Posted on 12/06/2005 10:10:44 PM PST by CarrotAndStick
I have rarely seen such gloom and doom as with you guys. You might as well be part of the MSM and the Communists/Democrats. I assume you are just products of our present education system. It is good that you have a place like FR to come and learn something.
You live in the greatest, most generous, and freest country in the world and all you can do is dwell on what you think is wrong.
...the overall 'economy' is essentially judged according to how well, or poorly, business is doing.
Hello??? That is what an economy is, business. Now I am more convinced than ever that you are just youngsters. You probably meant society rather than economy.
This of course means the hundreds of thousands of American workers whose jobs have been outsourced become meaningless statistics when business is good.
Do you think that means those people are permanently unemployed? Would you so manage the economy as to prevent a company from making that choice? Once again, you are talking about a top-down managed economy, or Communism, not free enterprise. I wonder where you learned that?
Corporate greed has always been around to one degree or another, but corporate lust for the 'bottom line' is now devouring our own people.
Straight out of the leftist handbook. If you paid for an education you should demand your money back.
Why does anyone go into business? Usually it is to make money. Is that greed? He must provide a good or service that others are interested in or he won't be in business long. Doesn't that mean he is serving those who opt to buy his product rather than exploiting them? Perhaps you think it would be better for government to assign someone to provide that service or make that product.
If the business grows and becomes more than he can do himself he often hires someone to help him. Let's say he now needs a bookkeeper so that he can spend his time on other things. He puts an ad in the paper and agrees to pay so much for someone to do the books. A person shows up and agrees to do the work for the wage offered so he is hired. Who was harmed?
Later someone else comes to the owner and says I am a CPA and I run a bookkeeping service. I can do the same work as that guy but I will do it better, faster, and for much less. Both the owner and the bookkeeper have families to support. Where is the owners obligation?
The more we get entangled in this global web of "free trade" and "outsourcing" the more the world becomes a dog-eat-dog nightmare for people just trying to live and raise a family.
That is nothing more than what I just described but on a larger scale. Transportation and communication have advanced to the point that an American can talk to Hong Kong like the person was in the same room and he can go to Hong Kong faster than he used to be able to go to another state. Regardless, the business decision making is the same but with more competition and more options.
This scenario in turn brings out the worst in man, the evil side that fights for survival.
The "worst in man" is just that, in man. He can control it or release it but the choice is his and is not circumstance dependent. Blaming circumstances is just taking the easy way out.
It is already turning Americans against the wide-open immigration through our Southern border, because people are tired of watching the government give away our wealth to foreigners at the expense of the financial security of our own citizens.
We all agree that our borders should be controlled but for more reasons than the economy. Have you seen the economic figures lately? Despite the massive influx of cheap illegal labor and the outsourcing of work, the economy is rolling merrily along and unemployment is at 5%, a figure some consider to be intractable and unaffected by economic activity. In other words, for all practical purposes, zero unemployment.
If you have not heard of R. Buckminster Fuller you should familiarize yourself with him. He was a genius. He was not an economists or politician but he said, as best I can remember, "Free enterprise has the unique ability to transform the selfish desires of each individual into a good for all society."
If you want to see the worst in man, put him in charge of a Communist society.
Actually, IRW, your initial post sounded to me like an emotional outburst attempting to justify outsourcing in general. The common sense comment stems primarily fropm the claim that "The issue of transferring jobs overseas is a red herring because these type of R&D jobs are anyway held by immigrants to the US".
Such a claim is nonsense in the longer run and has only a degree of truth in the shorter run due to economic considerations. The larger problem is a problem caused by the throttled-down US economy rather than any comparison to the overall investments or R&D investments of any particular company. I believe that a statement like the one you made is a red herring. In fact, the outsourcing of jobs is very germane matter to the to US ecomonic conditions.
Foreign companies invest and position plants in the US largely for two reasons - tax benefits compared to their native country and being physically close to a given large-consuming market gives these firms certain benefits that are helpful in expanding and directing their business.
Much of the lack of US competitiveness stems from existing US tax policies which burden a US exporter operating in other countries (as opposed to many of the home countries offering their native firms what amount to benefits for operating in the US). It is hardly a level economic playing field and it is the economic effects of this sort of consideration that at least partially or even largely leads to the economic pressure behind outsourcing of jobs. After all, relatively cheap labor has been available throughout most of the past 1 or 2 hundred years and only recently has this trend accelerated and intensified.
What policy? The policy of corporations looking for the most $$? Are you suggesting that outsourcing should be banned by law? How about insourcing of jobs by Toyota and Honda? Should that be banned as well?
what is the best thing for the US society - bring in the immigrants on a track to be real citizens. No H1Bs, no other visa games - green cards, legal status so long as they observe the rules and stay in school and work, etc.
but the corporations don't want that, they want the cheap labor any way they can get it.
India has talented people in these areas - fine. Let India invest and build companies to compete with Oracle for example, that's how the free market is supposed to work. Instead, Oracle is being shipped to India, 100 engineers at a time.
Wow, surprisingly many liberal protectionists on Freep and this particular thread.
Interesting, to say the least.
India (and for that matter China) has people, not $$$ to invest. Capital follows labor/materials to produce goods/services.
The laptop I'm typing this on would have cost a few extra hundred bucks if I had to subsidize some boated pension plan with my purchase. I paid less money than I otherwise would have. Penny saved and all that. And my laptop is working fine. Hence, I have gained. The money that I saved will go to something else, maybe an American product. And no, we don't need global trade, but having it beats the hell out of not having it.
We became a super-power during and after WWII, when American manufacturing was at its peak. We became reliant on Asian and other foreign manufacturers and products because we became too greedy to pay our own workers what they were worth, and saw a bigger 'bottom line' in using slave labor overseas. We lost our world leadership in producing and manufacturing the best products on earth to our own greed and stupidity.
Our workers were asking more than they were worth, and the labor union thugs prevented any domestic workers from asking for less. Later on, government-mandated employee benefit packages made employing American workers even less attractive. High taxes thanks to the Johnson and Carter Administrations didn't help either.
As the German and Japanese auto manufacturers have so clearly proven, when you make the best quality products you outsell everyone else. Cadillac and Lincoln luxury cars continue to get badly hurt by Lexus, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Volvo, because these foreign competitors make far superior quality cars. The same thing goes for American mid-level cars, they get hammered by Toyota, Subaru and Nissan because they won't produce cars of equal quality.
So, what, I should subsidize American auto-makers by paying for inferior products just because they're under the same flag as I am? No thanks. Patriotism doesn't work that way. We don't reward mediocrity 'round here.
If globalism is so 'good' for America, then why are we getting our behinds kicked by all our foreign competitors, weather in consumer electronics, automobiles, motorcycles, whatever; and why do we run up frightenly high trade deficits with them?
You talk about dollars leaving the United States like it's a bad thing. Read Wealth of Nations some time.
All global trade, as it has become today, has done for America is bring us low priced gadgets and things that we don't need, like Nintendo, televisions, stereos, electric can openers.
I will be the judge of what I do and do not need, seeing as how it's my money that I'm spending. And if we had tariff-protected domestic producers making that stuff, we'd still be buying it, albeit with lower quality for a higher price.
Meanwhile, the prices of things we need for survival continue to skyrocket out of sight. We're just not paying attention to what really matters.
"Things we need for survival..." Like what? Food? If we dropped tariffs on foreign-produced food, we could get it even cheaper than we do now. No thanks to the Senators and Representatives from my state, in particular, for opposing elimination of the sugar and shrimp tariffs under NAFTA and CAFTA. Oil? A gallon of gasoline costs less than a gallon of orange juice, and it could be even cheaper if the environmentalists would get off the oil companies' backs, and if, oh, I don't know, Congress dropped taxes on oil and gasoline products. Clothing? That isn't hard to find, and it's cheap to get, if you know where to look. Shelter? We don't seem to have a serious homeless problem (even though it is Christmastime and there is a Republican in the White House, so the MSM would normally be churning out homeless stories right now).
So especially given the great economic news recently, I refuse to believe that the American economy is going to hell in a handbasket, let alone that it's international trade's fault.
"All first-world civilizations"? What, like Europe? Do you seriously want us to be like them? 20% unemployment rate, stagnant growth, churning-state Europe? I'll go ahead and pass on that.
No kidding. Rush is right; economics needs to be taught in high schools.
We don't? We just rewarded communist China with 'Most Favored Nation' trade status, and their imports are so cheesy that mediocrity would be several steps up for them.
As to your comments about 'rewarding' U.S. made products by buying them for patriotism's sake, even the most patriotic man in America would have a hard time doing that, because we simply don't make much of anything anymore. Even American automobile manufacturers buy their materials and parts from overseas, and have the engines assembled in foreign lands.
Because of this obsession with 'globalism', our nation has become dependent on foreign countries, (dependent even on our enemies like Communist China and Saudi Arabia, whose oil we could completely replace with Alaskan oil). Many a nation's bad intentions were covered under the viel of 'improving the economy', just look to Hitler's 1930's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, (the Nazis said ridding themselves of the Jews would help their economy, while communism promised to spread the wealth around to everyone).
Globalism, that bloodless coup that has thrown down autonomous borders, and its twin brother, 'multiculturalism', which has brought Islam to infect every Western nation, promises you that your toys will be cheaper and your lives will be 'enriched'. Meanwhile, all the consumer essentials like food, energy and housing continue to rise out of sight and terrorism threatens every formerly autonomous, free nation.
Manufacturing and producing are what make a nation mighty, and patriotism is what keeps it that way. Just look at post-war Germany and Japan, and our own rise to superpower during and after WWII. Then look at what globalism threatens to do to America, ("soon there won't be any money left to support America's elderly", the warn us; and our national debt will reach the Milky Way before NASA does). Then look at what 'multiculturalism', (Globalism's twin), has done to Western Europe. How stupid can people today be? Is your laptop and automatic coffee maker really all that important?
Don't be so shallow, Ace, take a course or two and expand your knowledge. An economy isn't just business, it's also consumer goods prices, jobs, wages, housing costs, national debt, trade deficits, consumer confidence, energy costs. Get out of that mind-numbing cave you dwell in and educate yourself.
That is exactly what they are not taught. In fact, I teach my 8 year old (3rd grader) economics at home. He always comes to me with questions like "why do people need to charge money for anything?". I get into a lecture on supply/demand, and then he gets it immediately.
Amazing!
No Kidding. But, protectionism NEVER helps/helped any economy. Talk to the Germans and French.
I graduated with a BA in Political Science, and I took one economics course, Microeconomics, and fell in love with the discipline. If I get some time on my hands in a few years, I'm getting a second degree. Gotta finish law school first, though. : )
National debt is part of the economy?? Only in the buying and selling aspect of investment and that is part of business. Consumer confidence part of the economy?? That may affect the economy but it isn't part of it. Trade deficits are part of the economy?? They are a bookkeeping byproduct of the economy, not part of it. The rest are also just components of business, as I said.
Don't be so shallow, Ace, take a course or two and expand your knowledge.
Mirror?
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