Posted on 07/30/2004 5:05:51 PM PDT by Archangelsk
Well... as annoying as it sounds, no, you don't. I will admit a couple of important caveats: Tax policy matters. It does not seem to change very much all at one time though.
The most important thing about the President is his foreign policy. That is his number one job and it has always been so.
and they don't actually drive the economy.
Yes, actually they do. The problem is that they're owned by the business community heart and soul. An example is Bush constantly talking about Free Trade..good, PROTECTIONISM...bad. Where in his rhetoric is FAIR TRADE, that made this nation wealthy in the first place? Why does he promote legislation that favors the move offshore? Why does he give them large tax decreases and hidden taxpayer funds so they can move the jobs to China and India? Why are the Chinese given access..free of charge..to our ports, our markets, our venture capital? Why does he do nothing about the influx of illegal aliens who take the few jobs that remain? Why does he keep trying to raise the legal immigration cheap labor numbers and only stops when we scream about the issue? He has alot to do with it and so do the people HE appoints. It's obvious where his loyalties lie.
Figures. I wondered when the maroons would show up.
I actually have a good Casino job. Most of my friends are struggling however. I've lived all over the country and have friends from a wide spectrum. That's why I'm not drinking the Koolaid. I know of exactly 1 who is doing well. The rest have lost homes, marriages, their lives. Some are keeping their heads barely above water. All are educated. All are workers. All are suffering.
You're hyperventilating. Take a breath. Slow down a little.
There's so much basic econ that needs to be covered in that post, I don't know if it is possible to properly address it in just one post. So, I won't try, but maybe I can nibble at the edge.
If a bare log can be shipped all the way across the Pacific ocean, transported to a mill, cut into lumber, then transported to a factory and made into chairs... then those chairs can be loaded into containers and shipped back to the U.S. and sold to people for a *lower price* than if the log was cut and manufactured into chairs here in the U.S.... then maybe we shouldn't be in the chair business??? Just a thought.
Artificially taxing the price of chairs to whatever it takes to be competitive, in a business that we fundamentally shouldn't be competing in in the first place, simply taxes consumers. They now have to pay more for everything they buy and reduces their own standard of living. It doesn't do anybody any favors in the long run.
Are you a "progressive'?
POTUS has Jack to do with our economy, aside from encouraging or discouraging business growth trends.
But thank you for your valuable input!
Maybe we shouldn't be in the small arms ammunition business either.
Huh?
If you're saying that something like ammunition for the military should stay domestic for national security reasons, then we can make that choice, as long as we know and are willing to pay a higher price for something that we could get alot more of for the same money elsewhere.
Maybe it's worth the money, maybe it's not. Kinda depends on the price, doesn't it?
Oops. Dopey me. I guess I mistook this for an actual discussion.
FReegards,
Actually, the original poster was saying his new job paid 2/3 less, so in this case, 2/3 is worse than 0.
1) Lots of dotcoms had huge bloated payrolls paying people to do, well, not much. While it was great at the time, it couldn't last. But while it happened, it didn't affect just the dotcoms. In addition to paying crazy salaries, the dotcoms bought stuff. Routers, servers, coffee makers, tables, chairs, desks, staplers, etc. All this money then zoomed through the economy, and other companies started adding excess people. Add the dotcom to the overstaffing at other tech companies for y2k (remember that?), and you had a lot of people getting high salaries without contributing much to the bottom lines of their companies.
2) Productivity. While most of the focus was on the dotcoms in the late 1990s, people were more or less ignoring the enterprise software makers, unless they were implementing a thin client or ASP (web-based) model. But the big story was that they made their software better. Companies implemented the newer versions to get to y2k compliance, but later realized that they could do more with less. Companies can now easily figure out which sales staff members aren't performing, which divisions aren't performing, and deal with these problems. Companies can keep lower inventory levels, they can contain all kinds of costs much better now. Good for the companies, good for the consumers (companies compete with other companies, and with lower costs can lower prices or at least not raise prices as much as inflation).
The fact is that in any technological shift, people get displaced. The number of RR workers plummeted between 1900 and 1950.
Har. Yer too funny, how about outsourcing to NORINCO.
We could get a lot more for the same money.
see you later.
Well... you tell me... if we could get X times more ammo for the same money by buying it elsewhere, at what point does X become large enough to make it a good deal for both the troops and for the taxpayers? Is is 2x? 5x? 20x? At some point it becomes stupid NOT to take advantage of the leverage.
I thought this was a liberal's wet dream, for the lower class to earn more and for the upper class to earn less...
Business is booming in Arizona. My employer is having difficulty keeping people because there are so many jobs available and they have to compete for employees. I have had to turn down some serious overtime there in order to keep up with my web design business. I've been so busy, I haven't had time help my wife with her business.
I'm sure better off than I was four years ago.
It does even more than that. England tried to protect herself from American industry after WWI through tariffs. It pretty much destroyed what manuacturing they had left, because of the lack of competition. They were still utilizing steam power in their factories in the 1960s!
"So, your wife is from Denmark ? or you have a big dog ?"
Actually, the great dane I picked up in Utah is my smaller dog. He only weighs 140 pounds. The really big dog is an english mastiff that weighs in at about 200.
The wife is German and I picked her up in Alabama prior to the move to Utah.
Sacrifice? No, I was glad to get the job regardless of what it paid. Moving to Utah, now, that was a sacrifice.
My experience was relevent to this topic. Like those referenced in the article, I took a pay cut, a significant pay cut, when I lost the job. But, it was only temporary cut, and I'm doing far better now that I was before I lost the job.
Well, there is that math thing. Of course, I meant that 2/3 of former pay is better than no income at all.
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