Dumb Plain Dealer LTTEs, Part DLCXVI !!!: A quick tutorial in U.S. and global economics!

[HughBeaumont]

Is this going to become a daily thing? Does the Plain Dealer only print right-wing-stained letters? WHY, exactly, do I still subscribe to this stupid paper?

Some may remember a similar post from two days ago, highlighting a particularly uneducated letter about how universal health care would never work. To all who responded that I should rebut his idiocy . . . think I'm a-gonna save my venom for these two:

Our two conservatard idiots today come from Hudson (one of Cleveland's richest suburbs) and from a finance professor from CSU (appeal to authority, I guess he wins, right?). These are in response to Dick Feagler's column about the downside of globalization (and yes, folks, there ARE downsides). Read on, and try to keep your breakfast up:

Poor Dick Feagler. His Sun day column displays his lack of economic knowledge, as well as a foolish attempt to drive into the future while looking into his rear-view mirror. He seems to have created a fictitious idyllic past by which he judges the current times. He has scrubbed this past of all of its stench and left only the scent of roses. He then compares today's smells only to this perfumed past. How pathetic.

He is a modern-day Neanderthal confronting the agricultural revolution destroying his hunter-gatherer existence. He is a modern-day Jeffersonian small farmer struggling unsuccessfully in the face of the Hamiltonian industrialization. Now he is a fossil railing against the winds of change created by the current revolution of globalization. He chooses to tremble in its wake rather than accept the changes and learn to participate.

Yes, many will fall by the wayside during this tsunami. But on the whole, mankind will be a beneficiary, as many will be lifted from their current low level of economic existence. Foreigners are humans, too. And having their aspirations met is a wonderful thing, not a negative. On top of it all, this is not a zero-sum change. Americans, as a whole, will gain significant benefits as well.

Welcome to our brave new world, Dick. It's going to be one hell of an interesting ride. Those willing to embrace it and adjust will prosper; those who do not will fail. That's life.

Charles D Evans, Hudson

Vomitous. "That's life"? La de da, "that's life", you fuck? OK, THAT. DOESN'T. MEAN. IT'S. RIGHT. CHUCKLES! Oh, you're SO getting dropped, asshole.

Here's the next one, equally as stupid and uncompassionate.

Dick Feagler's column " 'Made in U.S.A.' mostly a memory" is riddled with fallacies. What America "makes" is measured by our real gross domestic product, which is 6½ times its 1950 value. The portion of this that is manufactured is around 15 percent. So the majority of the U.S. economy is services and government. I'm sure it will surprise Feagler and most Plain Dealer readers to learn that manufacturing, in real terms, was also around 15 percent in 1950. So America has not "de-industrialized."

Yet Dick and his coffee buddies are on to something. About 14 million workers were employed in manufacturing in 1950 - roughly the same amount as now. Total employment in 1950 was 43 million, while today that number is 138 million. What they are interpreting as the United States "not making things anymore" is actually a dramatic shift in employment into services and government. We produce 6½ times as many manufactured goods today with the same number of workers due to dramatic productivity gains in manufacturing, even though manufacturing jobs have gone from one-third of employment to around 10 percent of the total work force.

Michael Bond (Bond is a professor in the Finance Department at Cleveland State University.)

Yeah, services and government jobs that often don't pay nearly as much as the manufacturing and industrial ones did, or have the benefit packages that they did (THANK you unions!). And America HAS de-industrialized. All your bullshit letter means is that the population grew and our WORKER (not the Capital) economy has weakened over time and cannot seem to accommodate that change. Stupid.

Yep, I'm preparing some ammo right now, using the Plain Dealer's own business section to start off . . .

[Ilsa]

1. The first letter was coulteresque: lacking facts, name-calling, and

bearing the compassion of a cockroach.

Professor Bond has bought into the "We're a services economy now" meme. He's forgotten that the services are burger-flipping at the predominant restaurants of choice now, dollar-burgers and super-sized fries, because that is all people can afford financially and time-wise as they rush off to job number two for the day.

Yeah, we've exchanged $20/hr jobs for $6/hr jobs.

[ThomWV]

2. Second letter omits agriculture output

Even lower paying than flipping burgers.

[OzarkDem]

3. Thanks for sharing our pain

Makes it better when we fellow Clevelanders can get sympathy from others..

I get especially angry with the way they attack Connie Schultz, Sherrod's wife.

[HughBeaumont]

4. My response -

The bold is what made it. Everything else had to be edited due to a 1350 character limit.

I find it just a little less than ironic that on the same day two valiant and shameless defenders of laissez-faire unbridled corporatism spout their heartless commentary on all of the benefits globalism brings to our unappreciative souls, your business section features three stories on plant and store closings (they failed to mention Hanesbrands will be moving it's operations to China and Central America), all of which will put workers on the streets and CEOs in an even better place.

Since these two geniuses seem to be incapable of showing compassion or putting two and two together, maybe I should for them. I don't know what Northeast Ohio you two live in, but the one I and many other workers live and survive in features many giant and empty closed plants where workers were once able to provide for their families and well-being. It's also in a state that continues to bleed jobs (as the business section almost daily points out) and potential workers and has not caught up in this supposedly great economy that we hear about daily.

Also, does Professor Bond, in his belief of "we're a service economy now", not get the memo that service jobs do not pay nearly as much as the industrial jobs that went offshore, nor are those same service jobs immune to offshoring? Workers often do not recover to the point where they once thrived and your oblivious dismissal of this problem without any reasonable suggestion of a plan of recovery isn't necessary.

With all of this talk of free trade, where's the call for FAIR trade? FAIR trade that would includes labor protections and safety regulations for domestic and foreign workers, something that doesn't exist under the unbridled capitalist model now? FAIR trade that would include corporate regulations of some sort and eliminate corporate personhood? FAIR trade that would have to include a better plan for re-entering displaced workers into equivalent wages at equivalent careers? Maybe FAIR trade should also include a better social safety net so that no worker should have to fend for themselves when they're fired through no fault or choice of their own, but because they simply weren't cheap enough.

Ideally, a strong economy is supposed to accommodate EVERYBODY at a liveable wage, not just the heavily degreed and privileged. In case you weren't aware, we don't seem to have that now, so pardon us if we're not heaping praise on the great shift to a lower-paying service-based economy. Maybe the two readers should think and observe the world outside of their McMansions before they write.

[HughBeaumont]

5. I was just informed this is being considered for publication -

Looks like my 0-4 record with the PD may soon end!

. . . if this gets published, I should expect some arguments among my financial analyst colleagues.