With the growth of robotics and artificial intelligence decreasing the need for human workers, I wonder if any of these companies will be smart enough to use some of their now-overseas billions to create a US-based technology manufacturing and supply-chain hub.
If I were a CEO, I would sleep much better knowing that I wouldn’t have to rely on the whims of a Chinese dictator for my entire product supply. Yes, that idea would be expensive, but Apple and other companies have so much stashed overseas that they could afford it.
And there are enough former manufacturing centers like Youngstown, Ohio, and upstate New York for likely cheap available land. W.P.
Dear W.P.: Ideally, they would invest the extra money — thanks to the largesse of US taxpayers — wisely. More likely, we will hear that such a course of action is uneconomical (which it might be near-term), and executives will simply use the money being repatriated at an attractive tax rate to buy back stock and further enrich themselves.
Hopefully, short-term greed won’t win over long-term plans.
Right now, for various reasons, we are at the mercy of the Chinese and other nations that aren’t always friendly to us. Your plan seems wise.
Dear John: You’re repeating that same supply-demand nonsense that in a tight labor market, wages will rise as employers are desperate to entice new workers to fill jobs.
The problem is that there is a point at which the work is not worth the wage, and instead of offering higher salaries, the employers simply divide the work among more lower-wage workers.
It’s the same law of supply and demand, except the demand is met by more workers at low wages rather than workers at higher wages.
Employers have an incentive to offer as little money as possible to their workers — the extra salary costs eat into their profits. If they can find a way to get the work done for less money rather than more, they will take it.
So today we have a problem where unemployed workers would just rather not work than work for a low wage.
And we have a limit of economic growth brought about by a limited supply of willing low-wage workers.
Fewer and fewer people are productive enough to justify the salaries that they want, and in the end, we hear the same old cry: “Get a job!”
Well, they are not going to get a job doing work they don’t want to do at a salary they don’t want to earn, if they don’t have to. S.G.
Dear S.G.: I don’t disagree with you.
Plus, let’s add the fact that if companies divide up a job and hire several workers instead of just one, then they avoid giving benefits like health insurance.
But the column you were referring to was about the nation’s labor participation rate, which has been stuck at a very low level for years. If that one job was keeping three workers busy, then the participation rate would actually benefit because there would be three people employed instead of just one.
So the low participation rate has to be caused by something else, like the fact that the job market isn’t as healthy as the “full employment” crowd wants us to believe.
reference nypost.com
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