Posted on 06/15/2003 2:09:25 PM PDT by Willie Green
Edited on 05/07/2004 6:06:46 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The worst thing that the politicians have done to this country was to sign NAFTA. The Republicans and Democrats are both to blame. The companies in this country said that unless they went overseas for cheaper labor costs, their companies would not survive. At first, I thought if they only sold to the people overseas, it would be all right. So the companies erected plants overseas but then they started closing their plants in America. Now they manufacture overseas and export to America and we have to import the products to be sold here. No wonder our imports are higher than our exports.
(Excerpt) Read more at news-press.com ...
More likely, they'll be working there. Actually, I think Mickey D's is one of the largest employers in america, whats the number, something like 1 in 8 people either does or has worked for them?
I wish I knew how to link to that thread. It showed up on FR a couple of months ago. If memory serves, they were sending some to jobs Europe and the rest to Asia. India was not mentioned specifically, and I don't know if they were the recipient of that much largesse. Software yes. Financial analysis, who knows? Beyond that, I don't know which Asian country would have workers with the requisite skill, and be willing to work for the attendant slave wages.
I agree there is a problem, but this editorial allows a typical person to dismiss it.
You are apparently out of touch with where venture capital actually comes from. It isn't the banks; they only loan spending money for huge established enterprises. Most of the venture capital come from ad hoc groups of very wealthy individuals, not from the banks. The banks are not part of the dynamo of new enterprise and innovation; "risk" isn't in their vocabulary unless preceded by "no" or "low". Wealthy people fund all the small and medium businesses that become Big Businesses.
Whatever gave you the idea that banks actually fund business? Have you ever tried to get a bank to loan you $10 million to capitalize $100 million in contracts when you are only worth $20 million? Puh-lease. Wealthy people will step up to the plate every time, banks require you to have already made the money before they'll let you borrow it (that "collateral" thing). Apples and oranges. Banks and VC serve two entirely different functions in big business.
There is a current management fad to send tech jobs overseas. Once the product comes back, and it is crap product, the fad will be dead.
That might be an overly broad generalization. They are one of the largest employers of High School and college students and senior citizens in the United States. Most of the kids who work there are usually just looking for extra money or are saving up to purchase something, want summer money etc.
McDonalds is more like the next job the paper boy got after he got older.
Indeed. The statistics in the US are something like 90+% of the very wealthy at any one time in the US did not have any "family money" or inheritance to prop them up. In other words, virtually all the very wealthy in the US are completely self-made, statistically.
"Charming", but true. Now is the time to eliminate foreign aid in all forms, or 90% of them just to pay for our own medical care and concerns here.
One advantage of universal heath care would be that small businesses wouldn't have to assume the costs, and people could move from one job to a better one without jeopardizing their families.
That's all very well and good. But what about the rest of us "poor" slobs?
Maybe. But there has yet to be a socialized heath care system that didn't suffer in the quality of its care. Where medical care is concerned, you truly get what you pay for (as I will soon discover when I get the privilige of picking up a COBRA premium.)
Your life is your concern, not mine nor the governments. Personal responsibility and all that. It is a sorry individual that can't get by reasonably well in the US. Too many people want all the benefits without any of the effort, or at the very least want to be able to dictate what level of effort should be required to get those benefits.
Which is why the US needs a middle class and why the middle class made the US the richest country by far. All countries have those idle rich who inherit ---we have them too ---sort of the aristocrats ---they can work if they feel like it --but they don't have to. Then we have the self-made wealthy who worked their way up ---sometimes all the way from the bottom ---but they require a middle class in order to do that. I know people who retired from bank president jobs who said they started out as errand boy and worked their way up and studied along the way. That's what middle class is all about --- in countries like Mexico, you can work as hard as you like if you're poor and you're not going anywhere ---unless of course you go to the US where there's a middle class.
not true.......
its called Social Security.....when you richies reach the $80,000 bracket you do not pay anymore....
so, in essence, the poorer and the middling classes pay as great a proportion of their income to pay for social services as do the rich....
and as far as all this "charity" that the "rich" toss around......if you read at all you will find that the American "rich" are abysmal in donating to true charities....
in fact, the biggest contributors to charity/church/civic groups etc are the working people and the middle class people.....PROPORTIONATLY of course....
But you do have that class of "rich" folk who donate with an eye for personal benefit....or tax deduction when they need it...ala Ted Turner...who "donated" a bunch of his land surrounding his ranch in Montana to the Nature Conservancy...
..to what end?.
..well, he gets a great deduction , can prohibit any neighbors from building on his "donation" and he looks so great to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and others.......
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