What would Al Gore have done?

[cowtown]

Originally posted by widebody911
Ah yes, you're one of the capitalists that would prefer people enter the workforce at age 8, etc, etc.

Labor is so evil, right?

Unless you are a member of the original Lucky Sperm club from 100 years or so ago, your sorry ass would have been working in a sweathshop as soon as you were potty trained.

Like the people to whom our manufacturing was sent.

You'd be drinking water infested with who-knows-what, as your factory dumped it's waste in the river/ocean; in your perfect world, there wouldn't be any "tree hunggers" to tell them not to.

Like they do in the countries where our manufacturing was sent.

You're standing on the socio-economic shoulders of giants and don't even realize it.

It's the 'overpaid' workers that are buying the stuff that you 'businessmen' sell. You expect people to continue buying cars and computers and real estate - with what if you lay them all off?

Yeah, I remember 'Reagan The Great' - the warm reality of 'trickle down' was the poor fit of his Depends.

This is an extremely narrow, polarized view of the world. It's risky to buy in to ANY idealogy hook line and sinker. Yes, corporations can be "bad", but IMO organized labor can be equally bad. I'd rather not start listing details about these two, I'm just expressing a high-level point of view.

And whether you like it or not, the reason this country is so rich, powerful, and even in the position where it CAN choose to lay you off and send your job to India, is due to corporations.

They aren't out to get you personally, they are maximizing profit within legal constraints.

So you may feel screwed, and you might think corporations treat poeple unfairly. But the reason you're driving a fast Porsche in the first place is...wait for it...those evil corporations!

Now let's grab our picket signs and go protest something! Wait a minute...that doesn't pay the rent, does it?

[Doug Zielke]

But to reiterate what Thom posted....
'You expect people to continue buying cars and computers and real estate - with what if you lay them all off? '

Indeed!

[island911]

'You expect people to continue their businesses of cars and computers and real estate - with what, if you sqeeze them all dry with taxes and regulations? '

A side note; I have met quite a few business founders. I have noticed one thing they have in common (besides a drive to efficiency) is a stong sense of community. Most prefer to keep their operations local, and are rather resentful if, say their base is in California, but their manufacturing is in someplace as close as Texas (still too far).

Understanding their reasoning is quite simple, really. whether a CEO or a Fireman, the people will make cost benifit judgements, as needed, to stay viable.

IF any of you out there think that "these corp's" are doing it all wrong, then why don't you step-up and show them how it's done "your way .. . the right way."

cowtown "gets it;" a proactive response (to the problem) will help, where as a reactive reponse will fall on deaf ears.
That is; nobody "owes" you a job, just because your sorry butt ended up here -- so be useful and make a job . . .if not, have some respect for someone bright enough to find something productive for you to do.

[lendaddy]

Look, people are people. There is no such thing as a greedy business owner or a greedy union worker for that matter, there are only greedy people. The greedy business owner would be a greedy union man if his situation were different. Now that our economy is relatively stable vs pre industrial revolution times there needs to be a return to raw capitolism. Organized labor is fine, just not the laws that give them power to shut a company down. If 400 people strike and 400 line up to take their place then I guess they didn't have it so bad afterall. Also, laws "helping" certain businesses should be banished as well. If a company can't hack in in business then there should not be a bailout or special tax reliefs to artificially keep them around. The further we stray from our capitalist roots the worse things will get. Think of our system as a simple weigh scale that we want to stay flat. As soon as we see it tipping one way we add weight to the other side, this goes on and on and on. Noone ever removes weight from the heavy side and that is the problem. The scale will soon crush under the weight we have added. Let the system work!

[widebody911]

Originally posted by island911
That is; nobody "owes" you a job, just because your sorry butt ended up here -- so be useful and make a job . . .if not, have some respect for someone bright enough to find something productive for you to do.

Ah, but you don't "get it". I never said anyone owes me anything. All I said is that in their search for 'efficiency' (aka greater profits) corps are killing the goose that's laid their golden egg. I'm sure it feels good to to defend the free market so vigorously - your high school economics teacher would be so proud - , but the free market also depends on having customers, without which there is no [b]market/b]. If you insist on bringing your customers' living standards down to 3rd world levels, they won't be your customers any more!

Your line of reasoning is akin to a guy climbing a ladder. He gets 12 feet off the ground and says "Hey, look I'm 12 feet of the ground, WTF do I need a ladder for" and steps off.

"Hey look, I have clean air and water, and I didn't have to work in a sweatshop at the age of 7, so WTF do we need all these regulations for? They're inefficient"

"Hey look, we sell a lot of stuff to people living here in the US, but we can save a lot of money by moving all of those salaries to a 3rd world country."

[BGCarrera32]

Reread your last comment...

"Hey look, we sell a lot of stuff to people living here in the US, but we can save a lot of money by moving all of those salaries to a 3rd world country."

Now read the one prior to again...

"Hey look, I have clean air and water, and I didn't have to work in a sweatshop at the age of 7, so WTF do we need all these regulations for? They're inefficient"

The regulations are in many cases inefficient, and extremely expensive and unrealistic. THAT is another reason why it costs so much in CA to do business and it will continue to bolt out of your state...the cost of producing the goods and services outweighs what the customer is willing to pay for the finished goods. MN is next...

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Originally posted by BGCarrera32
The regulations are in many cases inefficient, and extremely expensive and unrealistic. THAT is another reason why it costs so much in CA to do business and it will continue to bolt out of your state...the cost of producing the goods and services outweighs what the customer is willing to pay for the finished goods. MN is next...

(Tech) jobs are not being lost solely from CA. I'm in AZ, where the cost of living is pretty low, and yet my dept. is not permitted to hire within the US anymore--only in Bangalore. Interestingly, even when we were allowed to hire within the US, we couldn't find anyone qualified for the job who wouldn't require an H1B. And the pay is actually pretty good.

All the tech support calls I've made to IBM (they keep shipping crappy Maxtor drives--50% infant mortality rate--with their workstations) have been answered either in Canada or the Far East. IIRC IBM is based in Armonk, NY and is pretty well distributed across the US.

[cowtown]

Originally posted by widebody911
Your line of reasoning is akin to a guy climbing a ladder. He gets 12 feet off the ground and says "Hey, look I'm 12 feet of the ground, WTF do I need a ladder for" and steps off.

This is so incredibly simplistic. To continue your analogy, you seem to be pushing for a ladder that continues upward infinitely into the clouds, regardless of cost. The poor guy will finally get so tired of climbing that he will say "screw this, I'm going someplace that has shorter ladders."

Whether you feel like acknowledging this or not, regulations are market distortions, and they cause losses over and above their benefits. I'm not saying they are unnecessary, but they need to be used flexibly and judiciously.

Everyone (even corporations, whose people are just like you and me) wants clean air and water. But there are ways we can ensure this stuff reasonably (ie trading pollution credits and providing incentives).

We've also got to know when to say "OK, it's clean enough."

So many of today's environmentalists want perfection at any cost. It's losing them a lot of support - from people who do want reasonable pollution restrictions and controls, but not at the expense of everything else. The uncompromising, extremist attitudes of the parties involved has everything to do with our country losing jobs.

[widebody911]

Originally posted by BGCarrera32

The regulations are in many cases inefficient, and extremely expensive and unrealistic. THAT is another reason why it costs so much in CA to do business and it will continue to bolt out of your state...the cost of producing the goods and services outweighs what the customer is willing to pay for the finished goods. MN is next...

Actually, in general, the prices on the stuff being produced by the latest wave of outsourcing is not dropping - the difference is being paid out in executive bonuses.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/136574_ceopay26.html

Outsourcing to 3rd-world countries is great for manufacturing because they get to pay poverty wages and ***** on someone else's front lawn. In the US, we realized that industrial pollution was not a Good Thing, and hence regaulations were enacted - despite the well-funded opposition of the manufacturing industry. The fundamental problem is the people who are profiting from pollution don't have to live where the crap is being dumped. It's all good as long as the waste is somewhere else.

[tabs]

Now Living in the Real USA

In the early 1970's when all the EP laws were passed Corporations didn't have lobbyists.....they realized it was the lobbying efforts of the Greens that got the laws passed and they were left flat footed...So they decided it was time they needed to protect their interests...So thats how the Lobbyists came to wield so much power/influence on our political system.

You say "poverty" wages in third world countries...what would they be making if the corporation didn't creat a job there? Would they still be farming or working in a sweat shop for less. By thier standards they maybe making a fortune. US corporations have allready dumped enough of stuff on our ssoil to make it glow in the dark...Lake Erie, Cayuga River, Henderson NV...dumping of exotic metals and their processing by products....

CA has definately gone over the edge...if a business can't stay competive because of regulations it has to move or die. To make it personal I talk to a man in my local Post Office. I got to talking to him because he came from the smae town in CA as I did Rancho Cucamonga..he owned a Security Guard Service....quiet frankly it was the Workers Comp rates that killed him, it was difficult for him to explain it to his clients why he had to charge so much. Also when Ballys Gym didn't pay him what they owed him as he was closing the business....he wasn't able to meet payroll as he let his people go ( the business has to pay the employees within 24 hours of letting them go). Thus he was liable for a $55.00 a day penalty per worker for up to 45 days each plus the wages he owed them. The State represenative went out of her way to inform his workers even though it wasn't his fault he couldn't pay them on the due date, and his bill came to 190K. He eventually paid his workers all the wages he owed them, but filed BK and moved to Nevada. Thats a real case of a business being push out of business by state regulations.

The CA State Legislature and Govenator just doesn't get it, they continue to kill the golden goose that lays the eggs and then wonders why revenue falls off because eggs sales are down. So they then kill more gooses to make up the difference. I'm waiting for CA to file BK.

[widebody911]

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying there are not things wrong with the current system. But's it's not the little mom and pop ops that are laying off tens of thousands of people at a whack, and stuffing the difference into their executive's pockets.

[island911]

SO what are you saying, Thom? . . .that there ought to be a law against Americans doing business in other states, or over seas?

[BlueSkyJaunte]

I think part of the problem is that, these days, laws are being enacted to screw the consumer/worker in favor of the corporation: DMCA etc.

However, Joe Q. Public is too stupid to see this and keeps electing politicians who are criminals (but I repeat myself) and line their pockets with piles of money sent in support of their "causes".

[nostatic]

There ought to be a law against it. Now if we can just agree on what "it" is....

Why is it that in one ear I hear "we're laying off all these tech workers" and in the other "we can't find qualified 'merikuns to hire"? So is outsourcing about profits or finding a suitable workforce?

[island911]

Originally posted by BlueSkyJaunte
.. . , Joe Q. Public is too stupid to see this and keeps electing politicians who are criminals (but I repeat myself) and line their pockets with piles of money sent in support of their "causes".

Just what are you getting at, blue

[tabs]

Originally posted by BlueSkyJaunte
Joe Q. Public ......keeps electing politicians who are criminals

Your being a little harsh on the Democrats aren't you.....they all can't be crooks can they?

Does anyone want to compile a list?

[tabs]

Yeah Nostatic whats a "Meurkin"?

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Originally posted by nostatic
Why is it that in one ear I hear "we're laying off all these tech workers" and in the other "we can't find qualified 'merikuns to hire"? So is outsourcing about profits or finding a suitable workforce?

Well this is a special case, admittedly. We've been looking for someone degreed in a field (operations research / industrial engineering) that usually leads to MBAs or "management" career tracks but we need them to actually be able to write serious code. How many MBA hopefuls do you know who are willing to get their hands dirty in C++???

On the other hand, the truly tech-only positions are going offshore.

[nostatic]

If you look at the demographics of science graduate programs in the US, you'd see that most of the students and postdocs are foreign...even at top tier schools. There does seem to be something to the "leaky pipeline" issue.

I don't know any MBA-wanna be's that would actually write code. Isn't that why they want to get the MBA....so they don't have to do real work any more?

Apologies to my SBO who works very hard

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Originally posted by tabs
Your being a little harsh on the Democrats aren't you.....they all can't be crooks can they?

Oh, I'm equal opportunity, Tabs. Dems, Reps, Greens, Libertarians, you-name-its....they're ALL crooks.

The only people who should be allowed in public office are those who DON'T WANT the job.