Porsche chief's disdain for America

The American Thinker ^ | 10-11-06 | Thomas Lifson

[Renfield]

Davids Medienkritik discovered deep condescension toward America from a German executive whose company makes most of its money here. Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking defends the German “social model” of capitalism, and implies that we Americans are barely out of the backwoods with our rifles.

Europe’s culture is decidedly older than that of the USA. The Fuggers were doing business, while hunting was still the order of the day in America. Right now 37 million people in the USA live below the poverty line. The gulf between poor and rich has widened brutally. Do we want to have a situation like that in Europe and particularly in Germany?

Why would anyone buy an expensive car from a company whose head looks down on him?

I wonder what Herr Wiedeking has to say about the Japanese after a beers?

[floozy22]

Thanks for the post.

[Schweinhund]

Your world picture is based on “someone must be held down so that others can be on top”.

And you are one of the green space aliens that facilitated nine eleven. Was I close? Anyway, my economical views are not formed by boulevard media, please stop assuming that.

India is definitely a threat, and that ONLY because today we are living in the information age. You might be surprised that Interesting enough, human services, Dienstleistungen can be relocated to India to a large part, at least the well-paid ones. For example, German insurances have begun to relocate significant parts of their low to middle management to India. Exactly BECAUSE we are in the information age, almost every job can be sourced out, except direct human contact jobs. A good portion of these jobs can be computerized in the information age. The situation is fairly different from the post-WW2 time because the logistic situation is different.

Your economical assumptions are correct on a macroeconomical level. There, everyone will profit from economic development.

[Red Steel]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugger

[Red6]

The service sector also includes medical professionals, such as the ones in Dallas TX taking care of Musharraf's heart condition and King Hussein's cancer treatment. It includes the tens of thousands of foreign students who go to US colleges and Universities and pay for an education. It includes many things that bring money into our economy and is overlooked.

As mentioned in earlier posts, Germany post war and even Japan in into the 70s was in a similar situation. In fact, your Wirtschaftswunder was largely driven by this phenomena which today your media and even the ‘Fussvolk’ are bad mouthing. Japan today is our main trading partner, to whom we export, and Toyota, Honda, Kawasaki as many others produce in the US as well. Another example: If you buy a Kawasaki Vulcan motorcycle it is built in the USA.

The jobs that are being exported to low cost nations are low end jobs such as on a service call desk for low level IT support. It’s not the electrical engineer working for Texas Instruments. There are many many issues involved here. For example, legislation on for privacy, language barriers, national security rules, stability in those regions, taxation issues, rising costs in those countries that are considered low wage, getting skilled labor proficient in the skill sets required…….

While IT is easily to offshore physically it is actually more difficult to find technically competent personnel! Language and skill sets are more of an issue than in simple manufacturing where a mindless monkey CAN do the job as long as you can press down on a peddle with your foot.

Example: India (You used that example) is discussing taxing all income of businesses operating in India, even that revenue earned outside India and even if the corporate HQ is not based there. Wages in India have risen dramatically in the last few years, for the exact same reason they did in Germany and Japan. Some are moving their IT support back out of India because they have had difficulties that could not be overcome. There are barriers in some places that include corruption, safety of staff, or even the investment itself is at risk because the nation as a whole is unstable. Russia for example is largely held back today because of their own internal corruption, which in part the state is in on. Will some jobs move to India? Yes. Has India in the last years begun to import more and more goods from Europe and North America? Yes. It’s a two way road, not a one way road.