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When Amerit**ds can offer a quality product at price that is on-par with the 9th world, well then, I may consider buying Amerit**d Products. Until then......forget it......Walmart it is.
I agree in this day and age, it's the democrats and those on the left that are really carrying the "Live american, buy american" mantra.
Those on the right seem to applaud the failures of american companies, and were calling for the extermination of american icons like chrysler and GM
The right wingers look at buying american made products as somehow a bad thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guamanians
Your assessment is way off. The auto company problems were self inflicted. And they are now turning things around because they went back to the basics. Make a good product that people want to buy.
The applause you think you heard is more like disgust. There's no reason why American products and companies can't be competitive. But, when greedy people (i.e. CEO's, union bosses, lawyers, etc.) take advantage of patriotic citizens then they don't deserve our business.
GM and Chrysler were bankrupt and unable to obtain capital privately. They would have gone under and also destroyed the U.S. supplier companies, which would have been detrimental to Ford too.
Yes, GM's problems were self-inflicted but they couldn't have turned around without government help.
The government rescued the industry and now it is doing better than ever. What I note from conservatives is a tone of sour grapes. They hate GM because it reflects a success for President Obama -- and they can't have that.
GM and Chrysler were bankrupt and unable to obtain capital privately. They would have gone under and also destroyed the U.S. supplier companies, which would have been detrimental to Ford too.
Yes, GM's problems were self-inflicted but they couldn't have turned around without government help.
The government rescued the industry and now it is doing better than ever. What I note from conservatives is a tone of sour grapes. They hate GM because it reflects a success for President Obama -- and they can't have that.
Tha may be the case for some conservatives, but not all. If you remember, GW Bush also bailed out American companies, and many conservatives were against it then too. Your point about GM may be true, but it should not have come to that. If we (the gov't) continues to bail out every failed business then the country will go bankrupt. This is like "lending" your friend another $100 when all he does is waste the money. Luckily for us GM decided to get serious and it payed off. Thats not a policy that will work for long.
Tha may be the case for some conservatives, but not all. If you remember, GW Bush also bailed out American companies, and many conservatives were against it then too. Your point about GM may be true, but it should not have come to that. If we (the gov't) continues to bail out every failed business then the country will go bankrupt. This is like "lending" your friend another $100 when all he does is waste the money. Luckily for us GM decided to get serious and it payed off. Thats not a policy that will work for long.
Actually, the GM bailout was a money maker for the gov't. They paid back most of the money, plus, the gov't would have paid out billions in unemployment benefits. Moreover, the employees now pay taxes that we wouldn't have had.
If the "conservative" GOP would allow Congress to consider the tax proposals Obama has put forward to reward companies which hire here and bring back jobs from overseas, while punishing those who hide their profits overseas, the "liberals" might be able to accomplish quite a lot in that area.
When I was in high school, in a community with a population that was about 98% white, but with a broad spectrum of political loyalties (that is, everything from New Deal Democrats to small-town small-business Republicans) ... one thing upon which just about everybody agreed was that protectionism (high tariffs on imported goods) was not a good idea. The usual argument for that point was that the stock market crash of 1929 did not degenerate into a full-blown Depression until the notorious Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 further depressed international trade.
It's painfully "fitting" somehow, that while other nations such as Mexico, which discarded its one-party political system over ten years ago, and opened its markets, is growing rapidly, while Japan, which resorted to a disguised" form of protectionism, has been stagnant for a number of years, and a substantial portion of Americans seem to think of this as the way to go.
If we want to get high tech jobs back within our borders, we need to reform our system so as to make our labor rates competitive That does not mean cuitting wages; it means cutting the overhead; the extra cost of doing business in a constipated, over-regulated society.
I see two trends which I view as particularly prominent forces within that trend -- frivolous lawsuits and too much power in the hands of public-employee unions.
As a displaced industrial employee, I can understand the resentment many of the people of my age group hold against working conditions in the post-industrial or service economy. The simple, unpleasant fact is that monitoring an industrial process is usually less-annoying than dealing with a steady stream of demanding, over-indulged, often unsympathetic customers; a lot of us are simply turned off by sales pitches, feigned extroversion, and tip-mooching. But the supposed "protection" offered by a union does no one any good if it drives employment overseas; we must, in some way, impress upon some of the most over-ingulded in our "consumerist" society that the person on the other side of the counter has a right to basic dignity as well.
Finally, the public-eployee unions ought to recognize that, until the rise of the temporary American monopoly on heavy industry after World War II, employment in the pubic sector was linked to low wage rates as a trade-off for the security inherent in the job. Police officers and firefighters in major cities got no wage raises at all during the years 1865-1913, but living conditions still improved because the purchasing power of a dollar rose steadily in a continuous process of mild deflation. That example also doesn't factor in the opportunities available for both overtime work and promotion within the ranks.
Anything involving attempts to tamper with the workings of an open market is only going to benefit the priveleged group "on the inside", and penalize the rest of us over the long run. But if some of us are foolish enough to buy into such a scheme, it will, by its basic nature, create new opportunities for the poloitically astute to aviod the burden. That is what the emergence of Wal-mart and all the rest, so scorned by the protectionist dummies, was all about.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 05-07-2012 at 10:54 PM..
Actually, the GM bailout was a money maker for the gov't. They paid back most of the money, plus, the gov't would have paid out billions in unemployment benefits. Moreover, the employees now pay taxes that we wouldn't have had.
But the GM bond- and stockholders were left high and dry. If you say "serves them right" I won't argue. But is anyone in the private sector going to finance an auto-industry venture knowing that history, fueled by influence-peddling in order to get access to the government's power, will eventually repeat itself?
The American auto industry got its death warrant with the first attempts by Big Brother to control production back in the 1970's. It's already walking-around-dead while foreign automakers build plants here, but only in right-to-work states.
It's just slow suicide, but if that's your preference .....
You got it all BACKWARDS doh!Obama is causing a revolt by banning-Buy American!!
WASHINGTON -- A group of 68 House Democrats and one Republican sent a letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday urging him to reconsider an element of the controversial free trade agreement currently being negotiated by the administration. If approved in its current form, the pact would effectively ban "Buy American" policies in government contracting.
Although the deal, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, has received relatively little media attention in the United States, it has sparked international friction among consumer groups and environmental activists who worry that terms demanded by the Obama administration will eliminate important public protections. Domestically, however, the deal's primary source of political tension is from a portion that could ban "Buy American" provisions -- a restriction that opponents emphasize would crimp U.S. jobs.
I don't know how they suppose all that is in there when the agreement hasn't even been finalized yet. There isn't even a rough draft of the whole treaty available because they're still negotiating in Dallas right now.
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