Kash of Angry Bear Is Upset

Employment is almost exactly the same as it was four years ago, even though there are an extra twelve million Americans sixteen and over:

Angry Bear: The most disappointing part about the US economy's poor job creation right now is that we may well be pretty much at the peak of economic growth for this business cycle; most economists forecast growth in the US to slow gradually from 2004's pace over the next two years... and those economists who think hard about the US's necessary current account adjustment (are you surprised that I was able work that subject into this post?) suspect that the economy may slow more than just gradually sometime over the next year or two. If this is the best job creation that the US economy can do when growth is relatively strong, what will the labor market look like as the US economy slows?

Comments

[howard]

no discussion of job creation in america is complete without a reminder that george bush promised that his 2003 tax cut would create 5.5M jobs between July 1, 2003 and December 31, 2004.

[Lee A. Arnold]

The Social Security question should be: The Republicans gave a tax cut, mostly to their already-rich contributors, supposedly to improve the economy--so why hasn't the economy improved to the point where the rest of us make enough money to (1) invest for our future, and (2) contribute fully to the world's best social insurance, --BOTH?

[Stuart]

Kash is upset for a reason. Me? I'm simply worried for my daughter who is currently completing her junior year of college.

[johnchx]

angry bear: "...and those economists who think hard about the US's necessary current account adjustment ... suspect that the economy may slow more than just gradually sometime over the next year or two."

Wouldn't a current account "adjustment" actually stimulate domestic employment? Dollar falls -> imports fall, exports rise -> domestic employment rises. Yes?

Of course, such an adjustment wouldn't necessarily be painless. We'd be consuming less while producing more (a process otherwise known as "saving" but no matter).

And of course I'm assuming that monetary policy works the way it's supposed to...keeping prices from rising (despite rising import prices) while not squeezing hard enough to provoke a recession. A big "if" I know...but if we assume monetary policy goes off the rails then all bets are off anyway.

[Gerard MacDonell]

Bush lied about his justification for the tax cuts. Bush is a lying liar and it is fair to point that out.

But you, my fellow liberals, are a bit dishonest too. It is plainly wrong to imply that weak job creation has something to do with inappropriate fiscal policy, unless you believe that there is some sort of supply-oriented distortion introduced by Bush.

I think you have to choose a coherent argument. Either you explain how fiscal policy has weakened the supply side of the labor market.

Or you ccept that aggregate demand is prospectively excessive, in which case you endorse the Fed's efforts to restrain it and quit bitching about issues that go to deficient demand.

Or you argue that we need less aggregate demand restraint than is desired by the Fed, in which case you drop your repeated references to Greenspan's monetary policy acumen and accuse him of incompetence.

But if the issue is aggregate demand, as opposed to fiscal sanity itself, your issue is with the Fed not the Treasury. We are not in a liquidity trap, so the midpoint of the probability distribution around prospective demand is set by the Fed. And even regarding bygones, the path of aggregate demand has not been so weak that it has delivered below target inflation. And even if the path of GDP growth were too low, then that would again have been the fault of the Fed not the Treasury as the zero constraint never did bind.

Related, you have to admit that reasonable people can disagree on the state of the labor market. It is at least conceivable that some portion of the ongoing decline in the unemployment rate reflects a voluntary rather than cyclical decline in labor force participation. You and your allies often leave the impression that it is a no brainer that the true measure of the available labor force has continued to surge in recent years, even though the official data strongly imply otherwise.

Remember, an unwillingess to be empirical is a conservative vice. They know before they loook. WE look. If anything identifies a good liberal, it is THIS habit.

[anne]

Then, an ideal solution to our employment problem is a decline in the value of the dollar. The decline leads to more international demand for American exports and more domestic demand as imports are pricier. Growth gains and employment follows. But, there is sadly more.

Germany, France and Japan are faltering in growth. So a decline in the value of the dollar against the Euro or the Yen would have a muted export effect. The Euro has already gained significantly in value but demand for American exports has been muted. A decline in the value of the dollar is likely to raise interest rates, and this in turn will slow American growth. Whether the Federal Reserve would lower rates in turn would be problematic because of possible price increases. The problem is tricky indeed.

[spencer]

Prior to 1974 productivity growth averaged about 66% of real GDP growth. In the low productivity era of 1974 to 1994 productivity growth averaged just over 50% of
real GDP growth. Since 1994 productivity growth has averaged almost 90% of real GDP growth. This means that because of stronger productivity real growth does not generate the employment bang it use to.

[anne]

Spencer

Nicely done. Then, growth especially since 2000 could have been higher with minimal inflation impact. There we find the limited effect of the fiscal stimulus on employment when the effect might have been profound.

[anne]

Spencer

Please explain how you relate changes in free reserves by the Fed to price earning ratios :)

[wkwillis]

Anne
The decline of the dollar and decline of imports are linked directly. An increase in exports is not necessarily implied from a decline of the dollar.
99% of all products are "commodities" in the sense of having scale economies that are local to one continent or one country. They are not going to be exported or imported from that continent or country unless there is serious mispricing of currencies or investments.
So except for location dependent agricultural and mineral exports and imports, why should most products move from the US to Europe or Asia? Cheap labor is only cheap while the American currency is mispriced against the renminbi. America will cease importing Chinese commodity manufactures when the dollar renormalizes but will not then begin to export them to China.
Some products will be traded between continents. Some specialised tools or instruments or materials. They just won't have significant impacts on currency levels.

[anne]

WKWillis

Though you argue well, and in a different time I would agree, I have trouble coming up with a significant employment increase from a decline in the value of dollar at this time. Interesting problem.

[elizabeth_a]

Overseas labor is probably 1/10 the cost of US labor -- including skilled labor. Telecommunications costs are low.

I'm on the board of a small software company. We could hire one junior programmer here or an office of 9 in Romania. Guess which we chose. And I don't feel bad.

The decision to move overseas is not a marginal one. If labor is a large part of production and it can leave, it will. Changes in the dollar of 20-30% will not change the math for most people.

Dramatic increases in transportation costs (fuel) would be more likely to move production closer to consumption.

THere will be some pickup in tourism and decrease in Americans vacationing abroad.

In a decade or so, the labor costs in the stable parts of the world will rise and things will either shift back here or stay permanently abroad as investments in capital equipment dramatically improve productivity.

I'm as strong a believer in the merits of free trade as anyone but I am deeply disappointed by our government's inability to think sensibly on how to encourage productive investment. Today 45% of US corporate profits are from the financial sector -- clearly aided and abetted by government policy. Where do you think the talent pool and capital investment is going? At the same time, government support for basic science research is being cut (DARPA grants, for example). What are these people thinking???????????

As I mentioned earlier, most of the decisions to move abroad are not marginal, but health care policy as well as the decision to shift the tax burden from capital (often earned via overseas labor) to middle class labor is inexcusable.

Sorry for the rant -- I just can't believe my eyes these days.

[Jim S]

For a drop in the dollar to make enough of a difference in exports to significantly improve U.S. employment wouldn't we have to have enough of a manufacturing base producing items that are in demand globally? While there might be more manufacturing left in the U.S. than some people think it's not in areas that would be helped that much by a drop in the dollar.

[ken melvin]

http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2005/04/march-employment-report.html The chart says it all. Nice adjustment Bush.

[howard]

it is true that we've had enormous fiscal stimulus with modest employment growth, and spencer has probably identified the fundamental factor in play (although there are chicken-and-egg considerations, but we'll let those go for now).

nonetheless, in the absence of a parallel universe in which the bush 2003 package was a true stimulus package (that is to say, that put the dollars in the hands of those with the greatest propensity to spend the marginal dollar of new cash), i'm going to cling to the belief that we could have done better.

Better does not, of course, necessarily mean a return to late '90s employment levels; it simply means better than we actually did with the bush-delay policy mix. As elizabeth and wkwillis have suggested, there are indeed limits in the short term to significant improvement in the job-creation picture, and no president can, in the wall street terminology, "fight the tape."

PS. Anne, to resume our periodic conversation, i don't see any happy outcomes, which is why i continue to project stagflation: as you know, profits are not going to workers, so real wages are falling as it is. A weaker dollar increases the cost of imports without - as has been argued above - necessarily improving job creation. A Fed move to raise rates to support the dollar (or a presumption by the bond market that the Fed will move to raise rates to support the dollar) certainly doesn't help job creation. Both eventualities lead to higher prices without necessarily leading to better growth. Ergo, in my book, stagflation lite: modestly incresing prices, at best constant real wages (and more likely falling real wages) for most people, some degree of growth that primarily enriches the top 5% (and in particular, the top 1%) of the income pyramid (and the household wealth pyramid, which overlaps but isn't the same as)....

[mrjauk]

Elizabeth A, I am a fellow traveller.
I teach one of the social sciences at an Ivy league institution. It seems as if every second graduate is planning on going into investment banking.

[elizabeth_a]

btw I don't think there are a lot of heroes in our current mess. Union leaders should have embraced technological change that might have cost some jobs in the short term but by switching to a more capital intensive/ less labor intensive production method kept the factory here.

A national leader who can speakly plainly and frankly on these issues...where are you???

[anne]

Howard

I rather agree, but wish it might be otherwise. The problem you have developed for us includes growth too slow to add significantly to employment and moderate inflation as resources and selected products and services, as health care, increase in price. The softening factor for many households has been the rise in real estate and bond prices. Interest rates will continue to rise for the Fed cycle continues, budget conditions continue to worsen. Not a pleasing view....

[knut wicksell]

If exports go up, and imports go down, consumption is going to have to shrink. Are Americans ready to see their standard of living fall? Because that's what's waiting for them when the trade balance eventually balances (if it ever does).

[chris]

Export what? What is the U. S. going to export to start getting the trade balance back towards balance? Along with the lost of soft power is lost of the rest of world's taste for American goods. Levi's a great U. S. brand closed up the last of its U. S. factories.

Here's a rhetorical question, who in Germany wants to buy a U. S. made SUV? Gee, lot's of high priced German SUVs on U. S. roads, reciprocal? Here's a funny one, who in China is going to buy a U. S. made car?

We export lots of agricultural goods but those are subsidized. People in the tax paying states pay for the grain producing states to sell their stuff at subsidized prices. Otherwise we'd hear more about unfair competition from Brazil and Argentina.

We can spread the arms race by exporting weapons, but a lot of times they are sold on the basis of loans, do those loans ever get paid back?

Airline sales are done on a lot of horse trading of producing different components here and there. McDonnel Douglas set up a factory in China with the expectation of selling planes there, but never happened at least to a low level of McD's expectations.

What is on the horizon that the U. s. can innovate in, produce and sell at a profit without a subsidy? Keep in mind every other country on earth is trying to do the same.

Of couse there are adjustments that will be made to the U. S. production base so maybe in 10 years we are producing and exporting more. But maybe that won't happen.

[me]

"Are Americans ready to see their standard of living fall?"

Too late knut. I imagine the average of Bill Gates and my salary is increasing, which I suppose is a rising standard of living, but mine isn't and neither is the salary of any of the working class. Here in Atlanta there are less jobs in technology today than four years ago.

But we opened two new Walmarts.

[howard]

Anne, thanx to your many comments and questions, i think i may have finally formulated a clear-cut description of where i think we're going and why.

and so, in response to knut's comment, i think living standards are going to fall for many households, especially if real estate stops fulfilling the ameliorating role that anne noted....

[wkwillis]

elizabeth a
All American unions are in favor of technological change to the max. They want to keep their jobs. New tools, great, new processes, great, new products, great. Bring it on.
The technological advances labor resisted were the ones that made them work harder or made their jobs more dangerous, like when the locomotives went from coal to diesel around sixty years ago.
The corporations wanted to switch to one man crews since they didn't need the fireman to shovel the coal and keep the steam up (a hard, skilled job) and the union wanted a second guy so the first guy could use the bathroom or make lunch or just talk and stay awake.
The unions wanted someone to spell the guy at the controls of the locomotive for safety reasons involving braking times. Derailments at eighty miles an hour are much more dangerous than derailments at twenty miles an hour. Faster reaction time is crucial, and that means two crew.
It's the corporations that want to build the advanced technology factories some place with cheaper labor, and that's backfiring on them in China. In China you build a factory and train the guys, and then next year the guys you trained start up a competing factory using your processes and your vendors and your technology and your brand name to sell to your customers. You find out that you've outsourced the management and stockholders as well as the labor.

[elizabeth_a]

Wkwillis

That may be selectively true but there are many counterexamples. The airline employees and the self-check in machines...

[Lee A. Arnold]

Let's all vote for weak job creation by inappropriate fiscal policy, compounded by no remedy for the dislocation of jobs due to trade.

We might have had a lower-middle consumption-aimed taxbreak to rev-up recession business capacity utilization for re-employment, and thence to prospectively excessive demand. Instead, we had business investment-pushed (and oilprice) supply inflation-creep, with prospectively excessive dividends promised, just as asset inflation arrives. No wonder the employment-search is sloughing-off, as jobs simply disappear to trade, the displaced worker sets his mind to moving Somewhere Else, and all the while, the prospectively excessive housing bubble blows out his upstairs windows.

If we are not going to help people's cashflow by creating jobs, then the question becomes, how do most people turn the assets that remain, into creativity and productivity which they themselves own, since that is the key to their future. Creativity and productivity proceed from knowledge, readiness, and physical health. That would be the lecture for today. So if government splurges anywhere, it should first be on education, basic science research, and medical care. After that, let's throw money at something like the Small Business Administration.

On a related matter: More government borrowing to lock-box the tax money into "personalized" accounts, is taking on the odor of a rare, Pecksniffian fatuity.

(Wait until foreign investors get wind it's because we all want to remain in the world's rentier class.)

It's funny that, after all the twisty arguments for privatizing Social Security are tracked-down and demolished, time and time again, not least by the extraordinary contributors to this extraordinary blog, the Republican economists' fallback position is that it will still simply be better if people have a "sense of ownership." As if there is a deficit of it, and a mere turnaround will correct our misfortunes. (Perhaps if the voters gain this new sense of responsibility, Congress will suddenly act responsibly, too?) ...Really, I'm trying to find a retiree who went through life without a "sense of ownership." I talk to a fair number of them, and I am offering to give away a free case of beer. But so far, they all think the question is stupid. This exhausted dependence on the old "self-interest" psychologism is silly, and inadvertently self-revealing. It would be insulting to retirees, if it weren't just ridiculous, and embarrassing to its expositors.

[beowulf]

Elizabeth A.

I wasn't aware that 45% of corporate profits are due to finance. That's a huge percentage. I wonder if you know the percentage of profits that are from real estate (without double counting finance profits on real estate)?

Except for finance and real estate, its hard to pick out healthy industries in this economy.

[john c. halasz]

Just to add a bit to the answer to Gerald MacDonell's challenge, tax cuts dispropotionately- (or proportionately, if one sticks to the literalistic rationalization that decries tax progressivity)- for the very well-to-do and reductions on taxes for capital income,- (accelerated depreciation, capitals gains and dividends),- not only failed to provide a "fiscal" stimulus through the multiplier effect, -(and, insofar as extra consumer spending did result from the high-end crowd, in all likelihood it was highly import-skewed, as opposed to, say, federal transfers to state and local governments for public services and infrastructure),- but such cuts, in effect, exchanged a tax liability for a bond obligation. But the latter is not exactly what happened. Rather the loose monetary policy that accomodated ineffective fiscal policy, which inflated asset prices, also flooded the system with liquidity, reducing returns on assets and lowering interest rates to unattractive levels. Together with the lack of employment/wage growth, this reduced the pricing power of businesses, so that they could maintain their profitability only through cost reduction strategies, either through the substitution of labor with ever-cheaper capital or the replacement of domestic labor with cheaper foreign labor. The U.S. dollars thereby sent abroad were then recycled by foreign Central Banks into the very bonds that replaced tax liabilities. The Bush administration's economic policies have been an unmitigated, unchecked catering to the various and sundry immediate interests of capital, but the irony is that such policies are not really good for the long-run interests of capital.

[tante aime]

Besides employment, King George need learn that, rather than pandering to his nation's paupery with a filing cabinet prop full of old Treasury Bonds, then mimeing for the cameras that the SSTF doesn't really have any actual *cash* in it, (which even a cretinous tid knew twenty years ago when this issue was a crisis de jour), now he need memorize two more memes in his howdie-dootie golly-gee presidential lexicon:

"full faith and credit of the US government"

-and-

"fiduciary duty of a trust fund chief executive"

Honest, it's like watching an imbecile on Ritalin, the appalling stunts and boners this Goofy White Boy pulls. There isn't bank one in the US that has any cash in it. There isn't an investment house anywhere on Wall Street that has your personal IRA sitting in some deposit box. It's all out there on margin, everything in America, all of it, fiat paper and margined "assets", credit lines, electronic funds transfers, mortgages and derivatives. All smoke and mirrors, a colossal house of pasteboards, flipping and flopping as fast as the numbers roll over on the national debt counter.

And at any moment some sheik could shout, "Banko!"

"Full employment, what full employment?", mimes George.
"Catastrophic trade deficit, hey, what trade deficit?
Looming Federal and State budget technical bankrupcies?
Fast approaching economic & oil sanctions against US?"
Like having a gutter-drunk for a national grandfather, pissing away the American family estate.

Hey, news flash, Herr CiC. You wanted this job, you got it. Now get back to work and get all of US back to work, instead of wringing your hands for some woman on life- support, at the same moment you're signing a cap on pain and suffering damage claims that would have sacrificed her in her first year after the medical malpractice that put her there in the first place.

Duplicitous bastards, two-faced infernal traitors. .|..

[elizabeth_a]

Beowulf

You have to distinguish between real estate construction, capital gains and mortgage finance. Some count as GDP, some count as profits and some don't really count at all. The answer to all your questions (i.e. I don't know) can be found at http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn1.htm you want the interactive nipa tables and a strong glass of something.

[Kimmitt]

I fear things are way simpler than that. I think that two things have happened:

1) The transportation costs for a large segment of services used to be very large, and now they are very small.

2) China and India have moved into the Zone of Diversification for skilled vs. unskilled labor.

3) Our productivity isn't *that* much better than theirs any more.

Standard trade theory predicts Factor Price Equalization. Everybody, we're all gonna make what an Indian worker makes (okay, maybe times three). Man I wish I had tenure.

[Bob H]

I'm upset that the stock market averages are also about where they were four years ago, actually slightly lower.

[spencer]

Anne -- I do stock market strategy for a living -- selling in the soft dollat market to professional investors. I focus very much on the PE side of the equation and use numerous measures of fed policy as leading indicators of PEs. No single measure works all the time. But if you will send me an e-mail
I will return you a chart of the pe vs free reserves.
In the 1987 stock market free reserves was the single best signal -- both for getting out and getting in --and again in 2001-02 it was the single best indicator. But at other times it has not worked as well. But this is true of all indicators -- no single indicator is perfect.

[spencer]

Theose of you commenting on international trade are making very good comments. And they tend to support my belief that the trade- current account deficit will be "solved" largely through a major recession that reduces domestic demand rather then through the soft landing shift in marginal prices.

Most trade is in goods where the business cycle determines prices much more then the dolar -- see oil and copper as examples. But we are starting to see a modest rise in prices for consumer goods imports -- excluding oil and autos. But if you look at the prices that the retailers -- departments store type goods --
are getting they are unable to pass those rising costs throught to the consumer and are seeing their margins erode. As a consequence they are trying to rebuild margins by cutting employment and rebuilding retail productivity -- that is why we just saw hours worked in retail drop last month.

[r[obert]ea]

"reasonable people can disagree on the state of the labor market. It is at least conceivable that some portion of the ongoing decline in the unemployment rate reflects a voluntary rather than cyclical decline in labor force participation."

Right--those 12 million new unemployed Americans 16 and older over the last 4 years all decided it would be simpler to just live on their trust funds . . .

[Steve4Clark]

Now I understand that there are new job entrants coming into the work force... i.e. kids growing up.

But it also seems to me that there are old job hounds who are leaving the work force. i.e. people retiring

In the past the kids growing up outnumbered the people retiring. However, since we are now entering the time period where the baby boomers are retiring, I wonder if perhaps some of the old assumptions are no longer valid.

I think that may be a small factor why the lack of job growth has not had as large of an impact as it did say back in '91 when I was graduating from college.

The thing I have noticed is that Republicans don't seem to mind, or care about lack of job growth. It's forcing more wives to stay at home, and it's putting downward pressure on salaries. For whatever reason, these factors are appealing to them.

[Rob Salkowitz]

This isn't a bug, it's a feature. The Bush economy is designed to create profits and not jobs, such that all the benefits of increasing productivity go to shareholders and not labor. It's working as intended.

[me]

"reasonable people can disagree on the state of the labor market. It is at least conceivable that some portion of the ongoing decline in the unemployment rate reflects a voluntary rather than cyclical decline in labor force participation."

Very republican of you.

I will give you an example of "voluntary" participation. I worked at AT&T. Outsourced to IBM for about 9 grand a year less. Offshored by IBM to India.

Few interviews in the last 2 1/2 years. 4 years of grad school make you "too experienced" and "overqualified" to "participate" in the labor force.

Last week I was offered a job as a Lockheed sub making less than half of what I made at AT&T. Now the funny thing about that is that I would be editing documents of Lockheed writers making twice what I would be.

I guess your definition of voluary is not accepting a job at Walmart.

[Luke Lea]

Maybe it's time to start thinking about legislating a shorter work week, say, a four day week and a six hour day, which would both increase the number of jobs and real hourly earnings -- the latter as a result of reducing the supply of labor.

This was the 19th century solution to economic progress, when they moved from the 72 to the 40 hour week. This is what made possible the "middle-class" lifestyles of mid-2Oth century America.

It really doesn't matter what is causing the problem -- immigration, free trade, labor saving technology -- the effect is the same: an increase in the supply of labor relative to demand. Thus the solution is a given.

[anne]

Spencer

"In the 1987 stock market free reserves was the single best signal -- both for getting out and getting in --and again in 2001-02 it was the single best indicator."

The important point is that when the Fed is adding to free reserves, the reserves will be absorbed by investors and asset prices will be selectively bid up. Whether the stock market is effected is less important than whether assets prices in general are effected. A proper test would be 1999. The Fed began to tighten in 1999, and the stock market was rather flat for the year through summer. But, the year 2000 worry led the Fed to add to reserves through the fall. The market rose astonishingly. The drain of reserves began once 2000 began, and continued till spring, and the bull stock market was ended even if inadvertently. Interesting. The Fed then really does target assets prices.

[anne]

Spencer

Interestingly, the continual interest rate declines by the Bank of Japan did not have the effect of the Fed lowerings from 2001. Japanese reserves were not evidently used enough to buy domestic assets from 1993 on. We must think about this :)

[donna]

How long before we have to send our kids out of the US to get jobs? Especially ones interested in technology as my kids are. They won't be content to flip burgers here, that's for sure.

[Mik]

In 4 years USA absorbed 4 million legal and at least 4 and as many as 12 million illegal immigrants. If 50% of these people found job, they displaced 4 million natives.

donna asked:

"How long before we have to send our kids out of the US to get jobs? Especially ones interested in technology as my kids are."

I hear anecdotes that it is already happening here and there. Unless your kids have a chance to graduate in top 10% of MIT, they better forget for an R&D job in technology.

Besides it doesn't pay well anyway. A nurse in Silicon Valley makes more per hour than 90% of engineers. When one considers stable employment, benefits, pensions, etc, I would not be surprised if a nurse makes twice life-time income of what an average engineer makes.

Same goes for police/firefigters/jailers in CA, all can retire after 20 years of service with 90% of highest year salary (that is padded with overtime to $140K). About 70% of policemen retire on disability, that is after the highest earnings year they, pure by accident they have an accident. $100K+ pensions, tax free, are common among guys in their late forties and early fifties.

[Mik]

elizabeth_a wrote:

1. "I'm on the board of a small software company. We could hire one junior programmer here or an office of 9 in Romania. Guess which we chose. And I don't feel bad."

2. "At the same time, government support for basic science research is being cut (DARPA grants, for example). What are these people thinking???????????"

As long as it is your money, you could invest in any hell hole as far as I'm concerned. I wish as a taxpayer I didn't have to subsidize your business risks via US Navy policing oceans and US Air Force keeping barbarians at bay, all that enabling you to profit from Romania cheap labor.

But why, again as a US taxpayer, I should pay for research - socialized risk, while you will take a research result and privitize profits from it?

As it is I pay thru the nose for your very ability to do biz in Romania.

[elizabeth_a]

Mik

Don't disagree with anything you say. But you can be against tax cuts and still not send back your refund check to the government....

In our case, there are probably more subsidies from the Romanian government who educated all the workers and pay for their healthcare and retirements than vice versa. Plus 9 people now have a job instead of 1. That doesn't feel bad.

[Mik]

elizabeth_a wrote:

"Plus 9 people now have a job instead of 1. That doesn't feel bad."

Those 9 are in Romania vs 1 in USA. And I have no doubt that if tomorrow 20 Cocarachians will be cheaper, you drop Romanians as hot potato.

You are entitled to do with your business as you wish. But do not pretend that you are anything other than cold blooded profiteer taking full advantage of US (and Romanian for that matter) taxpayer while holding him in contempt.

[elizabeth_a]

As a human being, I don't distinguish between a person with a Romanian passport and an American passport. I've always found this strange dictotomy that Americans -- virtually all immigrants or descendents of immigrants-- make based on the passport held.

[me]

Just remember elizabeth, your customers are the 9 jobs you created in Romania, not in the US. Soon you will be whining that you have no customers.

To me the big difference is Dell invests in China. But guess what elizabeth? They sell to Chinese. They are the number one seller that is not a Chinese company.

You on the other hand are merely playing global labor arbitrage, or selling out the US. I am glad you feel good becuase I feel good everytime I boycott a company like yours.

[john c. halasz]

There is the fallacy of blaming the capitalist for the dynamics and pressures of capital(ism). Why blame the capitalist rather than the failures of revolt?

[Mik]

An icy indifference as to whether one’s countrymen are winning—be it in a competition for jobs or Olympic medals—is moral treason and the mark of a dead soul.

Elizabeth is one. it is legal to be a soulless but it is morally wrong.