The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Washington, D.C.
Posted on 02/08/2006 8:15:08 AM PST by hedgetrimmer
That is certainly one indicator. Another is throwing on the trash heap existing skilled, educated workers in favor of the quick buck overseas labor. We have had highly skilled, highly educated people over here that have had their life's work and career literally thrown out with the trash because someone thought that a foreign worker could do it cheaper (note cheaper, not better, or at all). And those aren't buggywhip jobs, either. We're talking high-tech, state-of-the-art R&D in things like EE and CIS.
There are those who say, and you see them right here on FR, that, well, so what, screw 'em, all that matters is making money. If that means selling out American companies, their employees, and the country's infrastructure and hard-won capabilities built up over the years with the blood and sweat of our people, then they say, so be it, in pursuit of that last, almighty dollar. In the end, those who sell us out will reap a bitter harvest, and, sadly, when it comes their turn to be thrown out on the dung heap, they'll wonder, wha hoppen?
Yes, he did. You are too young to remember.
The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, Washington, D.C.
Speaking for myself, I assure you that I won't come to a conservative website and whine that it'll happen to you.
Any idea's as to what money guy has instore for us in the future?
That Resource/Populace Numeric pie chart margins they will be thinking on that with contingency plans.
maybe they have decided allready tenativley.
so what awaits us down the road?
A Future planetary child birth plan/DNA screen,sterilization,
or does man get culled in some great drama like a rampant virus.....or war.....or both?
Maybe Metropolis goes skyward like Judge Dread movie or 5th Element.
Maybe we all get to stay : )
many of the things you are advocating are in the process of being talked about, like so many pertinent issues in front of our so called leaders.
Unions will never go away, much to your dismay. But many skilled Union jobs that are going away are paying good middle class wages, putting kids through college, buying homes and new cars. Those replacement workers are not capable of sustaining the current standard of living so many people currently enjoy. We can blame reductions in our standard of living to illegal, undocumented workers flooding our job markets and taking jobs from documented, tax paying Americans.
Repealing cumbersome environmental laws has a nice ring that echo's loud in ANWR that drilling for oil and gas vital to America's economy will not happen, or Nelson in Florida attempting to block forever oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico 150 miles off the coast of Florida.
Sounds like progress repealing cumbersome environmental laws???? Not to me.
Workers Comp is a racket I agree. Job safety programs are necessary to accomodate the idiots and illegal immigrants who are looking for jobs nowadays. Translate those safety manuals into four or five languages and maybe people won't get hurt. For the English speaking (not ebonics) Americans who do get injured on the job, just turning them loose with untreated injurys should really put a demand on Medicaid and welfare, considering how easy it is to become disabled. Missouri has tried work comp reform. It has helped nothing. Tilted heavily in the favor of employers, real injurys are given the band aid and iodine treatment. The promised rate reductions have not happened. Actually the cost has increased for work comp premiums. I have first hand experience on both sides.
Eliminating the minimum wage only hurts low income workers. The savings to employers will be pocketed in increased profits. consumers will see no savings.
The Bush tax cut has worked. You have that right. Now if congress can make it permanent.......
Tort reform is only talk. Do you really believe a bunch of elected lawyers are going to limit their income opportunities? Will they shoot themselves in the foot? Will they close the loopholes in the laws that they build in, because litigation is a part of every law? No. don't see it. Only solution to maybe make progress in real Tort Reform is to quit electing lawyers to congress.
Capitalism is founded on the principle of earning a fair wage for a good days work, with a promise of earning more as an incentive for doing a good job. Cutting pay as you propose can only work if it is across the board for all workers of all professions so there are no discrepencys in the standard of living. So if you are willing to cut your pay by 100% when the Union workers cut their pay accordingly then that is fair. But if you don't take an appropriate pay cut, you become a hypocrite.
Not so much a "whine" as a warning. Sell out your country and you end up selling out yourself.
"Our?" How is "our" standard of living falling? Every job I have lost in my life, A. Pole's unfamiliarity with my age notwithstanding, has been to someone who could do the job more cheaply. My standard of living fell (temporarily), but I could see no logical reason to conclude that everyone else's was falling as well.
Let me be more specific.....middle class standards of living are falling. I know personally several peple who's average paying jobs were exported to Mexico. No new car or larger home in their future. On the other hand Lawyers, doctors, and the Country Club class seem to be fairly comfortable and moving upward in their standard of living. But they also may employ the illegals who work cheap because no taxes are paid or withheld on the worker.
If I could work and not pay taxes, I think I could work for less as well. And my standard of living would not suffer.
In conclusion, it is not so much the wages that drive up the cost of everything, it is the taxes. Make more, pay more taxes. Unless you are wealthy enough to juggle money into tax shelters so as to pay a smaller percentage, and hire illegal workers knowing little will be done if they are caught.
Add up the cost of medical treatment, and other taxpayer supported services and handouts given to the illegals. Eventually that cost will drain resources which will have to be replenished with higher taxes....... and the standard of living for the working American citizen slide lower and lower.
I propose taking every major military weapons, support and C4I system and creating a highly detailed supply chain map, down to at least the lowest level components and perhaps even the raw materials below them. All suppliers and their locations would be listed. For each supplier and location, a risk prioritization number would be calculated based on multiple risk and mitigation factors. Any high scores would automatically roll up to the top. It would be an interesting (and frightening) exercise. Perhaps some of those who preach that great war is an impossibility are deluding themselves precisely because they have a sense just what this exercise would reveal. To them, great war must be kept out of mind because we'd lose.
Try to run one of them little high reliability fans used to cool electronics without ball bearings. In a real war, we'd do like we did in WW2 .... that is, if we even could do it!
The paradox you have alluded to is this. When the world moves from an interwar to a great war mode, all the rules that folks like Thomas P.M. Barnett and Thomas L. Freidman consider to be written in stone instantly cease to apply. The shopping mall culture would end on the first day of the war.
So you therefore assume that because there has been a 60 year interwar period (defined as the absense of major war between great powers) that we shall never have another great war. Correct?
That was not a real war. In fact, the most recent real war, fought to result in unconditional enemy surrender of another great power or powers, ended in 1945.
Most of the key decision makers in corporations are either part of the Davos Culture (globalist utopians who dream of whorled peas) or are doctrinaire radical libertarians who simply despise the idea of a strong nation state. I know this from personal dealings. There are some real pieces of work out there. How can you blame them? Look at what they teach in school and what is in all the trade rags? The average exec gets almost zero exposure to anything besides the "World Is Flat" mantra - group think has taken its toll. Execs barely have time to digest their own corporate data and rely on flunkies to digest the externals. This is a deep hole we are in, far worse than even Henry Ford dug at his worst.
heard that
We can't mass produce Nike shoes what will we do?! My lord what to do if we can't make cotton t-shirts??
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.