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It was pretty sad... everytime Obama pushed and got a liberal agenda passed, it was all for "jobs"... healthcare reform was "for jobs"... wall street reform was "for jobs"... apparently nobody told healthcare reform or wall street they were suppose to hire more people after the legislation was passed... instead they laid off MORE workers... Obama lied to get his liberal agenda PERIOD...
That's strange arithmetic.
The federal govt passed the stimulus so jobs would be created. Bank rates were lowered and held low so jobs could be created. Businesses are being enticed to hire with tax incentives. Meanwhile many programs are in place to keep people from losing their homes and to help them to buy new ones. More stuff I can't think of right now.
What exactly do you think is within the federal government's capacity to do?
That's not true...
You can compete if you have equitable trade.
But when you have layers upon layers of bureaucracy, administrative overhead, insurance, taxes, and fees inflating the cost to hire and sell labor, America can never compete locally or internationally.
For example, what do you think would happen the day AFTER all taxes, rules and regulations were removed from American industry?
Would expatriate companies stay on foreign soil or rush back?
I would strongly suspect that companies would rush back here, in a NY minute.
In short, government meddling is the root cause for economic decline in America.
No, you do not need strict regulations to control harmful industry. All you need to do is hold them accountable, under existing law. But that's what no one will address. Why else can a corporation and its stockholders escape responsibility for criminal and civil damage?
Take pollution, for example. All government regulations do is establish LEGAL limits. But if you consider pollution as poisoning, what kind of fool accepts "legal poisoning"?
If a corporation poisons someone's water, land or air, hold them legally responsible.
Better yet, have a corporation's inlets downstream of its outlets, and mandate that the Board of directors and Executives all have to imbibe the effluent from their operations... on a weekly basis.
When their own lives are at risk, they will NOT knowingly pollute. And if they accidentally pollute, the new management will rush to correct the problem... hopefully soon after the funerals.
Two words that libs don't like to see in the same sentence, legally and responsible. It is very obvious why that is. The hard leaners at the head of the EPA sure don't want those words in the same place. All they want to do is to control through regulation.
The problem with that is identifying those dead end jobs early enough to avoid committing a significant portion of your life to what turns out be temporary employment. Fortune ball reading isn't a commonly available tool for most of us.
In the case of that Maytag plant, it had been there in that town since the company began and the company was dedicated to its neighbors. The founder of the company is even buried in Newton.
Who knew, or who could forsee, that one day after the founders death, an outside firm with no social conscience, with no committment to anything but it's shareholders and it's bottom line, would come along and do what they did? Who could have guessed that a couple of generations of good, profitable work would end up one day simply blowing away? Could you have seen it?
Probably not. And, neither could the citizens of Flint, MI (whose grandfathers built Buicks there) or of Syracuse, NY (where generations of families built Carrier air conditioners) or of Denison, TX (where refrigerated biscuits were invented and where Pillsbury suddenly pulled out). The list of communities and families devastated by the relentless pursuit of greater profits in the name of globalization goes on and on.
It's easy to play "Capt. Hindsight," (a tip o' the hat to last night's South Park), but that doesn't help those workers and their families caught up in the destruction of American industry. It's too late for them to make the decision to not count on "dead end" jobs. They're caught now, stuck between their committments and a future which has suddenly disappeared.
What do they do? How can they do it without losing everything they've worked for in the process?
Oh, it's quite easy to say, "Train for another job," but that answer is too pat, too simple. It avoids having to deal with the companion questions of just how to do that when you're unemployed and your creditors are beating down the door. It doesn't address WHAT jobs to train for, nor how to determine if that new career might not also turn out to be a dead end.
No, it seems to me that the right, the easy answer, is to make it unprofitable for companies to move their production off shore. Make it hurt when they do it, to the point that the economic incentive to do so is gone. American workers are still the most productive workers on earth and, even if they have to be paid more, can still compete with Joe Chinese, one on one, and beat him at his own game. All it takes is a committment by companies to the workers who make them rich, and that means a committment by The Peoples government to make them quick screwing our people.
You can bet they won't do it volutarily.
My issue is not so much "identifying those dead end jobs early enough to avoid committing a significant portion of your life to what turns out be temporary employment", but rather having a broad range of skill sets, coupled with a higher level of education, so that, in the event you find yourself losing your job, you can make yourself more employable. IMO, jobs that require a high school diploma or less (w/o the need for some vocational, trade or college completion) is dead-end...just a matter of time on when that end comes.
That's always been the downside to company towns and it's ALWAYS the way it will end. Nothing, no company, is forever.
Absolutely. People who depend on that one company are slaves to it. No one should be living with only one option, it's going to end badly at some point. It is unwise to ever become that dependent and to trust a corporation to take care of you- please. It was a bad idea back in the early industrial days and it's a bad idea now.
Heartbreaking story in the first segment about a small town economically devastated by the loss of the Maytag factory. Second segment about tax policies and the deficit.
I feel so terrible for the people who are becoming homeless and destitute, despite having worked responsibly all their lives. WHAT is going to happen? Economists have said the "recovery" already happened and it is weak -- not gonna get any better. Are there any community wide efforts to help keep each other afloat? Or is everyone just depending upon government assistance? Eventually that will run out.
That's old news. Everyone knew the factory would close. If they employees would have went to university or vocational school to get additional training, or looked for another job, then wouldn't be in the mess their in.
Hmmm. I don't know what to make of it, but someone who makes the above grammatical/spelling errors is probably someone who didn't go to university himself and it seems ironic you would make such a statement about other people.
Here's the thing, not everyone is suited to university study or professional occupations. Perhaps most people could handle vocational school (we hope), but there will always be those who are just "workers" and there was a time when we needed "just workers." Is that time past?
Of course I would encourage my own children to get as much education as they can, IF they are suited to higher education. But again, everyone is not. There should be no shame in doing a simple job as long as you do it well and don't expect to live at a level beyond basic subsistence.
I know that corporate outsourcing is not occurring due to the recession but is part of the contributing factor to the recession. It is still a sad story for the people. I guess they should have all seen the writing on the wall long ago, but some people just aren't capable of planning ahead. If they are good people at heart, then I still feel sorry for them.
Sears once placed an order to a stove manufacturer for 1000 stoves, then in the middle of production canceled the order. They did it so they could force the company into BK and buy the entire company for a fraction of the cost.... So while there are some that want to blame the economy or the current administration these sort of things are not new.
To make the assertion Obama wants everyone on gov assistance is ignorant. He has created 1.6 million jobs and has done some things to stop the flow of jobs abroad... yet it isn't only up to him. He is creating a fertile ground for investment at home.
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