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Outsourcing Jobs, Offshoring Markets

01.01.70

Conventional economic wisdom teaches that it is not in the interests of employers to drive wages down to desperation levels, since most consumers are wage earners and consumption demand generates from 66 to 72 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. Were employers to drive wages too low they would  at the same destroy their customer base, which is good for neither capital nor labor. This line of reasoning assumes that capitalism is  organized such that each nation’s labor market is both entirely domestic and the sole source of  the demand for its economy’s output. But capitalism is a global system and its sovereign components are not closed economies. The typical large corporations’ labor pool and customer base are now globally dispersed. In fact, the last few decades has seen the creation, for the first time in history, of a global labor market.

The outsourcing of jobs has become common knowledge, and is perceived by most working people as a significant source of the nation’s unemployment woes. The loss of jobs to cheaper labor markets is nothing new; it has been building since the 1960s. In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of domestic output.  In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent. This tendency has accelerated with the deregulation of cross-border capital flows. Since 2000 the United States has lost thousands of factories and a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs, representing a 32 percent decline. By the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time we saw those numbers was in 1941.

Source: CounterPunch

The Sensible Home: New refrigerators are more efficient

01.01.70

A. Any new refrigerator is going to be more energy efficient than your old one. This is particularly true for Energy Star-qualified models that must be at least 20 percent more efficient than the current minimum energy efficiency standards. You can find a list of models that are Energy Star qualified at www.energystar.gov along with buyer�s guide tips.

With all other design factors being similar, a smaller refrigerator consumes less electricity than a large one. Unless you are constantly opening the refrigerator door and searching for food items, the majority of the electricity consumption of a refrigerator is due to heat transferring in through the insulated exterior surfaces.

A smaller refrigerator has less exterior surface area than a large one, so less heat gets in. In order to keep the inside of the freezer at 0 degrees and the refrigerator portion at 40 degrees, this heat must be removed by running the compressor.

When deciding upon which features you need, try to avoid ones that penetrate the exterior of the refrigerator. At a penetration, there is no insulation so more heat can transfer in. This is analogous to a house exterior. A house with more windows, doors, skylights, etc., will lose more heat than one with fewer breaks in the wall and ceiling insulation.

Source: Chicago Daily Herald