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This is fundamentally wrong. Every conservative misunderstands this point.
It is not because of too much regulation that our industry and manufacturing jobs have disappeared; it is because of the extreme labor force cost savings enabled by globalization.
I work for a large Silicon Valley technology company that you have surely heard of. I manage their entire internal profitability. Know how much our typical fully-loaded US software engineer costs? North of $200K.
Know how much that software engineer costs in a place like India, all in? Try about $37-$40K.
As a US laborer, you cannot compete with that guy in India! I don't care if you reduce all the regulation to nothing. It is still orders of magnitude cheaper for the corporation to get the guy in India, who is educated and motivated to do the work.
And that's why the jobs are gone (except for the ****ty poverty wage McJobs), and that's why the income disparity is growing.
The fact that conservatives can't recognize this means that they are just as devoid of solutions to the problem as liberals.
Do you really believe no conservative understands what you posted? Perhaps it is just politicians that don't understand it. Just like they didn't seem to understand it is virtually impossible for the IRS to have had difficulty finding Lois Lerner's email. Regulations have little to do with software company employment.
Software isn't the manufacturing that politicians complain about. They complain about hourly jobs - the kind that typically don't need a college degree. These jobs are vulnerable to not only cheap overseas labor - they are also vulnerable to automation.
I would hope to be more sensible under most circumstances, but the grand panacea of "self-improvement" does not address the actual problem. Low-wage labor is a commodity. It appears in the production functions for many good and services. An individual worker may move up or on, but those low-wage jobs will still be there in the long term, and someone will be working in them. The problem doesn't go away because we are now talking about Bob instead of Steve. Follow?
And thankfully those jobs are available to employ people who don't want to improve their skills.
Punish? I would like the 1% to pay into Social Security at the same rate as the rest of us. NO CAP!!!!!!!! Are you kidding me??? They get to pay less as a percentage than people earning $20K, $80K, $100K and more? It is disgusting!
That's not really a reason for them to pay more. Especially when what they can get out of it is capped.
For the rich, SS is a terrible investment. Not in the 1% (yet) and even I feel SS is going to have a terrible payout when I get old and saggy and am structuring my income to avoid paying as much as I can into SS.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gg
Maybe speeding tickets or DUI stuff should be based on income like in Finland. That way the pain hurts the billionaires at the same rate as the poor! Why shouldn't it?
That is actually a good idea.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gg
I am not asking for much from the top 1%. I think they should be punished if they just ship all their work overseas and I also have to question how they got so wealthy and their employees are not? Why shouldn't they pay their workers at a percentage of the earnings of their companies?
Why should they be punished for using the capitalist system we have? Why should their employees be guaranteed to be wealthy as you imply? The employees took no personal risk in starting anything. They have no ownership. They're workers. If they want more, they have to take on more risk and do more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gg
The employees must do a good job if the top is making tens of millions a year. Why are CEO's in the US making over a million a month? Is anyone worth that? The companies don't pay downstream very well and the top make all the money. Trickle down? Ha, ha, ha, what a joke that Reagan played on the American people. Sadly, people still believe in it. Just look at any graph of today compared to back in the 50s. It is sickening!
Because the workers let their unions get destroyed.
Companies succeeded at dividing and conquering.
You have no bartering power as an individual, only as a group.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lowexpectations
I understand what SS is and it isn't a scheme. Conceptually it's simple and even the wealthy get something out of it
While I don't like SS nor do I plan on incorporating it into my older years, people often forget what the poverty rate for old folks was before SS.
>50%.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mkpunk
It don't help when the employee is held at gunpoint asking them to accept the low wages or be unemployed because there are enough people to replace them between older workers who need to reenter the workforce and high school and college graduates entering the workforce for the first time.
And before you ask Petch, some did improve their marketable skills.
The employee isn't held at gunpoint.
I don't like the wages employers pay, so I work for myself. I've been self-employed since I was a teenager. Even when I have a job working for someone else for a little bit, I'm still working on my own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freemkt
??? Childless adults who are poor don't get much in the way of government handouts.
I know a deadbeat getting about $36,000 a year in welfare from various government levels.
He's childless and over all worthless.
Quote:
Originally Posted by so954
What I am upset about are families like the Waltons who own Walmart who come in an destroy all other competition and then only hire part time employees and tell them to apply for foodstamps and Medicaid.
Another problem billionaire is the Koch brothers. They are buying the Republican party so they can pollute the environment and to make more billions at the cost of the tax payers.
So my problem is with the 0.01% of the very wealthy who hoard their money and do not put it back into the economy, it's the working class who keep the economy going. The greed of the megarich is a sickness.
That is capitalism. If Americans don't like it, stop supporting it.
I haven't bought anything at Walmart in years. I also don't buy anything Chinese I can avoid buying.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ambient
This is fundamentally wrong. Every conservative misunderstands this point.
It is not because of too much regulation that our industry and manufacturing jobs have disappeared; it is because of the extreme labor force cost savings enabled by globalization.
I work for a large Silicon Valley technology company that you have surely heard of. I manage their entire internal profitability. Know how much our typical fully-loaded US software engineer costs? North of $200K.
Know how much that software engineer costs in a place like India, all in? Try about $37-$40K.
As a US laborer, you cannot compete with that guy in India! I don't care if you reduce all the regulation to nothing. It is still orders of magnitude cheaper for the corporation to get the guy in India, who is educated and motivated to do the work.
And that's why the jobs are gone (except for the ****ty poverty wage McJobs), and that's why the income disparity is growing.
The fact that conservatives can't recognize this means that they are just as devoid of solutions to the problem as liberals.
While all that is true, the government could have done more to protect the American economy instead of selling it out.
China should never have been allowed in the WTO. A free market cannot compete with a controlled market.
Government policies cannot stop all off-shoring, but they can be used in certain parts of the economy to at least bring some degree of price parity.
China is a prime example. They use tariffs on many American imports, while their exports to America are tariff free.
Sooner or later, we're all going to have to start taking responsibility for the society we're living in or it's going to fall apart, and the wealthy are in a better position to do that.
If they're unwilling to take an interest in improving society for the majority, then they need to be motivated to do so.
I would hope to be more sensible under most circumstances, but the grand panacea of "self-improvement" does not address the actual problem. Low-wage labor is a commodity. It appears in the production functions for many good and services. An individual worker may move up or on, but those low-wage jobs will still be there in the long term, and someone will be working in them. The problem doesn't go away because we are now talking about Bob instead of Steve. Follow?
I do, I was just stating that to deflect the typical response from said poster about that canned line on other threads. I agree that if Steve changes companies or just gets promoted Bob will get the job. After Bob it could be James. The problem with the job market now is just about every job is low wages and companies are offering part time to skirt Obamacare so while Steve might be getting paid better, he is isn't high on the hog.
Do you really believe no conservative understands what you posted? Perhaps it is just politicians that don't understand it. Just like they didn't seem to understand it is virtually impossible for the IRS to have had difficulty finding Lois Lerner's email. Regulations have little to do with software company employment.
Software isn't the manufacturing that politicians complain about. They complain about hourly jobs - the kind that typically don't need a college degree. These jobs are vulnerable to not only cheap overseas labor - they are also vulnerable to automation.
EVERY job is. Now you can have managers not even in the same city as you. Some companies don't even have management anymore. Just look at Zappos. Jobs in America will soon be a thing of the past because of globalization and computers.
How many millions of fingers did you say you had? It is typical for people on welfare to get off again. Some do indeed return, but a theory that recipients are somehow sucked into becoming lifelong dependents is nothing but a line of manufactured right-wing garbage.
Clearly we are not on the same page... I can only relate my experiences of 30+ years managing residential rentals in the San Francisco Bay Area... nothing more or less.
As stated... success, as determined by a family no longer needing rent assistance, is almost zero... some of the families I manage date back to the 1980's... not uncommon for Housing Vouchers/Section 8 Certificates to be passed from one generation to the next...
Remember... I'm the poster with oodles of anecdotal replies...
Wow, that's pretty clueless. You can be either a private club or a public accommodation. Take your pick. You can't be both. Think lunch counters in the south in the 1950s and 1960s.
The comparison isn't valid; the department store chains which operated the lunch counters were involved in interstate commerce. Same rules applied to the bus companies which figured in the freedom rides.
But not very many purchases of a wedding cake or bridal gown involve more than one state.
The entire procedure was simply dreamed up by militant Left-leaning lawyers sympathetic to the LGBT coalition --- in order to deliberately target individuals not likely to be friendly toward their cause (and maybe pick up a few ill-gotten bucks for themselves).
The "commerce clause" of the U S Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) was originally intended as a free trade measure -- prohibiting any state to impose tariffs and other obstacles against the produce of another state. One hundred years were to pass before any Federal interference in ordinary commerce was envisioned and sanctioned under the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. Most of that mistake was undone in the 1970's when transportation was deregulated, but the clause itself remains a flimsy excuse for Federal interference to appease a special interest.
EVERY job is. Now you can have managers not even in the same city as you. Some companies don't even have management anymore. Just look at Zappos. Jobs in America will soon be a thing of the past because of globalization and computers.
Uhhh.....managers not in the same city....that is not new.
The US will still lead the world in software and related technology for a long time. The workers in India, Russia, and other IT-rich countries still don't do primary design and research. The one thing Apple makes in the US is software.
As energy costs rise, transportation becomes a more significant part of manufactured product's cost. The economics of offshore work doesn't stay constant. Some work will shift back to the US, while others won't.
There is a bunch of NEW auto manufacturing in the US. It just isn't done by UAW workers.
I used to work for a Fortune 500 company. Several years ago, they made a big deal of going to a "Pay for Performance" format. Your yearly bonus (if any) would be determined by your performance for the year. This was also a time when annual raises had not been seen for a while, because the company could not afford them due to the economic conditions.
Then a new company President was hired. He immediately received several million stock options and 250,000 shares of company stock (worth about $5 million). That was before he had performed even one day on the job.
The rules have always been different for the people at the top. Kind of hard for me to see them as being "punished"
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