Austerity measures have they ever saved an economy?

I agree. Certainly programming, engineering consulting, and some legal work are currently being out sourced to India to the disappointement of many people who are employed in these areas. But the characterization of these jobs is manufacturing or service is secondary. I hope I haven't disrailed the discussion.Crashfrog's characterization still irks me though...Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I never said there was a problem with service jobs. What I said was "building an economy on top of a very large service sector, relying on jobs that are mostly not exportable (at least not reasonably with available technologies) runs the risk of a trade deficit" (Message 133) and that "there are some pretty serious and lasting impacts on an economy and its people when the primary form of employment shifts to service jobs and away from manufacturing and agricultural/extraction jobs" (Message 121). Which is what I've said. Their non-exportability doesn't cause the imbalance, it just makes it worse, because so long as we are primarily engaged in the production of non-exportable services, we can never hope to regain the balance and settle the trade deficit.The problem is that our economy has been moving away from the production of exportable goods in favor of the production of non-exportable services; and this, obviously, runs the risk of creating a trade deficit.Jon

Yes, you did say those things, but you also said this: I'm asking you to describe how it would be more convenient if service jobs could be exported. But getting you to do so seems to be impossible.

I thought that was pretty obvious in what I said, but I'll repeat myself and then explain myself:

quote:

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Jon in Message 137:

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Their non-exportability doesn't cause the imbalance, it just makes it worse, because so long as we are primarily engaged in the production of non-exportable services, we can never hope to regain the balance and settle the trade deficit.

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The products of non-exportable service jobs (services) cannot be exported to offset a trade imbalance. So as nice as it is that we don't soon have to worry about retail clerk positions being outsourced, it is also a bummer that we cannot export their product to settle the deficit.On a further note, I'd argue that running a trade deficit is more detrimental than the comfort of knowing certain jobs cannot be outsourced, since goods are at the heart of meaningful economic transactions, not services.Man cannot live on legal advice alone!Jon

I don't see any place where I've attempted to make any classification of what is a service job and what is a manufacturing job. How are you not getting this? You're the one trying to find the bright line between manufacturing and service. I'm the one telling you that there's no such line in a world where mass-producing an iPhone and mass-producing a taco are almost the same job.You're simply lying about my position, Nukes, in the best tradition of the practice of law.

You can take your "irked" and eat a bowl of salty dicks with it.

Jon, this makes no sense to me. Let's use grocery bagging as an example, non-exportable service job. The output of grocery bagging is a bunch of bagged groceries that belong to the person who purchased them. The energy is supplied by the baggers labor.Even if it were possible to export bagging to other countries, who outside of this country would want to pay a US bagger $7.25 or more an hour?

I think what Jon is trying to say, though he's not articulating it very well, is that the service jobs we do in theis country that are "un-offshorable" do not produce anything that can be sold overseas.The off-shorable jobs, like manufacturing and mining and such, produce goods that can then be sold back to America. This creates a trade deficit.The point that Jon seems to be overlooking is that much of the jobs being sent over seas are still owned by American companies, so they don't technically contribute to a trade deficit.

That's an additional point beyond the one I am making, which is that the very nature of many services makes them difficult to export.But apparently I haven't been articulating it very well, so hopefully Perdition's explanation will be of some help.Jon

What the hell is this, then? Or this (blue = service)?

Uh. No. I am not. I am talking about support programers. I am in I/T person that deals with networking, and often I have to deal with the application support people that use the network for their job. I am NOT talking support center people.I also have to deal with operations that have been off shored to Brazil. Initially, they were reasonable, but the tern over was very high, and every 'incarnation' of operations lost technical skill so they are horrible now.The folks in Argentina are good, and managed to keep their skill level up.. at least the ones i deal with. They don't have the turn over ratio from the ones in India, China, Russia , or Brazil. I am hoping the folks in China get better trained and can actually mange the job.. but I am not holding my breath... the knowledge base for training them properly has evaporated.

Isn't it a bit silly to complain about that? Those jobs exists because we require them to be performed. The jobs that produce things that can be sold overseas are surely also exportable. So it occurs to me that the blaming anything but exportable jobs for the trade balance is without merit.Surely Jon meant something else.

Nobody is arguing that there is no growing trade imbalance. What I am questioning is your analysis of the cause, and your nice maps and graphs don't shed any light on that. All that's necessary for a trade imbalance is we keep buying goods elsewhere, but elsewhere isn't buying our stuff for one reason or another.I don't think it makes sense to blame jobs that inherently cannot produce anything exportable, yet must be done. The blame lies elsewhere. Yes, we have to clean our own streets, but isn't a bit silly to say that the fact that U.S. street cleaners' efforts cannot clean the streets in China is adding to the trade imbalance.

Nobody is arguing that there is no growing trade imbalance. What I am questioning is your analysis of the cause, and your nice maps and graphs don't shed any light on that. All that's necessary for a trade imbalance is we keep buying goods elsewhere, but elsewhere isn't buying our stuff for one reason or another.I don't think it makes sense to blame jobs that inherently cannot produce anything exportable, yet must be done. The blame lies elsewhere. Yes, we have to clean our own streets, but isn't a bit silly to say that the fact that U.S. street cleaners' efforts cannot clean the streets in China is adding to the trade imbalance.

Yes, and these are the jobs we're losing overseas. Leaving us with only jobs that don't produce anything that can be sold overseas. Which creates a trade deficit. Yes, the jobs are required, but if everyone is a hairdresser, a burger flipper, or a yoga instructor, we're left with jobs that are only useful for those in the immediate area, and cannot produce anything to be sold overseas.These jobs were necessary 20 years ago, too, but we also had manufacturing and other jobs that allowed us to sell things overseas rather than having to import everything we want to buy now. I believe that's exactly what Jon is blaming. Jobs that can be exported are the ones that allowed us to have trade goods. Now that they're exported, we no longer have trade goods, leaving us with jobs that don't produce anything to sell overseas. The very reason they can't be exported is the same reason they make nothing we can trade.