Once upon a time last century, I attended a financial advisor, representative, or whatever talk. I don’t remember the man or much of the details other than one, very important thing. That thing was the notion that it won’t be different. That it is never different. It is all part of a cycle that has been true for as long as we have set up our global rules and economy, but it isn’t different.
Giant Sucking Sound
Rather than look forward and try to guess what the future might bring, he looked back. He mentioned Ross Perot and his Giant Sucking Sound which was caused by all the U.S. jobs flooding across the border into Mexico would become the master of America.
That didn’t happen. If you aren’t old enough to remember the Giant Sucking Sound, it was coined by an American Presidential candidate running as an independent. The worry was that with globalization and trade agreements like NAFTA there would be no reason for any company to operate in America, and he was right. Kinda.
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Manufacturing jobs were indeed shipped overseas. Ironically, not too many went to Mexico. Instead across the Pacific there were nations willing to do anything at any price. Your dirt-cheap microwave comes courtesy of them.
Even more interesting than Ross Perot and his Giant Sucking Sound was that it wasn’t the first time America worried about such a thing. Before Perot, there was fear that all the jobs (and money) would end up in Germany. Then, after Perot and the GSS there was Japan. It seemed that America would falter and bow to Japan. Unfortunately for them, their economy smashed the great Japanese company to pieces.
If some of this sounds familiar, that is because it is.
You see sometime after the Giant Sucking sound something happened. That something was the creation of and use of mobile networks, fast local networks, all connected to an internet. Every bit of that became American jobs. Laying cables, wiring up data centers, building new headquarters and then secure facilities. Ever faster phones that demanded data faster than it could be delivered. (How many of you are old enough to remember you could only get an iPhone with AT&T, and as part of that agreement with Steve Jobs, AT&T agreed that it would not limit users’ data causing AT&T to fail frequently until its infrastructure caught up. Then there was the internet bubble followed by a recession followed by an expansion followed by…
The interesting part is that about every fourth market catastrophe was self-inflicted by the financial industry. (See also the Savings & Loans scandal, and the guy who offered a good rating on customer’s company if the customer’s CEO could get the ratings guy’s kid into preschool. – I’m not making this up. I haven’t looked into it, but its very likely that nothing happened to him, and he probably still works on Wall Street to this day.)
Right now, everyone believes that this time it’s different despite all the evidence to the contrary. China’s current dominance is hindered by its government and its need for total control, including their currency.
Was There Really a Giant Sucking Sound
It is difficult to say whether Ross Perot was completely right or wrong in his concerns about the effects of globalization, as the issue is complex and multifaceted. However, it is true that globalization has had many positive effects on the economy. It increased trade and economic growth. It also had negative consequences, such as job displacement and wage stagnation for certain groups of workers.
One of the main ways in which globalization has affected the job market is through the movement of manufacturing jobs to countries with lower labor costs. This process, known as “outsourcing,” has led to the loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector in industrialized countries like the United States. However, it has also led to the creation of new jobs in service and technology sectors, as well as increased efficiency and competitiveness for businesses.
Globalization has also had an impact on wages, with some workers seeing stagnant or declining wages due to increased competition from overseas workers. However, other workers have benefited from globalization through access to new markets and opportunities for growth and advancement.
Overall, the effects of globalization on the job market and wages have been mixed, and the extent to which Ross Perot’s concerns have been realized will depend on individual perspectives and circumstances.
That part in the middle was written by AI. It is relatively obvious to me, but something else happened. I never meant to travel down the Ross Perot rabbit hole. So, I pawned that part off to AI so that you could get some facts here, and more facts at an article of mine over at Medium.