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Many here use the word slavery all to often. I must have a different concept of slavery. In my mind I think about people kidnapped from their native land. Forced to work for 0 pay and are owned as in property or like a plow horse.
Third world countries and their cheap labor. Many it can be argued are forced to work in horrid conditions by american standards. Normal conditions by their own. Cheap labor by american standards acceptable by their own.
I don't like outsourcing anymore than most. I deal with it everytime my password at work fails. Call costarica to get it reset talk to someone whose english is not at all understandable.
Jobs going south or over seas. Some of this due to Unions pricing themselves out of work. Some due to greedy corporations or both.
But to call it slavery??? Nah exploitation for sure.
What the hell do you think they're doing when they pay in taxes in one single year what you would make in 10 lifetimes?
Other than that, I think your post was great, but you cannot expect successful people to be particularly charitable when an enormous portion of what they earn is taken off the top to forcibly support the very ideals that everyone wishes they would do voluntarily.
Not arguing with that-- I'm simply saying that to get (for example) a mining company to clean up a superfund site (know anything about Butte, Montana?)--or an Oil Company to clean up after itself--is often close to impossible. Yet when they DO finally 'comply', on orders of a Federal judge, it's often worked into their advertisements as a sign of "caring about the environment"..
Nothing particularly WRONG with that--- just shows a little hypocrisy, IMO. My post alluded to the fact that our great industrial leadership, as well as some of industry's "ruthlessness", are BOTH tied in to our peculiar culture--different than other nations...Remember good old "J.R. Ewing ?" ('Dallas')---in much of the world, he'd have been looked at as a boorish jerk. Here, in America, he was a HERO !....I LOVED J.R., and so did millions of others. Fictional, perhaps, but he embodied many of our admired ideals. NOBODY got the best of J.R.!..As some of the old "timber barons" up in Oregon used to say (and J.R. would probably agree) "It's a lot cheaper to buy a judge than to retain an attorney"....now THAT'S business !....(at least until we 'reign it in' )..
Great freaking topic!! Wow, thus far soo good. I hate to say this, but again I have to agree with most of what LM1 said. Also Macmeal definitely on point.
The only thing i would add that is not being discussed is exactly the benefit of sending jobs offshore and how a lot of those jobs due to the falling dollar are coming right back.
India and China currently have a comparative advantage in producing goods, that rely on human labor, than we currently do in the United States. What effect will this have on the economy? Well, the same effect that the huge oil spikes in the 1970's had on the importation of cheap gas efficient Japanese cars.
Americans are very resilient and we will continue to advance the world in technology and other areas that require significant capital and risk. The same people that have been forced out of manufacturing jobs will be the same peoples who's children evenutally started working in the computer industyr for heavy weights like Dell, Microsoft, HP, and Apple. We no longer have a comparative advantage at manufacturing in the United States, without some sort of government Tariff on imports. Oh no what ever will the American people do now that so many jobs are outsourced? Exactly what we have always done to compete in a "global" economy we will do whatever it is we do best and make the right investments in our human capital to get us there.
Outsourcing is great! It should be looked upon not as a burden of greedy capitalistic corporations, but a wake up call to the rest of the country, that we no longer have an advantage in producing or paying low skilled labor. The reasons have been highlighted earlier in this thread. Also notice with the falling dollar and a more competitive global market those same jobs that many Americans lost 20 years ago are coming right back. Look at Hyndai, Honda, and Toyato. It's now cheaper for them to hire workers in the US to produce their cars than it is to manufacture in their own countries. Look it's the global economy and we have consistently proven that when its time to figure out something new to specialize in Americans meet the challenge and create new more skilled jobs. Just look at the internet. Okay, so what we loose a few low skilled jobs, but we gained a number of new highly skilled workers. Mark my words because of the capitalistic system we operate under we will continue to be the country that takes the greatest risk to create the next great job opportunities. We have access to a lot of captial and we encourage our citizens to take risk, that other countries forbid and this is why the US isn't going anywhere!!!!
Are you including company-paid health care in that computation? For our health-care funding system to be predominantly employment-based is the root of the problem.
That certainly doesn't help. However, I think you will again find government overregulation as a root cause of our skyrocketing health care costs, as well, so my point still stands.
You will find that this general mentality is precisely what has motivated the laws that make our US manufacturing climate so unfavorable. Global labor arbitrage was a totally unavoidable consequence of highly efficient trans-continental shipping occurring right about the same time that the 3rd world finally woke the hell up and brought to market the only asset they had going for them- their human capital. We Americans can kick, cry and pull-hair that our labor isn't as competitive as it once was, but really, generations upon generations of compounding employee benefits, hyper-bloated wages and an overall sense of "gimme" has shanghaied us in the fiscal boat we're currently in. Can we blame China and India for wanting to compete with us? Is it "our fault" that we were all raised from infancy with this totally insane, completely delusional concept of entitlement- a concept that relied on economic dynamics that couldn't exist forever?
Furthermore, I don't know what economic school you come from, but there is no such thing as a "corporate duty" to create jobs. This is a bizarre concept, usually held by people who haven't a clue what a corporation actually is.
The only duty a corporation has is to provide profits to its shareholders, either in the form of a dividend or increasing the value of their shares via capital reinvestment. That is 100% of "corporate duty" in a nutshell, right there.
It is up to us as a nation to regulate them (businesses) as we see fit, but whenever we do so with a mind towards eliminating their ability to produce profits (or, viewing the profits they produce as national chattel for us to commandeer by virtue of popular will), we also eliminate the jobs that are concomitant with the businesses existence.
This issue is fascinating, as you find that the very people who are constantly lamenting over the losses of jobs are the exact same ones who favor every single regulation that forces the jobs to go elsewhere. They want to "punish" the big, bad corporations yet they feel entitled to jobs at the same time. This constant demagoguery of the word "corporation" is getting very, very tiring. The people who blather thusly are usually retards. For the past three decades, we've been regulating the everloving sht out of businesses, basically forcing them into survival mode. We've held the gun of odious regulation and obscene to their heads, ensuring that they must take drastic measures to survive as a viable enterprise.
In short, it's the classic losers philosophy.
Entitlement and jealousy wrapped into one big ball of failure.
you make some good points, but the problem i have with your position is this: 50 years ago, the corperations would not get away with what they do today. now, maybe 50 years ago, wages werent as high as they are today, but 50 years ago it didnt take two incomes for an average family just to get by either.
corperate duty? maybe your right. maybe there never was a corperate duty. then gone is the government duty (the regulating arm of us as a society) to regulate the corperations. why? because the corperations have so much influence over our government. essentially, our government and our beloved corperations are ran by the same people. take Haliburton, for example. you know, the corperation that our vice president used to be CEO of - that got "no bid" government contracts to rebuild Iraq and do other traditionally military functions. when military servicemen and their own former employees talk about all the fraud, waste, and abuse - paid for by me and you - do you think they're making it up? the point is - our government is of, by and for the corperations. we now have ruling class, not just an upper class. i dont know how you cant see this.
as far as wanting to punish the corperations - some of them, absolutely. but i'm not looking to punish businesses for making a profit. i dont see thier profit as community or state property, but when you see people losing their jobs to outsourcing and downsizing and the CEO gets a 400,000,000 bonus - at some point you have to ask, how much money do you need?
oh yeah, and loser philosophy? entitlement and jealousy? jealousy no. entitlement, hell yes! our American sense of entitlemet is the only thing that keeps our government in check. without a sense of entitlement there would be no sense of outrage, and we would sheepishly accept things as they are like citizens of other countries where our beloved corperations send thier manufacturing and service to take advantage of thier lack of entitlement.
bro - i have a secure job. i may not be rich, but sadly, i make twice as much as most people do. i just look at this country and am concerned about what kind of country my son is going to have when he grows up. i'm saying i see us moving backwards as a society. you appear to be saying that things are as they should be, and perhaps we had it too good as a society in times past.
the point of my original post is this: conventional wisdom states that even before the civil war slavery would soon be outmoded by technology and the need for paying jobs. and now, the need for a working society has been overtaken by the need for higher profit. therefore nearly all manufacturing has moved overseas to places where the labor is cheaper. so, wouldnt the businesses have the work performed here by slaves rather than overseas - if they could.
Last edited by Linson; 01-11-2008 at 11:59 AM..
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