the main problem with manufacturing going overseas is that there are people here who can't really make it in college for whatever reason, can't be an engineer. While this split in effort makes sense in the aggregate, on the individual level... you can't move to China and work if you need that sort of job.

This isn't as easy as just thinking about globalization, however good it has been to us... there is more to it. Lots of good points though.

People who were capable of doing engineering and design jobs weren't working on the factory floor in the first place. Stossel's theory is based on the presumption that people are cogs who can easily be moved from job to job. They aren't. Sure, moving manufacturing jobs to China makes some products cheaper. But what replaces them is not engineering and design jobs: it's welfare. You end up paying less for products, and making up the difference in layers of government bureaucracy and social disfunction. Kid of those former manufacturing workers learn that money comes not from going off to work every day, but from the loving hand of the state. Or they chase the dream of a college education, find it still doesn't prepare them for those engineering and design jobs - because there never were as many of those as we were told by people like Stossel, and they're still going to the people who are suited for it and would have gone into those fields anyway - and end up indentured to government and its banker cronies through lots of non-dischargeable student loan debt.

Yes, "Buy American" is a welfare program. It's the kind of welfare that teaches the value of work, cuts out the government, (except in the matter of tariffs, which are constitutional, and easily administered) and doesn't destroy price signals.

Given that we're not just going to let people starve in slums if they can't move up to be engineers or designers, I'd prefer to distribute it through the products I buy than through taxes.

There's another issue here.

Rising oil prices are signalling energy trouble just like the gentle zephyr preceding a hurricane. We're in the Age of Oil, and that time is limited. When energy costs get so high we can't ship anymore, I hope we can get these businesses re-established.

> We're in the Age of Oil, and that time is limited.
> When energy costs get so high we can't ship
> anymore, I hope we can get these businesses
> re-established.

This is so very, very, very wrong. Later today, we will count the ways, together.

Meanwhile, pay it no heed. Enjoy your Thursday! Those of you on the West Coast, go ahead and a have a white-wine spritzer with lunch. Back East, take off your work clothes when you get home and fire up the grill for some burgers. Relax! You've earned this.

"working in factories is unpleasant"

Stossel seems to have a pretty simplistic view of manufacturing. In reality, products do not simply and magically leap from the desk of some creative designer to a factory inhabited by drones. Manufacturing engineers need to design the process by which it is to be made. Architects design the building for the factory. Toolmarkers and CNC programmers create dies, molds, etc. Logistics specialists make decisions on transportation, inventory levels, etc. IT people put systems in place to control the process, and executives of various levels, up to plant manager and VP Manufacturing, run the whole thing.

Yeah, there are plenty of dull, repetitive jobs in manufacturing. Also in banks, and even in media organizations.

I'm a supporter of trade, but I think the "manufacturing is for morons" meme has done a lot of harm.

Crid? Buddy, hows about instead of prommising to, at some later date, regale us with facts and figures on how worng someone is and then fail to follow thru; How about you just not post anything until you acctually have something to post.

Its gotten kinda annoyingnall those broken promises

Waiting for Oil

Fred: I wish we had half as much oil as Saudi Arabia.
Mike: Shhh. We do, but it's illegal.
Fred: I suppose what we don't know won't hurt our politicians.

Worldwide "proven oil reserves" is a very restricted definition. Even those reserves have been expanding as technology has improved and as the oil price has stayed high. There is no "peak oil" on the horizon.

Andrew sees the world as it is. I love guys like that.

@crid and Andrew_M_Garland

and global warming is a hoax?

PS Miss Alkon: I tried to be creative and propose jet or boat or space shuttle (it is true for a few chosen!) but the password stick on car! I recess my case: astronauts do not go to the moon on car!!!

Mr. Stossel gets sloppy on this one...as some have already pointed out.

Yes it would be good if people changed from factory jobs to engineering and design jobs... but that is not what happens. The jobs just go away and are not replaced with anything...maybe some low level service jobs or sales. So instead of people making clothes...cutting, sewing, etc they are flipping (burgers), frying (potatoes).

John makes the incorrect assumption that what kept people from becoming engineers was that they were needed in the factory. In reality, there were already enough engineers and any one with skills and aptitude could get one of those jobs.

( www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm )
Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT

Global Warming: How to approach the science   (PDF 58 pages)

Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Seminar at the House of Commons Committee Rooms
Westminster, London, 22nd February 2012

This is a careful, scholarly, clear, and readable presentation of claims and data. Global warming is not a hoax, but catastrophic, damaging global warming is a hoax not supported by evidence.

Prof. Lindzen points out that a doubling of carbon dioxide by 2050 would be expected to increase average world temperature by about 1 degree C (1.8 deg F). The alarmists pose that natural processes will multiply this warming to 3 deg C. Current data seems to give a multiplier of .5, giving .5 deg C of warming by 2050 (.9 deg F).

A major argument against an explosive, self-multiplying warming is that we are here to talk about it. If the Earth's climate system had a multiplier (rather than a dampener), then prior much warmer and much colder periods would have spiraled to either a freezing or boiling extreme. Venus would be an example. Earth has been stable for 3 billion years.

Raddy, that has to be one of the weirdest comments this blog will see in 2012 (and even the people who don't like to squabble about things will recognize that the competition is fierce)—

> Rising oil prices are signalling energy
> trouble just like the gentle zephyr preceding
> a hurricane. We're in the Age of Oil, and
> that time is limited. When energy costs get
> so high we can't ship anymore, I hope we can
> get these businesses re-established.

There are so many ways to go after this... But only two links per comment are permitted. Awkward, right? Sorry, dem's da rules... This will all be somewhat atomized. Let's begin.

> Rising oil prices

Here's five years; here's 2012.

So, like, WTF?

> Rising oil prices are signalling

Oil prices signal the price of oil in a wider commodities markets (spot & futures) of energy. They're not messages from the future, like that one Star Trek where Shatner got to nail a still-fertile Joan Collins. If anyone knew what an unremarkable short term trend like were "signalling," he or she wouldn't have time for bog comments.

How many links do you want about this?

Yesterday:

A growing number of key energy analysts say that technological advances and high oil prices are leading to a revolution in global oil. Rather than petroleum scarcity, we are seeing into a flood of new oil supplies from some pretty surprising places, led by the United States and Canada, these analysts say.

America’s new story for energy is still unfolding. It includes the continuing development and expansion of renewables and increased energy efficiency, both of which will be essential to our future energy mix. But what is striking is this great revival in oil and gas production in the United States, with wide impacts on jobs, economic development and the competitiveness of American industry. This new reality requires a new way of thinking and talking about America’s improving energy position and how to facilitate this growth in an environmentally sound way.

LGN, etc., three years ago

The US is leading the charge. Operations in Pennsylvania and Texas have already been sufficient to cut US imports of liquefied natural gas (LGN) from Trinidad and Qatar to almost nil, with knock-on effects for the global gas market – and crude oil. It is one reason why spot prices for some LNG deliveries have dropped to 50pc of pipeline contracts. […] The US Energy Department expects shale to meet half of US gas demand within 20 years, if not earlier. Projects are cranking up in eastern France and Poland. Exploration is under way in Australia, India and China.

[T]he world has burned about 820 billion barrels of oil since the first strike at Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, in 1859, and 600 billion of those barrels -- almost three fourths of the total -- have been burned since 1973. Yet the world's proven oil reserves are about half again as large today as they were in the 1970s, and more than ten times as large as in 1950. It is as if using up oil has somehow created more, although obviously that cannot be true.

A second paradox: Each decade produces fewer of the very large discoveries known in the industry as elephant fields. "No field with more than 27 billion barrels -- one year of global consumption, at present rates -- has been found anywhere since Safaniya, in Saudi Arabia, was discovered in 1951," Gregg Easterbrook wrote recently in The New Republic. Today, indeed, a find of merely one billion barrels is considered cause for rejoicing. Yet the average exploratory well yielded four times as much oil in 1998 as in 1980, according to the Energy Information Administration, with the big jump starting about ten years ago.

A third paradox: We know there is less oil in the ground every year. Other things being equal, that should make finding additional barrels more expensive every year. But finding costs have dropped sharply since the 1970s, even in the United States, a region that has been drilled practically to death.

> Rising oil prices are signalling
> energy trouble

No, not "energy" trouble. Now, of course, RENEWABLE energy (specifically nuclear) is going through some tough times:

Science Problem Plagued, 35-Year-Old South Korean Reactor to Restart After Failure
Jason Mick - August 2, 2012 11:49 PM 1 Hour Ago

Some experts say restarting the reactor may lead to disaester

This month South Korea will flip the switch on a very aged nuclear reactor. South Korean officials say their hands are tied and that the reactor must be brought back online. But some experts wonder whether South Korea is flipping the switch on a stable reactor or on a ticking time bomb.

San Onofre investigation is postponed
August 2, 2012 | 9:04 pm | Los Angeles Times
As costs of the San Onofre nuclear plant outage continue to mount, the California Public Utilities Commission postponed a decision to open an investigation into the plant’s troubles and the potential impact on ratepayers.

How did a comment like yours get attached to a post about Olympic uniforms? Raddy, your business may have some dark days ahead, but you shouldn't pretend we're all in this together.

(Thanks to Flynne for offering clarity about this a few years ago, on this blog, at a critical juncture. I still haven't seen her in a cocktail dress.)

To The Former Banker,

Most of the jobs available in 1900 have gone away and have not been replaced by anything immediately related.

Farming has been particularly devastated. In 1900, 38% of the population worked in farms, compared to 2.6% in 1990. A large segment of the population adapted to simple, manual labor has died out, it seems.

The growing efficiency of labor has led to the utter desolation of our society. The standard of living in 1900 is now provided by 10% of the workforce, leaving everyone else to beg for nourishment from the lucky few who have those new and vastly more productive jobs.

All sarcasm aside, the growing efficiency of machine-assisted labor has been a very good thing. The efficiency of specialization, mass production, and trade has been great. There is no reason to believe that specialization and trade across national boundaries is any different. Buy your goods from the most efficient producers, and use your cost savings to buy other things.

> and global warming is a hoax?

It's not so much that it's a hoax, it's that to people like you, GW is mostly a series of melodies by which to daydream about taking over the lives of other people through government.

Who needs it?

(This Garland kid's got a fastball.)

I got so bored with this I forgot to tease Raddy about his "gentle zephyr" thing.

Do your own jokes. Y'know.

Crid,
Thanks for the compliments.

Okay. Everything's fine, and oil will last forever.

Not.

"and global warming is a hoax?"

Yes. Next question.

Hmm. No, not a hoax.

And just in case you don't want to do any of that nasty research or read stuff you don't already agree with, try noticing this:

It is warmer in the city. This is because of the energy expended there. There are more cities than there used to be. There is more energy being expended there. Those cities are on Earth, and no matter what else you might say, no matter how hard you are about being told by some government agent what kind of light bulb to buy or car to drive, that is NOT an illusion.

> Okay. Everything's fine, and
> oil will last forever

Wow, Raddy.... That's like a an alcoholic's swing from thundering rage to weeping apology, all in a minute and a half: 'American business is doomed' to 'everything will be fine'. On or the other, huh?

Now, what would cause a person to describe civilization's challenges in such simplistic, stark terms? Hmmmm... Uh... Let me think... I got it! Personal interest! Fear!

There's plenty of energy, Raddy. There's always going to BE plenty of energy. Your own career may be suffering all sorts of terror, but it's got nothing to do with the rest of us.

That you're so eager, even at a relatively comfortable hour like this, to start manipulating people with anxiety tells us much about the people who make your industry go.

Oh, and whaddya know... Raddy's very concerned about AGW, and he thinks you should be, too!

Have you ever taken a position –or a found a truth– on some topic which wasn't precisely aligned to your career interests?

Crid: once again, you demonstrate that you have no idea what I do - and that this will not deter you at all from commenting as if you do.

"There's always going to be plenty of energy."

And that's enough to show me you haven't the slightest on that topic. Stick with film, or video, or whatever it is that you do other than write wonderfully.

I don't have a future in oil, dummy. Nor do I generate nuclear electrical power, now that I've been off the submarine. I just know how it's done.

I think you can learn, it's just beneath you somehow.

Carry on.

Raddy, if only people loved you enough to trust you!

You KNOW this stuff! And they don't! But they won't LISTEN, so you have you have to scare them:

> When energy costs get so high we can't ship
> anymore, I hope we can get these businesses
> re-established.

Because, right?

> When energy costs get so high we can't ship
> anymore, I hope we can get these businesses
> re-established.

Golly, the future is bleak and needy!

What can the people with the special precious knowledge do to protect us, and how can we convince them to deploy their magnificent powers????

What was that?... Flying past my cheek, just now?... It wasn't a gentle zephyr, was it?!?!??!?

OH NOES!
________________________


This is just trans-cosmically fucked up of you... Pretending that the laws of thermodynamics mean we're going to run out of energy. It's loathsome.

But MAN is it fun to watch!

Wow, Crid!

In your world, burning a pound of fossil fuel has no consequences - wait, maybe it isn't really gone, someone else can burn it again, right?

You are SO completely fucked up about natural resources the opportunity to trust what you assert doesn't even present itself!

There are only two positions with respect to oil: 1) it can be totally depleted, and 2) it cannot. This has nothing to do with who I am, or what my job is. It's a physics thing.

I suspect you have been cheated of an education on that topic.

Step back from government action. Forget what an Administration may or may not do. Forget hidden costs, like the environmental "hit" of hybrid propulsion batteries, or the food supply impact of ethanol generation - and you can even forget the overt costs, like the BP oil rig fire or the Alaskan oil spill. Look at what happens when you burn oil.

The root of this is simple: oil, burned, is gone forever. It is a finite resource, one that wishful thinking insists should be cheap so that diesel duallies can be driven everywhere. That wishful thinking is wrong, and this is easily and instantly shown, as I have already, by noting that increased demand leads to higher prices.

That's not wrong, either. Just as the price of oil rising raises the price of an airline ticket, it raises the price of every stage of food provisioning.

Grossly, but simply spoken, all the energy we deplete was deposited by natural forces. It is being used faster than those same natural forces are replenishing those deposits. That leads to outage regardless of your opinion, employment status or political affiliation.

> It's a physics thing.

No, it's fraud thing. Either foolish or dishonest.

> It is a finite resource

It's a finite quantity, but it's not a finite resource in any meaningful sense. Your great-great grandson will have all the oil he needs... (Otherwise you'd have sold that sporty little motorbike of yours, right? Or buried it... Of course you would.)

There's no force in the cosmos that can harvest all the fossil fuel on Earth. But as the price rises (as it will, for everything, no matter what,) we'll get better at conserving it and we'll get better at extracting it... Because both approaches will reward people, as has oil itself over the last hundred and twenty years. The last generation in this century will be living much better than the first, especially in the developing world.

And indeed, there are hundreds of thousands of positions with respect to oil, not just two. Millions maybe. Or seven billion, depending on how you count.

Most plentiful will be the positions of the Chinese, who simply cannot use oil as we did a hundred years ago: The air quality of their cities won't permit it. But bringing a billion into modernity will also bring the genius of a billion into modern education: They'll solve these problems, richly rewarding the people who do, because they have zero choice.

And no one who isn't making a living with radioactive wastes needs to be concerned on this point.

Can you name a single resource that's left the globe with catastrophic result for civilization? We've never run out of anything.

...Except, y'know, whale oil, which was our call to make, not the natural world's. And you'll have noticed that people still turn on their lamps at night to read.

Join them.

I disagree.

We need to manufacture as much as we can. Domestic trade is better for us than foreign trade. A lot of Americans are stuck in the place they are in their career as well as the communities they're in. They can't go to college and they can't relocate. If more goods were made in America then some of these Americans would be better off. Not many, but some. Why not many? Because of automation. Still, we should make as much of what we need and what we want as possible.

One more thing. American markets are wide open. Foreign markets are shut tight to our goods. We manufacture less as it is, but much of what we do make just can't be sold or won't sell overseas. The quality is good and people want it, but our "friends" won't open their markets to us. They use quotas and tariffs. We should too.

> Domestic trade is better for us
> than foreign trade.

Let's say Japan and the United States had been locked out of each other's car markets for the last fifty years, but each had let its domestic industry roll on at the same trajectory as when the gates were shut in 1960.

Where do think Detroit would be today? Exactly where they are anyway.

The world is interconnected. Pretending it isn't won't help us.

"There is no reason to believe that specialization and trade across national boundaries is any different."

...Other than the rise of the welfare state and our massive debt overhang, both of which threaten the health of the entire American economy and society.

All those cheap Chinese goods were great, except we didn't trade straight across for them, goods for goods, value for value. The lifestyle we enjoyed was not the result of genuine efficiencies created by the free market or improved technology. (As was the case with food production.) It was the product of debt. We bought those "cheap" foreign goods with IOUs. And when IOUs you have outstanding get called in, that means a sudden and painful cut in your standard of living. This is true on a personal or a national level. When that happens, you begin to wonder: might it not have been better to have enjoyed yourself a little less, in the interests of maintaining a sustainable, predictable lifestyle without so many painful shocks? But of course by then, it's too late.