Obama Tells Companies to 'Step Up' and Hire Workers

[The Rabbi]

Maybe make it so its not a HUGE tax, 5% 10%, maybe make it only on specific types of goods.

Lost of different ways to handle it then the way it was handled in your example. Unfortunately you just want to have a bee under your bonnet and not discuss it.

Well, the intent of the tax is to keep out foreign made goods. The targets of that tax will retaliate in kind, keeping out our goods. If you make it a low tax, then it will be ineffective. If you make it effective in keeping out foreign goods, you will keep US goods from being exported.
This really isn't that difficult a concept.
If you prevent people from making business transactions then you prevent people from making money.

You might have missed it or It might have been on this same exact topic in a different thread but when you hear me talking "import tax" the tax is for a specific purpose.

That purpose was to go toward paying our foreign held national debt. It was also meant to be legislated in a way that the tax expires when the debt is gone (no exceptions) and that it is to ONLY be used for the debt (no exceptions).

These are caveats I hold in regards to my desire for an import tax on goods.

I get the concerns but I also get our dire situation.

Whether the tax is for reducing foreign held national debt or stealth girdles for Michelle Obama is immaterial. It makes foreign goods less competitive in the U.S. market, meaning they will sell fewer. Meaning they will retaliate against U.S. goods imported into their market. The result is that fewer goods get sold all around.

 

[The Rabbi]

...That doesn't make sense to me. The US worker ought to be 50 times more productive...

He is, I just didn't explain it right.

For an example in building construction cement wall plaster can cost $20 per square yard as per stateside cost data using workers that cost $50/hr (total with sub's overhead & profit). Doing the same work in Panama still costs $20 per SY even though I'm paying $1 per hr. It's not because local people are lazy, they're hard workers. The thing is that if they're not intensively supervised they'll say, do the wrong wall, they'll do it double thick, they'll FORGET TO HAUL IN THE DAMN CEMENT WHEN IT RAINS AND THEY'LL--

[taking a minute to breath into a paper bag...]

OK. So the US worker is more productive in part because he is better trained and typically with better tools. Which is why wages are higher here.
We dont disagree.

 

[Caroljo]

...That doesn't make sense to me. The US worker ought to be 50 times more productive...

He is, I just didn't explain it right.

For an example in building construction cement wall plaster can cost $20 per square yard as per stateside cost data using workers that cost $50/hr (total with sub's overhead & profit). Doing the same work in Panama still costs $20 per SY even though I'm paying $1 per hr. It's not because local people are lazy, they're hard workers. The thing is that if they're not intensively supervised they'll say, do the wrong wall, they'll do it double thick, they'll FORGET TO HAUL IN THE DAMN CEMENT WHEN IT RAINS AND THEY'LL--

[taking a minute to breath into a paper bag...]

OK. So the US worker is more productive in part because he is better trained and typically with better tools. Which is why wages are higher here.
We dont disagree.

The company i've worked for for 18 yrs closed a plant they had in Juarez Mexico (yay!)..and moved the jobs to China (boooooo). I work in the Quality dept and have to get parts approved by our end customer. China is making beautiful "looking" parts (we make all kinds of silicone hoses), but their quality is crap. I can't tell you how many times they've had to re-build parts to get them right and it all makes ALOT more work on me. They have a huge turnover of workers...i'm not sure how many we have employed there, but i was told there are probably 10-12 workers that have been there since the plant was open (about 3 years)...so they're always having to train new people. And sometimes the JUST DON'T GET IT! I keep asking my supervisor to tell me again why we have anything built over there and he just laughs (because he agrees!). Can't quite figure out how the company is saving money this way...

One good thing...we still build alot of parts in our US plant here, and we have several customers that will NOT let us move their parts to China!!!

 

[The Rabbi]

A lot of manufacturers are discovering that off shoring isn't the panacaea that they thought. There are time and quality issues that might make the end product more expensive, not less.

 

[expat_panama]

...the US worker is more productive in part because he is better trained and typically with better tools...

There's so much more.

Life experiences. During WWII when a truckload of Russian soldiers had motor trouble they sat and waited for a mechanic. A GI truck breakdown had everyone poking around seeing who could fix it first.

Americans don't work harder they work smarter. Japanese workers put in far more hours than US workers but they stand around agreeing. Americans get more done per day in 8 hrs than the Japanese do in ten.

It goes on and on and this whining about how we need import taxes to compete is from those who don't know about American exceptional-ism. Real Americans aren't afraid to compete in the world market, they love it.

 

[The Rabbi]

Assuming the union mentality doesn't kill our competitiveness first.

 

[Caroljo]

A lot of manufacturers are discovering that off shoring isn't the panacaea that they thought. There are time and quality issues that might make the end product more expensive, not less.

That's what i believe they found in Juarez...along with the fact that it's the most dangerous place in Mexico. Now in China...we can't get the parts we need in time, there's alot of scrap, and the language barrier makes directions just horrible at times, getting them to understand what we expect!

 

[OmniRocky]

I think the real problem is that the economy is just too lazy. It needs to get up and get going again, and I've told it so. I don't know what else to do... ROFL

 

[Zander]

Is this an offer?

Federal government is nation’s largest employer; average pay is…
June 25, 2010 in General Comments | Tags: average federal pay, federal government employment, federal government largest employer

According to the Career Guide to Industries, 2010-2011 edition, Web page of the United States Office Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site, the United States government, which employs approximately 2 million civilians (not including intelligence agencies), is the nation’s largest employer. Average earnings for full-time federal workers in March 2009 were $74,403. The highest average for a specific job was $128,422 for General Attorney, while the lowest average for a specific job was Nursing Assistant at $34,728. The number of federal employees is predicted to increase by 10 percent during the period 2008 – 2018.
Federal government is nation’s largest employer; average pay is… « Phil Hardwick – From the Ground Up

Yeah - the Federal Government IS the largest employer. You are correct. Now, can you tell us what they produce that benefits us?

Thanks.

 

[rdean]

Republicans already squeezed the Middle Class dry. No one has any money. Every time Republicans make a budget cut, they want to give that cut away to billionaires.

When no one but billionaires have money, no one buys anything. There is no incentive to hire.

The Republican solution? Cut taxes and fire people. Then blame it on Obama. One, two, three. So predictable.

 

[Avorysuds]

Sooo, Obama shifts the blame from him to someone else? The reason a 800 billion dollar stimulus and 4 trillion Fed stimulus didn't work is not because it failed as predicted but because companies don't run out and hire people?

 

[editec]

Sooo, Obama shifts the blame from him to someone else? The reason a 800 billion dollar stimulus and 4 trillion Fed stimulus didn't work is not because it failed as predicted but because companies don't run out and hire people?

The reason the 787 billion stimulus failed is because damned little of it really went to creating new jobs.

38% of it went to tax cuts.

The vast majority of the rest of it went to the states so they could continue to keep workers in place.

But even if it hasd been three times as much, the stimulus money needed to be invested in things that would create more jobs.

And that simply did NOT happen.

It failed, I think, because it was designed to fail.

 

[California Girl]

Oh, so the problem is that the economy is just fine, but that businesses just won't hire anyone? The scary part is that he actually thinks that's how it is

U.S. companies are sitting on two trillion dollars of our tax cuts which were intended, at least according to rightwngnuts, to trickle down from the "job creators".

that money, less operating reserves and business expansion costs, should go to hiring. so i'd modify the president's comments to that extent, but as politifact says:

Still, no matter how you slice the data, the Federal Reserve statistics show that companies are holding on to much more cash and liquid assets than they have in years past, so Obama's broader point is valid. It was also presented in general enough terms -- "$2 trillion sitting on their balance sheets" -- that it is defensible as an accurate figure. But to the extent Obama's statement implies companies could readily invest that entire amount of money, it is misleading. Less the amount needed to meet regular business expenses, the amount on the balance sheet that could be used to invest in business expansion (including hiring new workers) is actually much smaller. And so we knock Obama's statement down a notch to Mostly True.

PolitiFact | Obama says companies have nearly $2 trillion sitting on their balance sheets

You're kidding, right?

No one, not the president, not congress, not anyone can tell a business to hire workers that it doesn't want or need. They are profit driven, not charities.

 

[FiscalSanity]

Ummm, you should hire when you don't have the work to justify putting more people on the clock? Folks, why is this so hard to understand-if you want a company to increase it's labor force by 10% then it's sales have to go up by an equivalent percent(or more) or the company is going to lose money. Owners and managers whole goal is to maximize profit, so doing something that is obviously going to cost the company money isn't something they are going to consider.

Even if the company wasn't going to lose the money, why should it hire more employees then it needs to handle the business it currently has? Are they supposed to pay those extra people to do make work or stand around for several hours a day because there isn't enough real work to go around, or are they supposed to send some of their existing employees home early so that the new employees have something to do?

 

[Avorysuds]

Sooo, Obama shifts the blame from him to someone else? The reason a 800 billion dollar stimulus and 4 trillion Fed stimulus didn't work is not because it failed as predicted but because companies don't run out and hire people?

The reason the 787 billion stimulus failed is because damned little of it really went to creating new jobs.

38% of it went to tax cuts.

The vast majority of the rest of it went to the states so they could continue to keep workers in place.

But even if it hasd been three times as much, the stimulus money needed to be invested in things that would create more jobs.

And that simply did NOT happen.

It failed, I think, because it was designed to fail.

Let me put some perspective into your insane thinking… Could you promise with let’s say 5x the spending that America would be on track or you get slowly dissected live on television?

My point is, Obama failed and blamed every other person on the planet, if yours failed would you actually admit “we’ll holy shit I got that 1 wrong.” Or just say we needed 10 trillion to do the job?

Try and remember that the Fed pounded 4 TRILLION of a stimulus into the system while Obama did his 800billion. So in a way it was 5x the original stimulus.

I find it funny or sad or whatever… that people claim we needed to do Obama’s stimulus, then when it failed it magically saved us from a depression AND got us out of a recession (later, lol) yet here we are today talking about the realistic possibility of skipping a “double dip recession” (lol I know, we never got out of the first one!) and landing right into that Depression we were “saved” from, on accident!….

Yet we hear “we needed more.” Lets skip back to before the bail outs and stimulus while MILLIONS of people and many on these boards made prediction. That prediction was, “The stimulus/Bail outs will fail, then we will hear that they needed more money. At most we will see a floating of the economy and the crash is inevitable.” How come “we” don’t get credit for predicting with near perfect accuracy this most uncertain future? Why do we give people who told us off and made fun of us another chance when yet again we tell you it will fail and again they mock us…