Yep. I firmly believe the value of a company is its employees, not the equipment or facilities. I spent more time with my employees than my family, they WERE part of my family.
It's also why I paid 13 of them more than I earned - because I wanted to keep them. And in all those years, I never had a single employee leave voluntarily. Not one. Pay them well, take care of them (health care, dental plan, Friday afternoon BBQs/pizza feeds/movie times), and they will reward you.
Oh, and before I started my own thing, I worked at 3 other jobs. I lasted an average of 4 years before I was fired for insubordination at each place. Telling your superiors they're wrong, and refusing to do the wrong thing, typically doesn't add to a long career! However, I told every employee that they had free reign to tell me when I was wrong, and if they could show it, I'd give them a $50 bill and do what they suggested.
That sounds a bit like Carly Fiorina's "No American has a right to a job."
Correct. There IS no right to a job. You have the right to try to work, but no RIGHT to actually work. Declaration of Independence and Constitution and all that.
Fine; but then, no employer has a right to a profit, if you're going to play that game.
Absolutely. The employer can do whatever it can to earn a profit, operate in the red (and eventually go bankrupt), or just shut down. As an employer, I'm not claiming a "right" to earn a profit, but I DO claim the fundamental right of the Declaration of Independence:
The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness.
I am not guaranteed a profit, but I am guaranteed the right to try to earn a profit.
You are not guaranteed a job, but you're guaranteed the right to try to get a job (which, of course, includes going out and starting your own business and creating your own job).
And (come to think of it) the claim that "it isn't the wages but the regulations" -- while it might be true of manufacturing -- isn't true of software or high-tech.
Well, high-tech design (not manufacturing). Those are much higher margin jobs (witness Microsoft with a huge 23% net profit margin, larger than anyone else in the consumer electronics industry). Writing software has big up-front costs and basically zero "production" costs.
Otherwise, why the rush of H1-B employees?
I've worked with lots of H1-B visa workers in the US, alongside them at Dell, Apple, and Microsoft. For the most part, they earn the same as American workers doing the same thing.
The difference is we do have an actual shortage of high tech workers in the US. Seriously. I sometimes consult with small startups looking to build engineering teams, and the labor pool in the US is rather small; opening it up to overseas workers as well - who, by law, must be paid the same rates - immensely aids the team-building process.
Lastly, consider that last year the US graduated 150,000 engineers, and that 40,000 of them were foreign nationals. And that China alone graduated 500,000 engineers. We simply are not graduating enough tech workers, and the rest of the world - China in particular - understand what drives economies: innovation, creation. You need technology workers. Engineers.
I'll leave you with this last image I snapped 2 weeks ago, at the HSBC center in downtown Bangkok:
The US Government - via taxation and regulation - is squashing that potential. China, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, etc. are embracing that potential. They're doing whatever they can to free their citizens to reach their potential, they reward success, they let you keep the fruits of your labors.
We're running from what made us great; they're running TO what made us great. It's not greedy companies or "free trade" that is killing the US, it's greedy Government and a large section of the US population that believes in the entire class-warfare claptrap as proffered by Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the Democrats (and insane "Conservatives" like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan).