Tuesday confirms a subterranean paradigm shift that’s been underway for at least two years. Because of rising labor costs in China and elsewhere, the mathematics supporting offshoring of former American jobs has drastically changed for the worse, according to Harold Sirkin, senior partner at BCG:
Over the past couple of years, we’ve projected an improvement in U.S. manufacturing competitiveness by 2015 that would help drive an American manufacturing revival. The results of our latest survey make clear that a profound shift in attitude is beginning.
When you look at the total cost of production for many goods, the U.S. appears increasingly attractive.
The impact is likely to be enormous. A report released by BCG in August predicted that between 2 ½ million and 5 million new jobs would be created in U.S. manufacturing before the end of the decade, less than seven years from now. This is estimated to bring down the unemployment rate by between two and three full percentage points.
While this is an inevitable outcome of rising labor costs globally and tectonic shifts in the technologies of production globally, which is destroying jobs and devaluing the worth of labor, especially in manufacturing jobs that hugely benefit from human-intelligent machines, super-automation, robotics and digital computerized operations, the jobs returning will still be relatively low-paying except for the technologically sophisticated work necessary to the operations of the advanced non-human factor of production.
To be competitive globally, where businesses will also be able to use advanced labor-destroying technologies of production, will require American businesses to develop teams of workers to further innovate and invent even more sophisticated technologies of production (that will destroy jobs and devalue the worth of labor). This means that the jobs created will be technically skilled, require advance training and education. The reality that exists today will exist tomorrow. The reason is that the role of physical productive capital is to do ever more of the work, which produces income. Full employment is not an objective of businesses. Companies will continue to strive to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum. Private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work will continue to be eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role.
Therefore it should be obvious that jobs creation will not be enough as a traditional income source for the majority of Americans. Another source of income MUST be developed. That source is individual OWNERSHIP of the FUTURE wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets of an expanding economy that can support general affluence for EVERY American.
How this goal can be achieved is a question that is not in the current discussion of our nation’s political leadership, academia or media––but needs to be.
Our problem today is ownership of the productive capital assets held by corporations is concentrated among a tiny wealthy ownership class, and the majority of citizens are either job serfs or welfare serfs and either dependent on a job or on the “collective tax extraction and debt obligations” of The Government for welfare support. Not only is America OWNED by the so-called 1 percent, but the system is structured such that they will OWN the FUTURE, because investment opportunities are restricted to those with savings to invest––and most Americans do not have savings or assets that can be put at risk as loan security for capital credit investment loans.
The other reality, which needs to be stressed, is that while 99 percent of the population is dependent on a job as their ONLY source of income, as tectonic shifts in the technologies of production continue to exponentially impact every sector of the economy, jobs will continue to be destroyed and the worth of labor devalued. Thus, unless we reform the system, people will become increasingly dependent on “democratic socialism” funded by tax extraction and future debt obligations.
What should be the goal is to return power to each of us equally. Wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital property ownership is the ONLY way to accomplish this. Otherwise “socialism” with centralized decision-making as to who and how much each person is entitled to will be decided by an “elected” elite parentage acting as The Government.
Such a future outcome, which respects the principles of private property ownership and human rights, could be termed “personalism,” which is based on a new economic paradigm. Personalism structures ownership among individuals acting as individuals with full voting rights in the conduct of the corporations they are share owners in, each rightfully entitled to a respective share (according their their stock ownership holdings) in the full earnings generated by the corporations they own.
In order to accomplish a personalized society, we need to adopt policies that effectively balance production with consumption, never allowing the private sector ownership of productive capital assets to be concentrated among a wealthy few but instead ensure that FUTURE productive capital asset formation is financed to create broadened, universal individual ownership. Otherwise America will continue to slip into socialism. That is what happens every single time property and therefore power is centralized in any civilization.
The problem most people have with understanding this phenomena is that they fail to see that there are TWO INDEPENDENT factors of productive input, which results in products and services being made and delivered. We live in a society that respects and should uphold private property rights––rights to the fruits of one’s labor input and to that of one’s owned non-human instruments used as a productive input. This is the invisible structure of the society. The non-human factor (owned by individuals) is exponentially advancing and as a result causing tectonic shifts in the technologies of production that destroy jobs (which increases the number of people seeking employment) and devalues the worth of labor, which puts competitive pressures to globalize production, which shifts employment to other countries where labor is less costly as well as regulations and controls.
The solution is to reform the system to ensure that as we expand the economy we simultaneously create NEW OWNERS of the newly formed wealth-creating, income-generating productive assets, without taking from those who now OWN until their death at which time there should be, as a substitute for inheritance and gift taxes, a transfer tax imposed on the recipients whose holdings exceeded $1 million, thus encouraging the super-rich to spread out their monopoly-sized estates to all members of their family, friends, servants and workers who helped create their fortunes, teachers, health workers, police, other public servants, military veterans, artists, the poor and the disabled.
For solutions see “The Absent Conversation: Who Should Own America?” published by The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/who-should-own-america_b_2040592.html and by OpEd News at http://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-Absent-Conversation–by-Gary-Reber-130429-498.html
Also see “The Path To Eradicating Poverty In America” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/the-path-to-eradicating-p_b_3017072.html and “The Path To Sustainable Economic Growth” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/sustainable-economic-growth_b_3141721.html. And also “Second Income Plan” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/second-income-plan_b_3625319.html
Also see the article entitled “The Solution To America’s Economic Decline” at http://www.nationofchange.org/solution-america-s-economic-decline-1367588690 and “Education Is Critical To Our Future Societal Development” at http://www.nationofchange.org/education-critical-our-future-societal-development-1373556479.
Also see “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at NationOfChange.org http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624 and “The Income Solution To Slow Private Sector Job Growth” at http://www.nationofchange.org/income-solution-slow-private-sector-job-growth-1378041490.
