Why Can’t We Innovate Ourselves Out of This Hole?

The old "boo hoo America needs more engineers to 'innovate'" crap.

Apple "innovates" just fine. Then they export the resulting jobs to China. AMD "innovates" just fine, then they export the resulting jobs to China. Lot of other companies "innovate" just fine, then export the resulting jobs to China or Kore or Maylaysia or Singapore or wherever.

We need to do something to stop the "innovators" from exporting the resulting jobs.

Doesn't have to be that way--Micron in Boise did all their manufacturing in the US for a long time, but now they've done well enough that they're starting to buy up their Asian competitors and use their factories. Intel still does most of their manufacture in the US.

AFAICT changing company-paid health insurance from a benefit to an entitlement made them extremely reluctant to hire new people, especially older ones. For many years I've had to work as a temp or contractor at high-tech firms that had only a relatively small core of full-timers they almost never added to.

jsw

Keep in mind, Jim, that it's never been a legal entitlement. Corporations themselves started offering company-paid health insurance, largely during WWII, as an attractor for good employees. They couldn't offer higher wages because of wage and price controls during the war.

If Congress hadn't knuckled under to the Chamber of Commerce and the AMA, and had adopted Harry Truman's universal health care plan, we wouldn't have the mess we have today. Whether we would have better health care is a speculative question.

"From each according to his ability. To each according to his need."

Karl Marx

"Communism. It's failed every time it's been tried." Rush Limbaugh .

But if we give everything to the government and all of us are sucking from the government tit....................hhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmm?

Tom

Chris, the day you get job that pays anything poverty wages and thus = leaves you with an actual Federal tax obligation is the day you'll be = justified in making ANY comments about politics and the economy...

Until then, you're just another conservative toady.

Hey, don't you support free speech? It's protected by the Bill of Rights, after all.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

Chris, the day you get job that pays anything poverty wages and thus leaves you with an actual Federal tax obligation is the day you'll be justified in making ANY comments about politics and the economy...

Until then, you're just another conservative toady.

Simple. Drop the Federal Income tax and replace it with a tax on gross revenues. Then allow only one deduction: Wages paid upon which US FICA taxes are due.

To be revenue neutral, the gross revenue tax rates would be much lower than income tax rates. Probably 5 to 10% max.

Income made by speculation would have few, if any, wages to offset the tax. A few fund managers handle billions, so the labor input is tiny.

FICA is owed on the first $110,000 of wages. So anything paid above that would not be deductable. You can pay your execs anything you want, but past $110K (or whatever the current cap is) its non deductable from corporate revenue.