Now that former CNN host Lou Dobbs has been freed of his duties with his former network, he has been making the rounds on other networks - Fox News "The O'Reilly Factor," Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and now with his long-time rival's show CNBC's "The Kudlow Report."
One of the issues debated among a panel consisting of Dobbs, host Larry Kudlow, former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and CNBC CME Group reporter Rick Santelli on Nov. 19 was the issue of wage stagnation - which Dobbs blamed on outsourcing, immigration policy and technological advancement.
"I believe that the issue of unemployment in this country and job creation fundamentally will have to be taken on as a matter of government policy," Dobbs said. "It will also have to be taken on as a matter of business leadership. As to the idea that wages have been stagnant in this country for 35 year, point of fact, we have to understand what the causes are."
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"And we have to look at what the - the contributing factors are," Dobbs continued. "I believe those contributing factors are in part increased technological advancements, which has led to productivity. I think it's also without question trade policies which have led to, frankly, an immigration policy that has permitted the competition between our middle class and the cheapest labor in the world. And until we deal with the issue of outsourcing, we are going to be in significant trouble."
Reich contended the answer to the problem was dumping more taxpayer money into the American education system.
"I think raising outsourcing and talking about what we ought to do about outsourcing is a very, very complicated dilemma, but you know as well as I do that a lot of Americans are being - are losing their jobs, not to outsourcing, but to software, to labor-saving machinery, to numerically-controlled machine tools," Reich said. "We've got to upgrade the quality of our workforce and provide better education. Our schools are falling apart, Lou."
Kudlow disagreed with Dobbs' and Reich's arguments that wages have stagnated, lending to the notion that the standard of living in the United States has remained the same. But Santelli poked holes in their arguments and said there is empirical evidence that Americans are better off based on the technological advancements alone.
"Listen, I look all of my neighbors that are middle class," Santelli said. "Larry, they have Plasma TVs, They have at least two cars, maybe three. They all live in houses that have indoor plumbing. I think anybody on this panel who can't look around and see that the standard of living, the way an average middle class family has lived has improved over the last several generations has got blinders on."
And Kudlow cited The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger, who noted that Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, French economists described by Henninger as "rock stars of the intellectual left," have complied data that shows real median incomes have increased.
"It was two French socialists, Piketty and Saez, who created the data which has become the Democratic Party mantra," Kudlow said. "You know, 24 percent increase just in the last 10 years on real median income. That number just came out, I know there are lags. And by the way, some of these numbers show the bottom quintiles have risen the most. We still can climb the ladder of opportunity in this country, Lou."
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Too much coddling going on.
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 12:08 ET by TD in FLSantelli... you can always count on him to tell it like it is.
BTW, I don't disagree w/Reich's analysis that our education is lagging, especially in the lower-middle class blue collar area. However, you can't just throw money at the problem (oops, I guess that kills all leftist ideas then) and expect results. Do kids whose mommy and daddy pays for all their college get better grades than those who have to work/take out loans? It's an attitude thing. Better funding for education may give schools additional tools to help kids, but kids still have to put in the effort to succeed. Why put in the effort if Uncle Sam is there offering handouts left and right... essentially advocating that personal accountability is obsolete. The government should be highlighting success, not discouraging it.
Too much government in education...
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 13:12 ET by dasherThe problems in education have been exacerbated by government intervention since the Dept of Education was created in Carter's term.
If you want better education get the federal government out of it.
"Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink." P.J.O'Rourke
Santelli is an idiot
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 14:45 ET by sajc05Why do your neighbors have 2 cars and a plasma? mostly because they took on debt to have them, because our nation encourages people to go into debt to buy material items they do not need.
ALSO
Those products like flat screen tv's and other house hold items, have become cheaper, cheap is good, but not when it puts americans out of work. I run a small business, if i ever had to compete with a company that employed labor at 5 cents a day to make its products and avoided paying taxes in off shore loopholes I'd be out of business.
walmart has allowed people to buy cheap goods but it has sucked the money out towns across the america. You buy a hammer for 1$ (for example) back before globalism, that dollar stayed in the city, there was wealth not debt. NOW you buy a hammer for 1$ at walmart 95 cents goes out of the town to corporate, 3 cents goes to shareholders, 2 cents goes employees. thus sucking the capital out of small towns across america.
My business does well because we buy from local suppliers, our customers are loyal to local business's and we make a good product and pay people well. we don't have children in southeast asia making our products at slave wages and we do not avoid our civic duty of paying taxes by hiding our profits offshore, WHICH is unamerican.
sajc...
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 20:53 ET by UnsaneWhy do your neighbors have 2 cars and a plasma? mostly because they took on debt to have them, because our nation encourages people to go into debt to buy material items they do not need. One, you have a very serious problem with the concept of freewill. Last time I checked, no one has a gun pointed to their head when they spend more than they earn.
Two, who the hell are you to dictate what people do and do not need?
Those products like flat screen tv's and other house hold items, have become cheaper, cheap is good, but not when it puts americans out of work. I don't see you running out to pay $100 for a shirt made in this country.
Cheaper is better, and if it puts Americans out of work, so be it. If they offer a better quality product at a reasonable price, I am all in. (Name a nation other than the United States that makes a decent pickup, for example - you can't.) Besides, the money I save buying clothing made offshore for cheap will only allow me to employ Americans elsewhere in doing work that can't be done elsewhere.
walmart has allowed people to buy cheap goods but it has sucked the money out towns across the america. You buy a hammer for 1$ (for example) back before globalism by using this word you indicate to me your ddesire to hermetically seal off the United States completely and entirely for the Outside World. Unfortunately for you the United States is built on trade., that dollar stayed in the city, there was wealth not debt. NOW you buy a hammer for 1$ at walmart 95 cents goes out of the town to corporate, 3 cents goes to shareholders, 2 cents goes employees. thus sucking the capital out of small towns across america. Yeah, I know, this sucks as the Constitution PROMISES and GUARANTEES every single American a job!
Wait a minute...
My business does well because we buy from local suppliers, our customers are loyal to local business's and we make a good product and pay people well. we don't have children in southeast asia making our products at slave wages and we do not avoid our civic duty of paying taxes by hiding our profits offshore actually, I APPLAUD this. This is called "voting with one's feet". I bet if the corporate tax rate were lowered so that it is no longer the second-highest in the world, this would be less of a problem., WHICH is unamerican. Well, that is certainly your decision to make. Of course, lost on you is the fact that thanks to those jobs in Southeast Asia, that part of the world has become a huge export market for the United States. (Go to Asia now and you will see their airlines flying Boeing aircraft, manufactured in WA and CA. For one example.) For some bizarre reason exports have gone from 5% to 12% of the economy in the past 40 years or so. It isn't because other countries live in a poorhouse.
If more people had your mindset, we'd still be making IBM Seletrics and hardly anyone would have heard of HP, or computers.
"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)
There is an important point that Kudlow almost made...
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 14:56 ET by c5thenThat is until the Government decides that it's too dangerous to let it's citizens climb the ladder because some of them occasionally fall off.
That is at the heart of the "health care debate" that we are going through. No one want's to call it what it really is: It's about how we can get a small % of the population to pay for the health care costs of everybody. It's not about access because everyone has as much access to health care as they have to groceries and plasma TVs. It's about paying for what some want but can't afford.
Nothing like having a disingenuous debate about the wrong topic.
Throw 'da bums out!!!
Before it's too late.
www.loyaltoliberty.com
WE DON'T MAKE THINGS! As in
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 15:25 ET by billbWE DON'T MAKE THINGS! As in the aforementioned plazma TV'S. I'm a retired self-employed Toolmaker and believe me, it was not easy staying ahead of progress.In the 70's I employed kids in my work-study program that the local high schools threw over the side. I taught them how to make a living in the Numerical Machining world. I watched local machine shops shut down to make room for warehouses because we were doing more work with fewer people, many of them are my kids I'm proud to say. In 1987 I sent a "letter to the editor." to the Newark Star Ledger. One sentence said," The days of putting on bumpers for $20 an hour are over!" The chicken has come home to roost!
When ever a program appears on one of the financial networks, the USA image is Wall Street and banks. The image from Asia is large ships and autos being built and welding sparks. Gee, do you think there's a message here?
Ah, but we DO
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 20:56 ET by UnsaneBut we DO make things. Ever heard of Boeing?
And head on out to Houston sometime. While at a job interview/job site tour, I couldn't go ANYWHERE without bumping into people making things.
This constant whine about how we don't make things is just...populist shrieking.
"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)
Re Wage Stagnation
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 16:51 ET by slickwillie2001Incomes have stagnated because our government and Big Union have driven so many good jobs out of our country. I have to laugh at folks like Dobbs, or BOR or any politician that think if you just tweak our system in some way, that thousands of huge factories that are now in China are going to pick up and move. The industrialization of America took many decades, and you can't do it over again in less than twenty years or so.
Our government has made war on industry for the last fifty years. They have enabled the corrupt Big Union movement which would rather destroy a company than lose an organizing drive. Add to that environmental legislation where one environmentalist can go to court and shut down a billion-dollar project, labor legislation that tells industries who they have to hire, a broken and busted system of K-12, and a system of corporate taxation that depends less on the law than hiring a good lobbyist.
Add to this the Bamster's drive to socialism, salary controls, corruption of centuries of corporate bondholder rights, the healthcare nightmare, uncertainty of future capital gains taxes, costs of energy controlled by Luddites, who-knows what new taxes Harry and Nan might come up with, the uncertainty of our dollar, and you have to wonder why there are any industries left.
Common sense
Fri, 11/20/2009 - 20:59 ET by Unsaneslick, this is about the most common sense post I have seen here. Education here sucks, regulations on all sorts of issues are insane, the unions price people out of the market, and the government punishes achievement by corporations AND individuals...
We still make things but if those items were fixed, this country would be making even more and be that much more prosperous.
"CONSUMED DEMOCRACY RETURNS A SOCIALIST REGIME" - Slayer, "Fictional Reality", from Divine Intervention (1994)