Going Backwards fast

[BeauchampT]

My father worked in a totally differnet industry (steam plant operator on ships). When he switched to land work (a power plant), he was doing more work for almost half the pay. A few years later he had to switch to another job (still as a steam plant engineer), at a paper mill; still lower wage. In fact, when he had to manage his crew for a while, his pay raise was a whopping $0.03/hr. Oooo, big opportunity.

Every single industry is falling apart, and yet, we still spend as much as before. Take Canada - our annual income as a nation is less than our annual expenditure. Average person in Canada spends 110% of their income. Oh yeah, absolutely genius that. We are as much of the problem as the economy. We are the economy.

[Servicetech]

Getting out of the printing industry has been a very good decision thus far, I now work in an automated food plant.

After my initial layoff from my career in the printing industry, I was out of work for 5 days before I accepted a much lower paying job at an electrical manufacturing company, pay was considerably lower but it beat what unemployment pays (peanuts) plus it had health benefits. Plus I can show on my resume that I am driven to work and not go on unemployment.

Now I'm at a major food manufacturer that values employees who perform and I am climbing my way back up the pay scale.

[chevalier]

There seems to be a very negative outlook here. I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur and own my own place. Call me crazy but I was proceeding doing that in 2009 until a better opportunity came along at the last minute. That project remains on the back-burner as improving technology make it even more feasible. Even in this restructuring global economy there are still ways where money can be made including printing.

The economy that existed between 2002 and 2008 was a false economy driven by horrendous economic policy and hard-to-grasp global trade imbalances. That mix will probably (and hopefully) not return for at least a hundred years or until it is nearly completely extinguished from living memory. Anyone wanting or expecting those kinds of returns, loose cash and loose credit is either loony or a pirate.

The falling (real) wages Canadian, American and Western European workers are experiencing is centrally due to a global rebalancing of trade. The whole "free" trade concept "levels" the playing field between the developing economies and developed economies. I should state that i'm not a communist, socialist, capitalist, nationalist, or racist. I'm not ideological about this stuff.

Economic explanation (I used China and America out of convenience but this applies globally):
China has excessive amounts of very cheap labor and America does not. Chinese people want to eat and prosper. The Chinese have more people than they know what to do with (over-saturated labor market). Regulations like minimum wage, mandatory health insurance, OSHA regulation are either nonexistent or unenforced. The living standard for a worker is lower. When we eliminated (and continue to) trade barriers (tariffs, quotas, minimize inspection of imports, etc.) it forces American workers to compete with their Chinese counterparts. The result is decreasing American wages and/or automation of processes that were once done by a worker. It also raises the wages of Chinese workers but the Chinese government has minimized and prevented that through currency manipulation. The end-game of this balancing is where an American wage (including benefits) and a Chinese wage (including benefits) for the same job will be roughly the same. This is good for humanity as a whole but it sucks to be an American because lifestyle will never be as good as it once was. It also means work-harder and get paid less in real money. These economic forces have been unleashed and cannot be contained without truly sliding backwards into trade warfare and possibly even bullets and bombs warfare.

I cannot make it any more clear that the days of showing up and doing your job in the Western world and getting a 2% or greater real raise year over year is over. This market trend is not only happening now but it will accelerate once Africa and South America light up red hot like Asia has over the past 20-30 years. There are nearly 7 billion people on this rock now and only around 1 billion of those are North Americans and Europeans. The earth and it's resources are finite and competition decides who gets what, when and where. I could droll on for hours about this.

It isn't all bad for those who live in already developed economies. I have prospered and plan to keep prospering. I've done it by constantly updating my skill sets, applying intelligence, being mobile (willingness/ability to move), and I have had a bit of luck. I have increased my wage >250% in the past 5 years. This in what I hope will be the worst economic conditions I ever have to live through. I do not work for myself and I do not have a college degree or any certifications.

[chevalier]

I cannot make it any more clear that the days of showing up and doing your job in the Western world and getting a 2% or greater real raise year over year is over. This market trend is not only happening now but it will accelerate once Africa and South America light up red hot like Asia has over the past 20-30 years. There are nearly 7 billion people on this rock now and only around 1 billion of those are North Americans and Europeans. The earth and it's resources are finite and competition decides who gets what, when and where. I could droll on for hours about this.

Read this today...
Interview with China's*Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs: 'The West Has Become Very Conceited' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

From the interview:
"Many say that power is shifting from the West to the East, but we believe that it is a process of diffusion. It used to be within the Western world, but now it is also diffusing to a wider world. There is a need to reform the current world structure, which was built after World War II to the benefit of around 1 billion people of the developed world. China is only one of the newly emerging countries. Brazil is growing. India is growing, as are parts of Africa. In the future, 3 to 4 billion people will be coming into this process of wider industrialization. But that reform needs to be an incremental process that is achieved not through war and not through conflict, but through dialogue."
-Fu Ying, Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs