Agree. Infrastructure investment has direct and ongoing benefits. Not only are you paying for equipment, labor, materials, maintenance, etc. the local businesses can more efficiently operate and public safety is improved. This seems like there should be bipartisan support of massive infrastructure investment. Unfortunately our congress doesn't seem to ever act proactively. Instead they wait until Katrina, Flint lead, Minneapolis bridge collapse, etc. before they they pony up funding for a much more expensive fix.
Labor also isn't fixed. Much of the angst over immigrants, legal and illegal, is that they are taking our jerbs.. Anyway capital can flow both directions. This isn't a zero sum game and as countries like PRC, Mexico and Vietnam get more successful they are also investing and buying from the US.
Labor is fixed in that your steel worker from Pittsburgh can't move his family to Anshan, China so he can continue to make steel.
FWIW, for myself I'm not directly opposed to those things. I am, however, very skeptical of our government doing them in a manner that is either cost effective or produces the desired benefits. Done correctly, all of the above things should pay for themselves over time, due to increased productivity and wages, and hence higher tax revenue. I suspect the opposite would occur here.
Survival of the fittest. He can, he just isn't willing to do so. He can also offer to work in the US for the same wages they are paying in China. He doesn't want to do that either. He has choices. He can follow his job, he can train for a new job, he can create his own job. He can give up and hope the government, charity, etc. saves him.
Labor is far less fluid than capital and glacial in many industries but there are industries where it flows. Agriculture, construction and IT labor has proven to be relatively fluid. American labor isn't very willing to relocate to other countries but certainly workers from other countries are willing to come here.
Making sure the work you are doing is providing maximum value add to the compay. Pure manual labor isn't going to stay here. Skilled labor can. To compete in today's economy one must be constantly improving in skills. A highly skilled worker in the U.S. is more valuable than a non skilled worked overseas...but their skills are going to be constantly increasing, too. What globalization has done is make the global economy uber competetive. So, everyone needs to be uber competetive in it. Welfare is not a solution, fwiw. It is putting a bandaid on the symptoms, while the wound continues and gets worse. So, you can't even call it a 'remedy', and doing so only points out how badly neoliberalism fails to grasp either the problem or the ramifications of their proposed solutions.
Crap, hit 'submit' too soon. As for workers relocating, that's not the issue. A worker relocating to a low wage country is unlikely to be successful (very different to someone from there coming here). What is the issue is becoming a very skilled, and hence very valuable, worker. If one's skills CAN be easily replaced by someone overseas, they probably WILL be replaced, at some point. So, the solution is to make those skills hard or uneconomical to replace. Highly skilled workers are very valuable because they are also very productive, and add to the bottom line. Someone that knows how to use today's very technical equipment. Also, we are switching, because of this, to a service economy. Service is often very dependent on face to face interaction. So, if one is in a job that requires little skill, one should probably be looking to either acquire higher skills and move up, or move into a service oriented position. This, too, is uber competetive. Witness all the complex surgeries, like heart transplants, moving to India. It is worthwhile noting that the reason India is so good at such things is NOT due to the low labor rates (doctors there are earning very good salaries), but because they have embraced capitalism, and have made their processes very efficient. So, they can do those surgeries cheaper AND with better success than the same surgeries here, due to their efficiency. Something we should all pay attention to.
