Twice as many people working for the government than in all of manufacturing!

[martybegan]

And the CEOs multi-million dollar salaries do not play into the cost of manufatcuring?

Divide the pay a CEO gets by the number of units a company sells and guess what? It really is a drop in the bucket in the cost of an item.

Lets look at Boeing for example of a high end product. A 737 costs 80 million, a 747 around 250 million. Lets take the average at $165 million. Boeing's CEO made 19.7 million in 2010, but Boeing has 2 major components, Defense with 68k employees, and commerical airlines at 58k or so. lets be generous and split it 50/50, ignoring any other products. So $9.85 million is the compensation for the commerical side. in 2008 Boeing shipped 407 units, so the CEO cost per unit is $24,201 per unit, or 0.01% of the aircraft's cost.

Now, high end items like aircraft are really not the issue, it is more low end items like clothes, or cheap electronics. I can assume the numbers are the same for those, or at least similar. I will try to do some math on those, but it makes the whole CEO thing a bit of a red herring.

Before we get too far along, I personally blame many of our unions for forcing jobs overseas. We are in a global economy and the wages and benefits that unions demand are not competitive in that global marketplace. However, to completely ignore CEO salary and benefits and lay ALL of the problems at the feet of the unions is probably inaccurate.

CEO salary is the big flashy thing in the window that gets all the attention, but really doesnt affect the bottom line of a business. You can cut the CEO' salary in 1/3 and you barely affect the cost of the item. Simple economics dictates that the majority of your costs is labor, then materials.

The prime issue is we are stuck in a transitional period of the world's economic development. Some countries now have the capability to manufacture items far above thier assumed worker cost/skill level due to automation. This is added to the contanerization of cargo, making the shipping of goods cost pennies per dollar if item worth. The old way to balance this out was tarriffs, but that has fallen to the wayside in the global economy. What you are left with is either reducing your own workers level of living to stay competative, or force the other countries to raise thiers. Basically, you are screwed until the situation corrects itself.

 

[8537]

Ya has nothing to do with the left forcing Business overseas to remain competitive you know like Harley Davidson and Obama Motor's......ya the left's attacks on our Business environment has been so helpful.

yeah, we should pay workers here what they pay in china, right?

loon

Or you have to force China to follow our regulations and rules, and thus raise thier own costs of doing business.

Or, you have to accept that manufacturing jobs were great for America when our wages were lower and our workforce less educated, but now we focus on creating higher-skilled, higher-wage jobs. We're not a manufacturing economy any more, we've grown beyond it.

 

[Oddball]

So, this thread has devolved into yet another "dey tuk or yobs" whine thread, rather than recognizing the rather obvious fact that bureaucracy in America, at all levels, is faaaaaaar too bloated and expensive?

Incredible.

 

[Robert]

yeah, we should pay workers here what they pay in china, right?

loon

Or you have to force China to follow our regulations and rules, and thus raise thier own costs of doing business.

Or, you have to accept that manufacturing jobs were great for America when our wages were lower and our workforce less educated, but now we focus on creating higher-skilled, higher-wage jobs. We're not a manufacturing economy any more, we've grown beyond it.

With the dismal rate of Failure of our Education system today we have not grown beyond anything in fact in lees you plan on having several hundred million hair dressers and McDonald workers you better start looking at way to keep the business in this country because we cannot afford to lose any more manufacturing job's.

The simple fact of the matter is that the left has and continues to promote a Hostile business environment everything from tax's to attacks on business themselves to promote what the left does best Class warfare. It blow my mind that anyone would expect business to stay here in this environment when any other nation offers greater benefits to moving operations there.

 

[Sallow]

Even if it is 3 times more productive it is 10 times more expensive. Unless you can convince people to pay more for US made items, work will continue to go overseas.

Think about it, it is cheaper to make something 4000 miles away and ship it here, than it is to make it here. This is valid for many low-tech items, things like clothes, that do not take alot of skill to make.

And the CEOs multi-million dollar salaries do not play into the cost of manufatcuring?

Divide the pay a CEO gets by the number of units a company sells and guess what? It really is a drop in the bucket in the cost of an item.

Lets look at Boeing for example of a high end product. A 737 costs 80 million, a 747 around 250 million. Lets take the average at $165 million. Boeing's CEO made 19.7 million in 2010, but Boeing has 2 major components, Defense with 68k employees, and commerical airlines at 58k or so. lets be generous and split it 50/50, ignoring any other products. So $9.85 million is the compensation for the commerical side. in 2008 Boeing shipped 407 units, so the CEO cost per unit is $24,201 per unit, or 0.01% of the aircraft's cost.

Now, high end items like aircraft are really not the issue, it is more low end items like clothes, or cheap electronics. I can assume the numbers are the same for those, or at least similar. I will try to do some math on those, but it makes the whole CEO thing a bit of a red herring.

Ridiculous.

In your example:
Did the CEO do the designs on his own?
Does the CEO manufacture the products on his own?
Does the CEO ship to the clients on his own?
Does the CEO maintain all the relationships and partnerships on his own?

If not..then why his he entitled to a salary equal to those of several hundred people combined?

Most of today's CEO's didn't start the companies they head..and work pretty much the same hours that the average joe works. Add in..alot of that time is spent "schmoozing" on the tax payer's dime..as in they can write off a good deal of their "entertainment" expenses.

 

[martybegan]

yeah, we should pay workers here what they pay in china, right?

loon

Or you have to force China to follow our regulations and rules, and thus raise thier own costs of doing business.

Or, you have to accept that manufacturing jobs were great for America when our wages were lower and our workforce less educated, but now we focus on creating higher-skilled, higher-wage jobs. We're not a manufacturing economy any more, we've grown beyond it.

Its not all manufacturing jobs, its really the ones that are simple. We still make airplanes, and construction equipment, and weapons (we are really really good at that). We also still have an infrastructure/construction base. The jobs we have lost are mostly textiles, small parts, consumer electronics, and some vehicles.

The problem with growing beyond a manufacturing economy is that some thing may happen to prevent us from getting all this good stuff from overseas, at that point we better remember how to do it ourselves.

 

[Robert]

And the CEOs multi-million dollar salaries do not play into the cost of manufatcuring?

Divide the pay a CEO gets by the number of units a company sells and guess what? It really is a drop in the bucket in the cost of an item.

Lets look at Boeing for example of a high end product. A 737 costs 80 million, a 747 around 250 million. Lets take the average at $165 million. Boeing's CEO made 19.7 million in 2010, but Boeing has 2 major components, Defense with 68k employees, and commerical airlines at 58k or so. lets be generous and split it 50/50, ignoring any other products. So $9.85 million is the compensation for the commerical side. in 2008 Boeing shipped 407 units, so the CEO cost per unit is $24,201 per unit, or 0.01% of the aircraft's cost.

Now, high end items like aircraft are really not the issue, it is more low end items like clothes, or cheap electronics. I can assume the numbers are the same for those, or at least similar. I will try to do some math on those, but it makes the whole CEO thing a bit of a red herring.

Ridiculous.

In your example:
Did the CEO do the designs on his own?
Does the CEO manufacture the products on his own?
Does the CEO ship to the clients on his own?
Does the CEO maintain all the relationships and partnerships on his own?

If not..then why his he entitled to a salary equal to those of several hundred people combined?

Most of today's CEO's didn't start the companies they head..and work pretty much the same hours that the average joe works. Add in..alot of that time is spent "schmoozing" on the tax payer's dime..as in they can write off a good deal of their "entertainment" expenses.

Just have to love Class warfare......so utterly empty

 

[8537]

Or you have to force China to follow our regulations and rules, and thus raise thier own costs of doing business.

Or, you have to accept that manufacturing jobs were great for America when our wages were lower and our workforce less educated, but now we focus on creating higher-skilled, higher-wage jobs. We're not a manufacturing economy any more, we've grown beyond it.

With the dismal rate of Failure of our Education system today we have not grown beyond anything in fact in lees you plan on having several hundred million hair dressers and McDonald workers you better start looking at way to keep the business in this country because we cannot afford to lose any more manufacturing job's.

We have the most educated workforce in the world. Bar none.

 

[8537]

Or you have to force China to follow our regulations and rules, and thus raise thier own costs of doing business.

Or, you have to accept that manufacturing jobs were great for America when our wages were lower and our workforce less educated, but now we focus on creating higher-skilled, higher-wage jobs. We're not a manufacturing economy any more, we've grown beyond it.

Its not all manufacturing jobs, its really the ones that are simple. We still make airplanes, and construction equipment, and weapons (we are really really good at that). We also still have an infrastructure/construction base. The jobs we have lost are mostly textiles, small parts, consumer electronics, and some vehicles.

Very good point, thank you.

The problem with growing beyond a manufacturing economy is that some thing may happen to prevent us from getting all this good stuff from overseas, at that point we better remember how to do it ourselves.

Right, but the other option would be to forcibly maintain low-skilled manufacturing via tariffs etc...making almost everyone worse off in an attempt to prevent the potential for people possibly becoming worse off in the future if the geopolitical situation spirals downward.

I'd prefer to use trade as a means of making sure the geopolitical situation doesn't spiral downward.

 

[WillowTree]

Something is very wrong when there are 22.5 million people working for the government and only 11.5 million working in all of manufacturing.

Stephen Moore: We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers - WSJ.com

Maybe if our corporate "friends" would stop shipping all of the manufacturing jobs overseas, we wouldn't have these problems?

then turn the hostile to friendly and maybe they will..

 

[WillowTree]

Maybe if our corporate "friends" would stop shipping all of the manufacturing jobs overseas, we wouldn't have these problems?

Ya has nothing to do with the left forcing Business overseas to remain competitive you know like Harley Davidson and Obama Motor's......ya the left's attacks on our Business environment has been so helpful.

yeah, we should pay workers here what they pay in china, right?

loon

what part of competitive do you knot understand? oh yes,, all of it..

 

[martybegan]

And the CEOs multi-million dollar salaries do not play into the cost of manufatcuring?

Divide the pay a CEO gets by the number of units a company sells and guess what? It really is a drop in the bucket in the cost of an item.

Lets look at Boeing for example of a high end product. A 737 costs 80 million, a 747 around 250 million. Lets take the average at $165 million. Boeing's CEO made 19.7 million in 2010, but Boeing has 2 major components, Defense with 68k employees, and commerical airlines at 58k or so. lets be generous and split it 50/50, ignoring any other products. So $9.85 million is the compensation for the commerical side. in 2008 Boeing shipped 407 units, so the CEO cost per unit is $24,201 per unit, or 0.01% of the aircraft's cost.

Now, high end items like aircraft are really not the issue, it is more low end items like clothes, or cheap electronics. I can assume the numbers are the same for those, or at least similar. I will try to do some math on those, but it makes the whole CEO thing a bit of a red herring.

Ridiculous.

In your example:
Did the CEO do the designs on his own?
Does the CEO manufacture the products on his own?
Does the CEO ship to the clients on his own?
Does the CEO maintain all the relationships and partnerships on his own?

If not..then why his he entitled to a salary equal to those of several hundred people combined?

Most of today's CEO's didn't start the companies they head..and work pretty much the same hours that the average joe works. Add in..alot of that time is spent "schmoozing" on the tax payer's dime..as in they can write off a good deal of their "entertainment" expenses.

I'm not aruging the point of if the salary is justifed, I'm showing the cost of his salary is nothing compared to the overall cost of the product. Someone brought up the point of why not lower the CEO's salary to save money on production to make our manufacturing sector more competative, and I countered with the fact that the CEO's salary really doesnt mean anything with respect to product cost.

As for why they make more money, its simply a matter of the talent pool. A large portion of the population can run a machine that stamps metal, evidently the pool for people that can run a multinational corporation sucessfully is much smaller. Its the same reason a baseball player makes more than a teacher. Lots of people can teach, very few can go .310-35-110 over a season.

 

[martybegan]

Or, you have to accept that manufacturing jobs were great for America when our wages were lower and our workforce less educated, but now we focus on creating higher-skilled, higher-wage jobs. We're not a manufacturing economy any more, we've grown beyond it.

With the dismal rate of Failure of our Education system today we have not grown beyond anything in fact in lees you plan on having several hundred million hair dressers and McDonald workers you better start looking at way to keep the business in this country because we cannot afford to lose any more manufacturing job's.

We have the most educated workforce in the world. Bar none.

I think the Germans would have a quibble with this point, but we are definitely up there.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Something is very wrong when there are 22.5 million people working for the government and only 11.5 million working in all of manufacturing.

Stephen Moore: We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers - WSJ.com

Maybe if our corporate "friends" would stop shipping all of the manufacturing jobs overseas, we wouldn't have these problems?

Ya has nothing to do with the left forcing Business overseas to remain competitive you know like Harley Davidson and Obama Motor's......ya the left's attacks on our Business environment has been so helpful.

Didn't the Republican Party control the Senate, House and WH from January 2001 until January 2007? In six years they had total control over the budget and tax policy. Why didn't they roll back corporate taxes or take any other action in keeping jobs at home?

Hell, they might have allowed corporations to dumb waste into rivers, smoke and ash into the air and setaside all envronmental safegurards; by eliminating worker safety laws, child labor laws and union representation they might have made manufacturing very profitable again, much as life was in the late 19th Century.

Of course Bush and the R's weren't really conservatives, they were RINO's. The real Republican Party is now in control and hope to do all of this in do time. Plutocracy is Freedom; so it was, so it will be.

 

[Againsheila]

Something is very wrong when there are 22.5 million people working for the government and only 11.5 million working in all of manufacturing.

Stephen Moore: We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers - WSJ.com

That's because our manufacturing jobs have been sent overseas. Are you suggesting we send our government jobs overseas as well? How about we just send our politicians overseas and don't let them back in the county, maybe then we could get something done.

 

[Oddball]

Something is very wrong when there are 22.5 million people working for the government and only 11.5 million working in all of manufacturing.

Stephen Moore: We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers - WSJ.com

That's because our manufacturing jobs have been sent overseas. Are you suggesting we send our government jobs overseas as well? How about we just send our politicians overseas and don't let them back in the county, maybe then we could get something done.

We should be so lucky.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Conservatives want our manufacturing done overseas, at the lowest possible labor cost, because that is a shining example of the so-called free market at work.

Half the people I know who work in government around here are ex-factory workers whose factories no longer exist. They didn't take government jobs because they were a cushy step up,

they took them because they were pretty much all that was left.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Ya has nothing to do with the left forcing Business overseas to remain competitive you know like Harley Davidson and Obama Motor's......ya the left's attacks on our Business environment has been so helpful.

How did they get "forced" by the left again?

Well gee I don't know how about insane environmental policy's. Or the asinine cost of doing business in this nation. or hell how the fact that the left has failed so badly in our education system that our work force is an utter joke compared to nations like India for good sakes.

I'm betting you don't remember being told what was going to happen a very long time ago with the left's policy's but we were told 'Oh no we want a "Service based economy" well now you've got your "service based economy" don't like it so much eh?

Let's look at today shall we .......what do we see from the left Business are EVIL tax them into non existence Business owner are rich fat cat TAX THEM into non existence the complete demonetization of our Business's by the left and now you're whining they've moved over sea's?........Really?

They build the i-pad overseas with workers that are paid 30 cents an hour.

How do you propose we bring those jobs to America?

How much can we save by polluting to make up for that?

 

[ClosedCaption]

Americans cant compete with the global market. IMO I think the reason many americans believe we can is because of the word "compete". Like a race! Americans are competitive, right?

But no worker here will or wants to work at the wages of some of these other nations. Even if we did decide to live on $10 a day wages. Where would you live in America on that? Where or what would you eat? It can't be done. Being nice to business isn't going to make them turn their backs on more profits. Period.

 

[kiwiman127]

Or you have to force China to follow our regulations and rules, and thus raise thier own costs of doing business.

Or, you have to accept that manufacturing jobs were great for America when our wages were lower and our workforce less educated, but now we focus on creating higher-skilled, higher-wage jobs. We're not a manufacturing economy any more, we've grown beyond it.

With the dismal rate of Failure of our Education system today we have not grown beyond anything in fact in lees you plan on having several hundred million hair dressers and McDonald workers you better start looking at way to keep the business in this country because we cannot afford to lose any more manufacturing job's.

The simple fact of the matter is that the left has and continues to promote a Hostile business environment everything from tax's to attacks on business themselves to promote what the left does best Class warfare. It blow my mind that anyone would expect business to stay here in this environment when any other nation offers greater benefits to moving operations there.

FACTS show there has been a class warfare going on since the 1980s as wages have grown about 1% since the 1980's in Real Dollars despite productivity rising about 85% and our economy growing about 90%. The money has stayed at the top, thusly preventing the working class from growing with the economy. That is the class warfare in it's real life state.

Sources:

Alan Blinder: Our Dickensian Economy - WSJ.com

http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/Wages+and+Benefits:+Real+Wages+(1964-2004)

So it appears the the right is on the side of those driving down wages which will eventually destroy the capitalistic consumer driven economy. How can the working class participate in a consumer driven economy when they keep losing expendable income due to flat wages?
And the poor corpoations that the far right wants to give even more tax breaks to have been recording record profits and they need more tax breaks?*

* http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/economy/24econ.html