Americans vote with their wallet to send work overseas.

It bothers me that americans continue to complain about industrial jobs sent to asia, white collar to india and asia etc.. But every time an American goes to wallmart and spends a dollar or they choose the asian model to save 1 or 2 dollars then they have no right to turn around and complain.

Another issue, Americans need to stop crying poor every time the spend 4-5 a gallon pumping oil into their big Escalade. Anyhow everytime you pump you send me money in fat BP/XOM dividend checks every 3 months although I reinvest into more shares for my future.

 

I agree! I've been trying to avoid buying anything made in China, but it's hard! You have to check everything. I bought potato chips and when I got them home, I discovered that they were made in China. Potato chips!

I'm also not too sorry to see gas prices go up. As long as I keep seeing SUVs and huge trucks filling up, I figure it's still too cheap. Not many people agree with us, though

 

No doubt.

The sick part is we know what happens when money isn't being recirculated into a community, it creates a ghetto.

We're creating a ghetto out of the US by sending our funds overseas where they are invested THERE instead of locally into our own communities.

It's way messed up. The results are going to be painful.

 

C.T. That ghetto was already created for the most part in the late 60's. i.e. most skilled mechanics back then could easily make $35 an hour, now it's a struggle to get $15. And now as compared to then, the U.S.D. is probably at about 1/2 the purchasing power of that era.

I mean new car's were selling for $2,000 - $3,000, now add a 0 to the figure and you're still buying a mediocre piece of machinery at best in comparison. Sure the new cars have more convenient bells and whistles like ass warmers, warmers for the ass warmers and windshield wipers that work on their own, but what freaking good is that when the car will be in the shop for 1/2 it's life?

 

Ross Perot put it best thirty years ago when he claimed that free trade agreements would result in a reduction in wages for Americans as the wages in places like China increase, until things stabilize, at which point we'll all be making like six bucks an hour (except the corporate execs of course).

The major problem I have with free trade is that it encourages corporations to take the capital they gained on the backs of us working Americans and invest it over seas. Capital invested over seas should be taxed heavily enough to compensate for the social costs of the displaced American workers.

I agree it's hard to buy American, since nothing is manufactured here anymore.

 

It's this whole sweat shop argument. You can say that people are hypocrites for buying the product from a person who may or may not have stolen their job (not literally)- but the reaon they are trying to save that buck is surely since they aren't working.

I wouldn't buy something out of principle if it put's me in financial jeopardy.

 

I assure you,my family is'nt that way.I try to avoid foreign products whenever possible.For that matter,I even take it a step further,i read labels,& try to buy only products made right here in missouri whenever possible.Don't be so quick to judge all Americans.there's still a few patriotic country fucks like me out there. honestly dude,if you think the stocks are preparing your future,you'll be one of the ones jumping out a window when shit comes to shit,just like in the 20's

 

destroying america was relatively easy

by destroying the working wage you created a fairly rigid class structure you either had money or you didn't.

you keep the peasants happy with rhetoric about patriotism and using them to fight in foreign wars far from home.

in the end the mob live in trailer parks unable to buy anything but the cheapest nastiest product. the peasants have no other choice but keep their heads above water and buy chinese products.

in this way things only get worse and worse, destroy the working wage destroy your country.

the idea of working slavery is an old one in america, the africans were shipped in because the farmers weren't able to produce cotton for an acceptable profit.

nowadays america relies on the mexicans to achieve the same outcome.

 

Thankyou. I was going to say that same thing. It isn't the poor and ignorant who are to blame it's those who keep them that way.

 

It's not about labor savings when corporations send jobs overseas. It's about tax savings. The US has a very high business tax rate and that is a huge incentive to move jobs off shore.

So cut the tax rate, put up an amendment that says business can't make campaign contributions. Two things will happen. First, the money will automatically ramp down. A lot of poor people can compete monetarily with one rich guy. That's democracy. Even rich guys can't compete with corporations. That's Any Rand, 1984, etc. Let's stop treating logos like they have feelings, opinions or problems we need to solve for them.

 

In the developed world, such as the US, the cost of of labor is dictated (especially in high end industry) by unions, where the employees get substaintially more then non unioninzed employees. To the tune of 25$/hour or more, thats 200$+/day.

Overseas, in the countries the corporations move their plants to, they generally have zero wage controls and the employees end up getting paid A FEW DOLLARS PER DAY at the most.

Yes, tax savings are part of the calculation, but only a small part.

Thinking that even totally eliminating the taxes would stop the companies from shipping jobs overseas is ignoring that.

As long as it is legal for companies to ignore labor laws in the country they are selling their products by having the labor done where those laws don't exist, companies will continue to ship jobs overseas.

 

So you blame the wages of the workers on corporate decisions on where to locate? Taxes, power, local concessions, availability of raw materials or other resources and the general ease of doing business in the area are much bigger factors. Labor unions and minimum wage earners are not the problem. They are just easy to blame if you happen to make substantially more or substantially less income than either group.

 

Perhaps you should go take an economics course.

Labor is the largest single cost to manufacturing, and the easiest to cut, by moving that labor overseas.

If you don't already understand that, then that is your problem...

 

thats right

an old trick to make a company look better on paper before selling it off is to sack a massive chunk of the workforce. when they do that shares jump because the money that used to be paid to workers is now paid to shareholders. this can only last for so long as experience walks out the door and the company starts the slow spiral downwards to oblivion.

sacking the workforce is usually a sign that the company is under very bad management. the fact that customers are dwindling is because the management has not reacted to the fact that people are not buying their product. things like new ideas, new ways of manufacture, good design etc etc are ignored.

as a worker you shouldn't rely on some fool who has worked his way to the top and big salary because he knew someone who knew someone. as a worker you need to react and retrain to survive. no job is safe from bad company management, as a worker you need the skillsto jump ship and evolve with the work market.

shops such as walmart etc destroy other companies to survive , something explored by karl marx - you sell as many things for the lowest price. the more you sell the lower the price to make it (you can negotiate your material prices for things like copper, iron, TVs, dvds if you buy a lot of it). in the process society collapses as each company races to be number one in the market.

 

I can't say I've ever worked for a union,but in my experience,union workers are generally lazy & overpaid.they want their breaks,they wanna boogie out at 2:30& GOD forbid they don't get benfits.Where I worked,you went in,built a fuckin house,got paid.Benefits,got to drink beer at work,could smoke herb if you wanted( I don't anymore)& if you fell,you're fired on the way down.plain & simple.& before anyone says anything,we might've been fucked up,but we never built a bad home,& only ever failed one inspection that only took me an hour to fix.No fancy safety equipment,no hard hats,let's build this fucker.So In my opinion,not only did unions fuck the economy,they fucked the rugged individuality America once had.The whole "welfare nation" thing we got going on needs to come to an end as well.

 

Boy--you need to research the history of why unions were formed and why they are necessary. Start with "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. The rich(most) would work you to death for a dollar an hour and kick your ass proper or kill you if you wanted to stick up for yourself back in the day=ie:form a union.I have withdrawal slips from 5 or 6 unions and I always had the right to protect myself from unwarranted firing because maybe some prick didn't like me.And made better bucks than when I worked anywhere non-union. And by the way---any time you see those commercials with robots welding on automobile assembly lines--there used to be people doing those jobs.I know--I was one of them. How many fucken' Fords will those machines buy?

 

And Guy's on the money with his posts.

 

Tax breaks will not make a difference. our workforce cannot compete against 12 year old children making 1 dollar a day.

 

Hey guys new here, but I just thought I'd throw this out there.. If you check out some information on the World Trade Organization, a lot of these factories are force built in developing nations because members of the WTO offer to "help" develop the nations (By helping, they just destroy them by introducing the greed system). A lot of the people working these jobs in sweatshops are victims of forced wage slavery. So not only should you not buy things made in China, but don't buy anything that's corporate unless it's a true necessity.

 

I'd buy US made but little available anymore. US companies off-shored their machinery and materials saying they would make products cheaper but they arent cheaper. Liers! Same prices they just pocket the labor savings and expect me to buy their products. No thanks.

 

and the Chinese, and....

Some things never change, they just shift until enough people get pissed off, then they "fix" it, or misrepresent it enough to appease the majority until they forget...

...then it happens again...

Has there ever not been a fairly rigid class structure in this country? Though I agree it's gotten worse in the past few years.

Keep the peasants at each other's throats with tea parties to distract us from the real problem, which is not the division of the pie, but that more of it is going to less people, while more of us are the peasants.

The cycle will continue until it becomes more expensive to produce goods elsewhere, as the standard of living in developing economies improves and ours declines, though forcing us to collectively scale back on our consumption might be a good thing, and I like to think that the companies who are selling us out will get bitten in the ass by it in the end. The real cost of producing stuff over seas is more than something like transport cost that can be put on a balance sheet.