When You Send the Mfg and IT Jobs Overseas, You Destroy Your Economy

[Yavin4]

Sure, you can extend credit to the masses and allow them to buy a house, a big car, and whatever else they can haul back from the mall, but when the mortgages and the bills come due, they won't be able to pay them back because their jobs are overseas.

Globalization is a fraud. It's nothing more than labor arbitrage.

[ingac70]

1. A little rant from me...

Blue collar workers in manufacturing has been more or less dealing with this shit since the early 80's. Nobody seemed to care, since a large portion of that workforce is unskilled, the bullshit was put out "Oh well, shoulda went to college"!

Now the folks that went to college are getting the shaft. They refused to see that it could happen to them just as easy.

I just wonder what it will take for people to say "Enough!"? "We the People" let this happen, by voting in shit that made this disintegration of our standard of living possible.

[PsN2Wind]

3. "dealing with it since the 80s"

and watching it then accelerate once NAFTA and the WTO treaties were enacted. And who signed them into law claiming they were trade agreements, not treaties, and thus didn't require ratification, Bill Clinton?

[ingac70]

4. Most of my rant is from personal experience...

I'm from that blue collar segment, third generation in my family in the same plant. That plant had a hiring freeze on production workers from 1979-1994...

[PsN2Wind]

6. I'm not knocking what you said

The decline of the middle-class started with the export of those jobs where a kid fresh out of high school, maybe not even having a diploma, could go down to the plant where the old man worked, hire on, and after an apprenticeship, be making enough money to marry, start a family and live pretty damn comfortable on just what he (mostly hes at that time) was making.
I'm just pointing out that the stream of jobs exported became a flood with NAFTA, WTO, and other "free trade" agreements that came about in the 90s.
Spent years in manufacturing, retired from a small family business where I was the inside die-maker.

[ingac70]

7. I took a buy out from Ford...

last year. Got hired on in the mid 90's when they were still making $$$$. Ah, the good old days ;)

I surely missed those profit sharing checks once Dubya came around....

[lapfog_1]

8. You know what's funny

all those corporate assholes (officers and upper management) think it can't happen to them, either. And it can... and will. After all, if your IT group is in India and your manufacturing group is in China... where is the logical place for the VP of Operations or the VP of Human Resources or the VP of Accounting or the CTO... right, same place, overseas. And if the Veeps are there, what about the President and CEO? I bet there are a lot of MBAs in India or China right now that will do just as decent a job as the assholes here that make millions in stock bonus and other compensation. What's a BOD to do? Save money and hire cheaper people, that's what.

It's starting to happen in a trickle, but in a few years it will be a torrent.

The only jobs left here will be sales and shipping... until our whole economy goes down the shitter because these assholes destroyed the middle class.

[flashl]

13. Spot on!

How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans

One in four workers in the United States have jobs that pay poverty wages, provide minimal or no benefits, and allow little flexibility and time for quality childcare.

Despite the great wealth of the United States, the standard working conditions for these workers are lower than those of comparable workers in other industrialized nations. Inadequate wages are only one part of the problem in low-wage jobs. Low-wage jobs are not just quantitatively different than better paying jobs, but qualitatively different

Editorial DU Post - The Betrayal of Work

Blue-collar work before the Raygun administration offered a pathway to middle class.

The employment picture is bleak. Since Enron plundered pensions and retirement investments, employees adversely impacted stayed in the workforce instead of retiring. For years, there have been no reporting about dismayed college graduates competing with high-school graduates for low-wage jobs.

No one honestly address or count individuals effected in the crisis of more high school and college graduates entering a workforce than there's been job creation.

[Warpy]

2. It was a combination of sending our jobs offshore

and using the savings from cheap to slave labor to fatten upper executives rather than pay stockholders, while striving to keep service wages as low as possible. That concentrated wealth into too few hands while forcing the majority of ordinary people to go deeply into debt to compensate for inadequate wages.

Other parts of the picture included fudging numbers and lying about actual domestic inflation by excluding products produced domestically like health care and housing and using those artificially low numbers to justify keeping wages at starvation levels.

An economy with all the wealth concentrated into a few hands at the top while the bottom is drowning in debt is inherently unstable. People at the very bottom are not going to be able to repay that debt, ever. That is what will cause the whole business to collapse as the institutions that hold the paper on that debt start to fall like a row of dominoes, one after another.

Don't expect a whole lot of help from Uncle Sugar in bailouts. He went into hock to fatten the rich, too.

[JohnnyRingo]

5. Deficit Spending

As I understand it:

When the country spends more than it takes in, we have to print more greenbacks (seen any new money lately?)
When we print more cash, we're faced with 2 choices:

1. Keep the money here, and create runaway inflation from a glut of paper currency
2. Send the money out of the country, and devalue it's worth against foreign notes.

So far, Buxh has opted for the easy way out with the second choice:
Foreign war
Export jobs
Import labor that sends money to their home country
Increase foreign aid to obscure tinhorn dictators
Allow companies to set up offshore headquarters
Buy foreign goods for government use (especially military)

All the above sends money out of the country.
Coupled with massive corporate tax cuts, we've reached a tipping point where the Franklins are no longer as welcome overseas. The money is now piling up here, causing increased inflation.

Now we have a new crisis on our hands.....Bankruptcy

Corporate greed knows no bounds, and Buxh has pampered them like a sugar daddy with a platinum credit card.

[JDPriestly]

9. This is why we need Edwards.

Obama needs to explain his stance on this issue better.

Obama received his B.A. degree in 1983, then worked at Business International Corporation and NYPIRG before moving to Chicago to take a job as a community organizer.<23>

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

Business International Corporation (BI) was a publishing and advisory firm dedicated to assisting American companies in operating abroad. In 1986, Business International was acquired by The Economist Group in London, and eventually merged with The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Founded in 1953 by Eldridge Haynes, BI initially focused on American companies and started out with a weekly newsletter (called Business International) and a group of key corporate clients. BI eventually became the premier information source on global business with research, advisory functions, conferences and government roundtables in addition to its publications. It was headquartered in New York City, with major offices in Geneva, London, Vienna, Hong Kong and Tokyo, and a network of correspondents across the globe.

Publications included a family of newsletters (Business International, Business Europe, Business Eastern Europe, Business Latin America, Business Asia, Business China, and Business International Money Report), regularly updated reference products covering 40-50 countries (Financing Foreign Operations; Investment, Licensing and Trading Conditions Abroad), an international business and economic forecasting service, a risk assessment service, and in-depth research reports. It also conducted specialized research assignments for its clients. It was well-known for its Roundtable Conferences that brought senior business executives together with key government figures in capital cities around the globe. Its business forecasting conferences and publications were also widely used.

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

Does Obama repudiate outsourcing now? I am willing to accept a change of heart and mind, but I would like to know where he really stands on this.

[BigBearJohn]

10. Yep! They are killing the goose that laid the golden egg! Typical of Republicans

[90-percent]

11. Free Lunch

A new book by some economics guy named David K. Johnstone. He was interviewed on NPR Fresh Air. Talked about bush's Texas Ranger deal, which was gotten by RAISING the sales tax. Tax the many to benefit the few, plus some nice eminent domain taking of property adjacent to the ball park.

Sounds like a good book. Please read and then post the "executive summary"

-90% Jimmy

I posted this elsewhere, but I'm in the machine tool business since late 1979, and I've seen almost all major American Machine Tool Builders vaporize into dust by the stupidity of the people that run them. American auto makers seems to be following their lead. Like, proposed new emissions standards are the first increase in fleet mpg in thirty years? WHO KNEW the future would bring an increasing demand in reduced emissions and better mileage? How many Harvard MBA's would a poor corporation have to hire to predict that?

[flashl]

12. Is this the book?

Perfectly Legal : The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and CheatEverybody Else (Paperback)
by David Cay Johnston (Author)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com

Most Americans would agree that they are duty bound as beneficiaries of our democracy to pay taxes, and the majority of us do pay—-exorbitantly. But what about those who do not pay their fair share? David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, here reveals how fairness and equity have eroded from the American tax system.

Johnston describes in shocking detail the loopholes our government provides the "super rich"--from private individuals to profitable corporations—-to hide their wealth, to defer or evade tax payments, and to pass the bill to law-abiding middle-class Americans. The loss in revenue "imposes a severe cost on honest taxpayers" through reduced services, increased federal debt, and a weight on the middle class that threatens to impede its ability to achieve upward social mobility.

Admitting the extreme complexity of our economy and by extension our tax code, Johnston points out that the very wealthy do, of course, pay taxes. However, because of shelters that allow them to understate most of their income, they pay little more on average than most Americans on the dollar. This is regressive, and unquestionably favors the superrich. Johnston includes examples of outrageous corporate malfeasance (such as companies that establish off-shore tax addresses) and exposes the tax benefits of the particularly loathsome practice made famous by Jack Welch, in which thousands of wage earners are laid off while a handful of executives are granted hundreds of millions of dollars through deferred compensation, company stock options, and lucrative retirement packages, all at stock holders' xpense.

In addition to these offenses, he describes the tax evasion methods of those who simply defy the law and are emboldened by a beleaguered IRS that is too underfunded to serve as an effective deterrent to tax cheats. Johnston calls for a complete overhaul of the system. But because those who most benefit from these laws comprise the "donor class" that supports the government power structure, our prospects for reform remain very bleak.

[90-percent]

14. here it is,

here it is, plus the show i heard, I think?


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17808622&ft=1&f=1006


-90% Jimmy

[flashl]

15. Thanks

[upi402]

16. Yep, this is why corporate Dems are just as destructive...

to our Republic as Republicans are.
I fought NAFTA tooth and nail and hate Clinton even tho he's the best Republican ever. And Gore is no better in terms of labor and middle class destruction.

I wonder if "main stream Dem" supporters are now getting a clue as the curtain gets pulled back on the obvious bullshit they've been gulping down so eagerly.

[ingac70]

17. wish I could rec that. n/t.