Jobs in Boise?....Think the Creative Class; Boise ranks 9th in Country for attracting the Creative Class

[AlleyTD]

Originally Posted by mathlete

If you want pie-in-the-sky thinking you don't need a Creative Class for that. Call Bernie Madoff.

Torrie is exactly right. Owning and running a business in Asia has been an eye-opener for me. Like earning a PhD in international business. For example, I pay (the equivalent of) $15 a month per employee for health care with a $3 copay per visit and have personally found the quality of health care here to be the equivalent of that in the U.S., since most doctors have significant international training. An added benefit is that doctors offices are everywhere and their hours are such that we've never had to make an appointment for routine health care matters. When we do need to make an appointment we go online and it's done.

I could go on. The bottom line though is it's a myth that the American workers' wages are the problem and that all Asian workers live a life of misery and exploitation and that's why they're taking your jobs. There is, of course, sweatshop exploitation in Asia but the real reason you're struggling in the U.S. is because you're system is bloated with public and private special interests which are choking your economy and its ability to compete.

It's hard to see that though until you get outside the U.S. and see it objectively, particularly while participating in a competing economic system at its ground level.

Well, that's enough for me. I've got too much work to do to be ranting on a soapbox and if my colleagues here ever find out how I'm spilling the beans about global competitiveness they may run me out of town back to where I belong.

Well, clearly you know better than I.
rep points to you for being honest.

I will admit I am a pie-in- the- sky kind of a gal sometimes.

I just wish when I called a help line I didn't always get someone reading from a script ... very frustrating.

As for your colleagues finding you here spilling the beans about global competitiveness .... city data is a good place to escape. I doubt they'd find you here.

Additionally, you said, "...they may run me out of town back to where I belong."

It's nice to hear you say you know where you [really] belong

[boiseguy]

Problem is, the push to create things whether in the US or in Asia is to sell it in the american marketplace... Government needs to step in on this free trade crap, and tell companies, that if they want untaxed, access to the american marketplace... they have to employ americans..
Everyone wants to sit and create the best product for the cheapest amount of money by means of the entire world's resources to turn around and sell it in the american economy. When they don't realize that the exportation of all those jobs, lowers the buying power of the american economy....
That is not without saying something must be done on taxes and investment, and beaurocracy here in the US. But I think we can be a bit more protectionist when it comes to jobs and our economy. If you want to go do business in Asia, you better plan to sell it to asians.. This expectation that because you're an american businessman, that you can take a pass on american employees and still be granted access to the american marketplace is wrong... and all it takes is the government to shut that crap off with tariffs and taxes..and then there will be the incentive for coming back home to make things better here for business rather than just running off to the easiest and cheapest place because it's there to exploit.

[CrownVic95]

Originally Posted by boiseguy

Problem is, the push to create things whether in the US or in Asia is to sell it in the american marketplace... Government needs to step in on this free trade crap, and tell companies, that if they want untaxed, access to the american marketplace... they have to employ americans..
Everyone wants to sit and create the best product for the cheapest amount of money by means of the entire world's resources to turn around and sell it in the american economy. When they don't realize that the exportation of all those jobs, lowers the buying power of the american economy....
That is not without saying something must be done on taxes and investment, and beaurocracy here in the US. But I think we can be a bit more protectionist when it comes to jobs and our economy. If you want to go do business in Asia, you better plan to sell it to asians.. This expectation that because you're an american businessman, that you can take a pass on american employees and still be granted access to the american marketplace is wrong... and all it takes is the government to shut that crap off with tariffs and taxes..and then there will be the incentive for coming back home to make things better here for business rather than just running off to the easiest and cheapest place because it's there to exploit.

Good post - and I agree with you 100%.

This short-sighted, take-the-money-and-run, "global economy" nonsense has hurt us exactly as one would expect it to. Much of California is third world already and that trend is speading fast nationwide. We must put an end to it, but I fear it may already be too late for those of us who remember life in the 50s and 60s.

[mathlete]

Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

[boiseguy]

the economy is much different than when smoot hawley tariff act was in place... those were the days when a war could bring you out of a recession... in today's economy.. its makes you bankrupt..
We don't have trade issues with other countries that pay employees to scale.. its the poverty stricken countries.. where american companies are going and capitalizing on paying poverty wages to turn around and sell their products to americans. The locals making all the cheap crap in china can't afford to buy what they're making.. its totally geared toward producing cheap in asia to sell it to N.america/europe/australia... With the changing of the times.. America consumes 54 percent of everything produced on earth... I'd say that's a lot of bargaining power as compared to 1930.
Also, much of the fuss over tariffs was with europe who is also first world nations.. This is not the same.. Today it is exploitation of the 3rd world, to sell to the first world.. Propogated by companies from the first world.
Globalization has hurt america where it counts... our middle class...
without a middle class we are nothing but lords and peasants...and if you don't like being a peasant in the global economy.. then you need to jump on board and go exploit china and vietnam with your business venture... in hopes that there's someone left back in america who can afford to buy your cheap garbage.
What it boils down to is.. its killing the goose that lays the golden egg...

[mathlete]

I didn't post here to taunt. I posted because in the ten years I've lived here, having learned Mandarin Chinese and spent countless hours on factory floors in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and India, I've learned valuable lessons which have profoundly altered the simplistic notions I arrived with.

For example, that when your employees take home 94% of their paychecks, quality health care costs an employer $15 per month and an employee nothing, real estate loans average between 2 and 3% and property taxes are a fraction of what they are in the U.S., you automatically have a huge competitive advantage that has nothing to do with exploiting workers and your employess have a very good quality of life on 40% less income than their American counterparts.

And, for the record, my business is high-end products with large IP content and I pay an average salary of $2,000 per month plus year-end bonuses. I'm still competitive with other manufacturers here because I'm part-owner of my own factory and we're much more efficient than they are. For example, as a native English speaking engineer I can resolve engineering and manufacturing issues with foreign customers much quicker and with less waste than my competitors.

The bottom line is that with everything I've learned here I know that the choice for American workers isn't between lying on their backs in poverty or starting a debilitating trade war with countries in Asia which have been financing U.S. public and private debt and could turn the spigot off in an instant.

What I was suggesting is that Idaho in particular embark on a truly informed study to find out exactly what systemic changes in the U.S. would create an economic environment which would allow U.S. workers to compete with anyone on earth. Right now nobody really knows where that bottom line is. In other words, if everything were on the table other than a decent wage, what systemic changes would have to be made to allow Company X in Idaho to compete with Company Y in South Korea, which it can't currently do?

Maybe there is nothing new and creative which could be done and still result in an acceptable alternative. Ten years ago, before I came here to Asia to see for myself, I would easily have believed that. Today, I don't, but I'm finding the nearly complete lack of receptivity to any suggestion otherwise validation of my decision to leave the United States for a part of the world where the sap is just beginning to flow after a centuries-long slumber.

Over and out.

[boiseguy]

Originally Posted by mathlete

I didn't post here to taunt. I posted because in the ten years I've lived here, having learned Mandarin Chinese and spent countless hours on factory floors in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and India, I've learned valuable lessons which have profoundly altered the simplistic notions I arrived with.

For example, that when your employees take home 94% of their paychecks, quality health care costs an employer $15 per month and an employee nothing, real estate loans average between 2 and 3% and property taxes are a fraction of what they are in the U.S., you automatically have a huge competitive advantage that has nothing to do with exploiting workers and your employess have a very good quality of life on 40% less income than their American counterparts.

And, for the record, my business is high-end products with large IP content and I pay an average salary of $2,000 per month plus year-end bonuses. I'm still competitive with other manufacturers here because I'm part-owner of my own factory and we're much more efficient than they are. For example, as a native English speaking engineer I can resolve engineering and manufacturing issues with foreign customers much quicker and with less waste than my competitors.

The bottom line is that with everything I've learned here I know that the choice for American workers isn't between lying on their backs in poverty or starting a debilitating trade war with countries in Asia which have been financing U.S. public and private debt and could turn the spigot off in an instant.

What I was suggesting is that Idaho in particular embark on a truly informed study to find out exactly what systemic changes in the U.S. would create an economic environment which would allow U.S. workers to compete with anyone on earth. Right now nobody really knows where that bottom line is. In other words, if everything were on the table other than a decent wage, what systemic changes would have to be made to allow Company X in Idaho to compete with Company Y in South Korea, which it can't currently do?

Maybe there is nothing new and creative which could be done and still result in an acceptable alternative. Ten years ago, before I came here to Asia to see for myself, I would easily have believed that. Today, I don't, but I'm finding the nearly complete lack of receptivity to any suggestion otherwise validation of my decision to leave the United States for a part of the world where the sap is just beginning to flow after a centuries-long slumber.

Over and out.

good luck to you then...
I think it's pretty apparent what needs to happen to become competitive..Doctors need to bend over and take 30K per year and universal healthcare needs to be implemented. Apply Capitalistic principles to everything. It doesn't work like that in a first world country.. without 60-70% taxes because unlike continental asia.. we have societal standards and labor laws. In Asian countries, healthcare, and benefits and what have you are hardly an issue, because they just need a paycheck.. give it 25 to 50 years, and they'll demand the same... In fact in many cases china is becoming more expensive and american companies are jumping ship to vietnam, south korea, indonesia.. etc. America was once like that, where Irish and italian immigrants worked 7 days a week 12 hours per day for 2cents per hour.. before we had labor laws to protect society... Its the evolution of a nation.. Don't make it out to be something that it's not.. Its not some new one of a kind situation..I lived in Australia just south of all that for many years... Businesses are just jumping ship when they can't or won't pay for what a particular society deems as acceptable as the standard of living grows ...You're just cashing in on it.. and using the existing american consumer market until asia gets on its feet and can replace america to buy your products.. Capitalism and greed is the driving force for your decision to do what you do and be ok with it... You are asking others to do what you should be doing here in america that is if you really care about your homeland... but in the end it is apparent that you only care about your own pocketbook where you can gain instant wealth nevermind who it hurts or steps on.. and that is why people don't have a lot of tolerance for the corporate world anymore... If china wants to eat it up... they can have at it.. but do us a favor and let us know the name of your company so that we make sure never to buy a single product you make.
I realize you didn't post in here to start a debate.... or to be attacked.. but I'm sorry it just had to be said

Cheers

[Syringaloid]

8th Street Marketplace at Bodo | Boise, Idaho 83702


8th Street AiR Program

The space at 8th Street Marketplace @ BoDo is designed to attract talent, boost productivity and improve job satisfaction. 8th Street also boasts Boise’s first and only artist in residence program, 8th Street AiR, which allows an artist to make a studio home and to display and share their work in our commercial office space for a period of 90 days. First Thursday studio tours and open houses are available to the public, so check it out if you’re in the neighborhood. After the artist’s time in residence is over, a piece of their work is permanently on display at the marketplace.

[Torrie]

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