OT - Jobs Lost

I wonder if the buggywhip makers and the horse collar makers thought it was Bush's fault too?

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

Your wrote: "And by the way, US based corporations that have more than XX percent of their employees in foreign countries will be taxed at double rate."

Doubled taxes is a *huge* penalty. How'd you like *your* taxes doubled? Think you could still make ends meet? Or would you have to "downsize" (or move) to afford the higher taxes?

Gary

So you move the head office to the Bahamas. Or Costa Rica. Or Liechtenstein. Now the company is totally outside US jurisdiction.

Sure, you can slap tariffs on the goods imported from such companies, but that's just a tax on US consumers, who don't have jobs anymore thanks to your policies which have run off the last vestige of a company for which they could work.

Gary

Somehow big businesses manage to work the books in ways that you and I never could. For example, back in 2000 Cisco systems paid _no_ income tax on $2.7 billion in income. GE pulled the same tricks. They get deductions you wouldn't believe. From the numbers I have been reading, it looks like many of these companies manage to shelter enough money that they are only taxed on about 10% of their net income. If I could do that I would only have to pay about $600 a year in taxes.

Besides, the argument was to raise the taxes (or remove some deductions) if they sent jobs off shore. Bring them back and the tax burden evaporates.

The way I see it, the problem is all about the mindset in this country of squeezing the last dime out of a situation without considering the other factors. Workers are simply another resource to be hired and fired on the commands of an accounting sheet. No consideration is given to the impact of these actions on anything other than this one company's bottom line. The idea of building a slightly less profitable but sustainable business is seemingly unheard of.

-- Joe, returning to lurk mode....

-- Joseph M. Krzeszewski Mechanical Engineering and stuff snipped-for-privacy@wpi.edu Jack of All Trades, Master of None... Yet

From what I see & read, it's a 2 way street. At one time workers were loyal to their company and companies were loyal to their workers. Now, as you say, they (workers) are simply a comodity that is aquired elsewhere when a better price is found. Workers also will jump ship for a few more cents an hour; taking expensive/valuable training & experience with them. Greg Sefton

Who d'ya spose pays those, Nick?? Those same poor folks who had their job sent overseas. Now they get shafted both ways :o). Greg Sefton

...precisely because experience has shown that company loyalty to its employees has long ceased to exist. There is some vague notion that if you treat people just enough like human beings that they don't run screaming, then you retain your investment in training. But that's the bean- counter hivemind, not loyalty.

--Glenn Lyford

Yes, but the tempo of that war was slow enough to allow large arms buildups after the war started. Modern high intensity warfare isn't like that. It only lasts weeks instead of years, so it has to be fought with the war materials which are already on hand rather than count on being able to produce war materials after the shooting starts.

It is also said that the world's militaries tend to prepare for the last war instead of the next one. Example, at the start of WWII, we had a battleship navy suitable for refighting WWI. Fortunately, the Japanese scrapped that for us and we had time to build a carrier navy to fight that war. The luxury of such time is no longer viable. We have to build forces capable of fighting the next war before it starts. We've done that to a much greater extent than any other nation through a process of continuous rescoping and upgrading. That's why militarily we're the only remaining superpower.

Gary

Sure, that sounds fine to me - as long as I get the same break that US corporations get, to start with. Percentage-wise they're way below the individual rates.

Sure Gary, reduce my taxes by a factor of ten, then I'd be HAPPY to have them doubled! :)

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Long long time ago, in a land far away....

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

A good point. It is a two way street, but, I think that the important point to remember is that in most cases a company needs its employees more than the employees need the company. If a company loses a long-term employee, not only do they lose the body doing the work, but, the knowledge and experience that employee has about the company...so-called "corporate memory". Recreating that memory is expensive, slow and usually painful. So...Loyalty is something that is earned, and I believe that the onus is on the employeer to start earning it first. However, that mindset has gotten rarer and rarer over the past couple of decades or so...which is another cause of the rot in American manufacturing these days. Dave Mundt

Some how I get the feeling this is a "Which came first the chicken or the egg" :-) ...lew...

You forgot to mention torpedos.

But the A-bombs worked well....

Look at the wwII tanks - at the first. At the last. Mostly a joke. Sad at that. The pacific type shuts down research and the military wanting to build 100M$ /mile people movers that can't fill a car.

the tanks at the end of the war were better, the best ones never made it. The first ones were targets.

Our cannon shells for these tanks were jokes also - would bounce off the German tanks - after research 'fixed' them.

Meanwhile our men died on the line.

How about airplanes ? same there just like Gary said.

The Ships in Pearl were the flag ships left over from my Great Great Grandfather when he was in charge of that fleet. Spanish American War times. The new stuff - subs and carriers were out of port. Few new ships were in port of any size. There were some newer ships however.

Mart> >>From what I've read, many historians are of the opinion that having the >

Import duties were invented to preserve a captive market for domestic companies (and to raise additional revenues for the Crown). Protective tariffs allow them to maximize their profits by charging more for their products, because the consumer no longer has alternative choices, ie it is no longer a competitive market.

Gary

Tarrifs only serve to slow the inevitable--by the time government gets involved at this level, the damage is usually already well underway......

Usually, the tarrifs dont seem to go towards keeping that business stable, in re-investment to the producer......

Rather, they appear to simply become a cash-cow for that governments coffers--till new victims are found or when that flow is exhausted.

True, but if you run the govt on import duties people will demand less govt and the efficiency of the whole system increases. You certainly wouldn't have the govt pay industry to remove jobs from this country.

What is the figure now..50% of all employees in the US work for a government agency?

Ed?

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

Yike. Somebody at the Libertarian/Anarchist blogs must be padding the numbers.

US total workforce: 112.0 million State & local emp.: 15.6 million Federal emp.: 2.7 million

Ed Huntress