Posted on 02/21/2009 5:17:52 AM PST by Dr. Scarpetta
A flag is flying at half-staff outside The Hershey Co. plant in Reading where production of York Peppermint Patties is ending.
After 23 years in Reading, the chocolate maker is closing the plant Friday and moving production to a new factory it has built in Monterey, Mexico.
It will mean the loss of 300 jobs in the southeastern Pennsylvania city. The plant also makes 5th Avenue and Zagnut candy bars and Jolly Rancher hard candies.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
Well, you need to tell that to all these posters and talk radio hosts who constantly say that lowering the corporate income tax would be an enormous boost to the economy and even bring many many exported jobs.
Actually, if one listens closely, you can hear the same folks advocating those contradictory positions: corporations don't pay taxes, and a reduction of corporate taxes would be a big economic boost. Why would it matter if they truly don't pay taxes?
But, yes, corporations do pay taxes unless they enjoy a perfect monopoly. In a competitive environment, no corporation can pass along every increase in the expense of doing business because more efficient competitors might offer equal equality at a lower price and take away much of their business.
Corporations pay taxes.
That's why many candy factories moved to Canada. For the slave wages and lax pollution controls.
Too bad Hershey. Candy isn't that good for us anyway.
Besides, we can make our own.
I know that people claim that illegal aliens from Mexico are doing the work that Americans won’t do, but it is a load of BS! I was at a burger joint the other day with my teenage kids, who happen to be looking for entry level jobs, and was smacked in the face with some reality to the problem. The young gal taking our order was probably my daughter’s age, but she could not speak english. She knew how to “fake” it well enough to stumble through our order, but she was in no way natural to the language. She is here illegally, most likely with her family.
TAKING JOBS MY KIDS WANT TO WORK!!!!!!!!!
I agree the open borders and free trade are different issues. But they are also directly impacting each other.
And, of course, different people have different definitions of each. My definition (and pretty much the capitalist definition) of open borders is that government immigration enforcement should focus on the factors
- terrorists
- murderers, rapists, dui drivers
- welfare parasits, truly bad people
There should be no welfare (by whatever name, medicaid, kidcare, foodstamps, section 8) for immigrants, legal or illegal. Any immigrant (of any status) who even applies for government welfare should be immediately deported.
Let’s say 10% of immigrants are truly undesireable. We know who they are. They have been stopped for dui, etc.
That gets to a basic underlying principle. People have a right to life; but not to live that life in the USA. To immigrate to the USA is a privilege, not a right. Thus, when we deport an immigrant (legal or illegal) he cannot stall in court claiming his rights have been violated because he has no “right” to be here; only a revocable privilege.
I’m for generously extending that privilege. But never forget that it is a privilege to come here, not a right.
True, we do live in a rural area.
I read that the reason Hershey is moving it’s production to Mexico are sugar tariffs. You can import items made with real sugar with out a tariff but sugar has a high enough tariff it is much cheaper to produce the product in Mexico and import the candy with out a tariff. ADM and others in the corn syrup industry are the lobbies behind the tariff.
Your story of looking for work in Portland is curious.
Here in the midwest I’ve averaged over 10 recruiters a week trying to convince me to jump from my job to their job. Most of those opportunities were in Illinois. But many of those opportunities have been in the midwest and South from VA to TX.
But rarely has a recruiter tried to get me to go to the mountain or pacific states. Maybe that speaks to the way I’ve marketed myself in the past to IL mostly.
What is interesting is that Indians are willing to relocate 10,000 miles for a job but US citizens aren’t willing to go where the jobs are in their own country.
From 2003 to 2008 I consulted to the same place. It constantly was looking for large numbers of people for highly paid positions with insufficient success.
I’m simply pointing out that our vaunted representatives in Congress appear to have little trouble with WTO every time they pass another farm bill costing billions of dollars. You need to find another bogeyman.
/facepalm
Love your tagline
You’ve hit the nail on the head.
It’s a matter of education and skills and willingness to work where the jobs are. Sure, there are plenty of Americans looking for work right now, but many of them don’t qualify for the available jobs.
An example: a large U.S. tech company which has had large layoffs recently just hired someone close to me for more than $74K right out of college. He has the grades, the skills, what they need. He’s also worked his tail off to get that engineering degree.
He also has friends, some older than him with degrees, who can’t find a job because there’s no market for what they’re trained to do: communications, psychology, liberal arts, etc.
TAKING JOBS MY KIDS WANT TO WORK!!!!!!!!!
Yes, its getting very old to be waited on by people that can't speak english. We went through a drive thru about a year ago and after repeating our order 4 or 5 times and the person still unable to repeat it back correctly, we finally just told them forget it, we'll go someplace where they speak english and we drove away.
Josh Early Candies in Allentown and Bethlehem, PA
A family owned business since the early 1900’s...
http://www.joshearlycandies.com/
I can’t tell you how many times we have left drive thrus because of that reason. But, this gal kept insisting that everything we ordered wasn’t available. We would have to point to the menu, and she would reply “oh” and hunt for a similar picture on the register.
Indeed, PCA used few Georgia peanuts. In fact, one lab worker testified to Congress that the original contamination may have come from organic peanuts shipped in from China.Not much to hang one's hat on. I'd like to see the testimony.
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