Posted on 02/18/2004 5:12:57 AM PST by beaureguard
Jobs .. and the economy. Those seem to be the issues that are driving many, if not most, of those who are supporting the Kerry candidacy.
First of all ... I'm going to repeat this simply because it makes the whiners so unbelievably angry. Listen up. They're not your jobs! The jobs belong to the employers .. not to you! You have job skills and, presumably, a willingness to work. Your task in a free economy is to get out there and find some employer with a job who needs your skills ... and strike a deal.
If you do not have the particular set of job skills that an employer needs, of if you have priced your labor out of the marketplace, guess what? It's not the employer's fault. The fault lies with you. Either develop a new set of job skills that are actually in demand, or adjust your pricing. The employer knows what he's looking for you. If you're not it .. it's your problem, not his.
Now ... you say you're going to vote for a Democrat this year because of jobs? You mean to tell me that you're going to vote against George Bush this year because you don't have a set of job skills that are in demand in our free marketplace? Yeah .. that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?
Tell me. Just what do you want the president to do? You information technology people out there .. just what are you demanding? Do you want companies to stop outsourcing IT jobs to India? OK ... tell me how to do that. These companies aren't shipping parts overseas and completed products back. All they do is ship information overseas by phone lines or the Internet. Then that information is modified and shipped back the same way. What do you want the government .. the president to do? Do you want some federal law that prohibits companies from transmitting information overseas by the Internet, having that information transformed or modified, and then shipped back? And tell me just how do you enforce that law? Does that law then apply to you also if you seek information from a company that is located overseas, thus depriving a domestic company of your business?
Ditto for manufacturing. I've already told you the story about the California company that makes computer mouses. (computer mice?) This company ships the components to China. The mouse is assembled in China and shipped back, then sold for around $40. Why? Because the assembly is cheaper in China than it would be in the US. So, you say you want the president to force this company to have that mouse assembled in the US? Fine .. then the price for the mouse goes up to about $70 a pop and sales drop. As the sales drop the jobs of the people in this country who manufacture the components for that mouse go away. Then the 100 marketing jobs this company supports in California also go away. You see, perhaps you can succeed in forcing this company to assemble these mouses in the US, but there just isn't any way you can force the American consumer to pay 80% more for the "made in America" version.
As Bruce Bartlett says in an article listed in my reading assignments, "No nation has ever gotten rich by forcing its citizens to pay more for domestic goods and services that could have been procured more cheaply abroad."
What we are seeing here is a demonstration of the "government owes me" mentality of far too many Americans. Every time you arrive at a speed bump in your life's journey you start screaming to the government for help. Sure, the speed bump is going to slow you down a bit ... but just keep moving forward and things inevitably pick up speed again. Americans are becoming helpless whiners. The more helpless you are, and the more you whine, the more likely it is you're going to vote for a Democrat. Democrats specialize in stroking the malcontent.
Congratulations, whiners. At a time when America if fighting World War IV, the war against Islamic terrorism ... you're going to vote for a candidate who wants to treat terrorism as a freaking law enforcement problem because you've made some pitiful jobs choices. Pitiful.
There is somewhat of an implied contract between an employer and employee in which the employee is often told to think of the job and other employees as one big family. Of course it isn't, but the only way to get workers to care about their jobs is to make them buy into the idea, and to make them feel a sense of 'ownership' over their job and tasks/processes.
Our civil society is based on trust, and this type of thing can be very damaging. My concern is that the government subsidizes 'our' American countries to use non-US citizens as their work force. That alone makes it 'not fair/free trade', not even considering the restrictions put on us by other countries.
Regardless of what side you are on, I think it behooves all to remember that most voters cast their vote on emotion.
Why should I bother fighting World War IV if it's not for a better life here in the US. The Corporations get a whole lot of benefit from being in the US. From selling their crap in the US. So if they don't want to pay their employees or even hire any why should we fight at all to make the world a safer place??
Corporations have no right of US protection either. Why should we spend any money making their buildings more secure. Why should we add dime to anything for them?? I think Mr. Boortz better rethink why any of our young soldiers should fight any war?? So they can come home and work for peanuts? I'm beginning to think that the right is losing its battle. It's OK to say that NAFTA didn't work as planned. It's insanity not to protect your technology jobs when it's technology that allowed us to take over 2 countries with less causulaties in the history of warfare.
It may be futile to try to protect the American way of life but to go down without a fight is certainly unamerican! We have become a nation of cowards too afraid to get the corporations upset. Let them move to Bermuda. Let's tax all products from any foreign corporation. Tariff everything that comes through our ports. I don't think the corporation want that. But just as Mr. Boortz thinks we don't have a right to jobs by the same logic corporations have no implicit right not to be taxed! We can get the money out of them one way or another. Also corporations have no right for government contracts. We can hurt their bottom lines pretty quickly by denying them government contracts.
There is no way to defend the outsourcing of American jobs. Republicans should just stop trying you make the rest of the party look bad.
Whatever!
And SHRUB is STILL gonna get CREAMED!!!
You've been quite restrained in your comment.
Boortz's philosophy is consistent, anyway: he doesn't have much use for unborn babies--and now demonstrates that he hasn't much use for those which WERE born.
You may remember the book of the prophet Amos, who going on 2800 years ago spoke out against, with words that sear and humble, the hollow prosperity and rampant materialism and seeking of profit at all costs that was going on in the northern kingdom. We do well to heed his words today, which I take from the KJV, the 8th chapter of the book of Amos, verses 4 through 14:
4 Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail,
5 Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit?
6 That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?
7 The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works.
8 Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt.
9 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day:
10 And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.
11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:
12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.
13 In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.
14 They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.
Verse 6 is particularly interesting:
6 That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?
I have seen some versions that translate "the poor" in the first clause as "the upright", kind of like selling out the livelihoods of your fellow citizens for saving a few pennies on your bottom line. Likewise, selling out the needy for a pair of shoes, Guccis, perhaps? And finally, the "refuse" of the wheat, meaning the dregs, the poor-quality leftovers. Kind of like selling out the hollowed-out shells of factories closed down, to places like China, just like they did the old Rockwell plant in my town that used to make parts for the B-1 bomber. Precision, high-tech, military-capable hardware sold out for pennies on the dollar to a country that would just as soon see us ruined. But, that's okay, because it's the "free market", and is "how economics works". Right, just like how it is so great to sell your enemy the rope he needs to hang you.
1. Respect for private property is not what that Psalm is about. It is about idolatry.
2. Obviously, many capitalists are motivated by greed, which is idolatry.
3. I'm a Christian. Market economics is not Christianity. The values which drive capitalism are often antithetical to Christianity.
4. That said, the laws of economics are simply the empirical observations of how an economy functions to most efficiently allocate resources. What end that allocation is directed toward is a value judgement, outside economics and outside politics, in the religious life of that society. Our society is secular and materialistic.
5. Governments do not create or control values. They express values.
6. Any attempt by government to implant a value in the economic system which is not a value of the people prior to law will be circumvented by the population at large.
7. The American people are at a unique schizophrenic point in their history, when they, as owners (read: anyone with retirement funds) want corporate profits maximized yet as displaced workers they rail against maximizing corporate profits.
8. In any society not explicitly formed around religious values, profit will win. Always. It is an inexorable force because it is the gateway to all the vices.
9. America is not now organized around any religious value.
10. America will outsource jobs. Period.
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