Are there any economic beneffits from global corporations ?

[Andylusion]

Lastly, debt is a problem the individual. Debt is just as bad, if we buy locally, than if we buy international. If we didn't buy foriegn goods, then we would be in MORE debt, because the cost of goods would be higher. How is that a win?

I desagree in this topic. Local debt can be controlled (at least in the mid term) . There is no control over foreign debt . While it is relatively easy to devaluate a currency it is hard to revalue it. Further more there is no control over interest rates

FYI..... the first total Free-Trade Agreement the US signed, was implemented in1985-1986.

It doesn't look to me like we have ever had a hard time competing internationally with 1st world, or 3rd world countries.

That single chart looks ok except for the last 10 years ( 2000 -2010 )

These two charts tell a different story.

While it is true the us had a manufacturing record on 2013, it seems 2008 was the last year in which the US was the country with the largest manufacturing output.
The jobs that were lost will probably will not be recovered they have either been outsourced or taken by automation. It makes me wonder what kind of future will await for people who lack the skills to get a job in other areas ... I had great expectations from the STEM areas, but recently I've read articles stating that STEM is not undersupplied.
I am not really sure this kind of lack of demand ( for jobs) is something the market will be able to adjust by itself.

IMHO the three pilars of development are science , technology and industry. The US no longer has the upper hand in one of them.

Actually no, both charts do not tell a different story at all.

2013 was a record year in manufacturing. Which means that we haven't lost all the manufacturing capacity that you claimed several posts ago.

Our manufacturing output today, is higher than it has ever been in the history of this country. Period. It's not up for debate, it's a provable fact.

Countries with more people SHOULD have more manufacturing output than our own country. Think about it... if the per-capita GDP of China reached even HALF of our GDP per-capita in the US, the Chinese economy would be $34 Trillion dollars.

So manufacturing would be millions of times larger than US manufacturing, even though they would be half of our GDP per capita.

More people, means more production. That should be really obvious, and yet we act like the US falling to second place, is somehow shocking. Why would that be shocking? We have 310 Million people. They have 1.3 Billion people. Their people could produce 1/4th of the production we do per person, and still surpass us.

India should also easily surpass the US in GDP and manufacturing goods, in the mid-Future.

This should be logical, and expected. Why anyone would think otherwise, is rather baffling

As for the loss of manufacturing jobs....

This also should be completely expected. When you drive up the cost of labor, with OSHA and Unions, and Minimum wage, and Health insurance mandates, and on and on and on......

As the cost of labor goes up, the value of replacing that high cost labor with automation, or lower cost alternatives, goes up too.

Hence, Kiosks replacing Cashiers at McDonalds. $15/hr minimum wage = laid off and replaced with computer.

Same is true of manufacturing jobs.

Like I said before, my company would not exist if you eliminated outsourcing. Those jobs wouldn't come back..... they would simply not exist at all... not here, or there.

We know this for a fact. Our company makes custom products. There simply are not any other companies that do the custom built products that we do.

But there are mass produced, off-the-shelf generic alternative. Non-custom products that could be used instead of ours.

So if we could not outsource some of our parts from China and other countries, and the price of our product went sky high.... our customers would stop buying. They would use generic off-the-shelf mass produced alternatives, and our company would close shop and cease to exist.

Those mass produced products.... they are not hiring manual labor. They are automated.

So whether you allow outsourcing, or prohibit it, doesn't matter. Those jobs, just like you said, are not coming back.

The only way they would come back, is if you cut the minimum wage, cut the regulation, cut the health care mandates, and get rid of Unions, and allow employers and employees to determine their wages on their own.

Then you could see a return of some manufacturing jobs. How many is debatable.

 

[CultureCitizen]

The only way they would come back, is if you cut the minimum wage, cut the regulation, cut the health care mandates, and get rid of Unions, and allow employers and employees to determine their wages on their own.

I don't think so .
1) Those jobs are not comming back . If the chart is correct the current output is 5 times larger than in 1950 with roughly half the number of employees. Production "might" be returning to the US , but the jobs will not return. I am certain.

2) China's industrial output is already larger than the US's and yet China's GDP is "only" 56% that of US. It is clear industry has a higher percentage of China's gdp than in the US. Eventually this can change, when jobs start shifting towards the service sector, but by then China will be an absolute industrial gigant.

 

[midcan5]

"Piketty's central discovery, if we may call it that, is that contemporary capitalism is over the long run steadily transferring huge quantities of wealth from the poor to the rich, reconstituting thereby the inherited or patrimonial privilege and power characteristic of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This fact may come as a surprise to professional economists, but it does not particularly startle those of us who have squandered our youth and idled away our maturity reading Karl Marx. All societies exist for the purpose of transferring wealth from those who create it -- the poor -- to those who do not -- the rich. The academic professions exist for the purpose of rationalizing this transfer, the churches exist for the purpose of blessing it, and the arts exist for the purpose of decorating the transfer so as to make it as charming as possible [even though this often comes to nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.]" Robert Paul Wolff in The Philosopher s Stone THOMAS PIKETTY CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CONCLUSION

Mod Edit:

• Copyright. Link Each "Copy & Paste" to It's Source. Only paste a small to medium section of the material.

 

[bripat9643]

Whenever I view a thread about corporations and outsourcing, the so called free market global economy, I wonder how it is that words come so easily to some when all they really need are eyes. Drive Rt 309 today in Bucks and Montgomery counties in PA. You'll see how Japan in particular is taking over one of America's primary manufacturing industries, automobiles. Then look up Keiretsu. But there is no use in arguing as we have an entire generation who believe in the 'good fairy' concept of economics. See the quotes in my thread on capitalism. I'll add a few below.

"Piketty's central discovery, if we may call it that, is that contemporary capitalism is over the long run steadily transferring huge quantities of wealth from the poor to the rich, reconstituting thereby the inherited or patrimonial privilege and power characteristic of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This fact may come as a surprise to professional economists, but it does not particularly startle those of us who have squandered our youth and idled away our maturity reading Karl Marx. All societies exist for the purpose of transferring wealth from those who create it -- the poor -- to those who do not -- the rich. The academic professions exist for the purpose of rationalizing this transfer, the churches exist for the purpose of blessing it, and the arts exist for the purpose of decorating the transfer so as to make it as charming as possible [even though this often comes to nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.]" Robert Paul Wolff in The Philosopher s Stone THOMAS PIKETTY CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CONCLUSION

"...In the United States large sections of the population were happily abandoned to illiteracy from the very beginning. Now new sections are added to this lumpen proletariat with each passing year. Everywhere one hears the elites saying to each other, in private: "Well, of course, they are not educable." There are endless statistics to confirm the already educated in their pessimism. Seventy-two million Americans are illiterate, the majority of them white. This doesn't include the functionally illiterate. One-quarter of American children live below the poverty level. Forty percent of children in public schools are from racial minorities. The whites who can afford to are slipping away into the private school system. Twice as many children are born to American teenagers as to those of any other democracy. But if you begin to add such facts as that forty million Americans do not have access to medical care, you are also obliged to wonder if the problem lies not with the population but with the elites, their expectations and their own education." p131 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul

Free Market Seductions: "The free market story is appealing. It references values like freedom, creativity, and beauty and counterposes itself against images of drudgery, dictatorship, and starvation. But the history of markets (and the firms that operate within them) is not a nature story.

Today, the dominant discourse governing discussion of markets, states, and companies is neoliberalism, and Mackey's [Whole Foods] free market business model and historical narrative fit neatly within this framework. In this vision, the economic sphere is "an autonomous, self-adjusting, and self-regulated system that [can] achieve a natural equilibrium spontaneously and produce increased wealth. "But the free market historical narrative lacks empirical weight. As economic historian Karl Polanyi argued decades ago, capitalist markets are a product of state engineering, not nature." p58 Nicole Aschoff, 'The New Prophets of Capital'

Piketty's book has been shown to be full of incorrect numbers. It's a huge pile of crap.

Once again, you're posting propaganda. It's also copy-and-paste propaganda and probably a copyright violation.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

I am arriving to the conclusion that global corporations do not beneffit the economy at all.
They actually harm it because they tend create cross country monopolies, evade taxes and practice dumping.
But I would like to hear if someone thinks global corporations have some beneffit.

I must underscore the word global . Please notice corporations are an absolute must for every healthy economy, specially medium and small corporations.

The answer is, of course, absolutely not.
The only economy that global companies improve is the top income earners (investor class, generally the top 7% earners)

1) They produce monopolies
2) They outsource to the cheapest labor they can find, and when that source of labor is no longer the cheapest...they move again. In other words as soon as they actually do start benefiting labor economy - they rip the jobs away.
3) They collude with governments to produce legislation to assist in stopping future competitors.
4) Income disparity is job#1. Many global companies pay more income to a handful of executives, than the rest of the entire company combined.
5) They kill off local, privately owned, competition like there is no tomorrow.

 

[Andylusion]

Whenever I view a thread about corporations and outsourcing, the so called free market global economy, I wonder how it is that words come so easily to some when all they really need are eyes. Drive Rt 309 today in Bucks and Montgomery counties in PA. You'll see how Japan in particular is taking over one of America's primary manufacturing industries, automobiles. Then look up Keiretsu. But there is no use in arguing as we have an entire generation who believe in the 'good fairy' concept of economics. See the quotes in my thread on capitalism. I'll add a few below.

"Piketty's central discovery, if we may call it that, is that contemporary capitalism is over the long run steadily transferring huge quantities of wealth from the poor to the rich, reconstituting thereby the inherited or patrimonial privilege and power characteristic of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This fact may come as a surprise to professional economists, but it does not particularly startle those of us who have squandered our youth and idled away our maturity reading Karl Marx. All societies exist for the purpose of transferring wealth from those who create it -- the poor -- to those who do not -- the rich. The academic professions exist for the purpose of rationalizing this transfer, the churches exist for the purpose of blessing it, and the arts exist for the purpose of decorating the transfer so as to make it as charming as possible [even though this often comes to nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.]" Robert Paul Wolff in The Philosopher s Stone THOMAS PIKETTY CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CONCLUSION

"...In the United States large sections of the population were happily abandoned to illiteracy from the very beginning. Now new sections are added to this lumpen proletariat with each passing year. Everywhere one hears the elites saying to each other, in private: "Well, of course, they are not educable." There are endless statistics to confirm the already educated in their pessimism. Seventy-two million Americans are illiterate, the majority of them white. This doesn't include the functionally illiterate. One-quarter of American children live below the poverty level. Forty percent of children in public schools are from racial minorities. The whites who can afford to are slipping away into the private school system. Twice as many children are born to American teenagers as to those of any other democracy. But if you begin to add such facts as that forty million Americans do not have access to medical care, you are also obliged to wonder if the problem lies not with the population but with the elites, their expectations and their own education." p131 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul

Free Market Seductions: "The free market story is appealing. It references values like freedom, creativity, and beauty and counterposes itself against images of drudgery, dictatorship, and starvation. But the history of markets (and the firms that operate within them) is not a nature story.

Today, the dominant discourse governing discussion of markets, states, and companies is neoliberalism, and Mackey's [Whole Foods] free market business model and historical narrative fit neatly within this framework. In this vision, the economic sphere is "an autonomous, self-adjusting, and self-regulated system that [can] achieve a natural equilibrium spontaneously and produce increased wealth. "But the free market historical narrative lacks empirical weight. As economic historian Karl Polanyi argued decades ago, capitalist markets are a product of state engineering, not nature." p58 Nicole Aschoff, 'The New Prophets of Capital'

Unfortunately that book has been shown to be incorrect too many times to be citing it as a source for information about anything.

Even in your own post, it's a joke. 40 Million Americans do not have access to health care? Totally wrong. There isn't a single person who doesn't have access to health care.

And of course people who can afford to, whether white or otherwise, move their kids out of public schools. They suck. That's socialism.

You might want to find a better source of information if you wish to be taken seriously.

 

[Andylusion]

I am arriving to the conclusion that global corporations do not beneffit the economy at all.
They actually harm it because they tend create cross country monopolies, evade taxes and practice dumping.
But I would like to hear if someone thinks global corporations have some beneffit.

I must underscore the word global . Please notice corporations are an absolute must for every healthy economy, specially medium and small corporations.

The answer is, of course, absolutely not.
The only economy that global companies improve is the top income earners (investor class, generally the top 7% earners)

1) They produce monopolies
2) They outsource to the cheapest labor they can find, and when that source of labor is no longer the cheapest...they move again. In other words as soon as they actually do start benefiting labor economy - they rip the jobs away.
3) They collude with governments to produce legislation to assist in stopping future competitors.
4) Income disparity is job#1. Many global companies pay more income to a handful of executives, than the rest of the entire company combined.
5) They kill off local, privately owned, competition like there is no tomorrow.

They have improved my life, and I made $20K last year.
If they produce monopolies, then my company should exist, since we are competing with international global corporations.

We outsource ourselves. If we didn't, we wouldn't exist as a company and I'd be unemployed.

They do collude with governments. STOP VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS. That will fix most of it.

Income disparity is the natural result of freedom. Every country that doesn't have income disparity, is a socialist impoverished hell, where everyone is equally poor.

I'll take the US unequal system, over the Cuba equal system any day.

They kill off uncompetitive competition yes. Which is good. The only way you eliminate competition, is by having a better product, or lower price, or combination. That's good. I like that. That's why I shop Walmart.

 

[danielpalos]

I am arriving to the conclusion that global corporations do not beneffit the economy at all.
They actually harm it because they tend create cross country monopolies, evade taxes and practice dumping.
But I would like to hear if someone thinks global corporations have some beneffit.

I must underscore the word global . Please notice corporations are an absolute must for every healthy economy, specially medium and small corporations.

The answer is, of course, absolutely not.
The only economy that global companies improve is the top income earners (investor class, generally the top 7% earners)

1) They produce monopolies
2) They outsource to the cheapest labor they can find, and when that source of labor is no longer the cheapest...they move again. In other words as soon as they actually do start benefiting labor economy - they rip the jobs away.
3) They collude with governments to produce legislation to assist in stopping future competitors.
4) Income disparity is job#1. Many global companies pay more income to a handful of executives, than the rest of the entire company combined.
5) They kill off local, privately owned, competition like there is no tomorrow.

How much of that is due simply to bad public policies or micromanagement of our tax code but not for pandering.

 

[Norman]

"Piketty's central discovery, if we may call it that, is that contemporary capitalism is over the long run steadily transferring huge quantities of wealth from the poor to the rich, reconstituting thereby the inherited or patrimonial privilege and power characteristic of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This fact may come as a surprise to professional economists, but it does not particularly startle those of us who have squandered our youth and idled away our maturity reading Karl Marx. All societies exist for the purpose of transferring wealth from those who create it -- the poor -- to those who do not -- the rich. The academic professions exist for the purpose of rationalizing this transfer, the churches exist for the purpose of blessing it, and the arts exist for the purpose of decorating the transfer so as to make it as charming as possible [even though this often comes to nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.]" Robert Paul Wolff in The Philosopher s Stone THOMAS PIKETTY CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CONCLUSION

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• 
  
  
  • Copyright. Link Each "Copy & Paste" to It's Source. Only paste a small to medium section of the material.

Wow, some time since I have read anything this misguided, and that includes Piketty's dumb book.

What should be learned from Piketty is that you can't just make up an equation with a strong preclusion and call that reality. Heck, at least you should check some of the conclusions of the said model before publishing. He honestly managed to modify the Solow model to even more retarded form than it already was in.

As for all society's existing for the purpose of taking things from the rich to the poor.. Where have you been? Last time I checked the rich pay 50 %+ tax rates while the poor pay barely any taxes, and instead receive free services. Meanwhile poor people don't generally produce anything, so what the heck could you even possibly take from them?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

All societies exist for the purpose of transferring wealth from those who create it -- the poor -- to those who do not -- the rich.

if the poor create wealth why do the rich have it or why do the poor freely sign up for low wages to create wealth and give it to the rich??

it would be like one man agreeing to work for minimum wage at McDonalds and another agreeing to work as CEO for $5000/hour and then agreeing to swap wages.

Its 100% absurd and stupid and of course, liberal.

 

[CultureCitizen]

if the poor create wealth why do the rich have it or why do the poor freely sign up for low wages to create wealth and give it to the rich??

Usually poor transfer wealth to the rich , because they have no option. They lack capital. That is one of the reasons for which I think micro loans are a good idea. It promotes entrepreneurship among poor people.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

"Piketty's central discovery, if we may call it that, is that contemporary capitalism is over the long run steadily transferring huge quantities of wealth from the poor to the rich, reconstituting thereby the inherited or patrimonial privilege and power characteristic of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This fact may come as a surprise to professional economists, but it does not particularly startle those of us who have squandered our youth and idled away our maturity reading Karl Marx. All societies exist for the purpose of transferring wealth from those who create it -- the poor -- to those who do not -- the rich. The academic professions exist for the purpose of rationalizing this transfer, the churches exist for the purpose of blessing it, and the arts exist for the purpose of decorating the transfer so as to make it as charming as possible [even though this often comes to nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.]" Robert Paul Wolff in The Philosopher s Stone THOMAS PIKETTY CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CONCLUSION

Mod Edit:

• Copyright. Link Each "Copy & Paste" to It's Source. Only paste a small to medium section of the material.

Piketty's central discovery, if we may call it that, is that contemporary capitalism is over the long run steadily transferring huge quantities of wealth from the poor to the rich,

Yeah, his fiction is funny.

 

[danielpalos]

All societies exist for the purpose of transferring wealth from those who create it -- the poor -- to those who do not -- the rich.

if the poor create wealth why do the rich have it or why do the poor freely sign up for low wages to create wealth and give it to the rich??

it would be like one man agreeing to work for minimum wage at McDonalds and another agreeing to work as CEO for $5000/hour and then agreeing to swap wages.

Its 100% absurd and stupid and of course, liberal.

no one is claiming that; but in hypothetical, class room scenarios.

 

[Norman]

if the poor create wealth why do the rich have it or why do the poor freely sign up for low wages to create wealth and give it to the rich??

Usually poor transfer wealth to the rich , because they have no option. They lack capital. That is one of the reasons for which I think micro loans are a good idea. It promotes entrepreneurship among poor people.

Poor (working) people don't transfer wealth to the rich. They rent their capital for a fee, and are certainly not forced to do that. It's not a wealth transfer but agreement that benefits both parties. Generally poor people are the ones who DO NOT work, in which case your point becomes even more absurd. You can't transfer something that doesn't exist.

However, the rich people do actually transfer wealth to the poor in mass quantities via taxation and charities.

I really can not stand the leftist loons that in essence are saying that the hand that feeds them is the reason for their misfortune, rather than their (in most cases) lazy asses. Have some appreciation towards those who make your life possible FFS.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Usually poor transfer wealth to the rich , because they have no option. They lack capital. That is one of the reasons for which I think micro loans are a good idea. It promotes entrepreneurship among poor people.[/QUOTE]
100% stupid and liberal as usual
1)micro loans are as old as time. Any idiot can loan money witgh interest and anybody will have a friend neighbor family etc from whom to borrow money at least once.
2) the poor can save money and accumulate capital just like Guats or any other group does. Sneak into America, work for minimum wage, save half to send home or to start a business. The Chinese save a 30%, while Americans save 2%, despite being far poorer. Capital is everywhere.
3) poor transfer wealth??? Actually dear the rich pay the wages and thus transfer wealth to the workers.

Good luck in your after life.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Poor (working) people don't transfer wealth to the rich.

Culture freak is a bit above total retard liberal. Most liberals want to steal money through taxation and transfer it to the poor, but culture freak wants to get them micro loans so they can become entrepreneurs. As I said its a step above pure retarded liberal but still little more than a belief in magic .

 

[danielpalos]

So what; supply side economics for the Right is to simply bailout the wealthiest and then let it trickle down.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

What's a bailout for the wealthiest look like?

 

[danielpalos]

What's a bailout for the wealthiest look like?

It looks something like this:

In 2007 the richest 1% of the American population owned 34.6% of the country's total wealth, and the next 19% owned 50.5%. The top 20% of Americans owned 85% of the country's wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 15%. From 1922 to 2010, the share of the top 1% varied from 19.7% to 44.2%, the big drop being associated with the drop in the stock market in the late 1970s. Ignoring the period where the stock market was depressed (1976-1980) and the period when the stock market was overvalued (1929), the share of wealth of the richest 1% remained extremely stable, at about a third of the total wealth.[20] Financial inequality was greater than inequality in total wealth, with the top 1% of the population owning 42.7%, the next 19% of Americans owning 50.3%, and the bottom 80% owning 7%.[21] However, after the Great Recession which started in 2007, the share of total wealth owned by the top 1% of the population grew from 34.6% to 37.1%, and that owned by the top 20% of Americans grew from 85% to 87.7%. The Great Recession also caused a drop of 36.1% in median household wealth but a drop of only 11.1% for the top 1%, further widening the gap between the 1% and the 99%.[19][20][21] During the economic expansion between 2002 and 2007, the income of the top 1% grew 10 times faster than the income of the bottom 90%. In this period 66% of total income gains went to the 1%, who in 2007 had a larger share of total income than at any time since 1928.--Source: Distribution of wealth - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

What's a bailout for the wealthiest look like?

It looks something like this:

In 2007 the richest 1% of the American population owned 34.6% of the country's total wealth, and the next 19% owned 50.5%. The top 20% of Americans owned 85% of the country's wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 15%. From 1922 to 2010, the share of the top 1% varied from 19.7% to 44.2%, the big drop being associated with the drop in the stock market in the late 1970s. Ignoring the period where the stock market was depressed (1976-1980) and the period when the stock market was overvalued (1929), the share of wealth of the richest 1% remained extremely stable, at about a third of the total wealth.[20] Financial inequality was greater than inequality in total wealth, with the top 1% of the population owning 42.7%, the next 19% of Americans owning 50.3%, and the bottom 80% owning 7%.[21] However, after the Great Recession which started in 2007, the share of total wealth owned by the top 1% of the population grew from 34.6% to 37.1%, and that owned by the top 20% of Americans grew from 85% to 87.7%. The Great Recession also caused a drop of 36.1% in median household wealth but a drop of only 11.1% for the top 1%, further widening the gap between the 1% and the 99%.[19][20][21] During the economic expansion between 2002 and 2007, the income of the top 1% grew 10 times faster than the income of the bottom 90%. In this period 66% of total income gains went to the 1%, who in 2007 had a larger share of total income than at any time since 1928.--Source: Distribution of wealth - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Since the government doesn't control the stock market, how is an increase in the stock market a bailout?