The jobs are leaving! The jobs are leaving!

[Baruch Menachem]

Watching my Korean soaps. They are better than the stuff out of Hollywood. But they all speak Korean, which is as musical as something by Stravinksy. All those Hollywood types make a product of a lower quality, so I can't be bothered with it. Sucks to be them.

The price of a good, wages or whatever is determined by the demand for that product and the willingness of folks to pay the costs of bringing it to market. Wages are only relevant on what you can buy with them. The reason the Bangladeshi worker probably has to get by on so little is because of all the other costs in the system.



There is no way some guy in Bangladesh is going to compete with an American worker who does a $16 an hour job. US factories do not pay the wages they do for someone who is only worth 25 cents an hour.
Wages are a cost, and people pay the cost based on the fact they get more than the cost back.. $16 pays for a set of skills in english, following instructions, math, being able do to a set of tasks without supervision, and just the fact that the factory is in a certain place and the customers are in a certain place and the materials are there too.
A 25 cent an hour worker is a guy who has 25 cent an hour skills.

We are not paying the wages we pay because anyone deserves them. It is because they earn them.

How is anyone entitled to the belief that the rest of the country owes him, just because he was born here? That was his good luck. He needs to build on it.

 

[Cuyo]

Watching my Korean soaps. They are better than the stuff out of Hollywood. But they all speak Korean, which is as musical as something by Stravinksy. All those Hollywood types make a product of a lower quality, so I can't be bothered with it. Sucks to be them.

The price of a good, wages or whatever is determined by the demand for that product and the willingness of folks to pay the costs of bringing it to market. Wages are only relevant on what you can buy with them. The reason the Bangladeshi worker probably has to get by on so little is because of all the other costs in the system.



There is no way some guy in Bangladesh is going to compete with an American worker who does a $16 an hour job. US factories do not pay the wages they do for someone who is only worth 25 cents an hour.
Wages are a cost, and people pay the cost based on the fact they get more than the cost back.. $16 pays for a set of skills in english, following instructions, math, being able do to a set of tasks without supervision, and just the fact that the factory is in a certain place and the customers are in a certain place and the materials are there too.
A 25 cent an hour worker is a guy who has 25 cent an hour skills.

We are not paying the wages we pay because anyone deserves them. It is because they earn them.

How is anyone entitled to the belief that the rest of the country owes him, just because he was born here? That was his good luck. He needs to build on it.

I think you're missing the point, which is that the opportunity is gone... We'll just have to agree to disagree...

$16 is an arbitrary number, it's about what a press operator, a quality control guy, a glass-factory-glass-flipper-over-er (I knew a guy who did this, flipped a piece of glass over on the assembly line to cook the other side, 12 hour shifts), an egg carton loader, might make in some stage of an assembly line of a factory. We're not talking college educated stuff here, just a good honest day's work.

The problem is, the factory ain't here no more. My glass factory friend's company shut down the entire operation in favor of importing Chinese glass. They leveled the plant, but others, especially in more urban areas, they just abandon.

Per capita these people are super poor compared to us. They'll work for less, far less than anything that passes as a "living wage" in the States.

Again my question; Do you think U.S. firms should be permitted to cut costs any way they can, with no restrictions, no matter how much it damages the U.S. economy?

 

[rdean]

I have an honest question for everyone here in both parties; Where are we on isolationism? How do you guys feel about bringing jobs back, either through tarriffs on imports, or on making laws to prohibit outsourcing, both, or any other means?

The labor pool is flooded, which has forced real wages into the toilet and put the clamp on the middle class. So many people are desperate for work that they'll take far less than someone in their position would make otherwise, and companies are happy to oblige paying them far less.

Thoughts?

NYT: Millions face years without jobs - The New York Times- msnbc.com

A new scarcity of jobs
Some labor experts say the basic functioning of the American economy has changed in ways that make jobs scarce — particularly for older, less-educated people like Ms. Eisen, who has only a high school diploma.

Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, a feat often achieved by cutting payroll. The declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees. Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to low-cost countries in Asia and Latin America. Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 — the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class paychecks.

------------------------------------------------------------

It's all about investing in America. Republicans say, "Don't spend money, shrink government, remove regulations and cut corporate taxes". All the things that caused the problem.

I don't understand why Republicans vote against their own self interests time and time again. Add the whole "anti education" thing, and you have a recipe for disaster. The very people who need the most help and the people who fight that help the most.

Invest in America first. Invest in the American people. Invest in education. There, that's it. That will work.

 

[Xenophon]

Again my question; Do you think U.S. firms should be permitted to cut costs any way they can, with no restrictions, no matter how much it damages the U.S. economy?

The problem is the way government operates, not the firms themselves.

Their are other reasons for teh US decline, which only rose do to an anomoly, the second world war. The USA was untouched by the physical aspects of the war, and siezed markets in all kinds of good all over the world which lead to tremendous properity and rising salaries and pensions for over 30 yeas after the war, but by that time the world had recovered and new countries entered the manufacturing business.

Think about it, a century ago China was basically illiterate peasants living under foreign leaders, now they are a economic powerhouse.

The USA refuses to leave its 1950s era view of itself as THE country leading teh world in all things.

Things that fail to adapt die.

We are failing to adapt.

 

[RodISHI]

Watching my Korean soaps. They are better than the stuff out of Hollywood. But they all speak Korean, which is as musical as something by Stravinksy. All those Hollywood types make a product of a lower quality, so I can't be bothered with it. Sucks to be them.

The price of a good, wages or whatever is determined by the demand for that product and the willingness of folks to pay the costs of bringing it to market. Wages are only relevant on what you can buy with them. The reason the Bangladeshi worker probably has to get by on so little is because of all the other costs in the system.



There is no way some guy in Bangladesh is going to compete with an American worker who does a $16 an hour job. US factories do not pay the wages they do for someone who is only worth 25 cents an hour.
Wages are a cost, and people pay the cost based on the fact they get more than the cost back.. $16 pays for a set of skills in english, following instructions, math, being able do to a set of tasks without supervision, and just the fact that the factory is in a certain place and the customers are in a certain place and the materials are there too.
A 25 cent an hour worker is a guy who has 25 cent an hour skills.

We are not paying the wages we pay because anyone deserves them. It is because they earn them.

How is anyone entitled to the belief that the rest of the country owes him, just because he was born here? That was his good luck. He needs to build on it.

I think you're missing the point, which is that the opportunity is gone... We'll just have to agree to disagree...

$16 is an arbitrary number, it's about what a press operator, a quality control guy, a glass-factory-glass-flipper-over-er (I knew a guy who did this, flipped a piece of glass over on the assembly line to cook the other side, 12 hour shifts), an egg carton loader, might make in some stage of an assembly line of a factory. We're not talking college educated stuff here, just a good honest day's work.

The problem is, the factory ain't here no more. My glass factory friend's company shut down the entire operation in favor of importing Chinese glass. They leveled the plant, but others, especially in more urban areas, they just abandon.

Per capita these people are super poor compared to us. They'll work for less, far less than anything that passes as a "living wage" in the States.

Again my question; Do you think U.S. firms should be permitted to cut costs any way they can, with no restrictions, no matter how much it damages the U.S. economy?

If anyone thinks it is just the cost of employees I would say you are sadly mistaken. The little factory that shut down here recently and moved to China was sold out. In looking at the cost to maintain that building the first thing I noticed was the several hundred thousand dollars a year for property taxes on the tin shed basically. The tax assessor wants the building owners to pay for the cost of the entire building all over again in less than ten years. Taxes are killing jobs much faster than wages.

 

[Cuyo]

If anyone thinks it is just the cost of employees I would say you are sadly mistaken. The little factory that shut down here recently and moved to China was sold out. In looking at the cost to maintain that building the first thing I noticed was the several hundred thousand dollars a year for property taxes on the tin shed basically. The tax assessor wants the building owners to pay for the cost of the entire building all over again in less than ten years. Taxes are killing jobs much faster than wages.

No it's certainly not just the cost of employees, but your last statement (in red) is certainly a stretch. I don't know of a single company whose taxes are not utterly irrelevant next to payroll.

Now I'm from New Jersey, the property tax capital of the country, and taxes were a contributing factor to me picking up and moving myself and my business to central Penn (among many other things). The taxes in NJ were $4k in NJ for a 4000 sq ft warehouse, in penn, 5600 on a 16,000 sq ft warehouse. Both pale utterly next to a payroll budget of nearly $100k. $5600/year is about what I spend on my Sunday delivery driver!

I know, my business is not every business in the country, but to say property taxes are a bigger expense to any business than payroll, well that's just silly!

 

[beowolfe]

I have an honest question for everyone here in both parties; Where are we on isolationism? How do you guys feel about bringing jobs back, either through tarriffs on imports, or on making laws to prohibit outsourcing, both, or any other means?

The labor pool is flooded, which has forced real wages into the toilet and put the clamp on the middle class. So many people are desperate for work that they'll take far less than someone in their position would make otherwise, and companies are happy to oblige paying them far less.

Thoughts?

I think you're laboring under the misconception that tariffs = isoloation. I don't agree. My problem with what we've done is that we've done it half assed. The system of tariffs put in place by the constitution were designed to protect our domestic economy from being flooded with cheap goods made in other countries. The free trade agreements have undone that system without putting anything in place to protect our economy.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

In England, tarriffs are called 'customs' because it was the one tax that the king could always get through parliament. In ancient times, every time a new king came on to the throne, they had to re pass the whole tax system to give him the authority to collect them. As they were the only taxes easy to pass,and Parliament would always pass them, they became known and Customary duties.

When the us constitution was written, customs were the only form of direct taxation allowed the new state.

Most of the founders actively disliked high tariffs, as they were the losers in the tariff game. Jefferson and Washington especially. The idea of fostering monopoly by taxation as tyranny was one of the few things that united all the colonies together. The whole Tea Party was about the fact that the East India company was given a monopoly in order to extort money from the colonies.

Tariffs don't really do much to preserve jobs, they enrich the politicians, a little bit, help the putative beneficiaries a very small amount, and cause huge losses in terms of quality and price to the consumer. Like most other forms of theft, the losses suffered in no way compensate for the small gains.

And the gainers are very different from the losers. The gainers really don't need the gain, as they are usually a lot better off than those who lose by it.

 

[LibocalypseNow]

Both the Socialists and Neocons are staunch Internationalists/Globalists. They are destroying our nation. It's time for true Conservatism to return. Lets hope this starts happening this year. Make 2010 count people.

 

[rdean]

Oregon Manufacturer Growing With Green Technology

When Aarnio bought Oregon Iron Works in 1975, not long after dropping out of college just shy of graduation, the business comprised all of 12 employees jammed into a 5,000-square-foot shop in Northeast Portland. Sales that year totaled $850,000.

Today, nearly 400 employees occupy work bays covering 305,000 square feet. A separate facility in Vancouver, recently rebuilt after a major fire, handles final assembly. Anywhere from five to 20 separate projects are under way at any one time, spinning benefits for more than 300 local and national vendors. This year's sales will exceed $120 million.

-------------------------------------

Impressive.

 

[Some Guy]

I think one point that may be missed in the discussion so far is that if companies didn't send the more remedial manufacturing jobs overseas, you'd see much higher prices here in the US. A company needs to make more than it spends, so if you literally multiply your production cost by a factor of 10 by moving those jobs back to the US, you're going to need to charge much more for the product in order to make that cost back.

This is the reason that the minimum wage is a bad idea. It forces companies that have very simple, remedial jobs to offer at a low wage to instead send those jobs overseas or simply not offer a product/service. Obviously no one likes the idea of working for $7 an hour, but if someone would take it, why should they be denied?

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Working for peanuts is better than being unemployed.

It is insulting that someone is protecting you by depriving you of a job. $6 isn't much, but it is so much better than zero

 

[Some Guy]

Working for peanuts is better than being unemployed.

It is insulting that someone is protecting you by depriving you of a job. $6 isn't much, but it is so much better than zero

Right. No one would be forcing anyone to take the job. If the employer can't fill the position then so be it, but he/she should have the right to offer it.

 

[RodISHI]

If anyone thinks it is just the cost of employees I would say you are sadly mistaken. The little factory that shut down here recently and moved to China was sold out. In looking at the cost to maintain that building the first thing I noticed was the several hundred thousand dollars a year for property taxes on the tin shed basically. The tax assessor wants the building owners to pay for the cost of the entire building all over again in less than ten years. Taxes are killing jobs much faster than wages.

No it's certainly not just the cost of employees, but your last statement (in red) is certainly a stretch. I don't know of a single company whose taxes are not utterly irrelevant next to payroll.

Now I'm from New Jersey, the property tax capital of the country, and taxes were a contributing factor to me picking up and moving myself and my business to central Penn (among many other things). The taxes in NJ were $4k in NJ for a 4000 sq ft warehouse, in penn, 5600 on a 16,000 sq ft warehouse. Both pale utterly next to a payroll budget of nearly $100k. $5600/year is about what I spend on my Sunday delivery driver!

I know, my business is not every business in the country, but to say property taxes are a bigger expense to any business than payroll, well that's just silly!

You speak of what you know for you. I know I was taxed on a small building more than 1/10 of the cost of the entire cost of that new building per year. That means I would be paying for the same amount in property taxes on that little building that it cost to build that building in less than ten years. Is it different in NJ, probably is. I know a family owned hardware and lumber business cannot survive paying well over a hundred thousand a year on a building that cost them less than five hundred thousand to build (which is what the closet large hardware/lumber yard here pays per year).

I have looked at the taxes here where we live for well over ten years now and know personally what taxes do to a the basic businesses in the rural areas such as we currently and most generally have always live in. People supposedly do not want the cost of food to go up so areas such as these have farm subsidies. These subsidies provided a system where corruption thrives and profiteers take advantage of all with devaluations and inflation of products that they themselves do or do not necessarily grow and the taxpayer subsidizes it. No that is not a stretch it is the truth like it or not. You may be able to buy bread at two dollars a loaf and pay very little for the taxes on your property but the people that grow the grain for that bread you eat do not have that population base that an area like NJ has to tax from so they tax the crap out of the small businesses that provide jobs in these rural areas and many times the homeowners also. Large corporate farmers move in and tear down the homesteads, clear the fruit trees and farm huge areas with GM & GMO crops and shit-loads of chemicals so you can have cheap bread. It is a vicious corporate cycle that has created the mess that you see today as the e-con-o-my crashes. These GM and GMO chemically laden crops have tainted the food supply and the water so badly that the people are not healthy so now those same corporate holders wish to have each and every tax payer pay them to provide them with cures for all these maladies that they help create with their chemicals and processes that were ultimately paid for in this whole corrupt systemically failed system with tax dollar subsidies. Again more taxes on the backs of the people!

 

[Vanquish]

Farm subsidies are a funny issue. Half the people who complain about lazy urban welfare recipients have no idea the kind of farm welfare being doled out. They just think middle america is stuck in the 50s with family farms with Andy Griffith on them.

Meanwhile chicken coops have 24,000 chickens or more each, run based on conveyor belts and mass produce a product 1950s farmers could never imagine.

 

[RodISHI]

Farm subsidies are a funny issue. Half the people who complain about lazy urban welfare recipients have no idea the kind of farm welfare being doled out. They just think middle america is stuck in the 50s with family farms with Andy Griffith on them.

Meanwhile chicken coops have 24,000 chickens or more each, run based on conveyor belts and mass produce a product 1950s farmers could never imagine.

Welfare for corporate farms either way is just another portion of that vicious tax the people and spend it cycle.

Here a few weeks ago I saw two yellow trucks with mexico license plates. They seemed either lost or looking, not sure which. If I would have had the dog with me and more time I may have checked'm out further. Yesterday I got to wondering if they were trucks with more illegal workers in them the drivers seemed a bit odd. I know the corporate pig farms around here were built with mostly illegals, probably have a lot of illegals working at them too.

 

[beowolfe]

In England, tarriffs are called 'customs' because it was the one tax that the king could always get through parliament. In ancient times, every time a new king came on to the throne, they had to re pass the whole tax system to give him the authority to collect them. As they were the only taxes easy to pass,and Parliament would always pass them, they became known and Customary duties.

When the us constitution was written, customs were the only form of direct taxation allowed the new state.

Most of the founders actively disliked high tariffs, as they were the losers in the tariff game. Jefferson and Washington especially. The idea of fostering monopoly by taxation as tyranny was one of the few things that united all the colonies together. The whole Tea Party was about the fact that the East India company was given a monopoly in order to extort money from the colonies.

Tariffs don't really do much to preserve jobs, they enrich the politicians, a little bit, help the putative beneficiaries a very small amount, and cause huge losses in terms of quality and price to the consumer. Like most other forms of theft, the losses suffered in no way compensate for the small gains.

And the gainers are very different from the losers. The gainers really don't need the gain, as they are usually a lot better off than those who lose by it.

Based on your post, I get the feeling that you're not sure what tariffs are.

 

[csbarry]

That which is consumed in this Country should be fabricated in this Country. That which is fabricated in this Country should be serviced in this Country.

 

[uscitizen]

Farm subsidies are a funny issue. Half the people who complain about lazy urban welfare recipients have no idea the kind of farm welfare being doled out. They just think middle america is stuck in the 50s with family farms with Andy Griffith on them.

Meanwhile chicken coops have 24,000 chickens or more each, run based on conveyor belts and mass produce a product 1950s farmers could never imagine.

Yep and we just have a few so we have put too many eggs in one basket as it were.
If something happens to one of the egg producers we have shortages and price hikes.

Probably one due about Easter.

 

[Cuyo]

I think one point that may be missed in the discussion so far is that if companies didn't send the more remedial manufacturing jobs overseas, you'd see much higher prices here in the US. A company needs to make more than it spends, so if you literally multiply your production cost by a factor of 10 by moving those jobs back to the US, you're going to need to charge much more for the product in order to make that cost back.

This is the reason that the minimum wage is a bad idea. It forces companies that have very simple, remedial jobs to offer at a low wage to instead send those jobs overseas or simply not offer a product/service. Obviously no one likes the idea of working for $7 an hour, but if someone would take it, why should they be denied?

I'm liking you more and more. You're clearly to the right of the spectrum, but you seem to understand why, and have a far greater grasp on the pros and cons thereof than that to which I'm accustomed from the right.

Yes, that gives us the question; is it better to have low prices and a generally depressed economy, or higher prices and a more stable economy? Eg, if you make twice as much but stuff costs twice as much (To keep it simple), is that better or worse than what we have now?

I think the 2-fold scenario is better. Food and housing should be roughly unaffected, because they can't be outsourced in any meaningful way; Therefore in my hypothetical, you're left with far more discretionary income. With double the paycheck, and food/housing roughly the same, you have far more choice on what to do with what's left. Sure, you can't buy quite what you could with double paycheck and no price increases, but I think you certainly come out on top.

Maybe you disagree? Maybe you think wages double and consumer goods triple? Thoughts?