In review

[baileyuph]

This past week was very busy, I upholstered furniture, repaired furniture frames, plus duplicated the original upholstery on a CAT seat, very sophisticated and expensive, then installed numerous parts in a vehicle,

In review, the conclusion is Americans have a problem, every thing I touched and wore was made in another country.  You know, it is hard to ignore this hearing of the need for jobs.

No wonder employment is what it is, even all my clothes are foreign made.  The TV I watch, same story.

Remember when the Hundi auto was not important?  That too has changed.

How can this change with our labor rates?  What is the shorter answer on the outcome of all this?


Doyle

[SHHR]

I'd say the say the short answer (although hardest to implement) would be for the conscious person who notices these thing to go out of their way to shop for American made goods. When an item isn't available, contact a supplier, sales rep, company executive and make your requests known. Just like writing your government representatives, the more and more people who do this the more they will listen and provide what is asked for.
Kyle

[kodydog]

Simple. Get rid of corporate tax and at the same time get rid of corporate welfare. If a corporation cant make it without government assistance than let them die. Get rid of unions who raise wages and benefits so high corporations cant afford to make a profit aka auto makers.

Get rid of lobbyist who own senators and congressmen. Were all living on a budget these days and the government needs to do the same thing. Governors and the President have term limits, why not senators, congressmen and representatives. In fact why not have a strictly volunteer congress, that would give some of those good old boys a heart attack.

Get rid of the the current tax code. How about a fair tax or a consumption tax. A lot of my customers are so worried about higher taxes and squeezing there dollar bills so hard there afraid to spend any of it.

Reform Social Security. There was a time when SS was needed, to help elder people get by in their latter years. I don't under stand why someone who makes $100,000 a year in retirement needs SS. And don't give me that BS how they "invested" into it so they deserve it. Most retired people far outlive the "investment" they made.

If we could free up the money people earn then they would have more money to spend and the economy would start rolling again.

Radical ideas? Hay I'm a radical guy.

[bobbin]

Tough question to answer without getting "politcal", something we're not supposed to do on this forum.  But, in the spirit of discussion I'll give my two cents worth and it will dip into the realm of political, because it really has to. 

I don't disagree with the opinions expressed so far.  But rather than getting rid of corporate taxes I think we should raise them!  Here's how I see it:  huge, multi-national corporations (they're now considered individuals by the Court) are able to outsource work that used to be considered skilled and provided generations with the ability to provide good incomes and sound, middle class lives for themselves.  Lobbyists that prowl the halls of Congress are paid by those very corporations who have outsourced with impunity... outsourcing that added to their profits and profits on which they paid no taxes all the while adding to the roles of the unemployed (which costs taxpayers) or the underemployed.  As those jobs were outsourced so were pension plans and corporate benefits for the hard working, blue collar retirees.  But not for the executives with their private elevators and cafeterias.

I am all for "means testing" Social Security and Medicare.  I'm also a proponent of raising the age at which those benefits can be collected.  At its inception, SS was collected at 65, 3 yrs. beyond the average age of death in the USA!  It was started as an insurance program to make sure people didn't starve in old age (think the Depression years), it was never intended to be the sole means of reitrement income!  Nor was it intended to absolve workers from saving for themselves.  The wealthy citizens of this country don't need either but by golly they're the first to howl about "fairness" and how much they paid into the system.  It's important to consider that the rates paid into the system by those now collecting were considerably lower than the rates those still paying into it are at present.  The Concord Coalition used to maintain that the average worker collects all the monies he paid into SS within 18 mos. of drawing his first benefit check.  Moreover, SS is paid on the first 108-9K you earn, after that you don't pay that tax.  I'm all for reworking the tax code in this country.  But I'm no fool, the way things are now, everyone needs to have some skin in the fight, even those at poverty level!  Consider also that the pool of workers paying into the syste is shrinking, so taxes will have to go up to maintain the  status quo.

I would love to be able to buy American, but not if the quality is crummy.  I loathe enriching multinationals that have fled our shores and abandonned our workers in favor of ever greater profits. leaving social chaos in their wakes.  They need to pay up and consider it a cost of doing business and moving production to third world under regulated countries. 

[sofadoc]

There are so many manufacturing jobs that have been outsourced to other countries simply because WE don't want them. Factories can't find competent workers for the meager wage they are willing to pay.

I firmly believe that if we brought ALL those jobs back to America, there wouldn't be enough takers to fill the positions.
Sure, we could lure workers if we raised wages, but then a $5 item would cost $20.

We can't have it both ways. We can't earn top wages, while paying bottom dollar prices at the register. I'm sure there's a happy medium. But in order to reach that middle ground, we as a society would have to eliminate a little thing called GREED.

Is Capitalism finally biting us in the butt?

[baileyuph]

I ask myself would I go and build a car factory, pay all the union benefits and be able to compete with a factory somewhere else that gets the work done cheaper and just as good?

Well, maybe not because the domestic consumers, on a scale, just aren't that loyal.  "Price Sells"!

I have researched the subject of depression, recession, and business cycles and what is happening here and around the world is natural for capitalism.  Prosperity cannot continue to go up infinitely.  It has check points and may even crumble before dusting yourself off and going forward again.

We are seeking bottom at this point and the smarter we are about it the easier it will be to climb back on and enjoy the ride of a new cycle. 

All points have merit,

Thanks,

Doyle

[kodydog]

I would love to be able to buy American, but not if the quality is crummy.  I loathe enriching multinationals that have fled our shores and abandonned our workers in favor of ever greater profits. leaving social chaos in their wakes.  They need to pay up and consider it a cost of doing business and moving production to third world under regulated countries.  

Bobbin I can feel the passion in the words you write. But I can not understand how raising taxes on mega corporations helps to keep them in this country. Or how it enriches the lives of people in this country. Especially when the government takes that money and squanders it on worthless projects like bridges to nowhere.

Lowering corporate taxes will force them to lower their prices through competition and in turn lower the price the consumer pays. The corporation sells more products and in the end pays more taxes than if we raise their taxes and they sold less product. Not to mention putting more people to work. Think cigarettes. The government keeps raising taxes to fund their pet projects but more and more people quit smoking and in the end the tax revenue is no higher than when they started. The biggest segment of the smoking population are lower income so it ends up being a poor tax. I'm not a smoker and getting more people to stop is a good thing but that's not my point.

Perfect example is Big Oil. Every one screams about obscene profits. But if you look at their profit margins you would wonder why everyone thinks they are such a good investment. The truth be known the government makes a bigger profit on oil than the oil companies.

[baileyuph]

Jobs will return when manufacturing does and that is highly dependent on cheaper labor.  It is international competion going forward, not local.

During he interim, when is government going to get smaller, as industries have?  The leaders in that department have a lot of work to do.

Doyle

[byhammerandhand]

I listened to an interesting story on my way to my first job this morning:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/12/145038754/the-history-of-factory-jobs-in-america-in-one-town
American workers have the highest productivity rate (widgets per person hour) in the world.

A few days ago, there was another story about the "hand made products" from China.  Their point was with wages near zero, hand labor was less expensive than investing in equipment.

[kodydog]

Yeah Hammer, it seems the more technology is advanced the more jobs are created. The younger generation really need to keep up. The people graduating high school today have never known a world without personal computers or the internet.

[mike802]

This is a complex issue on meany levels, I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I know some of the problems.

Our gov. used to have these things called tariffs, they were meant to protect American workers from low cost imports, they also generated revenue for the gov. we no longer enforce tariffs like we used to.

Our gov. gives tax incentives for manufactures to move over seas.

The junk we buy from China cost a third what an American product would cost, but we have to buy three of them to get one that works.

Most multinational corporations don't pay any taxes, its not the tax rates that need changing, but the loop holes. 

Inflation does not mean things are going up in value, it means our money is becoming worth less. 

The federal reserve is a private bank, our gov. barrows it's money from it at interest, that interest is never created, so the dept can never be paid, that is why we keep going deeper and deeper into dept.  That is what our "taxes" really go to, to make payments on an unpayable debt, not the stuff we have been told.

Our gov. has the constitutional authority to coin money from Silver and Gold and spend it into the economy, no debt needs  to be created, just this one act alone would boost our economy tremendously.  It was one of the main reasons for the Revolutionary War, England wanted the colenest to stop using their own money and use the Pound.  The prosperous colenest soon became poor under this rule.  There were three attempts to set up a central bank in the U.S, each was a disaster for the American people. President Jackson shut down the bankers and he survived an attempt on his life.  Lincoln and Kennedy were not so lucky.  There are powerful people who want to keep things as they are because it works for them.  Amschel Rothschild "give me control over a countries money and I care not who makes its laws"  or something similar to that.

[Mike]

We can't have it both ways. We can't earn top wages, while paying bottom dollar prices at the register.

Made me think of what always bugged me driving to work all my life..
I Alys made some , produced with my own hands that i could look at and say i did that. there are so many people that dint make anything paper pushers that dint produce anything but paperwork.
out of all the hands that it takes yo bring a product to you,  one Guy had to make it. How many middle men were there? and insurance ? cant tough it but you pay for it.

[Mike]

Yeah Hammer, it seems the more technology is advanced the more jobs are created. The younger generation really need to keep up. The people graduating high school today have never known a world without personal computers or the internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LkusicUL2s

[kodydog]

Thanks for the pick me up Mike, that was funny.

[gene]

I AM NOT A NON CONTRIBUTING ZERO! I AM A HUMAN BEING!!!

lol

gene