Report Card for Donald Trump

[David Horn]

(12-28-2016, 05:40 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(12-28-2016, 05:30 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: If automation has collapsed jobs in the USA, it will collapse then in Europe and China too in time. If manufacturing is done by machines, fewer people are needed.

Yes, Eric, if Japan and South Korea and Germany have vastly higher levels of factory automation than the US, and yet higher rates of employment in the same sectors, then they must inevitably be behind the US and must collapse in their turn (as they catch up to US automation?).  Because, after all, if manufacturing employment in the US didn't collapse because of automation, it must have collapsed for some other reason, one which might be amenable to policy shifts, which means that something would have to be done (or at least an explanation tendered as to why those who set policy choose not to).  And we can't have that, now, can we?

I mean, there is only so much work to be done, isn't there?

You cite three countries that have manipulated their currencies to make them unusually competitive, although Japan is slowly exiting that group.   Is this the best you've got?