See my other post, CEO's and senior executives of companies make the decisions to outsource. If they (not the company) are penalised by having to take equivalent overseas salaries and conditions for their jobs then their own greed and self interest would stop the trend immediately.
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 00:02:06 -0500, Tbone brought forth from the murky depths:
When was that? I haven't seen anything about it. The latest mention of Perot on CNN is 2000. Salon.com says he might run in 2004. EDS mentions London contracts on their site, not India. Perot Systems doesn't mention reorg. (Aha, google news has it, 23 hours ago)
Do you know anything more about it? If so, cite it, please.
Yeah, well I'd like my taxes and insurance costs to go away too. Then we could all drive off to happy piggy-land.
Jim
================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================
I could buy into that. The idea is to level the playing field a bit between companies that outsource, and those that don't.
Jim
================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================
Yes. I think the important thing to remember is, this stuff's *gonna* happen. And in the long run, we're all dead. But if there is some way to allow the transition to happen without such a huge disruption for american workers, that would be great. Even if it means throwing the brakes on outsourcing, somehow - even if just a bit, for just a while.
Jim
================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================
This is what Ed calls "the race to the bottom." I don't think this is inevitable. I also thing that buffering the profits companies can realize by outsourcing is one way to temper the short term effects of globalization.
Jim
================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================
Ummmm.....lots of frozen foods have already moved offshore. A great deal of the vegetable processing in California jumped quickly to Mexico when NAFTA hit the books. Salinas CA used to have dozens of frozen food processors and now has only 2 or three...most thinking about closing the plants because it can be more cheaply produced in Mexico and further south.
All major frozen french fry companies now have large plants in China (and all over the world). The only saving grace is the volumes used are so high that they tend to be built to serve local markets rather than having surpluses to ship back to us.
A good deal (if not most) of the beef used by the larger fast food chains comes into the USA as large frozen blocks from South America where it is ground and formed into frozen patties.
What I can't figure out is the deductive reasoning behind the (government and others) push to keep open markets overseas. They seem to be saying that if we buy from China, their people will have money to buy our stuff. If we won't even buy our stuff because it is so expensive, why would they????? Of course some items that require technological knowledge will do well such as telecommunications, but overall I just can't see the huge benefit that is said to come from their markets being open to USA goods relative to our markets favoring their goods. It seems more likely to their markets will be open not to our goods, but to our corporations to build factories there. How does GM building a factory in Guangzhao give any real benefit to the US economy?(yes, some individual stockholders will make big money from it, but the fact is, it DOESN'T trickle down)
Koz
Eric R Snow wrote:
Yes! I like that idea!!
If there were any way to make it stick though.
:(
Jim
================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================
This might be what you're looking for
Gunner.. I agree with you that THIS is the question that needs to be harped on. In my opinion, this is the Bush failing (as it was a failing for the geeks who came before him). He failed and still fails to recognize it as any kind of problem except political in terms of getting votes. Wallowing in guttural terminology here, Mr. Bush should shit or get off the pot.
It's time for all parities to start answering this question, even if many of the answers are silly. They are running around saying there IS a problem but I haven't heard one credible course of action (or any desire to take any course of action) to improve the situation. The mantra seems to be "job training" (both parties). Yea, job training for a 300 million person service economy...like that's going to solve things.
Koz
Gunner wrote:
Since corporations move overseas to increase ROI for stockholders, there should be a system where stockholders cannot profit enormously from such moves. For one, capital gains should be treated as any other income, without loopholes and methods to hide the income. Personally, I think sales taxes should be collected on stock transactions also. You pay sales taxes on the goods you buy, why is purchasing a portion of a company exempt from this? This would change the nature of investments from chasing dollars in the short term to chasing dollars in the long run.
Koz
jim rozen wrote:
Actually, it's what Alan Tonelson calls "the race to the bottom." He wrote a book by that title. I borrowed the line from him.
It would be useful in these discussions to distinguish between what's happening to the economy as a whole, versus what's happening to our jobs. They aren't necessarily the same thing.
The thing I want to know first is what kind of a comparable service job you re-train a 50-year-old toolmaker for. The President puts faith in the idea, but I don't know what he's putting faith in. My fear is, neither does he.
Ed Huntress
Outsourcing isn't the problem. The problem is internal sourcing from the cheapest location. If XX corp who owned a division in Shanghai was subject to the taxes and laws of the location XX corp sat, there would be far less incentive to have that division. Unfortunately, the current corporate structure laws let XX corp in the USA treat XY corp in Shanghai as a separate entity while still at the same time treating it as part of the main corporation when it comes to profits, balance sheets, assets, dividends, etc. You get the best of both worlds...you get to show the Shanghai division to make the books look good but you don't have to treat that division the same for taxation etc.
The same thing happens in the USA all the time for other reasons. For example, many national companies have separate divisions in states like CA so that their main corporation is not taxed at CA rates on sales (complex system where you take % of sales in CA and pay corporate taxes on that so they form shell companies to insulate the main company). How many corporations are registered in Delaware that really aren't in delaware? If a particular state suddenly lowered all corporate taxes to half what the other states charged, how quickly would corporations flock to that location, either firing old workers or forcing them to move? Same thing as moving overseas.
So....If you own a company or division overseas (or own one that owns one etc.) you should be taxes on those imported goods the same as if that company was sitting in the basement of your head office. Pretending that it is "not you" while still profiting as if it is you means it IS you.
Oh yea..I like the idea of executives being paid their equivalent salary in overseas location dollars :)
Koz
snipped-for-privacy@i>>
Anyone ever studied the causes and effects of the Luddite Riots?
Those who ignore history, are doomed to repeat it.
Gunner
"To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated." - Trefor Thomas
Ha. The NY times had an recent article, which I did not read - but I read the letters in response. The article's theme was that american workers are lazy and allowing their skills to get rusty.
The letters were uniformly scathing and had one common reply:
"American companies are not after a skill set. They're after a pay scale, you moron!"
We don't need re-training. Our skills are just fine thank you. Anyway most of the 50 year old toolmakers I know would be quite happy to learn software coding or whatever - except those jobs are flying out the door just as fast all the rest of them!
Jim
================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================
The problem with this approach is, there's no discrimination between a company that keeps it's jobs in the US vs one that sends all the work overseas.
I'm not objecting to ROI in pinciple, but rather any increase in ROI that is directly attributable to moving jobs offshore.
Jim
================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================
That's why import duties were invented.
On 15 Feb 2004 22:39:36 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@aol.comNS (Whunicut) vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:
IMO manufacturing can still be profitable. It's just not _as_ profitable as paying peanuts to gagged slaves under crushing regimes.
occ safety and health, pay and conditions, negotiable hours, some sort of pay structure, holidays each year......
I am not saying that the stuff you mention is wrong. It's just not the whole picture. I can see where the _small_ machine shop will suffer badly from paper work. But they were dying anyway, as the big boys gradually ate them up. It's not the "average" machine shop that is going OS.
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Spike....Spike? Hello?
On 16 Feb 2004 14:10:31 -0800, jim rozen vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:
While I dod not object to the idea of shares, and ROI, to an extent, I do object to ROI when it begins to overwhelm the actual "business of the business" in any way. These days that seems completely inevitable and alsmost total.
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Spike....Spike? Hello?
On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 22:41:22 +0800, snipped-for-privacy@iinet.net.oz vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:
Beautiful!
Except that the CEO's of the companies doing the outsourced work are multi-millionaires.
But I see what you mean, I think, and I like it. The CEO would recieve the same proportion of his old pay as any worker who was transferred to the receiving company would get.
Oh yeah! And the money should go into capital development or worker pay at home, not increased profit to the shareholders. I can actually see your suggestion being quite popular under the share-based system we have now. I think that most CEOs are "not at fault" because they are simply doing the shareholders' bidding.
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Spike....Spike? Hello?
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