Posted on 08/25/2009 11:15:49 AM PDT by Son House
Edited on 08/25/2009 11:17:35 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Cummins Filtration has announced plans to move 400 jobs at its Lake Mills plant to a factory in Mexico.
The division of diesel engine manufacturer Cummins Inc. announced Tuesday its oil and fuel filter assembly operations in Lake Mills will be moved to San Luis Potosi, Mexico, beginning in November.
(Excerpt) Read more at kaaltv.com ...
Oh no, not on obama’s watch! I thought he was going to keep jobs from going overseas. He is a major failure. He thought his popularity was going to carry the day. Reality check!
Going to Mexico is just jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
The problem in the US is not ONLY taxes. It is a plethora of items that have had a result of penalizing “Productivity” in the United States relative to what we could be producing.
Regulations, whether environmental or product safety or ‘protective’ for one industry or another, reduce productivity via artificial constraints. If I wish to buy a ladder that is a little rickety, then so be it.
That is tied up with our incredibly legalistic barriers to increased productivity. When there are more lawyers than engineers, that indicates a problem in itself with respect to productivity. Lawyers slow productivity, indisputably.
Our taxation structure is a barrier to increased productivity. That barrier is much lower in many ways in many countries in the world. The way depreciation of capital is allowed in the US tax code is only one of those problems, but is a stark difference.
A specific item is that we have forced atomic power plants out of business in this country, and are attempting to do the same with coal. Indisputably, these are the most productive methods of generating electricity with the exception of hydropower, which is essentially constrained by nature. Similarly the US has placed barriers on oil and gas production which has lowered productivity in that realm.
Any higher taxation lowers the likelihood capital will be invested, and lowers productivity gains.
Our welfare system encourages lower productivity. When people are able to eat without ever considering working, that is a problem. That goes for many other programs.
The size of government at all levels decreases productivity. Those bureaucrats with very few exceptions add nothing to productivity.
IF the US would start focusing on allowing our business and technologists to increase the US productivity whole hog, we could again be the leader in world manufacturing due to our ability to harness technology. That would again allow our wages to balloon, since ultimately, wages (standard of living) are based on productivity.
And part of the problem is slave wages in the third world, no worker protections, and no pollution controls. We can take nearly any deregulation step and we still won’t be able to compete with the slave labor conditions.
You bring up good points there. However, the US managed to overcome the wage/labor disadvantages for many many decades, due to the WASP work ethic and the US interest in knowledge and education and technological advantages.
The government indirectly has hurt the first with the way we’ve penalized success, demeaned the religious foundations upon which we were built, and with the welfare system. I believe that the unions have been the prime factor in hurting the second. If we dcn’t recover those, we’re doomed I agree.
The disparity in wages has been longstanding, though, and even though it exists to this day, the US still manages to compete in many advanced fields, so I believe it is less of a factor than all of the others.
oops - didn’t address the pollution stuff. In the US, we have gone WAY, WAY overboard in “cleaning up pollutants”. The cost of dealing with such things is not linear, but exponential, with the amount of “cleaning” and “safety” you demand. If we had “reasonable” controls instead of “pristine”, the costs would be far lower. That was part of my initial answer as to what we could do to more competitive, as was the “legalistic” aspect of America.
Okay, FRiend, apparently you have a personal beef against Iowa. But, no matter what you’re dealing with, chances are pretty good it does not happen “only in Iowa.” That was the point.
By the way, when it comes to dealing with some of the obviously bought-and-paid-for features in the Code of Iowa, I’m not nearly as “ignorant” as you might like to think.
Sheesh.
The problem in Iowa isn’t coporate taxes in the form of income, it is the super high property taxes they have to pay.
YOU ARE RIGHT, BUT THEY SURE TAX THE CRAP OUT OF THEM HUH?
(SORRY ABOUT CAPS, DRAFTSMAN SLACKING FROM DUTY)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.