USA was really really dumb to move so much manufacturing to China

[pknopp]

I sure hope you PROUDLY wear your MAGA hat....made in china.....

MAGA hats are not made in China. There are some cheap knockoff from China, but none of the MAGA hats are actually from China. I assume you know this? Or are you ignorant?

Trump's clothing line was. Just the same as he hired illegals.

Until that all became a campaign platform.

Sure. If I was Trump, I would have done the same, except for illegals.

If you can't make something profitable in the US, then you have to make it outside the US, or not make it. That's how that works. No one is going to make a product in the US that causes them to lose money, just so they can say it was made in the US.

Nevertheless, the MAGA hats were never made in China. Sorry. That's left-wing Jessie Smollett story telling.

But I have no problem hiring legal immigrants, or outsourcing to China or anywhere in general. It's up to you to not have a system the creates economic incentives to make stuff outside the US.

Trump now says that is bad for America.

I'm a conservative. Trump might be the best of two bad options, but I don't really care what he thinks on the matter.

It was his hypocrital actions that cost taxpayers billions in bail out money.

 

[pknopp]

You still haven't backed up your position.

CAFE standards. Taxes on cars that USD more gas. (Trucks do not lay these taxes.)

Game, set, match. You lose.

Yes, we increased CAFE standards. That didn't ban big cars like you said so what are you saying? That you miss the days of smog filled cities?

If you want a car from Ford, there will soon be only one: the Mustang

No, it doesn't "ban cars", it just makes it unprofitable to make them, and thus the number of cars made will drastically decline.

We have the old CAFE standards of decades, and I don't remember 'smog filled cities' during those decades.

So now you are just playing another Jessie Smollett fabricated story.

Cars from other countries must meet the same CAFE standards.

Ok? I'm not sure what you are implying from this. Yes I know imported cars have the same regulations. That doesn't change the fact that driving up the cost on low-value cars, makes it nearly impossible to build a low-cost car profitably inside the US.

What you are saying effectively is... there will still be low-cost cars, just not made in the US.

Are you ok with more jobs being moved outside the US, or not? Because that is the effect of your regulations.

The same regulations apply to all cars sold in the USA.

Do some countries allow corporations to destroy their environment? Yes. We should heavily tax those companies that do that.

 

[Andylusion]

Under-regulated, under-thought capitalism allows for huge mistakes like this.

Another example of how those who refuse to understand that are opening the door for the socialists.

I must be missing something. Give me an example of "under-regulated" or "under-thought" capitalism.

Purdue Pharmacueticals.

Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused

That is your example of unregulated capitalism?

Title 21 United States Code (USC) Controlled Substances Act - Section 801-971

Roughly 100 pages of laws. Doesn't include FDA regulations either.
That's just Federal Laws too, and doesn't include State laws.

This is exactly my point. You are pointing to the pharma industry, which is one of the most highly regulated industries in the country, and then claiming this is an example of unregulated capitalism.

And this is typical of all socialist views. You screw up a system, and then when your endless government regulations and controls end up blowing up the system, like the sub-prime crash, you try and blame it on Capitalism.

Well that doesn't work. Not for people who think, at least. You can't have a thousand laws on drugs, and then when something happens you don't like, blame it on the lack of regulations.

Further, it is most likely because of regulations and government, that we have the opioid epidemic. There are clear signs that Medicaid directly supported the crisis.

https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemic/dp/1620402505/&tag=ff0d01-20

Sam Quinones on Heroin, the Opioid Epidemic, and Dreamland - Econlib

The economist who wrote the book Dreamland, gave a podcast interview on this, on EconTalk. You can listen to it if you want.

Regardless, if you look at the evidence, Medicaid directly promoted the Opioid crisis.

By covering the cost of the drugs to poor people, who then turned around, and sold the drugs on the street, combined with Medicaid doctors who were willing to take cash payments from people they knew were selling the drugs illegally, Medicaid alone, created a vast market for prescription opioids.

And while you can claim, along with the fake news media outlets, that all the drug companies were doing thus and so..... the truth is, the drug companies had no real alternative.

You can sit here and say in retrospect that they should have prevented the sales of their pills.... but in an alternate reality, if the drug companies 20 years back had intentionally prevented sales of pills, and one single patient had been denied the drugs they wanted through Medicaid..... you people right here, right now, would be have a toddler level melt down about how the evil drug companies were refusing to supply needed medications to people.

And we know this, because you and those like you have already had such threads on this forum for other situations.

The drug companies, do not have company representatives at every doctors office in the country. They don't have evaluations for everyone single patient. Yes, they likely did know that their drugs were being sold, but without omniscience to know which patients were lying and selling, and which really needed it, there was nothing they could do. If they had attempted anything to stop drug sales, you people would have been all over them.

There were no regulations as to the amount of drugs they could push.

Sell some pot, go to prison. Sell opioids and maybe you'll get sued.

Our regulation system is broke. That isnt an argument for ending regulatory practices. It's an argument for fixing that.

Boeing put profits over safety. The FAA was willing to look the other way until they got embarrassed by the emails that got released.

Many heads should roll. People inside of Boeing should be in prison.

Again, you are talking about the most heavily regulated industries in the US.

Now you can make the argument "they just need to fix it"... but how many decades on decades on decades have we played the "we just need to fix it" game with regulations?

Housing regulations have been growing in size and scope since basically World War 2. Endless on endless on endless regulations, and we've had crash after crash, with the biggest just in the past 10 years. 70+ years of endless regulations, and here you are 70 years later after the US Federal Government directly involved itself in housing... and we've had a massive crash.

How many hundreds of more years do you need to magically "Get regulation right"? And why should we believe you?

How many times have you said "trust us" in regards to government intervention, only to have it turn out into another crap show, and blaming Capitalism for it?

Look at the Stimulus package Obama pushed for almost a trillion dollars, and what did we get for that $1.3 Trillion dollar deficit for years? With the Stimulus package, unemployment would stop at under 8%, and we'd recover fully in 2 years. Instead unemployment went almost to 11% and we had the slowest recovery from a recession in all of US history.

And where did that money? Just gone.

And then you look at government agencies like the FAA and complain.... but here's the problem.... it's always been that way. Always. ALWAYS.

Government agencies simply end up being a revolving door for the companies. Every single time, you end up with people in those agencies, that use the power government gives them, to enrich themselves.

Not a single government agency anywhere, has ever stopped anything. Ever.

Name one time. Name one. You can't. Enron, actually used their SEC reports they filed, to pacify investors that were raising red flags about their books. Investor were saying.... this kinda looks like you are hiding something. .. and Enron said we filed our reports with the SEC, and they said nothing.

And this happens all the time. Walmart when they first started selling roasted chicken, left it to government to do safety checks. After a year, they found that only 3 visits even checked by the FDA, and 2 were the same store. So Walmart ended up buying wireless thermometers to put in each chicken to verify cooking with computers.

Your attempts to use government fix all things in the world, has done just the opposite. We are less safe from government, not more.

All your regulations and endless agencies make us worse off, and your solution is more of the same poison, as if taking more toxic waste, will magically make us all better. There is no example of that happening. No country has regulated it's way into prosperity and safety. Never happened.

 

[Andylusion]

We are so vulnerable. Look, China won’t even deliver masks to the USA manufactured by American owned companies.

What a colossal geo political blunder by some many stupid swamp creatures.

If China makes all of our shit, doesn’t that make us beholden to them? We can just tell them to pound sand. He rely on them.

So fucked.

TPP? So fucking stupid.

I sure hope you PROUDLY wear your MAGA hat....made in china.....

MAGA hats are not made in China. There are some cheap knockoff from China, but none of the MAGA hats are actually from China. I assume you know this? Or are you ignorant?

Trump's clothing line was. Just the same as he hired illegals.

Until that all became a campaign platform.

Sure. If I was Trump, I would have done the same, except for illegals.

If you can't make something profitable in the US, then you have to make it outside the US, or not make it. That's how that works. No one is going to make a product in the US that causes them to lose money, just so they can say it was made in the US.

Nevertheless, the MAGA hats were never made in China. Sorry. That's left-wing Jessie Smollett story telling.

But I have no problem hiring legal immigrants, or outsourcing to China or anywhere in general. It's up to you to not have a system the creates economic incentives to make stuff outside the US.

Only 15% of the products in the Trump store are made in the US


Only 15% of the products in the Trump store are made in the US
December 4, 2018
By Justin Rohrlich
Geopolitics reporter

Yes, I am aware of this, and I would do the same. You have to make products at a profit, or there is no point in making them. If you can not make something profitably in the US, then you make it elsewhere. That's how life works.

My point was the MAGA hat (which is exactly what the other poster said) is not made outside the US. The MAGA hats are made domestically.

 

[pknopp]

So we should go downward in wages? We as a nation should accept lower wages? Seems backwards thinking. Then prices of things have to drop big time. Otherwise people won't make enough to live paycheck to paycheck.

“Prosperity Through Lower Wages!”

Well yes.... if lower wages results in the creation of more jobs, and the creation of more jobs results in more people being employed, instead of unemployed... then yes that results in prosperity.

Again... are you going to be more prosperous earning Zero... or earning $5/hour? The answer is of course, earning $5/hour will be more prosperous than earning zero.

Equally, for the nation as a whole, every job in the private sector, is a productive job, or it wouldn't exist. Production creates wealth. Again, if you produced something of zero value, no one would hire you.

So increased production, means that the total wealth produced in the entire country, which benefits all of us, makes us more prosperous.

So again... more prosperity.

Now that does not mean we want people to earn less. I'd rather they earn more. And the way you earn more, is by gaining skills and abilities, experience and talent that allows you to produce more wealth.

For example years ago I had a friend who worked at Walmart. She used Walmarts tuition reimbursement program, to get a degree in construction engineering, and now has a job doing that, which of course pays more.

The solution to lower wages, is to have more people like her, who get jobs, and use those jobs to advance their skills the way she did.

The solution is not to mandate higher wages for low skill work, which results in people like her being laid off, and then they can't get a degree or experience to advance their career.

That isn't how it works. People don't make $0. People get welfare.

Which is actually worse. Because you are paying to not produce wealth for the country, while they consume wealth for the country.

Welfare is paying money, to destroy the wealth of the country.

This is why welfare doesn't exist in Nordic countries for example, and why most don't have a minimum wage. Because they understand that working for anything, and producing wealth for the country, is better than paying people to not work, and destroying the wealth of the country.

In Nordic countries the government negotiates the wages for most employees.

Is that what you are after?

 

[pknopp]

Under-regulated, under-thought capitalism allows for huge mistakes like this.

Another example of how those who refuse to understand that are opening the door for the socialists.

I must be missing something. Give me an example of "under-regulated" or "under-thought" capitalism.

Purdue Pharmacueticals.

Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused

That is your example of unregulated capitalism?

Title 21 United States Code (USC) Controlled Substances Act - Section 801-971

Roughly 100 pages of laws. Doesn't include FDA regulations either.
That's just Federal Laws too, and doesn't include State laws.

This is exactly my point. You are pointing to the pharma industry, which is one of the most highly regulated industries in the country, and then claiming this is an example of unregulated capitalism.

And this is typical of all socialist views. You screw up a system, and then when your endless government regulations and controls end up blowing up the system, like the sub-prime crash, you try and blame it on Capitalism.

Well that doesn't work. Not for people who think, at least. You can't have a thousand laws on drugs, and then when something happens you don't like, blame it on the lack of regulations.

Further, it is most likely because of regulations and government, that we have the opioid epidemic. There are clear signs that Medicaid directly supported the crisis.

https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemic/dp/1620402505/&tag=ff0d01-20

Sam Quinones on Heroin, the Opioid Epidemic, and Dreamland - Econlib

The economist who wrote the book Dreamland, gave a podcast interview on this, on EconTalk. You can listen to it if you want.

Regardless, if you look at the evidence, Medicaid directly promoted the Opioid crisis.

By covering the cost of the drugs to poor people, who then turned around, and sold the drugs on the street, combined with Medicaid doctors who were willing to take cash payments from people they knew were selling the drugs illegally, Medicaid alone, created a vast market for prescription opioids.

And while you can claim, along with the fake news media outlets, that all the drug companies were doing thus and so..... the truth is, the drug companies had no real alternative.

You can sit here and say in retrospect that they should have prevented the sales of their pills.... but in an alternate reality, if the drug companies 20 years back had intentionally prevented sales of pills, and one single patient had been denied the drugs they wanted through Medicaid..... you people right here, right now, would be have a toddler level melt down about how the evil drug companies were refusing to supply needed medications to people.

And we know this, because you and those like you have already had such threads on this forum for other situations.

The drug companies, do not have company representatives at every doctors office in the country. They don't have evaluations for everyone single patient. Yes, they likely did know that their drugs were being sold, but without omniscience to know which patients were lying and selling, and which really needed it, there was nothing they could do. If they had attempted anything to stop drug sales, you people would have been all over them.

There were no regulations as to the amount of drugs they could push.

Sell some pot, go to prison. Sell opioids and maybe you'll get sued.

Our regulation system is broke. That isnt an argument for ending regulatory practices. It's an argument for fixing that.

Boeing put profits over safety. The FAA was willing to look the other way until they got embarrassed by the emails that got released.

Many heads should roll. People inside of Boeing should be in prison.

Again, you are talking about the most heavily regulated industries in the US.

Now you can make the argument "they just need to fix it"... but how many decades on decades on decades have we played the "we just need to fix it" game with regulations?

Housing regulations have been growing in size and scope since basically World War 2. Endless on endless on endless regulations, and we've had crash after crash, with the biggest just in the past 10 years. 70+ years of endless regulations, and here you are 70 years later after the US Federal Government directly involved itself in housing... and we've had a massive crash.

How many hundreds of more years do you need to magically "Get regulation right"? And why should we believe you?

How many times have you said "trust us" in regards to government intervention, only to have it turn out into another crap show, and blaming Capitalism for it?

Look at the Stimulus package Obama pushed for almost a trillion dollars, and what did we get for that $1.3 Trillion dollar deficit for years? With the Stimulus package, unemployment would stop at under 8%, and we'd recover fully in 2 years. Instead unemployment went almost to 11% and we had the slowest recovery from a recession in all of US history.

And where did that money? Just gone.

And then you look at government agencies like the FAA and complain.... but here's the problem.... it's always been that way. Always. ALWAYS.

Government agencies simply end up being a revolving door for the companies. Every single time, you end up with people in those agencies, that use the power government gives them, to enrich themselves.

Not a single government agency anywhere, has ever stopped anything. Ever.

Name one time. Name one. You can't. Enron, actually used their SEC reports they filed, to pacify investors that were raising red flags about their books. Investor were saying.... this kinda looks like you are hiding something. .. and Enron said we filed our reports with the SEC, and they said nothing.

And this happens all the time. Walmart when they first started selling roasted chicken, left it to government to do safety checks. After a year, they found that only 3 visits even checked by the FDA, and 2 were the same store. So Walmart ended up buying wireless thermometers to put in each chicken to verify cooking with computers.

Your attempts to use government fix all things in the world, has done just the opposite. We are less safe from government, not more.

All your regulations and endless agencies make us worse off, and your solution is more of the same poison, as if taking more toxic waste, will magically make us all better. There is no example of that happening. No country has regulated it's way into prosperity and safety. Never happened.

I have never said "trust me" and I never supported Obama.

I'm not interested in a country where the greed of companies like Boeing, Perdue and DuPont get to decide what is acceptable and what is not.

 

[pknopp]

I sure hope you PROUDLY wear your MAGA hat....made in china.....

MAGA hats are not made in China. There are some cheap knockoff from China, but none of the MAGA hats are actually from China. I assume you know this? Or are you ignorant?

Trump's clothing line was. Just the same as he hired illegals.

Until that all became a campaign platform.

Sure. If I was Trump, I would have done the same, except for illegals.

If you can't make something profitable in the US, then you have to make it outside the US, or not make it. That's how that works. No one is going to make a product in the US that causes them to lose money, just so they can say it was made in the US.

Nevertheless, the MAGA hats were never made in China. Sorry. That's left-wing Jessie Smollett story telling.

But I have no problem hiring legal immigrants, or outsourcing to China or anywhere in general. It's up to you to not have a system the creates economic incentives to make stuff outside the US.

Only 15% of the products in the Trump store are made in the US


Only 15% of the products in the Trump store are made in the US
December 4, 2018
By Justin Rohrlich
Geopolitics reporter

Yes, I am aware of this, and I would do the same. You have to make products at a profit, or there is no point in making them. If you can not make something profitably in the US, then you make it elsewhere. That's how life works.

My point was the MAGA hat (which is exactly what the other poster said) is not made outside the US. The MAGA hats are made domestically.

Are you suggesting they are losing money on each one they sell?

 

[Indeependent]

We are so vulnerable. Look, China won’t even deliver masks to the USA manufactured by American owned companies.

What a colossal geo political blunder by some many stupid swamp creatures.

If China makes all of our shit, doesn’t that make us beholden to them? We can just tell them to pound sand. He rely on them.

So fucked.

TPP? So fucking stupid.

No, it doesn't mean any of that. If China didn't make the stuff, someone else would. And in fact, many countries make "all our stuff". China is logically the largest trading partner, simply because they have 1.4 Billion people.

But we're not beholden to them. If they cut trade, we would trade with someone else.

Now the key to this discussion is that if China didn't exist, most manufacturing would still have moved outside the US.

First, you need to stop saying things like "the USA was dumb to move..." The USA didn't move anything. You make it sound like the country got together and said, let's move such and such.... that never happened.

Companies react to the economic incentives given to them. When you Unionize a plant, and drive up the cost of labor and production, and the company can't make a profit in the US anymore, then you move manufacturing out of the country.

You could ban imports from China, but that won't bring a single job back to the US. As long as it is not economically viable to manufacture something in the US, then it won't be manufactured here ever. You have to reduce the cost of manufacturing in the US, and more manufacturing jobs will be created here.

How do you do that? Get rid of the Unions. Reduce the regulations, and cut health care mandates.

That is how you bring manufacturing jobs back.

Corporations received tax breaks to cover moving costs.

 

[toobfreak]

We are so vulnerable. Look, China won’t even deliver masks to the USA manufactured by American owned companies.

They are hanging onto masks because they need them there. We have our own masks.

 

[Andylusion]

Under-regulated, under-thought capitalism allows for huge mistakes like this.

Another example of how those who refuse to understand that are opening the door for the socialists.

I must be missing something. Give me an example of "under-regulated" or "under-thought" capitalism.

"I must be missing something. Give me an example of "under-regulated" or "under-thought" capitalism."


coal miners living in shacks with their families, starving, getting black lung disease, dying in poverty, while the swells drink champagne and eat caviar!

You don't know what you are talking about.

Miners today make $50K, to $60K on average, with some making six-figures.

Now I would assume you are jumping in a time machine, and going back in time 150 years. Great... what does that have to do with today? Nothing.

But let's even go back in time. Lot of you people are very ignorant about why people got those jobs in the mines. The truth is, most of the people lived a much better life working for the mining companies, than they did otherwise. That's why they worked those jobs. No one owned them. The company wasn't capturing people, and dragging them into the mines.

These people with zero skills, were working for poverty wages in the city, living in tiny apartments, in terrible conditions.

They were offered a job for life, with free housing, with cheap subsidized food, with a plot of ground they could call their own.

The food most miners got, was cheaper and more abundant, than people who worked no-skill jobs in the city could get. And most never had their own home before.

Now where their strings attached? You bet. The company paid in company dollars, and it was a one-way ticket. They bought the ticket to give you a train ride to the mine. The company of course wasn't going to pay for your ticket to leave the mine.

So people did end up trapped, where they had no real money, only company money, and they couldn't leave.

So I understand why Unions existed 150 years ago. I get it.

Well that's all nice and nifty.... but time to wake up sparky, because it's 2020. We don't have people being paid in Company Dollars, and no one is getting a one-way ticket to a mining town.

If you have to go back that far in time, to justify your position today... then you don't have a legitimate position today.

 

[Andylusion]

We are so vulnerable. Look, China won’t even deliver masks to the USA manufactured by American owned companies.

What a colossal geo political blunder by some many stupid swamp creatures.

If China makes all of our shit, doesn’t that make us beholden to them? We can just tell them to pound sand. He rely on them.

So fucked.

TPP? So fucking stupid.

No, it doesn't mean any of that. If China didn't make the stuff, someone else would. And in fact, many countries make "all our stuff". China is logically the largest trading partner, simply because they have 1.4 Billion people.

But we're not beholden to them. If they cut trade, we would trade with someone else.

Now the key to this discussion is that if China didn't exist, most manufacturing would still have moved outside the US.

First, you need to stop saying things like "the USA was dumb to move..." The USA didn't move anything. You make it sound like the country got together and said, let's move such and such.... that never happened.

Companies react to the economic incentives given to them. When you Unionize a plant, and drive up the cost of labor and production, and the company can't make a profit in the US anymore, then you move manufacturing out of the country.

You could ban imports from China, but that won't bring a single job back to the US. As long as it is not economically viable to manufacture something in the US, then it won't be manufactured here ever. You have to reduce the cost of manufacturing in the US, and more manufacturing jobs will be created here.

How do you do that? Get rid of the Unions. Reduce the regulations, and cut health care mandates.

That is how you bring manufacturing jobs back.

Corporations received tax breaks to cover moving costs.

Irrelevant. First off, a tax break isn't worth it. You may or may not be implying, that somehow the tax break is the cause of a company moving.

Wrong. Companies do not decide to move, or not to move, based on a tax break.

Tax breaks change your taxable income. If you spend a Million dollars, then you can deduct a Million dollars from your taxable income. Meaning you save taxes on a million dollars. For the company tax, that's $210,000.

You are spending $1,000,000, in order to save $210,000? No one does that. No one smart at least, spends a million to save $210 thousand.

The reason they move, is because it makes long term economic sense. They'll move, if that is what the economics say they need to do, whether they get a tax break or not.

Second, I don't know of any moving out of the country tax break. There are business expenses generally that I wager they can get a deduction for, but I highly doubt there is a moving the business out tax break.

What evidence do you have of this?

 

[Indeependent]

We are so vulnerable. Look, China won’t even deliver masks to the USA manufactured by American owned companies.

What a colossal geo political blunder by some many stupid swamp creatures.

If China makes all of our shit, doesn’t that make us beholden to them? We can just tell them to pound sand. He rely on them.

So fucked.

TPP? So fucking stupid.

No, it doesn't mean any of that. If China didn't make the stuff, someone else would. And in fact, many countries make "all our stuff". China is logically the largest trading partner, simply because they have 1.4 Billion people.

But we're not beholden to them. If they cut trade, we would trade with someone else.

Now the key to this discussion is that if China didn't exist, most manufacturing would still have moved outside the US.

First, you need to stop saying things like "the USA was dumb to move..." The USA didn't move anything. You make it sound like the country got together and said, let's move such and such.... that never happened.

Companies react to the economic incentives given to them. When you Unionize a plant, and drive up the cost of labor and production, and the company can't make a profit in the US anymore, then you move manufacturing out of the country.

You could ban imports from China, but that won't bring a single job back to the US. As long as it is not economically viable to manufacture something in the US, then it won't be manufactured here ever. You have to reduce the cost of manufacturing in the US, and more manufacturing jobs will be created here.

How do you do that? Get rid of the Unions. Reduce the regulations, and cut health care mandates.

That is how you bring manufacturing jobs back.

Corporations received tax breaks to cover moving costs.

Irrelevant. First off, a tax break isn't worth it. You may or may not be implying, that somehow the tax break is the cause of a company moving.

Wrong. Companies do not decide to move, or not to move, based on a tax break.

Tax breaks change your taxable income. If you spend a Million dollars, then you can deduct a Million dollars from your taxable income. Meaning you save taxes on a million dollars. For the company tax, that's $210,000.

You are spending $1,000,000, in order to save $210,000? No one does that. No one smart at least, spends a million to save $210 thousand.

The reason they move, is because it makes long term economic sense. They'll move, if that is what the economics say they need to do, whether they get a tax break or not.

Second, I don't know of any moving out of the country tax break. There are business expenses generally that I wager they can get a deduction for, but I highly doubt there is a moving the business out tax break.

What evidence do you have of this?

It is the business of business to make a profit.
It is the job of “our” representatives to maintain the US economy.’
“Our” representatives are handed legislations at BBQs and banquets to maximize profit at all costs.
It is a fact that the accursed Ronald Reagan encouraged globalism for the purpose of spreading Democracy and Capitalism to the rest of the globe; he was paid to lie.
Our trading partners did not incorporate one more ounce of humanity than they possessed prior to Reagan and the average American paid a heavy price.
The number of divorces and forecloses over the decades has been the reward of millions of Americans due to unfettered globalism.
The corps that left our shores should have been tariffed out of existence.
There is a tax break for moving a business that does not exclude off-shoring.
You may be too young to remember.

 

[Andylusion]

So we should go downward in wages? We as a nation should accept lower wages? Seems backwards thinking. Then prices of things have to drop big time. Otherwise people won't make enough to live paycheck to paycheck.

“Prosperity Through Lower Wages!”

Well yes.... if lower wages results in the creation of more jobs, and the creation of more jobs results in more people being employed, instead of unemployed... then yes that results in prosperity.

Again... are you going to be more prosperous earning Zero... or earning $5/hour? The answer is of course, earning $5/hour will be more prosperous than earning zero.

Equally, for the nation as a whole, every job in the private sector, is a productive job, or it wouldn't exist. Production creates wealth. Again, if you produced something of zero value, no one would hire you.

So increased production, means that the total wealth produced in the entire country, which benefits all of us, makes us more prosperous.

So again... more prosperity.

Now that does not mean we want people to earn less. I'd rather they earn more. And the way you earn more, is by gaining skills and abilities, experience and talent that allows you to produce more wealth.

For example years ago I had a friend who worked at Walmart. She used Walmarts tuition reimbursement program, to get a degree in construction engineering, and now has a job doing that, which of course pays more.

The solution to lower wages, is to have more people like her, who get jobs, and use those jobs to advance their skills the way she did.

The solution is not to mandate higher wages for low skill work, which results in people like her being laid off, and then they can't get a degree or experience to advance their career.

That isn't how it works. People don't make $0. People get welfare.

Which is actually worse. Because you are paying to not produce wealth for the country, while they consume wealth for the country.

Welfare is paying money, to destroy the wealth of the country.

This is why welfare doesn't exist in Nordic countries for example, and why most don't have a minimum wage. Because they understand that working for anything, and producing wealth for the country, is better than paying people to not work, and destroying the wealth of the country.

In Nordic countries the government negotiates the wages for most employees.

Is that what you are after?

Not true. Mythology. They do have trade unions, but they also have right to work. Unions can't prevent you from working for less than the Union negotiated wages.

Additionally, while I believe two nordic countries still have high participation in Unions, the fact is the rates of participation in unions has declined throughout all nordic countries.

Trade Union

Sweden down to 64% from 92%
Norway down to 49% from 57%
Netherlands down to 16% from 23%
Finland down to 60% from 78%
Denmark down to 66% from 76%

I think only Iceland has a 90% union participation still.

And the way that people get around that, is by claiming that the Union contracts cover non-union people. No evidence of that whatsoever. None. In fact, I have read articles claiming the exact opposite of that.

In fact, I saw a video years ago... and I wish I had downloaded it, and saved it.... from I believe Denmark, where a Union Leader was coming out against immigration... and he said very specifically why he was against immigration:

These immigrants are taking jobs for less money, and refusing to join the union and pay union dues.

Well according to the "everyone is covered by the Union contract" that should be impossible. Well apparently people who are not in the Union... are not in the Union, and not covered by Union contracts.

So, no what you are talking about is not true. The government is not negotiating wages for all people. Ridiculous Jessie Smollett fabrication going on from people who never lived in a nordic country.

 

[Indeependent]

“Prosperity Through Lower Wages!”

Well yes.... if lower wages results in the creation of more jobs, and the creation of more jobs results in more people being employed, instead of unemployed... then yes that results in prosperity.

Again... are you going to be more prosperous earning Zero... or earning $5/hour? The answer is of course, earning $5/hour will be more prosperous than earning zero.

Equally, for the nation as a whole, every job in the private sector, is a productive job, or it wouldn't exist. Production creates wealth. Again, if you produced something of zero value, no one would hire you.

So increased production, means that the total wealth produced in the entire country, which benefits all of us, makes us more prosperous.

So again... more prosperity.

Now that does not mean we want people to earn less. I'd rather they earn more. And the way you earn more, is by gaining skills and abilities, experience and talent that allows you to produce more wealth.

For example years ago I had a friend who worked at Walmart. She used Walmarts tuition reimbursement program, to get a degree in construction engineering, and now has a job doing that, which of course pays more.

The solution to lower wages, is to have more people like her, who get jobs, and use those jobs to advance their skills the way she did.

The solution is not to mandate higher wages for low skill work, which results in people like her being laid off, and then they can't get a degree or experience to advance their career.

That isn't how it works. People don't make $0. People get welfare.

Which is actually worse. Because you are paying to not produce wealth for the country, while they consume wealth for the country.

Welfare is paying money, to destroy the wealth of the country.

This is why welfare doesn't exist in Nordic countries for example, and why most don't have a minimum wage. Because they understand that working for anything, and producing wealth for the country, is better than paying people to not work, and destroying the wealth of the country.

In Nordic countries the government negotiates the wages for most employees.

Is that what you are after?

Not true. Mythology. They do have trade unions, but they also have right to work. Unions can't prevent you from working for less than the Union negotiated wages.

Additionally, while I believe two nordic countries still have high participation in Unions, the fact is the rates of participation in unions has declined throughout all nordic countries.

Trade Union

Sweden down to 64% from 92%
Norway down to 49% from 57%
Netherlands down to 16% from 23%
Finland down to 60% from 78%
Denmark down to 66% from 76%

I think only Iceland has a 90% union participation still.

And the way that people get around that, is by claiming that the Union contracts cover non-union people. No evidence of that whatsoever. None. In fact, I have read articles claiming the exact opposite of that.

In fact, I saw a video years ago... and I wish I had downloaded it, and saved it.... from I believe Denmark, where a Union Leader was coming out against immigration... and he said very specifically why he was against immigration:

These immigrants are taking jobs for less money, and refusing to join the union and pay union dues.

Well according to the "everyone is covered by the Union contract" that should be impossible. Well apparently people who are not in the Union... are not in the Union, and not covered by Union contracts.

So, no what you are talking about is not true. The government is not negotiating wages for all people. Ridiculous Jessie Smollett fabrication going on from people who never lived in a nordic country.

Why not explain how difficult it is to qualify to become an immigrant in some of these nations?

 

[Andylusion]

We are so vulnerable. Look, China won’t even deliver masks to the USA manufactured by American owned companies.

What a colossal geo political blunder by some many stupid swamp creatures.

If China makes all of our shit, doesn’t that make us beholden to them? We can just tell them to pound sand. He rely on them.

So fucked.

TPP? So fucking stupid.

No, it doesn't mean any of that. If China didn't make the stuff, someone else would. And in fact, many countries make "all our stuff". China is logically the largest trading partner, simply because they have 1.4 Billion people.

But we're not beholden to them. If they cut trade, we would trade with someone else.

Now the key to this discussion is that if China didn't exist, most manufacturing would still have moved outside the US.

First, you need to stop saying things like "the USA was dumb to move..." The USA didn't move anything. You make it sound like the country got together and said, let's move such and such.... that never happened.

Companies react to the economic incentives given to them. When you Unionize a plant, and drive up the cost of labor and production, and the company can't make a profit in the US anymore, then you move manufacturing out of the country.

You could ban imports from China, but that won't bring a single job back to the US. As long as it is not economically viable to manufacture something in the US, then it won't be manufactured here ever. You have to reduce the cost of manufacturing in the US, and more manufacturing jobs will be created here.

How do you do that? Get rid of the Unions. Reduce the regulations, and cut health care mandates.

That is how you bring manufacturing jobs back.

Corporations received tax breaks to cover moving costs.

Irrelevant. First off, a tax break isn't worth it. You may or may not be implying, that somehow the tax break is the cause of a company moving.

Wrong. Companies do not decide to move, or not to move, based on a tax break.

Tax breaks change your taxable income. If you spend a Million dollars, then you can deduct a Million dollars from your taxable income. Meaning you save taxes on a million dollars. For the company tax, that's $210,000.

You are spending $1,000,000, in order to save $210,000? No one does that. No one smart at least, spends a million to save $210 thousand.

The reason they move, is because it makes long term economic sense. They'll move, if that is what the economics say they need to do, whether they get a tax break or not.

Second, I don't know of any moving out of the country tax break. There are business expenses generally that I wager they can get a deduction for, but I highly doubt there is a moving the business out tax break.

What evidence do you have of this?

It is the business of business to make a profit.
It is the job of “our” representatives to maintain the US economy.’
“Our” representatives are handed legislations at BBQs and banquets to maximize profit at all costs.
It is a fact that the accursed Ronald Reagan encouraged globalism for the purpose of spreading Democracy and Capitalism to the rest of the globe; he was paid to lie.
Our trading partners did not incorporate one more ounce of humanity than they possessed prior to Reagan and the average American paid a heavy price.
The number of divorces and forecloses over the decades has been the reward of millions of Americans due to unfettered globalism.
The corps that left our shores should have been tariffed out of existence.
There is a tax break for moving a business that does not exclude off-shoring.
You may be too young to remember.

Again... I don't understand where the idea came from that trade meant anything about having more humanity.

Whether we trade with China, or don't trade with Venezuela, neither one is going to be more, or less humane. Trading doesn't do anything about the social systems involved.

Taking away trade, isn't going to help a single person anywhere.

The corps that left our shores should have been tariffed out of existence.

Are you smoking pot? Name one. Burger King?

The number of divorces and forecloses over the decades has been the reward of millions of Americans due to unfettered globalism.

Oh please stop it.... Really? Divorces is because of globalism? Are you full of it?

No, had nothing to do with meeting up with an ex-high-school-girl-friend on facebook, and screwing her over the weekend... nope nope... it was globalism.

Foreclosures had to do with government forcing banks to make bad loans. I can walk you through that again, if you like.

Nothing there has anything to do with globalism.

There is a tax break for moving a business that does not exclude off-shoring.
You may be too young to remember.

I don't believe you.

 

[Andylusion]

MAGA hats are not made in China. There are some cheap knockoff from China, but none of the MAGA hats are actually from China. I assume you know this? Or are you ignorant?

Trump's clothing line was. Just the same as he hired illegals.

Until that all became a campaign platform.

Sure. If I was Trump, I would have done the same, except for illegals.

If you can't make something profitable in the US, then you have to make it outside the US, or not make it. That's how that works. No one is going to make a product in the US that causes them to lose money, just so they can say it was made in the US.

Nevertheless, the MAGA hats were never made in China. Sorry. That's left-wing Jessie Smollett story telling.

But I have no problem hiring legal immigrants, or outsourcing to China or anywhere in general. It's up to you to not have a system the creates economic incentives to make stuff outside the US.

Only 15% of the products in the Trump store are made in the US


Only 15% of the products in the Trump store are made in the US
December 4, 2018
By Justin Rohrlich
Geopolitics reporter

Yes, I am aware of this, and I would do the same. You have to make products at a profit, or there is no point in making them. If you can not make something profitably in the US, then you make it elsewhere. That's how life works.

My point was the MAGA hat (which is exactly what the other poster said) is not made outside the US. The MAGA hats are made domestically.

Are you suggesting they are losing money on each one they sell?

Possibly the hat might be profitable. Looking around online, domestically produced hats, specifically these types of hats, are selling for $20. So I would wager they are likely making a profit from these.

However, having looked at pants and shirts made domestically, compared to imported pants and shirts, the price difference is very wide. An identical shirt in the US is $30 to $40 more base price, than one imported.

Well I'm not spending $40 more for a shirt, just because it is domestically made. Most people won't. That's why trying to sell such items is a money losing venture.

 

[Andylusion]

Well yes.... if lower wages results in the creation of more jobs, and the creation of more jobs results in more people being employed, instead of unemployed... then yes that results in prosperity.

Again... are you going to be more prosperous earning Zero... or earning $5/hour? The answer is of course, earning $5/hour will be more prosperous than earning zero.

Equally, for the nation as a whole, every job in the private sector, is a productive job, or it wouldn't exist. Production creates wealth. Again, if you produced something of zero value, no one would hire you.

So increased production, means that the total wealth produced in the entire country, which benefits all of us, makes us more prosperous.

So again... more prosperity.

Now that does not mean we want people to earn less. I'd rather they earn more. And the way you earn more, is by gaining skills and abilities, experience and talent that allows you to produce more wealth.

For example years ago I had a friend who worked at Walmart. She used Walmarts tuition reimbursement program, to get a degree in construction engineering, and now has a job doing that, which of course pays more.

The solution to lower wages, is to have more people like her, who get jobs, and use those jobs to advance their skills the way she did.

The solution is not to mandate higher wages for low skill work, which results in people like her being laid off, and then they can't get a degree or experience to advance their career.

That isn't how it works. People don't make $0. People get welfare.

Which is actually worse. Because you are paying to not produce wealth for the country, while they consume wealth for the country.

Welfare is paying money, to destroy the wealth of the country.

This is why welfare doesn't exist in Nordic countries for example, and why most don't have a minimum wage. Because they understand that working for anything, and producing wealth for the country, is better than paying people to not work, and destroying the wealth of the country.

In Nordic countries the government negotiates the wages for most employees.

Is that what you are after?

Not true. Mythology. They do have trade unions, but they also have right to work. Unions can't prevent you from working for less than the Union negotiated wages.

Additionally, while I believe two nordic countries still have high participation in Unions, the fact is the rates of participation in unions has declined throughout all nordic countries.

Trade Union

Sweden down to 64% from 92%
Norway down to 49% from 57%
Netherlands down to 16% from 23%
Finland down to 60% from 78%
Denmark down to 66% from 76%

I think only Iceland has a 90% union participation still.

And the way that people get around that, is by claiming that the Union contracts cover non-union people. No evidence of that whatsoever. None. In fact, I have read articles claiming the exact opposite of that.

In fact, I saw a video years ago... and I wish I had downloaded it, and saved it.... from I believe Denmark, where a Union Leader was coming out against immigration... and he said very specifically why he was against immigration:

These immigrants are taking jobs for less money, and refusing to join the union and pay union dues.

Well according to the "everyone is covered by the Union contract" that should be impossible. Well apparently people who are not in the Union... are not in the Union, and not covered by Union contracts.

So, no what you are talking about is not true. The government is not negotiating wages for all people. Ridiculous Jessie Smollett fabrication going on from people who never lived in a nordic country.

Why not explain how difficult it is to qualify to become an immigrant in some of these nations?

Well depends on the nation. Some it is extremely hard. What does that have to do with anything though?

The only reason I pointed out the Union leader opposing immigration, was because I was making the point that non-union workers are not under government, or union contracts. They are free-market wages. Not even a minimum wage exists in most of these countries.

 

[Andylusion]

I must be missing something. Give me an example of "under-regulated" or "under-thought" capitalism.

Purdue Pharmacueticals.

Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused

That is your example of unregulated capitalism?

Title 21 United States Code (USC) Controlled Substances Act - Section 801-971

Roughly 100 pages of laws. Doesn't include FDA regulations either.
That's just Federal Laws too, and doesn't include State laws.

This is exactly my point. You are pointing to the pharma industry, which is one of the most highly regulated industries in the country, and then claiming this is an example of unregulated capitalism.

And this is typical of all socialist views. You screw up a system, and then when your endless government regulations and controls end up blowing up the system, like the sub-prime crash, you try and blame it on Capitalism.

Well that doesn't work. Not for people who think, at least. You can't have a thousand laws on drugs, and then when something happens you don't like, blame it on the lack of regulations.

Further, it is most likely because of regulations and government, that we have the opioid epidemic. There are clear signs that Medicaid directly supported the crisis.

https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidemic/dp/1620402505/&tag=ff0d01-20

Sam Quinones on Heroin, the Opioid Epidemic, and Dreamland - Econlib

The economist who wrote the book Dreamland, gave a podcast interview on this, on EconTalk. You can listen to it if you want.

Regardless, if you look at the evidence, Medicaid directly promoted the Opioid crisis.

By covering the cost of the drugs to poor people, who then turned around, and sold the drugs on the street, combined with Medicaid doctors who were willing to take cash payments from people they knew were selling the drugs illegally, Medicaid alone, created a vast market for prescription opioids.

And while you can claim, along with the fake news media outlets, that all the drug companies were doing thus and so..... the truth is, the drug companies had no real alternative.

You can sit here and say in retrospect that they should have prevented the sales of their pills.... but in an alternate reality, if the drug companies 20 years back had intentionally prevented sales of pills, and one single patient had been denied the drugs they wanted through Medicaid..... you people right here, right now, would be have a toddler level melt down about how the evil drug companies were refusing to supply needed medications to people.

And we know this, because you and those like you have already had such threads on this forum for other situations.

The drug companies, do not have company representatives at every doctors office in the country. They don't have evaluations for everyone single patient. Yes, they likely did know that their drugs were being sold, but without omniscience to know which patients were lying and selling, and which really needed it, there was nothing they could do. If they had attempted anything to stop drug sales, you people would have been all over them.

There were no regulations as to the amount of drugs they could push.

Sell some pot, go to prison. Sell opioids and maybe you'll get sued.

Our regulation system is broke. That isnt an argument for ending regulatory practices. It's an argument for fixing that.

Boeing put profits over safety. The FAA was willing to look the other way until they got embarrassed by the emails that got released.

Many heads should roll. People inside of Boeing should be in prison.

Again, you are talking about the most heavily regulated industries in the US.

Now you can make the argument "they just need to fix it"... but how many decades on decades on decades have we played the "we just need to fix it" game with regulations?

Housing regulations have been growing in size and scope since basically World War 2. Endless on endless on endless regulations, and we've had crash after crash, with the biggest just in the past 10 years. 70+ years of endless regulations, and here you are 70 years later after the US Federal Government directly involved itself in housing... and we've had a massive crash.

How many hundreds of more years do you need to magically "Get regulation right"? And why should we believe you?

How many times have you said "trust us" in regards to government intervention, only to have it turn out into another crap show, and blaming Capitalism for it?

Look at the Stimulus package Obama pushed for almost a trillion dollars, and what did we get for that $1.3 Trillion dollar deficit for years? With the Stimulus package, unemployment would stop at under 8%, and we'd recover fully in 2 years. Instead unemployment went almost to 11% and we had the slowest recovery from a recession in all of US history.

And where did that money? Just gone.

And then you look at government agencies like the FAA and complain.... but here's the problem.... it's always been that way. Always. ALWAYS.

Government agencies simply end up being a revolving door for the companies. Every single time, you end up with people in those agencies, that use the power government gives them, to enrich themselves.

Not a single government agency anywhere, has ever stopped anything. Ever.

Name one time. Name one. You can't. Enron, actually used their SEC reports they filed, to pacify investors that were raising red flags about their books. Investor were saying.... this kinda looks like you are hiding something. .. and Enron said we filed our reports with the SEC, and they said nothing.

And this happens all the time. Walmart when they first started selling roasted chicken, left it to government to do safety checks. After a year, they found that only 3 visits even checked by the FDA, and 2 were the same store. So Walmart ended up buying wireless thermometers to put in each chicken to verify cooking with computers.

Your attempts to use government fix all things in the world, has done just the opposite. We are less safe from government, not more.

All your regulations and endless agencies make us worse off, and your solution is more of the same poison, as if taking more toxic waste, will magically make us all better. There is no example of that happening. No country has regulated it's way into prosperity and safety. Never happened.

I have never said "trust me" and I never supported Obama.

I'm not interested in a country where the greed of companies like Boeing, Perdue and DuPont get to decide what is acceptable and what is not.

Every single country on the face of the earth is run by profit. It's no different in Europe, and it wasn't in the Soviet Union.

The difference is, in a Capitalist system, when a company does something that causes deaths, the government extracts penalties on them.

In Venezuela, and any other country where companies are run by the government, they simply cover it up.

A perfect example of this, is China right now. One of the big problems with China and Corona, is that the government doesn't want to look bad, and since the health system is run by the government, they are more interested in fudging the numbers, and concealing information, than telling everyone what is really going on.

Say was true during the Soviet Union, where pollution was rampant, and the government just covered it up, because they didn't want to look bad, given they controlled the companies.

You say you don't want to live in such a world, and then promote every single policy that would create the very world you are against.

 

[Indeependent]

We are so vulnerable. Look, China won’t even deliver masks to the USA manufactured by American owned companies.

What a colossal geo political blunder by some many stupid swamp creatures.

If China makes all of our shit, doesn’t that make us beholden to them? We can just tell them to pound sand. He rely on them.

So fucked.

TPP? So fucking stupid.

No, it doesn't mean any of that. If China didn't make the stuff, someone else would. And in fact, many countries make "all our stuff". China is logically the largest trading partner, simply because they have 1.4 Billion people.

But we're not beholden to them. If they cut trade, we would trade with someone else.

Now the key to this discussion is that if China didn't exist, most manufacturing would still have moved outside the US.

First, you need to stop saying things like "the USA was dumb to move..." The USA didn't move anything. You make it sound like the country got together and said, let's move such and such.... that never happened.

Companies react to the economic incentives given to them. When you Unionize a plant, and drive up the cost of labor and production, and the company can't make a profit in the US anymore, then you move manufacturing out of the country.

You could ban imports from China, but that won't bring a single job back to the US. As long as it is not economically viable to manufacture something in the US, then it won't be manufactured here ever. You have to reduce the cost of manufacturing in the US, and more manufacturing jobs will be created here.

How do you do that? Get rid of the Unions. Reduce the regulations, and cut health care mandates.

That is how you bring manufacturing jobs back.

Corporations received tax breaks to cover moving costs.

Irrelevant. First off, a tax break isn't worth it. You may or may not be implying, that somehow the tax break is the cause of a company moving.

Wrong. Companies do not decide to move, or not to move, based on a tax break.

Tax breaks change your taxable income. If you spend a Million dollars, then you can deduct a Million dollars from your taxable income. Meaning you save taxes on a million dollars. For the company tax, that's $210,000.

You are spending $1,000,000, in order to save $210,000? No one does that. No one smart at least, spends a million to save $210 thousand.

The reason they move, is because it makes long term economic sense. They'll move, if that is what the economics say they need to do, whether they get a tax break or not.

Second, I don't know of any moving out of the country tax break. There are business expenses generally that I wager they can get a deduction for, but I highly doubt there is a moving the business out tax break.

What evidence do you have of this?

It is the business of business to make a profit.
It is the job of “our” representatives to maintain the US economy.’
“Our” representatives are handed legislations at BBQs and banquets to maximize profit at all costs.
It is a fact that the accursed Ronald Reagan encouraged globalism for the purpose of spreading Democracy and Capitalism to the rest of the globe; he was paid to lie.
Our trading partners did not incorporate one more ounce of humanity than they possessed prior to Reagan and the average American paid a heavy price.
The number of divorces and forecloses over the decades has been the reward of millions of Americans due to unfettered globalism.
The corps that left our shores should have been tariffed out of existence.
There is a tax break for moving a business that does not exclude off-shoring.
You may be too young to remember.

Again... I don't understand where the idea came from that trade meant anything about having more humanity.

Whether we trade with China, or don't trade with Venezuela, neither one is going to be more, or less humane. Trading doesn't do anything about the social systems involved.

Taking away trade, isn't going to help a single person anywhere.

The corps that left our shores should have been tariffed out of existence.

Are you smoking pot? Name one. Burger King?

The number of divorces and forecloses over the decades has been the reward of millions of Americans due to unfettered globalism.

Oh please stop it.... Really? Divorces is because of globalism? Are you full of it?

No, had nothing to do with meeting up with an ex-high-school-girl-friend on facebook, and screwing her over the weekend... nope nope... it was globalism.

Foreclosures had to do with government forcing banks to make bad loans. I can walk you through that again, if you like.

Nothing there has anything to do with globalism.

There is a tax break for moving a business that does not exclude off-shoring.
You may be too young to remember.

I don't believe you.

We’re you ever forced to work 110 hours a week for 50K when you had a Masters or a
PhD?
You skipped over the fact that “our” representatives sold their souls to Wall Street firms.
And no, I didn’t mean Burger King or McDonalds when I was referring to IBM, and hundred of other Fortune 5,000 companies laying off their workforce that spent years working for an advanced degree only to be led by one or more security guards to the exit because their job had been off-shores to India.
The real issue is that I am 60 and lived through all of this backstabbing.
Why do you think Trump won; he ran on this so why not send him a Tweet telling him he’s an idiot?

 

[Indeependent]

That isn't how it works. People don't make $0. People get welfare.

Which is actually worse. Because you are paying to not produce wealth for the country, while they consume wealth for the country.

Welfare is paying money, to destroy the wealth of the country.

This is why welfare doesn't exist in Nordic countries for example, and why most don't have a minimum wage. Because they understand that working for anything, and producing wealth for the country, is better than paying people to not work, and destroying the wealth of the country.

In Nordic countries the government negotiates the wages for most employees.

Is that what you are after?

Not true. Mythology. They do have trade unions, but they also have right to work. Unions can't prevent you from working for less than the Union negotiated wages.

Additionally, while I believe two nordic countries still have high participation in Unions, the fact is the rates of participation in unions has declined throughout all nordic countries.

Trade Union

Sweden down to 64% from 92%
Norway down to 49% from 57%
Netherlands down to 16% from 23%
Finland down to 60% from 78%
Denmark down to 66% from 76%

I think only Iceland has a 90% union participation still.

And the way that people get around that, is by claiming that the Union contracts cover non-union people. No evidence of that whatsoever. None. In fact, I have read articles claiming the exact opposite of that.

In fact, I saw a video years ago... and I wish I had downloaded it, and saved it.... from I believe Denmark, where a Union Leader was coming out against immigration... and he said very specifically why he was against immigration:

These immigrants are taking jobs for less money, and refusing to join the union and pay union dues.

Well according to the "everyone is covered by the Union contract" that should be impossible. Well apparently people who are not in the Union... are not in the Union, and not covered by Union contracts.

So, no what you are talking about is not true. The government is not negotiating wages for all people. Ridiculous Jessie Smollett fabrication going on from people who never lived in a nordic country.

Why not explain how difficult it is to qualify to become an immigrant in some of these nations?

Well depends on the nation. Some it is extremely hard. What does that have to do with anything though?

The only reason I pointed out the Union leader opposing immigration, was because I was making the point that non-union workers are not under government, or union contracts. They are free-market wages. Not even a minimum wage exists in most of these countries.

Corporations also have unions...BBQs and Banquets where they decide to lay off thousands of professionals at once.