Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
They're responsible for their own survival. It isn't my job to hold their hand through every second of their life to make sure they make sound financial decisions.
That's because the Middle Class wanted to do that. No one held a gun to their heads and made them do that.
What idiot is so pathetic they can't save money for 6 months to pay cash for a big screen TV instead of buying it on credit and paying 2-3 times its value?
Hoy ****, watching TV on a 27" screen? The horror....the horror...
I see what you are saying. I understand it. US has been wasting the cash they make on many unneeded things. Should High End Retail go away?
Companies are not hiring because with current unemployment and fear of individual job loss, workers are willing to work longer, harder and for less wages. ten years ago, you told an employee to do three times the workload for the same pay, they would walk and you will have a hard time finding someone to do it. But today, everyone is in fear of their job so you can demand more and more just to the point of making them a slave, and you will have a hundred people lining up for that job. An employer has no need to hire so long as the work is getting done.
No, there will always be a market for high-end retail.
What would help is to force credit card banks to go back to the old "7/5 Rule." I know people will have a hard time with this, but there really was a time in the US when you couldn't get a credit card unless you had 7 years with the same employer and 5 years at the same address, or 5 years with the same employer and 7 years at the same address (hence the "7/5 Rule").
Usually you got gas card as soon as you turned 18. I had a Union*76 card. Had a $50 limit. Got bumped to $200 after a year. Then you'd get a store card like Montgomery Ward, JC Penny, Elder-Beerman, Shillito's (all Federated Stores) or something like that.
This business with 19 year old college kids with no job having 2-3 VISA cards and a MasterCard was unheard of back the early 1980s. That just didn't happen.
That happened because of changes the Carter and Reagan Administrations made to banking laws as part of the FIRE Economy.
Excess credit is not as bad as excess money in the system, but it's still bad. Excess credit with low interest rates are why housing values are inflated. Plus excess credit usually ends up getting dumped into speculation. If you go back and look at the 1929 Crash, part of the problem was buying on margin, which was a form of credit, and the excess got dumped into speculation on the market which took a tumble.
I would hope people would see the FIRE Economy as pretty much a Ponzi scheme. It only works when people are spending credit and paying interest. When that stops, things go south.
Intel plans to spend as much as $8 billion on its U.S. manufacturing facilities in preparation for the launch of the company's next-generation of processors, which will be built on circuitry much smaller than today's chips. Intel said Tuesday the money would be spent on retooling four existing factories, called fabs and on construction of a plant in Oregon. The projects are expected to support 6,000 to 8,000 construction jobs and result in 800 to 1,000 new permanent high-tech jobs.
(...)
Intel's new fab will be called D1X. The facility is scheduled to open for research and development work in 2013. The fabs scheduled for upgrades include two in Arizona, Fab 12 and Fab 32, and two in Oregon, D1C and D1D. The latest investment follows a similar multi-billion-dollar expenditure on U.S. facilities in 2009, as Intel ramped up for building 32-nm products, which are being used in PCs, servers and mobile devices today. The company's upcoming 22-nm microprocessors, codenamed Ivy Bridge, are scheduled to go into production in late 2011.
In choosing to invest in the U.S, rather than in factories overseas, Intel is delivering what economists say is needed to revive the country's manufacturing sector, which is a focus on industries that can create high-paying, highly skilled jobs, rather than low-wage factories that make clothes, inexpensive appliances and other products that are mostly made overseas today.
I think the issue raised by the OP addresses the average worker, in particular the average unskilled worker now competing in the global labor market.
As Nor'Eastah alluded to, for some time now, probably decades, the US working class/middle class distinction has been blurred by easy credit, not to mention cockamamie social policy.
To be sure, the total equation is complex, but there is a nexus between interest rates and more profitable investment opportunities abroad. By the way, if the unemployment rate is, say, 10%, I wonder how many of those other 90% are actually underemployed, i.e. their jobs are actually worth less than what the mainstream pretends they are, hence:
Quote:
PacificFlights Companies are not hiring because with current unemployment and fear of individual job loss, workers are willing to work longer, harder and for less wages. ten years ago, you told an employee to do three times the workload for the same pay, they would walk and you will have a hard time finding someone to do it. But today, everyone is in fear of their job so you can demand more and more just to the point of making them a slave, and you will have a hundred people lining up for that job. An employer has no need to hire so long as the work is getting done.
Finally, on the cost side, other posters have already mentioned health care and taxes. I would also add the legal system.
The conventional propaganda is that the US has the best health care system in the world. But the fact is that it is probably the worst among the countries of early industrialization, costing double what it costs in most European welfare states for, on balance, about the same mediocre results, with both systems having both success stories and horror stories around that. The latest horror story in the US is that monster, masked as reform, that just passed through Congress, which is only fueling the rate of cost increase and adding complexity.
The conventional propaganda is that the US legal system is the most efficient and transparent in the world. I beg to differ, but I won't go into details right now, though, in short, it is, by and large, a wealth-transferring mechanism in favor of an increasingly parasitic ruling class and law school graduate wannabes.
Frankly, I think the least of our problems is the level of taxation, at least compared to most other countries of early industrialization, though to be sure the uncertainty surrounding extension of 2001-2003 tax rules is not helping. More harmful than tax rates in the US is tax complexity and compliance costs (related to the point about the legal system, as is the health care issue).
The upshot is that with the end of the Cold War, even unexpected, and the accelerated onset of globalization, exploited by the powerful and corrupt, the US has lost its exceptionalism and is increasingly becoming like any other country, still among the top in the ranks no doubt, but no longer the obvious choice for those with a particular competitive set of talents, and/or particular resource base, that could be better expressed elsewhere, and hence not enough investment and full employment for the mediocre who are globally uncompetitive.
It mandates minimum coverage and then mandates the minimum percentage the employer must pay. For the majority of businesses, it would be cheaper to drop coverage, tell the employees their on their own as far as health care plans, and pay the fines.
As an aside, wait till the dependents coverage to age 26 kicks in. That is insane.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
