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IBM, Other Multinationals "Detaching" From the US
theodp writes "If you're brilliant, work really hard, and earn a world-class doctorate from a US university, IBM has a job for you at one of its US research sites — as a 'complementary worker' (as this 1996 piece defined the then-emerging term). But be prepared to ship out to India or China after you've soaked up knowledge for 13 months as a 'long-term supplemental worker.' Newsweek sketches some of the bigger picture, reporting that IBM, HP, Accenture, and others are finding it profitable to detach from the United States (even patenting the process). 'IBM is one of the multinationals that propelled America to the apex of its power, and it is now emblematic of the process of creative destruction pushing America to a new, less dominant, and less comfortable position.'"
Instead of blaming them for leaving, why don't we stop chasing them away?
The law says this is what IBM should do. And its putting the state in trouble.
Hard ball to cope with.
Obviously competitive candidates will not lower their standard of living to leave the USA, so what this will really do is lower the pool of candidates applying for these research positions, and potentially lower the quality of researchers at IBM. If IBM feels the cost of USA workers outweighs the risk of falling behind, so be it.
Entrepreneurship is what is cause of success in US. That made all big companies work in first place. As long as there are smart people in US and smart people with ideas and execution to create companies, we're fine.
We have the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the world for a developed nation. That still isn't enough I guess. American justice, American greed. Maybe if we stopped doing stupid shit like invading Iraq and keepng bases all over the world we could reduce that tax rate even further! But they'd still leave for a cheaper place.
And your point is? Maybe we should prohibit these businesses from operating in the states. Oh wait, that's why they're leaving. . . And that's the problem.
Patriotism is a highly overrated trait in anything/anybody. If it's better to leave, why stay?
Yeah, that'll give IBM an incentive to put more workers in the US!
Or maybe not....
They are multinational corporations... what kind of national loyalty are we expecting from them?
They behave exactly as legislation allows them to behave. If you don't like it, change the legislation.
Reduce the tax rate but eliminate loopholes.
Or, we could close up all those expensive shit-stirring military bases, stop the failed wars (oh Korea and Vietnam, I wish we had learned from you..) and cancel social security, medicare and medicaid.
Blar.
Large corporations are not good citizens and care little about the welfare of the nations that created them. I've heard them described as sociopathic is nature, which is probably quite an accurate description. They rarely have any long term vision in most cases and only seem to look a quarter or two ahead to make investors happy. Limiting their greed just slightly compared to their competitors might earn some good will in the future, but even that seems to be beyond most corporations.
The future is China, not the USA, and IBM knows it. So do GM and other multinationals.
Why on earth would they remain chained to a sinking ship? That makes no sense. American labour is more expensive. They're heavily regulated. The supply of highly educated people in the USA is drying up, because all the people with advanced engineering degrees are from China and India.
This is not a surprise. It's the actions of a rational entity acting in its own self interest. The USA is rapidly decreasing in international importance, so *of course* they are trying to shift elsewhere.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Stop running trade deficits. Tariffs against lopsided trade are not the big evil that right-wing economists say they are. If other countries stopped running trade surpluses with us, they'd have to create a stronger local consumer class, which would start to even out monetary differences and even out imports. Balance balance balance.
Table-ized A.I.
The Egyptians complained about the English "stealing" their cotton spinning and weaving business. The English complained about the Yankee New Englanders, who complained about the Southerners, who complained about the Mexicans, who complained about the Malaysians who are complaining about the Chinese and Indians.
When I say "complained", I mean passed laws and regulations, imposed sanctions, taxes and duties, fought wars, battled smuggling, and whined.
In the long run, the laws of econonics ALWAYS win. The US should fix the causes, not the symptoms.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I'm confused at what the article is trying to say. Obviously they're upset that "something" is moving from the USA to overseas, but it sounds like IBM is encouraging their consultants to consult overseas, and their researchers to research overseas. Is that really that big of an issue?
I work at a manufacturer that designs and builds stuff in the USA (and to a lesser extent overseas) to ship all over the world. If you want to get into a leadership position, you'd better be prepared to spend 5-10 years of your career outside the US to gain an international perspective. This way you don't have some idiot who's never been outside the US trying to tell the rest of the world why they don't really need what they think they need.
I recommend reading a book called "IBM and the Holocaust" (http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com).
This is a company that happily accepted huge sums of money from the Germans during WWII to computerize the process of hunting down and exterminating Jews, and even "hardened" several of their facilities so they'd survive Allied bombings. All the while, they claimed to be an American business.
It's arguable that in a sense, they "left" the United States back then, even if they still retained a big physical presence here. Despite the law preventing IBM from being able to move their profits out of German banks during the war, they STILL happily worked on their projects for them, knowing full-well they couldn't even touch the money for years.
Makes the developing world rich like it made us rich.
that any factory or venture in China must be at least 51% domestically owned, such that they always will have the power?
Can't help but think that all these companies are building up their own competition... when China decides the dollar isn't that great anymore and that they've sucked out all the knowledge needed of the US and other 1st world countries to be on par with them.
Not that US companies alone can be blamed, the US consumer, with their rush to the cheapest priced options, by and large, contributed to this cycle.
The fact is that Obama is a redistributionist who claims that jobs are owed and not earned. Sorry, but that kind of attitude is what's driving employers away from the USA. You wish you had a girlfriend/boyfriend? Then make yourself appealing, so that someone will want to hook up with you. Don't go talking about how having a significant other is your inalienable right, somehow owed to you by society or other unspecified parties. You wish you had a job? Then make yourself appealing and more competent, so that someone will want to hire you. Don't go talking about how somebody else is "stealing" "your" job, as if a job is somehow owed to you, regardless of how incompetent you are.
Obama is consistently talking about "American jobs" as if the jobs are rightfully American. His political stance is well known to be re-distributionist. Start earning, and stop whining for a handout.
Entrepreneurship is what is cause of success in US. That made all big companies work in first place. As long as there are smart people in US and smart people with ideas and execution to create companies, we're fine.
Absolutely! You just have to fight off the patent suits they will file against you - it doesn't matter if they're frivolous or not because the multi-nationals will just keep you in court until you can't afford the legal fees any longer. They win by attrition.
Then there are all the Government regulations that they rail against in the media - with the help of the pundits. But the truth of the matter is that Government regulations add yet another barrier to entry for the entrepreneur that you've mentioned. So, behind closed doors, big corps LOVE Government regulations because only they can afford the lawyers and fees to navigate through them. And if there's a regulation that's just getting their way, well, they call in their boys in Congress to put pressure on the regulators to cut them some slack.
Now all those entrpreneurs that are making it have big corp connections or money behind them so they get a get out of jail free card.
Now, with globalization, even if you beat all those odds, you have some one in some third world country that doesn't respect intellectual property and they make cheap knock-offs or even knock-offs that equal your quality, but since they don't have any R&D to cover, they're profitable while said entrepreneur is being shutdown because he can't pay his bills.
But your'e right - just take care of those problems over and above the normal business problems and risks and BINGO! jobs for everyone.
P.S. Any spelling errors is because I haven't installed the plugin for Opera yet.
Seems like a stupid thing to be patentable... but maybe it would be good if they do, because it could slow other companies abandoning ship.
Oh for mod points right now, like Kruschev, I'll bury you!
This has NOTHING to do with Obama or the Obama administration. FFS ppl he's been in office 6 months.
The best thing we could do if we don't want IBM and other companies going abroad is what John Doerr and Thomas Friedman have suggested:
Because it's often difficult or impossible to import international engineers and scientists with valuable or unusual skills to the United States, the logical alternative is to go to where they are. Want this kind of behavior on the part of IBM and others to, if not stop altogether, then at least to slow? Implement Friedman's suggestion. Otherwise, don't implicitly (or, in the case of many commenters on this thread, explicitly) complain when companies react to the conditions that politicians, and by extension voters, have placed on them.
In 1965 Canada brought into law the "Auto Pact" ahref=http://www.canadianeconomy.gc.ca/english/economy/1965canada_us_auto_pact.htmlrel=url2html-14781http://www.canadianeconomy.gc.ca/english/economy/1965canada_us_auto_pact.html>
It basically states that for every car bought in Canada, one car must be built in Canada.
(In 2001 it was abolished because it infringed on NAFTA.)
This policy works for everybody except the greedy CEO's. Any manufacturing industry could be converted to this setup.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
This didn't really surprise me. Corporations have been importing talent from across the world and perhaps this has become more difficult over time. Over the years, these facilities have acquired quite a bit of talent and expertise. Since H1B visas and green cards are hard to come by, the next logical extension would be to export US talent to these facilities. Most countries that I'm aware of make it much easier for US citizens to obtain work visas and with lucrative compensation, an individuals quality of life in these countries may be far better compared to the US, especially considering the awesome service industry in India.
This is what our factories have to compete with. Plants which poison children.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090820/ap_on_re_as/as_china_lead_poisoning
Laws that protect us from this kind of behavior add costs that push companies to these countries.
Democracy isn't cheap.
Because the stuff that's "chasing them away" is the same stuff that still nominally keeps the American people from being totally subjugated and destitute like the Chinese and Indians are.
What makes you think that's achievable? Americans are competing with Chinese and Indians. What possible reason would there be for anybody to pay more to an American worker than to a Chinese or Indian worker?
Companies aren't going to stop leaving the US until we are so broken by their flight that we are forced to become fascist.
Companies don't care about fascism. We just need to become cheaper, or we need to help Chinese and Indians become rich.
Globalization, rabid dog competition and government interference don't aide in gaining a clear picture of off shoring jobs, or, any one county's standing and future. What remains evident is that English is the lingua franca of today's world and the best education, as a general rule, are still to be had at English speaking Universities. Certainly countries like Japan, France, Germany and others hold their own in their mother tongues, but English rules. As long as developing and, even, competitive countries continue to send their children to be educated in English speaking and democratic countries then, I venture, the R&D and innovations, will continue to originate in the same countries that house the prevalent Universities. Freedom of speech and flourishing ideologies like FOSS are critical to the exchange of ideas that drive the best in education and innovation. As Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others". And, as nature teaches, faster nervous systems eat slower nervous systems, and, democracies by dint of lower, or, less barriers foster faster nervous systems.
ideopath @ play
Isn't the real fix that we improve the countries they are outsourcing to until the economy there demands the same as US salaries? At that point geography becomes the benefit instead of dollars and they want to hire the guy closer to "home."
-Xen
So that's it.. even heads of the most foremost tech corporations are being taken over by greedy suits not feeling concerned at all by the public/planet good.
To be fair, Bush pissed off the whole world and destroyed the US budget. Both will take years to repair. No other US president can come close to that.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
There hasn't been freedom of choice in medicine in decades.
So after they move out what will keep them doing to the US what they do to other countries - exploit countries resources for profit. As we were the home to these greedy groups we have been pretty much insulated as they didn't rock their own boat. But if they are based outside of the US, kinda cleans off that slate and opens us up as a whole new market to exploit, don't you think?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
And shipped abroad... WHo thinks this is good for anyone? Why does the US govt not find a problem with this? It seems that the difference between the cost of living in the US is way higher than the C.O.L in another country. That is what will ensure that US is being parted out for its guts. Thanks Corporate leaders. Do you see where you've lead us?
saying "The sky is blue" or "A tiger has stripes". Duh! A corporation's whole reason for existence is to make money.
Some of these corporations are larger (fiscally) than the nations that served as their nursery. Like the child coddled in the nursery these corporations grow up, become smarter and richer than you, and they don't want to live with your house rules anymore. They don't even send Christmas cards or visit anymore *sniff*.
... And all of a sudden im glad instead of sorry that I never went to an University, and just sorta 'lucked myself into' an admirable IT-position...
I find the fact that corporations such as this, especially in a time of economic hardship, are basically harming american workers and showing such contempt for the USA, to be greatly offensive and angers me to no end. i think its time that we detach from china and india which has basically decimated Americas economy and who have stolen our jobs. I think its clearly time that we need to stop allowing these companies to abuse the USA looking at it as only a market to sell their overpriced chinese crap, and start creating jobs here again. Globalisation is such a big scam its ridiculous, its destroying this countyr and allows these greedy companies to basically exploit slave labor in china. The US should and can, and must for its survival, implement a tariff on imports of cars, textiles, furniture, IT services, customer service calls to India and China, etc, and so on. When we have 15% unemployment in reality and people struggling to find work the notion of any company moving jobs somewhere else really should cause a revolt from americans and demands to implement tariffs. Its time to get past this irrational hysteria about tariffs. Tariffs are good and can help this countries economy rebound. There is nothing wrong with it since it simply allows americans to make products for other americans. Think about it, why cant the chinese make things for other chinese, and americans make things for other americans. it would be better for the chinese of the products that chinese workers stayed in china to benefit to the people there. It would be better for americans to create more jobs in the US making products for use by americans. The only people that globalisation benefits is the wealthy rich elite corporations who important products made by employees in slave labor camps in china making a few cents an hour, living in filthy dormitories, who are treated in the most inhumane way, beaten, and even not allowed to use the restroom, with litany of human rights abuses, the products these slaves make are then sold off at a 100% markup in the US and the wealthy elite take the profit. Both the american and the chinese worker are the losers. Globalisation is what has allowed as well corporations to basically dictate to countries basically how they will treat workers and the environment and rewards countries which allow their environment and workers to be ruthlessly exploited by massive global corporations. This is a system where massive global corporations get their way and make the laws through making countries compete against each other to see who can allow their employees to be treated in the most inhumane way. Through the global consolidation and globalisation the corporations are able to control markets resources, jobs, and so on in many different countries and operate as sort of transnational governments. Through this we are seeing a new world order emerge where the governments of countries are simply puppets of a powerful fascist global corporate order who controls wealth, resources, jobs, markets, capital, etc.
If we value our freedom, we need to implement tariffs which would give our own worker welfare laws, our own democratic state, some force and allow us to implement unions without the corporations threatening to move jobs to other countries. If you want to be treated like a decently like a human being, to have a good life and to be paid decently for decent work, we desperately need to implement broader democratic unions which allow employees a democratic vioce where they can act as a safeguard against mistreatment and slave wages. Unions are essential to our economic recovery and for stopping the destruction of the middle class. The unions built the middle class in the USA and ironically created a middle class that had the spending power which made companies like IBM so successful. Unions are essential for workers to have decent wage since it more often than not is the tendancy of corporations to pay workers as little as they can, leading to a vast impoverished state in the economy. Its just shocking and disgusting tha
Your approach as stated is very reptilian (think brain-stem), however, we are mammals with a limbic system and prefrontal cortex as well. So there's wisdom in what you say, however, it misses 2/3rds of the story, which is really what makes us human.
The aggressive attitude that "balances-everything-out" is very important, but even more important is an understanding of non-aggression. We are all in this together - interlinked - and kindness and consideration for others helps everyone.
To use your analogies: if you see someone attracted to you, who is having difficulty romantically, then some consideration and belief in their intrinsic worth will bring out the best in them. Doesn't mean you date them or do anything for them really.
Same goes for work. A boss has the potential to bring out the best in employees, as Steven Covey illustrates in Principle Oriented Leadership.
The net effect of this approach is a win-win; and also greater than the sum of it's parts. It's in tune with our basic nature, which seeks to improve the inclusive fitness of the species. You've merely described the equivalent of the reproductive fitness - which favours sociopaths of all kinds.
The left is not about pathologizing people, but helping us all about become better than we are. Thus an unemployed person is not *lazy*, perhaps they are having difficulties - which we all do at some point. Giving a handout to a lazy person is effectively cruel. Giving a handout to someone in difficulties helps break a vicious cycle.
The political left is not about whining for handouts. That's a strawman that you use for self-propaganda.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The US is still the third largest exporter.
Folks have predicted the demise of the US many times and it has not come to pass.
It never will.
US 1.3 trillion exports
http://home.earthlink.net/~root.man/exports.pdf
Largest export countries (EU is not a country)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports
140
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2009/countries/US.html
10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimitz_class_aircraft_carrier
China is a nightmare, police state with huge problems.
Their population is aging rapidly. They are on the verge of revolution with thousands of riots a year.
execution vans
http://tinyurl.com/d2wzev
falun gong organ harvesting
http://tinyurl.com/nlx7z4
China demographic nightmare
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810166,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/globalwarmingisascam
dangerous demographics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w3meSupCME
http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/dangerous_demographics
http://tinyurl.com/depopulationreality
This will continue to happen as long as the US has an unfavorable political climate to business. And no, this is not just because of Obama, he is not helping any, or even making it worse, but it has been going on because of anti-business legislature over the years. US Americans are so full of wealth envy they can't see straight.
I'm pretty sure the land that my California home sits on hasn't enjoyed a history of unbroken legal sales since biblical times. Do you really think there's any usable land on Earth that hasn't been stolen at least once?
Was the Valley born out of greed.. or driven by the research and invention thrills, and eventual desires to make some lives better ?
And now that's it.. the heads of the most foremost tech corporations being taken over by greedy suits not feeling concerned at all by the public/planet good..
And laymen applauding at heroes finally taking action against those stupid nanny state measures stealing our so deserving wealthy.
Look I am an Indian, and I think that there are a few things all of you need to know.
America is not going anywhere for now. The fundamentals of your future lie in the hands of your people, especially the select few who have a vision and can buck the status quo. As long as you have plenty of such individuals you are going to weather any geo-political storm.
Whereas in my nation life is so linear that it is a goddamn joke.
Almost every kid is expected to be an engineer and most of these engineers hardly even know what the hell they are talking about. As Feynman would say their knowledge is fragile.
Our educational system itself is a joke. Trust me on this.
At the same time entrepeneurs are discouraged and looked down upon. They are sorta treated with ice, as everyone wants a *son* in an MNC with a prestigous MBA. So, basically our society is choking itself. Sure, these people are awesome paper pushers, but despite the fact that some of them do have a decent brain they all seem to fail to do anything different.
No revolutions are put into motion. No brilliant new synthesis are formulated. No groundbreaking patents are filed. In short, the truly important stuff is in stasis.
Your society whereas pushes its outliers and that is why, as Kay once put it, most software is written on one side of the atlantic. I think that you should stop looking at IBM and start looking at MIT. That is where your future lies.
And seriously drop all of that economics mumbo-jumbo. As the foundations of society are the ability to create things, transport those things and dessiminate them. I think that those earning a living by making a killing in stocks are living a sham.
Oh and Thomas Jefferson would kill himself if he saw Bush in action. Despite his failings Obama is, at least, a breath of fresh air. So, value him for that. At least he had the courage (unlike me) to step up to the plate.
P.S. - /.s javascript is screwed, haven't they heard of simplicity?
Why the heck would they then concentrate their facilities and jobs in US? Again get it clear - more than 60% of the money they make is NOT from US. They are not a US company, and this is to be expected. They are moving their business where their money is. Plain and simple.
As long we don't have gov health care they we will lose job to other places that do as health care costs make hiring people hear cost a lot more then other places.
Also fix 1099 system so big guys like IBM can use that to get out paying for taxes and other stuff that us works should get.
You've heard of offshoring labor to a foreign nation for a lower cost in labor?
International Corporate Evolution is the new trend. When in a nation with a bad economy offshore the entire company to a richer nation like in the EU that has a lower corporation tax and a lower tax on the wealthy.
You see labor needs to be offshored to the lowest cost third world nation like China, India, Thailand, Russia, where the cost of labor is low. That is the first step in International Corporate Evolution.
The second step is to expand your business to a foreign nation to compete with other corporations in foreign nations. If a company does not do that, foreign companies might move to their nation and buy them out (ala Anhiesier Busch Beer) or expand and build a company right next to yours and try to shut yours down. It is like a game of corporate chess, you need to move a piece to their location before they move a piece to your location and checkmate you.
The third step is to offshore highly talented employees (like with PHDs and tons of experience) and management to a nation that is wealthy and has a good economy but has lower corporation taxes and lower wealthy taxes. Move the bulk of your local company to that nation and downsize any employees that aren't as valuable.
The fourth step is closing down buildings in the local nation that has the bad economy and high taxes.
The fifth step is moving back to that nation after the bad economy has recovered and tax rates have been cut again and bringing the talent back with you. But if the economy does not recover and the tax rates are not cut, this is like a strike against the government to offshore the entire company to punish them for higher taxes and ruining the economy.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Bush Jr watched his dad get crucified in an election against Clinton. His father had raised taxes (as did Reagan) to keep the budget balanced (ish). Clinton also did that. It is speculated that Bush Jr's experience of his fathers election loss jaded him over treating the budget responsibly - afterall, the voters panned his father.
Bush Jr ruined the budget as follows:
So Obama (the bad guy =) inherited a financial crisis whose complex antecedents go back at least 20 years. Just when the US needs to spend big, Bush had already bankrupted the budget.
Obama has already spent more money then Bush has in his entire 8 years in office.
So myopic.
For the record, Reagan, Bush and Bush were huge spenders, but Reagan and Bush Senior had the wisdom to also raise taxes. The Republicans are all about huge government, and are the ones who tax and spend - by their actions. Except Bush Jr just who spent, so that future presidents can deal with the tax part.
Obama's spending is about averting a depression.
...is falling apart, daily. Entire states are broke, even our richest state California is broke. They are having to close down a lot of infrastructure, give public employees furloughs, dump prisoners, consolidate prisons, etc, and it keeps getting worse. Local hospitals and local school systems are broke all over the nation *now* and it is getting worse. Thousands of local governments are broke or near broke. Millions of people are facing foreclosure and one estimate is half of all homes will be "underwater" in terms of what they owe as opposed to what they will really be worth within a few years now. Daily we hear about more and more jobs going poof, just like in this article. States and local governments get taxes to pay for your civilized infrastructure, and we have half a million jobs a month going poof. People who can't afford their house note are not going to be paying local property tax, and if they lose their job, not be paying any state or federal tax either.
Your quote, then, in my opinion, "We are never going to drop to their level of poverty because we have things like running water, a strong infrastructure, and plentiful high quality housing. These are things that won't go away, just because of outsourcing."..is *wishful thinking* to the extreme, because there's nothing whatsoever stopping all this civilization we have developed for generations now here from further deteriorating as long as we are losing 100 jobs to one gained, whatever the lopsided figure is, and government tax payer jobs are not the answer there either.
Government jobs cost the nation wealth, they don't create wealth. We need real civilian sector middle class wealth creation jobs, not mc jobs or telephone sanitizing "service" jobs or government busywork bureaucracy jobs (or all those ludicrous "homeland insecurity" paramilitary jobs), and those are the type of jobs we have been losing, the wealth creation jobs. You have to have wealth creation jobs, period. Lose them, your civilization will collapse.
And it can and most likely will get a lot worse here than it is now, and it is precisely from the last couple of decades of heavy offshoring for fast cheap labor arbitrage designed to make wall street richer and everyone else poorer (in this nation).
Your attitude (anyone you) changes fast once you lose your home and job, etc. It stops being theory.
Not sure how far you are willing to drop down in lifestyle, but to match a lot of the developing world, you should be using a privy out back, be walking a few miles to the town well and carrying the water back, raising a lot of your own food immediately around your house, etc. Plus working 16 hour shifts in some dismal and highly dangerous factory for a few bucks a day..but still be forced to pay all US costs.
That's what you are saying, so I'll counter it and say it can't be done in the US, hence why I said wishful thinking.
I know I live as cheap and mean as possible here, probably a lot closer to developing world status that most people on this board, my income is slightly less than ten grand a *year*, and I couldn't live on 5 bucks a day, it just isn't possible unless you are out living totally wild and scrounging your food mostly. Any sort of shelter with electricity and running water, etc costs a lot more than that. I think I am at the bare minimum now, and we grow a lot of our own food, drive ancient vehicles and those only once a week, spend zip money on entertainment or restaurants, etc. Cheap, not third world, but second world status and you STILL need to have some decent cash coming in to exist here.
No job..then what, what do you tell people who just lost their middle class job to offshoring? "Tough crap, sucks to be you friend, just magically exist somehow...just think how cheap the goods at walmart are though!!"
Really, what are you willing to say to someone *in person*, face to face, who lost their job to offshoring, haven't found another job
Don't know anything about Taft, but crucifying Carter for the Islamic revolution is revisionist. The antecedents for the revolution are complex, and much to do with the actions of the British empire. Jimmy Carter did not create the whole middle-east hatey thing. Not by a long shot.
Although I do *not* support the Iranian revolutionaries, the Shah was one of those nasty idiot dictators that was a puppet of Western powers. So the revolutionaries had it in for western imperial powers, and for good reason. It would have been better for everyone if a bunch of moderates took over, but that is history.
Carter angered Iranian revolutionaries by toasting the Shah just before the revolution. Carter tried to work with the new regime after the take-over, however, he really pissed them off again by allowing the Shah to receive medical treatment in the US. Note that Carter only granted the request to the Shah because of pressure from Rockefeller and Kissinger.
The paranoid revolutionaries in Iran thought that the USA was plotting a "counter" coup, but they never were. To consolidate power, the revolutionaries started the hostage crisis. There was probably nothing that could have been done to militate the course of events. Dealing with hostile paranoid revolutionaries is hard - esp. when they already hate you and blame you for all of their problems.
Carter attempted to negotiate, and then there was the ill-fated rescue mission. Perhaps you think Carter should have let the US embassy staff rot in hell? They were just doing their jobs, and the US administration was doing nothing wrong at the time.
The talks that successfully negotiated the release of the hostages were initiated by Carter two months before the election. The release occurred shortly after Reagan was sworn in as president.
THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THEIR RELEASE, but in a twist of irony, they got the entire political capital for it - essentially because of the campaign. The Republican administration did nothing to set the history straight in the publics mind, by giving credit where it was due.
You can read all about it on the internet. It might open your eyes.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Its the death of the west, little more than that ..
The new playground for the Globalists is now China and the Islamic countries..
Why should we drop all that "mumbo-jumbo"? Economics is the study of human actions such as production, consumption, and most importantly, TRADE, of which this article is about.
I sure as hell wish I could go into a astronomy or physics related article on Slashdot and say that because I don't like what they are studying, it is invalid or untrue. Well, I could, but I wouldn't get modded "Interesting".
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm
You too can donate some of your income to supplement the almost 3 million donated this year!
What's that, you don't think the government needs any more of your money? Me neither.
These companies never 'detach' from the capital and credit markets that they need to stay in business. They enjoy access to free and fair markets supported by the U. S. Constitution. Investors and lenders to such companies depend on financial and accounting standards along with required public disclosures of financial information. When someone threatens to steal their IP or violate a contract they are a party to, they expect access to a fair and impartial court system backed by a stable political system. Let's see them 'detach' from those things...not likely. Being located in the United States is an enormous advantage for these companies and they know it. They just don't want us to know it.
In particular, India and China having their money fixed to ours. If not, then why not Europe or Russia? The simple fact is that IBM, GE, and others are exploiting the fixed money difference and the west is allowing itself to be destroyed. Unless the WEST decides to work together to stop these nations from having an unfair advantage, then there will NOT be a fair competitive market. And without that, more and more IP will simply flow to these nations. Keep in mind that BOTH china and India are pushing to obtain all of our IP related to tech (such as nukes or military or tech or pollution control, etc) and are simply stealing it if they do not feel like paying for it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Both China and India are starting to respect and push laws for IP that is CREATED AND OWNED by THEIR respective nations. BUT, NEITHER of them will respect IP created in the west (and possibly in other nations). We are still in a COLD WAR.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I actually like SS and medic*. But I am pissed at the Dems for not pushing to cut back military spending, both at home and abroad. We can't afford to be the world police and if you look at Afghanistan and Iraq...we suck balls at it.
Blar.
"It's arguable that in a sense, they "left" the United States back then"
Not really.
The US didn't particularly value Jews at the time, which was BEFORE the ___post____-WWII fascination with their extermination. Foreigners killing foreigners wasn't any more important at the time than it is now, which isn't much. There was no "Israel", Palestine was under British control, and the decision by the US to align with Israelis and against Arabs no matter what the cost had not yet been made.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Links please? Just several years ago, IBM was still getting more than 70% of their revenue from USA. I find it REAL difficult to believe that IBM has shifted that much away.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The only person that is doing good during this economy was Bernie Madoff. With the "Cash for Clunkers" program ending, what other government program is getting money into the hands of "Joe Six-Pack", (this person is losing their home, not their bonus). Banks aren't lending, why? Lending is NOT happening, but several banks have reaped bonuses, why? Manufacturing, and Services have left the U.S., and the U.S. is now "Tapped" of money. I think it's time to ween the BRIC nations off my Wallet's Mammary Gland. America just can't afford the BRIC anymore.
That's what we did and we go jack. The uber-wealthy continue to accelerate away from the rest of us and the middle class continues to shrink.
As long as politicians can take pay-offs from industry lobbyists without being hanged, this will never stop.
I'm left as the day is long but some times I want those right-wing guys to feed the tree of liberty. Shame they want to off Obama and embraced Bush :(
Blar.
All wealth stems from theft either now or in earlier eras.
I see, so when I am the best at building widgets, and you buy one of my widgets because
it is good quality and worth the price to you, this is theft?
Oh, I get it, I should *give* you the widget just because I have many and you have none. Even If I had
to buy materials and spend time to make the widget, I am evil, mean and nasty to not just give you one.
Good grief, computers were invented during the 2nd world war in the UK and used to decode the German mechanically generated ciphers and it sure wasn't IBM. Where the hell did you get your tall story?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Taxes are killing small business. Paying 7k a month in taxes is ridiculous when you only employ 4 fucking people! The problem is two-fold 1)Politicians the nation over view taxes as income, and because the always want to spend more cause 2) Taxes to always be raised (percentages or by inflation) and they want to tax something new every time you turn around. How about the tax me every time I sit on a toilet, and tax me everytime I read a book? At this rate were going to tax every fucking thing you can think of because were a nation that loves living in the debt. How can you expect consumers to be able to pay debts when the government cant even do it? In short, we are fucked, its only a matter of when, not if.
They maximize their value for their shareholders. Since they have so much money, they have so much power. I don't understand why people oppose big governments but don't have problems with big corporations. They are the same kind of authoritarian entities, but at least you can elect officials for a government. Change the laws regarding corporations.
Regarding your example, England and the US South wanted free trade with each other, with the backwards South supplying raw cotton material to industrialized England for processing, while the US North wanted "laws and regulations, imposed sanctions, taxes and duties" to protect its growing industrial base. The result of this was a civil war in which the industrialized north beat the rural south (a south which couldn't trust a quarter of its population). Afterward, the sanctions and duties only increased. What was the result of this? Today the GDP of the US is five times that of the UK.
Ultimately, this is a product of governments' mistaken belief that they can control commerce in any meaningful way. Commerce operates independently of all borders and all law; the attempts by governments anywhere to control it merely represent temporary stumbling blocks to commerce, which will always be overcome as ruthlessly and as effectively as possible. Thus the reason that for every market there exists a so called "black market," the most extreme example of this principle, in that it does not even pay lip service to government controls.
So long so long as there are buyers there will be sellers, and so long as these two meet there will always be a market.
And Muslims wonder why we hate them. Meanwhile, the only politically-correct group to hate any more, the Nazis, have another Tarantino foul-mouthed gore-fest aimed at them. When is Tarantino going to take on the fucking rag heads and their shit-for-brains Flintstone's-era theology? I recommend calling the film, "Fuck Allah."
I didn't say that all wealth is theft, but it stems from theft. Where did the raw materials for the widgets come from? Did they come from land that has been stolen sometime in the past? Did the US find a dictator or warlord to give money to while the people living there received nothing?
We obviously can't undo every wrong and I have no expectation that we will, but people have to get off their high horse when it comes to wealth - it's not fully earned.
What possible reason would there be for anybody to pay more to an American worker than to a Chinese or Indian worker?
How about this possible reason: if you were unable to sell any of your goods or services to an American worker unless you paid an American worker to produce them.
Protectionism is only bad when you stop being a producer (as China and India are exceptionally well aware).
Do you really save money by resorting to cheap labor to do your critical engineering work? Isn't the cost of software development over the long run mostly maintenance? Good luck with that crap software IBM. And good luck maintaining your clusterfucks over the next few years.
BTW, how do the contributions of 1+ billion Chinese stack up in open source software? I hardly ever see any Chinese names on any project. Why is that?
If you're a talented U.S.-based software developer I wouldn't be worried about this at all. The value you can bring to an organization is orders of magnitude greater than any cheap imitation from China or India, even if the dinosaurs who run some of these old-school companies think otherwise. The market will take care of any errors they make in due time.
Sophisticated flamebait? I live in a "socialist" country with a left-wing government. Our poor don't whinge for handouts, they expect them and whinge if you ask them to look for work.
In Communist China, starvation looks for you.
Wait! Whats a sig?
Equality means a free man competes to his international equivalent.
A doctor in America competing to a doctor in China is nothing more than religion. However, a carpenter in America competing to a carpenter in China is equal only by handicap; their country does more injury than good. Free trade doesn't mean by ward, it means without political bias.
Great post of yours, btw.
FTW (F*ck The World)!
All wealth stems from theft either now or in earlier eras.
I see, so when I am the best at building widgets, and you buy one of my widgets because
it is good quality and worth the price to you, this is theft?
Oh, I get it, I should *give* you the widget just because I have many and you have none. Even If I had
to buy materials and spend time to make the widget, I am evil, mean and nasty to not just give you one.
Nonono!
You've got it all wrong! He didn't mean that at all!
[sarcasm]
You shouldn't just be up and deciding to make some "widget" all on your own as an individual as if you were able to decide on your own actions without government involvement. You should be mandated by a government law, program, or regulation to make government approved and designed widgets for which you'll be allowed government-approved food, housing, and entertainment, and those widgets in turn will be given free to those who support the "correct" ideas and politicians!
Then, at the end of your government-mandated carefully-calculated standard productive years, you will be placed in a mandatory government-approved hospice facility to await your passing from whatever disease or illness that befalls you that you are no longer productive enough to the government to be worth wasting treatment on.
Where would the Great Society be if individuals could just decide to do what they wanted and what they each thought was best for them? They might make the wrong decisions!
[/sarcasm]
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Because it's very difficult to isolate and help only those who need it without changing the overall incentives in the economy.
You know, it's really not. Those who are deserving will find help, even if only in their neighbourhood, family, ... The reverse, finding someone worthy of your help and deciding how much to give them is also not all that hard.
It's just REALLY hard to do so with law. In fact, I dare say it's impossible.
Ack!
Sorry for the formatting error. The post I quoted should have been entirely in italics and had the tags, and I swear I previewed it multiple times while writing it and before posting. :|
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
We at Goldman Sachs have known that for years!
Palestine was under British control,
Just about the entire middle east was under British control. Oh and "palestine" meant the Roman Province called "philistine", meaning Israel, Lebanon, most of Syria, and sizeable parts of Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
And IBM may have helped with the holocaust, but the project they signed on for was the administration of the national health care system of Nazi Germany. Of course that was the project that turned into the holocaust later. I know it's important for "tolerant socialists" to believe that Hitler was conceived in a black mass by 2 goats fucking eachother in hellfire, but in reality this was an unremarkable guy, who started out working hard and trying to help his country. Later he went into politics and pushed a form of centralized economy that used to be called "socialism" (as opposed to (bolsjevik) communism) and is today known as "fascism". The component of the ideology that lead to supremacism and the holocaust, eugenics, can be found in any history book under socialism.
Until late 1941, Hitler was known as the man who made socialism acceptable and possible in America, or more affectionately the "Champion of the poor". He was nominated for the Nobel peace prize, and was the recipient of numerous press prizes on promoting peace, fairness and, especially, equality.
Good grief, computers were invented during the 2nd world war in the UK and used to decode the German mechanically generated ciphers and it sure wasn't IBM. Where the hell did you get your tall story?
Actually, the book alleges that IBM sold punch card machines to the Nazis. Punch card machines were in use as far back as the nineteenth century. I haven't done more than thumb through it, but it seems to be well-researched and credible.
Good grief, computers were invented during the 2nd world war in the UK and used to decode the German mechanically generated ciphers and it sure wasn't IBM. Where the hell did you get your tall story?
Perhaps the GP errs on a technicality by referring to the tabulating machines as "computers". You might like to peek at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine
For the lazy:
The tabulating machine was an electrical device designed to assist in summarizing information and, later, accounting. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. It spawned a larger class of devices known as unit record equipment and the data processing industry.
The term "Super Computing" was first used by the New York World newspaper in 1929[1] to refer to large custom-built tabulators IBM made for Columbia University.
I am not a crackpot.
Following the Great Depression and World War II, the leaders of our society decided to start taxing the wealthy more and more, while using that money for the betterment of society as a whole. It was called the New Deal. And this policy worked quite well, propelling America into a period of rapid economic growth, while at the same time creating a profound sense of economic security for the middle class. Vacation pay became the norm (it largely didn't exist before the Great Depression), and middle class Americans had enough disposable income to spend on luxuries like vacations.
This system was made possible by several other policies that prevented the rich from quickly withdrawing their money from the country. If you were wealthy in the UK in the 1950's, it was extremely difficult to get your money out of the country. It became common in this period for rich British citizens to build huge sailing yachts, which they sailed to other countries and then sold. They used their boats as a store of their wealth (read Myles Smeeton's Once is Enough for a story of one such couple).
Then came the right wing "neo-liberal/neo-conservative" politicians. When they got into power, one of the first things they did was to remove the barriers to capital mobility. Money was able to flow almost completely freely across national borders. This has brought economic growth for some, especially in countries like China. But it has also ensured that the countries that originally used taxes on the wealthy to ensure a healthy middle class were at a huge disadvantage. Rich individuals have withdrawn their money from America, and invested it in countries like China.
What many of us don't realize is that the complete and free mobility of capital will lead to the virtual disappearance of the American middle class as we have seen it over the past four decades, because it will ensure that money will flow away from countries with high taxes towards productive countries with low taxes. The country will increasingly look like Britain in the 1800's during the beginning of the industrial revolution (i.e. the world of Oliver Twist). There will be a very wealthy class. And there will be a worker class, which will comprise the vast majority of the population. Things like vacation pay, comfortable pensions, affordable quality health care, and disposable income will slowly but surely disappear for the vast majority of the former middle class. I am not prophesizing this; I am watching it happen before my eyes. IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING! Take an honest look at America right now, and tell me that our standard of living isn't slipping. And this at a time when we have never been able to make products more efficiently!
And to those of you who reflexively demonize those like me as "liberals", ask yourself this question? Are you a Billionaire? If not, then why are you thinking like a billionaire? Why do you think that lower wages for most of society is in your interest? Why do you think that taxing billionaires and spending that money to build roads isn't in your interest?
Do you think that the $20000 you have invested in stocks will pay for your comfortable retirement? What you seem to forget is that the billionaire who owns $200 million of those same stocks will make slightly more than you. And he will use the money he makes to buy even more stocks. Meanwhile, you, with your ever decreasing salary will have less and less disposable money to invest.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
So, an IBM site that was in Germany Prior to both World Wars. With German Citizens running said IBM site. So I don't see what the big deal is... Germany had access to IBM technology because the site was there.
This topic always comes up, No one talks about how many IBM Sites in the us where converted to make Machine guns for the allied forces. How our IBM computers helped the allies plan for D-Day? oh?
the deal that Clinton made with China was MFN IFF they dropped their trade barriers sometime before 2004 AND they freed their money (not a basket that is controlled by the chinese gov, but a true free exchange in which the private market decides). Well, NEITHER has happened. W just allowed it to continue. I had HIGH HIGH hopes that Obama would do the right thing. So far, absolutely NOTHING.
OTH, India does not have an agreement with us, so I do not hold it against them. Problem is, that their deciding to steal the IP for drugs and make their own (as well as export it) is directly related to this. Their carp is that the drugs are too expensive. BUT it is their having the money tied at 48 rupee to a dollar (according to most economist, the real value would be in the range of 12-24 rupee's to a dollar), AND they have tariffs on the drugs. INSANE.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
IBM was the world leader in mechanical computers/counters. Is it that hard to Google this stuff?
End free trade with non-free countries, or try communism! buy Chinese!
-edfardos
comparative advantage
I generally agree. I was imprecise, and I'm certainly not advocating any more safety nets at the federal level than we already have (I would much prefer they were entirely at the state level).
However, even within a family, helping someone is not always easy. Handing a family member cash is not always the best solution -- it's best to be very careful about exactly what you are encouraging them to do and how. One important point that socialists miss is that it's almost impossible for the government to do anything so personal, so they end up creating all the wrong incentives.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
I have observed the corporate polices and direction over the last couple of decades as an IBMer. The trend is obvious: if you want to remain in North America, you have to be either a project manager, a consultant, or in management/executive ranks. Manufacturing was off-shored or sold off a decade ago. Application development (e.g.: designing applications and writing code) and technical service delivery (designing infrastructure solutions and deploying/supporting infrastructure and deployed applications) has been going for the last five or six years.
For the next decade, IBM will be "finishing off" the relocation of application/infrastructure development and support, and getting starting more specifically on the research and development (i.e.: advanced sciences) offshoring. They call all of this LEAN, global resourcing (GR), global delivery, and other "politically correct" names. Not much more than a decade ago, the total number of IBMers in the BRIC (Brazil/Russia/India/China) nations was barely a blip (less than 10%) of the IBM employee base. Now employees in those countries account for 50% of the staff.
By the time I retire, I expect there will be almost no technical roles left in IBM within North America. The senior executive and their direct support staff will still be here, some consultants and project managers, and a few (very few) executive technologists: maybe ten to twenty percent (e.g.: 40,000 to 80,000) of the total employee base will remain here. As a technologist (development team lead), this is more than a bit distressing. I'll count myself lucky if I make it to retirement without being "resource actioned". Note that I'm regularly graded as a 2+ or 1 on my personal business commitments, but the quality of my work and the degree of dedication I have is irrelevant in the face of the perceived financial benefits of having the work performed overseas.
Take a look at Bob Dylan's lyrics from "Union Sundown" (on his 1983 album 'Infidels'). I won't post all of the lyrics here, lest the copyright police try to bust me. But seriously, have a look at the lyrics of this song. Here's the chorus:
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.
It baffles me that we elect Socialists like Obama and then act surprised when companies flee the country.
It's like we expect these people (read: the only people who have enough money to pay someone else's salary) to be like Comic Book Guy and say, "Please, take my money, I do not want it."
I am not the US citizen (yet), and still I do not understand how America can compete having such insane cost of upper management salaries, healthcare, and insane bureaucracy caused by crazy legal system. You allow these suckers to get millions a year and ask regular folks to work like slaves. My physician pays half of his salary to get insurance. It is now much cheaper to go oversees to get a better dental and medical treatment.
This has nothing to do with socialism, tax structure, or unregulated capitalism. IBM has stopped to innovate, the only way they can show any profits is by screwing over its employees with no long term strategy in place. They want to look good next quarter, and that is all they care about. The only way they can show any profits is by shifting their work force to cheaper labor markets. They have nothing new to sell, just have to maintain existing crap.
Invade and conquer the Middle East
now on a more serious note.
Corporations can have no value. Corporations can make money until they're blue in the face and distribute it to their employees but they can have no value in and of themselves.
No, Palestine was a subprovince of Syria, and most of Lebanon was part of the province of Phoenicia. The only part of Egypt in there was the Sinai, the roman extension in Jordan was part of it, and Arabia was never as part of Palestine but as part of Syria until the reorganization of the 5th century.
EXACTLY! IBM and other companies see the writing on the wall. Hussein Obama is a Marxist/Socialist and will stop at nothing to "redistribute" the wealth from "those that stole it" to "those that deserve it". What company would want to do business in America, when any profits they make are stolen. We have almost 40% of the people out there that for whatever reason, would rather sit on their butt and let the government "take care of them" instead of getting off their butts and taking responsibility for themselves. We have complainers, lazy butts, and those that think anything that happened to them is someone else's fault. It's a good thing the lax attitude of the average slob American wasn't around from 1941 to 1945 or we'd be speaking Japanese or German! Socialism will fail, as it has everywhere else when they run out of other peoples money to give away.
I gave it a read. It's well researched, but repetitive and sensational.
The system worked like this. One punchcard per person. Take the census data, find out a person's ethnicity, parent's ethnicity, religion, occupation, education etc. Now if you need to find the Jewish people, all you do is run a sort based on ethnicity. They were able to use the census data and the card sorters to find people with as little as 1/16 Jewish ancestry.
Now you have a stack of cards for each concentration camp. If you need a thousand people to build a railway, sort on profession, age, etc. Done. Distribute the cards to the guards and find people to find the prisioners with the right numbers tattooed on their armptis.
It's no surprise that the German subsidary did this work though. It was a German company. The surprise was how Watson was able to keep his hands in the cookie jar from over a wartime border.
Those ARE American jobs. The corporations of which we are speaking could not exist in their current form anywhere except in the US. We formed the laws that enabled their creation and growth, and have fought illegal immoral wars to expand their wealth and power. They owe us for the blood we've spilled on their behalf.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
+1, Truth
Considering what the asshats who won the war have done to the world in the intervening 60 years, I'm not sure that fascism isn't worth a second look. If it takes a fascist to finally relieve us of this plague of Enlightened Liberals, then by all means bring on the fascists, the sooner the better!
China recognises that one of its problems is "rote education" and that to compete with the USA, they need to be more creative, instead of just copy.
That China recognises the problem is just the first step.
Fixing it, well, that may take a generation or two, but one hopes that the USA doesn't drop the ball or else innovation could become outsourced too!
There are a couple of variations to the above themes I'd like to pursue... and I've worked in China and on the other side of the Atlantic with natives from both regions.
First, given time and lattitude, either sphere can produce creative workers. Where did the renaissance start? Who's hybrid car is the most prevalent? Where do the majority of hifi components you buy today come from and where are they designed? (Same for digital cameras.) If Japan can do it, why can't China?
Any comment about only one side of the Atlantic "pushing it" is extremely naive or us-centric or both. Where does Nokia do most of its mobile phone development? And perhaps most relvant for /.'s, where does the creator of Linux come from?
I certainly hope you are trolling. These days,it's sometimes hard to tell. But if you are not, I assume you will be first in line to man the gas chambers.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
As a fellow economic genius I have a few thoughts:
1.) Buying cheaper is more expensive.
We the consumers are as much to blame as the large corporations. The point is we are willing to buy the cheaper product to save ourselves money. There's nothing inherently wrong with this however we are thinking in the individual sense and not looking beyond the purchase and asking questions such as "How can they make this so much cheaper?" We just want cheap crap we can throw away later so we can buy more cheap crap (repeat over and over) which actually costs us more in the long run and fills those companies pockets.
2.) You need a babysitter?
We want the Uncle Sam to totally control how these companies operate however we fail to realize that we have the purchasing power. You don't need to be protected from buying from China or elsewhere. Make the decision on what to buy from where and whom. If nothing fits what your looking for then here's a thought: Stop buying shit. What could take months to years in the political arena can be accomplished instantly by you making a decision while your in the store. What happened to personal responsibility?
3.) The Chinese work hard.
Yea, I said it. The average Lee over there is no different than over here. He or she is just trying to support their family and put some food on the table. Would you let your family go hungry for someone else in another country? Deep down I doubt it because I know I wouldn't. Thus I can't fault them for it. If you want to turn your anger somewhere turn it at the guys lining their pockets with fat bonuses and those employees putting in the bare minimum and expecting premium wage.
4.) Our students need to not be stoopid.
I work and attend a college (no, I'm not the janitor). Everyday I hear students complain about how hard they have to study or how they can't wait to get shit faced. Yea, that's the way to go. Go ahead and burn some brain cells that won't come back.
They study to pass tests but not to learn the material. They complain about teachers trying to "over teach" them. We're so obsessed with having a society with individuals that have degrees that the quality of the person (by quality I mean someone who actually is willing to work hard to learn the material) getting it reduces its true significance. And a degree is only a meaning. That piece of paper doesn't make you more intelligent, it just means you know how to study for a test and do homework. Anyone can memorize things. What matters is your passion for learning, and your ability to take those memorized facts and use them in an abstract manner to solve problems that don't have answers yet. Your goal shouldn't be graduation but graduation as an effect of you mastering the material.
Why the rant? Because these same students who hate to learn and don't have a passion for knowledge take this same approach in the work field but have some sense of entitlement about them. When they can't do the job and get fired they blame the gov, the minimum wage guy from China, and everyone's momma. I would think our present situation would make students want to buckle down and give China something to be envious of but I still see students complain about how long their class was. Maybe China does deserve it more...
Thanks for your ignorance.
Firstly, the US wasn't involved in the war at the time, so it is pointless blaming them for that part.
Secondly, it is a dangerous path to go down, trying to evaluate what someone is going to use your tech for. No doubt you could blame Microsoft and its flight simulator for the WTC attacks?
Thirdly, this is a company, not a person. Do you think that the same people are making the decisions?? Do you think anything like that same culture exists today?
We have modern reasons to dislike IBM, without you dragging up this old shit.
And seriously drop all of that economics mumbo-jumbo. As the foundations of society are the ability to create things, transport those things and dessiminate them. I think that those earning a living by making a killing in stocks are living a sham.
Goldman Sachs' consistent(?!) $100 million profit (per day) is quite real.
IBM is just going the way that the government is going as well: it drives the value of the dollar down, it drives the wages in the US down so that the companies in the US can be competitive again after a while.
1. Do the Jewish people have a historic claim to the land of Palestine/Israel which has greater legitimacy than other claims?
Before the Hebrews first migrated there around 1800 BC, the land of Canaan was occupied by Canaanites. âoeBetween 3000 and 1100 BC, Canaanite civilization covered what is today Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and much of Syria and Jordan... Those would remain in the Jerusalem hills after the Romans expelled the Jews [in the second century AD] were a potpourri: farmers and vineyard growers, pagans and converts to Christianity, descendants of the Arabs, Persians, Samaritans, Greeks and old Canaanite tribes.â Marcia Kunstel and Joseph Albright, Their Promised Land
Furthermore, the Present-day Palestiniansâ(TM) ancestral heritage: âoeBut all these [different peoples who had come into Canaan] were additions, sprigs grafted onto the parent tree ... And that parent tree was Canaanite ... [the Arab invaders of the 7th century AD] made Moslem converts of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them, with the result that all are now so completely Arabised that we cannot tell where Canaanites leave off and the Arabs begin.â Ilene Beatty, Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan.
Neither was the rule in this area during any more than one of many periods. The Jewish kingdoms were only one of many periods in ancient Palestine: âoeThe extended kingdoms of David and Solomon, on which the Zionists base their territorial demands, endured for only about 73 years... Then it fell apart ... [Even] if we allow independence to the entire life of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, from Davidâ(TM)s conquest of Canaan in 1000 BC to the wiping out of Juda in 586 BC, we arrive at [only] a 414-year Jewish rule.â Ilene Beatty, Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan.
What about the Balfour declaration which promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine?
The Balfour declaration was made 1917. It was a decision made by a European power about non-European territory. It promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine on the condition that âoenothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestineâ¦â
As to how well the British kept this promise, Lord Balfour himself writes in 1919:
âoeThe contradiction between the letter of the Covenant and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation of Palestine (yes it was recognized even then!) than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American [King-Crane] Commission has been going through the form of asking what they are. The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.â
And what of the attitude of the great democracies?
Well, who better than Winston Churchill to clarify their position.
Churchill said: âoeI do not agree that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long timeâ¦I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, or at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.â
Or perhaps Truman would present a more enlightened view: âoeI am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.â
At my work we have a Chinese production facility. They do molding design as well. Molding design and Manufacturing are just as expensive. So skilled labour is just as expensive here as it is over there. Only thing is assembly is cheaper. But I can already see prices starting to rise. It's cheap but not that cheap. And then you have to send your stuff all across the world, this takes 3 months. Transportation is not free as well. So in all it's better now in China but when wages increase all this work will be coming back. And we will have a large Chinese middle class ready to spend some of their cash over here.
Norbu, J. (2004, 1 May 2007). Buying the dragonâ€(TM)s teeth. Retrieved 5 June 2009, from http://www.igfm-muenchen.de/tibet/ctc/2005/dragontext.pdf
Do everything in China, why not. What's the difference between software and undies?
IBM have history. They were after all the providers of punch card processing systems to the Nazis used to 'manage' the Jewish population. Why should anyone be surprised that they would slime up to the authoritarian regime of the century.
You would think the arrest of Stern Hu, Chinese-born Australian national, Rio-Tintoâ€(TM)s China iron ore executive would have put these sorts of plans into questionable status. But then the 'jailing' of Tibetan Buddhist Monks should have cause international outcry not the awarding of the Olympic games.
US or China, both continue to maintain nuclear weapons, both have gawd awful health care for the poor and below par standards of social security. Both have significant business and government corruption. The US in Vietnam or the Chinese in Tibet. Oh and both maintain the death penalty as well, (it's just a shame it isn't mandatory for white collar crime over $1M).
As Bart (Simpsons) just commented as he merged with a fly... "I'd be stupid not to do this."
...too young to remember Tiananmen Square.
The same thugs who are in power today ordered the murder of their own children. They had to bring in rural troops from the countryside to get it done, because the local soldiers refused to fire on their own people. To this day, the final death toll of that horrific purge is still unknown, though people like Harry Wu have some ugly, ugly estimates.
I have friends from China too. One of them made the exact same point you did. I made him an offer. I'll write a letter to George Bush calling him an idiot, and my friend would write a letter to the Premiere saying the same. We'd go to the Post Office and mail them together. He blanched, and declined.
Good Grief, we're talking about a place that won't even let Wikipedia through the door. I don't care if the Party is handing out lollipops every day now. They'll still cheerfully murder you for speaking your mind, asking the wrong question or praying to your god.
You haven't done anyone on Death Row any real favors just by giving them clean sheets.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
In a world where corporations are free to set up in any jurisdiction they choose it is impossible to enforce employment legislation on those companies. They will play off one country against another, offering investment in return for lax employment laws and little safety for the employees. That happens all the time. The UK shone in Europe as the economic powerhouse for just those reasons. Companies sought it out to make investments because they could get away with terms and conditions which would have been illegal elsewhere in Europe. Naturally, some politicians in other European countries looked on with envy, longing for the day when they too could dispense with those pesky employment laws and reap the benefits. That's what happened in Sweden at the last election and Sarkozy did the same in France. All in all, the freedom of corporations to pick and choose which country they will set up in reduces all nations to the same level. Don't be surprised when all nations are transformed into some version of what China now is - a one party, corporate state, with few personal freedoms.
The executives and shareholders who do the picking and choosing should be the target of stringent legislation and spend time in jail for their efforts and the goods and services supplied by such companies should be barred from import to all civilised countries.
China's growing power is the direct result of open trade.
You guys are pointing your finger at the wrong thing. Its US salary and healthcare cost bloat versus salary and health care costs paid overseas.
The governments ought to do is like you said. Have the directors live where the majority of the employees live. It makes sense. It's a great way to ensure that the workers have a respectable working conditions and a decent quality of life considering that's where the directors will have to spend a decent amount of their time.
I'm of the persuasion that when you speak to your higher ups, it's important for you to propose to them "how would you feel if you were in my place?" For example, if you work in a four foot by four foot cubicle by five foot cubicle and would like someone to improve your working conditions, I suggest you propose your higher-ups to try working in that cubicle for a year to see how they would feel. The same argument may be used for all the furniture in the office and everything else.
Be forewarned, the higher-ups always have a quick and witty way of making you look silly for asking such unreasonable requests. The only recommendation I have is to remind that the government/companies first and foremost should have a sense of obligation to make EVERYONE in the workplace and in the community they serve to feel welcome. The true test is to see higher-ups ready to get their hands dirty in every position of the company. If they can't do the work the position entails, the higher-ups should provide what the employees ask for, if within reason of course.
Here is another proposal for governments: for every employee turnover(let go, fired, moved on, whatever reason you may think of) , have the government fine the company a respectable amount. This will make the message loud and clear: governments and the community don't like turnover. Employees everywhere like stability in their life situation.
Everybody can grow within a company given the long-term commitment from all parties concerned.
Since stockholders have their hands on corporations, let have the corporations institute regulations fining those accountable for employee turnover a significant amount from their yearly salary. Say 40% of the hiring staff's/the firing staff's and the turnover staff's salary. That will send a message to those that hire and fire. When the corporation hires individuals, it's like a wedding. It's for the long-term. If you want a divorce, it's going to be the last resort and it's going to hurt everyone concerned employer and employee. The fines will go straight to a local community charity.
We aren't chasing them away as much as we're letting them get away with dirty pool in the process.
Hold them to account and if necessary, get assets frozen.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"My physician pays half of his salary to get insurance."
Yes. Curious why Obama hasn't made tort reform part of the health care "reform" bill, isn't it? Lawyers taking care of lawyers... How else would ambulance chasers like John Edwards get so filthy rich?
Business Taxes, Overbearing regulations. I don't blame IBM, I blame congress.
Folks, this is just the incremental dismantling of what was once the greatest nation on the face of this planet. Our tax structure pauperizes corporations (GM, Chrysler, soon-to-be Boeing if the Dreamliner has one or 2 more delays) and these corporation are our wellspring of prosperity. Prosperity itself is going overseas.
We can turn it around by doing one thing, and this is the only thing that will work. That is, pass the "Fair Tax." Read all about it at www.fairtax.com. Nuking all income-based taxes, nuking the IRS, and running the country on consumption taxes where we can finally tax EVERYBODY, and not let the rich people that are sitting on a big pile get off free, and the criminals that are running drugs and making billions get off free, and we can even tap the tourist industry, too.
That is the ONLY way to do it. Tax cuts won't do it - we're in too deep. We've lost too much, there's not enough money in the country left to tax. But the fair tax would bring an inrush of $10 - $15 trillion of foreign money into the USA to build factories (again, read the study at www.fairtax.org), and our biggest problem in a few years might actually be a labor shortage.
This is do or die. The CBO says our current course is "unsustainable" and they are right. Do it - or we get a 3rd world economy. Its that simple.
..just realistic. I saw the crash coming a long time ago and set out to become as independent as possible, including dropping demand for having to have so much of my life connected through the federal reserve note. I think I was accurate in the face of events over the last ten years. Way more than the bulk of wall street economists (the shills I mean) and especially the government who have lowballed the effects near constantly. Even with cooking the books, changing the way they count unemployment, changing how they create what it costs to live (dropping food and energy prices from their calculations) etc, it has still been worse than what they predicted. Near every quarter they have to readjust this or that. (I have a lot of journal entries on economics if you want to look, under "the almighty buck" but most of my other writings on the subject are gone now because they were on sites that are defunct)
Now not all big name economists got it wrong, the ones who also predicted it correctly are still saying that we haven't hit bottom yet, so I'll tend to believe those guys.
The biggest clue that the Feds were getting concerned that they had screwed up was when they stopped releasing all the money stats, the M3, which helped them push massive inflation easier.
As to living cheap, well one, I just am not doing apartments and random roomates, I am near retirement age and.well, just ain't gonna. My apartment days are long over. My GF and I share a small cabin and live on a farm. We3 have dogs and cats anf chickens and cows and a large garden, and that's jibe with apartment and roomate living. No mastter how cheap you get in an apartment, you are still 100% dependent on the whole system staying intact, which is a risk I simply will not take at this time..because I think it's near nuts to do that. If you do that you are relying on the biggest crooks and conmen in the world to have your best interests at heart..I just can't buy that being a smooth move.
I determined that moving to the the semi stix and being directly involved with food production and also we get a lot of our normal energy here directly onsite using firewood and having our own well, etc would be the best future proofing method. To get independent. Trying to eliminate the middleman as much as possible, we even have a modest solar array now and so on. We have little to no debt as well, a big help. Yes we buy in bulk and also grow in bulk ourselves, example we have enough stored food to last well over an entire year, even without having our garden, etc. Took awhile but I got there. I believe in wealth creation, just not filtering it through what I see as the dropping in value fed reserve note, so I switched to dealing in tangibles as much as possible..
We'll see what happens, but my prediction is it will get a lot worse here in the US and might take generations to recover, not just years or even decades.
The dominance of the fed reserve note as the international reserve currency is clearly in peril now, which is by far and away the big kahuna when it comes to quality of life in the US since we have offshored the bulk of wealth creation manufacturing. We need to import manufactured stuff now, and have been doing it with printed up pieces of paper. IOUs in other words (a "note" is a legal term for a debt instrument), and we we try to get them back to finance government, we just issue another form of IOU to these foreigners who hold our debt and they are getting *antsy* over that now and are slowing this effect and practice. It's slow, but the trend is steady and what you can read about it is it is a clear pattern and will continue. The fed note is medium term doomed right now, and as it goes, bye bye middle class USA.
We started out having our own manufactured items being exchangeable for imported oil (the petrodollar rise and the dominace of the fed reserve note after Nixon's move), but seeing as how that is not so much the case anymore, all these various outside nations now are questionin
Back when I first read Gibsons novels I realized that his vision of multinationals running the world is essentially correct. Made me kind of sad too. Since being laid in the financial services meltdown I am now working for an offshore outsourcing firm with the client being a Fortune 10 company. These days I can relate more to Tom Joad than Adam Smith...
Whatever problem you have, BLAME THE GOVERNMENT!
It's so easy! Try it with me!
BIG BAD GOVERNMENT!
See how easy and nice that is?
BLAME THE GOVERNMENT!
BLAME THE GOVERNMENT!
You don't have to think about it, you don't have to reason about it, you just have to say it!
BLAME THE GOVERNMENT!
Everyone now!
BLAME THE GOVERNMENT!
...and the USA having the need to fulfill it's obligations to the UN, I see no reason our nation had to get involved.
Oh, the fear of encroaching communism perhaps. Or the uncertainty of what would happen if the the North beat the South. Or the doubt over whether such a conquest would significantly strengthen the USSR.
The reasons for pre-emptive wars are all the same and almost always found lacking.
Blar.
Perhaps the italics tag is incompatible with straw man arguments :)
IBM isn't the only company that happily accepted money from the Germans.
"How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
IBM would not last a month if it were prohibited from selling products or services in the United States.
A few minutes with Google suggests otherwise.
"At the beginning of 2009, 71% of IBM's nearly 400,000 employees are working overseas - a 65% increase from two years prior." http://seekingalpha.com/article/131421-ibm-s-broad-global-presence-should-boost-q1-earnings
"IBM cut U.S. workforce by 6,000 while adding 18,000 overseas in 2008" http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/news/story/4783439/
"IBM is aggressively selling to small businesses and local governments around the world." http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/01/22/ibm-is-dead-long-live-ibm.aspx
"Not so gradually over the next five to 10 years, the 70/30 split between domestic and foreign investment could invert, resulting in an optimal placement of 70 percent of U.S. investment capital in international ventures."
http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/financialservices/us/detail/resource/B069979J37301Z69.html
Reality is not an ECON 101 class.
America and Europe have made lots of "widgets" by simply stealing the raw materials from other people. You have heard of this whole "colonization" thing that went on for a few centuries, don't you? Now, colonization is less direct and occurs through the use of international corporations. You should try and actually find out about all the people even today who are kept in dire poverty through the conditions created by the conditions imposed by corporations levelling their power on corrupt and/or poor governments. Or, who are just outright killed when they are inconvenient. You realize America waged wars in South America for the sake of a goddamn fruit company? Or that America had the democratically elected leader of Iran murdered just to protect the interests of oil companies? Because, of course, we can't have the actual people democratically decide how to use the nation's natural resources. They are not really free unless they are being robbed blind by their corporate masters. And that's over and above the fact that so much wealth has already been stolen through centuries of outright theft.
You really don't think through anything, do you? Or perhaps you are willfully ignorant of what conditions are actually like in the rest of the world. But don't worry. At this rate, Americans will discovering that soon enough for themselves.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
As we trade with these countries, we'll normalize their wages and stimulate their economy until we achieve parity. To be fair, this is EXACTLY what happened with Japan, and this is why Japanese and American salaries and standards of living are roughly comparable.
The problem with this example is that post-war Japanese society was molded by MacArthur in the American image, with strong labor protections. Japan and the US normalized because they were working from similar frameworks, with populations that were in the same league.
China and India will not normalize. They structurally can't until certain social progress is made, social progress that in the West took centuries and countless wars. The Chinese populations are still ruled with an iron fist (yeah, yeah, yeah, talk to me when you have do a Google search on Tiananmen Square from Beijing), and India is still selling women like cattle. For the love of God, they STILL, in 2009, have a working caste system (yeah, yeah, yeah, go 100 miles outside of Mumbai and then come talk to me). As for China, they're selling the organs of condemned political prisoners -- the Chinese version of OSHA ain't happening any time soon.
Wages cannot, and will not, achieve parity when one side of the table has 250 million citizens afforded the full protection of the law, and the other side has two billion slaves. Keep mixing those two solutions together and you'll end up with two billion, two hundred fifty five million slaves, not 2.25 billion descendants of Rousseau and Jefferson.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Now, start all over again, and give him a raise instead of extra hours. He takes more home with a $1.00 raise than he does with 10 hours of overtime, because he isn't bumped from one tax bracket to another.
Disclosure: I am among other things a certified accountant so I feel qualified to comment.
There certainly are some corner cases where crossing into another tax bracket will cause a net loss of income due to an increased tax burden so it is *possible* this happened to you. That said, situations like what you describe are VERY uncommon and almost always occur to those who already are earning an amount just barely below the break point between the two tax brackets and bump up just barely enough to get to the next bracket. Technically this is called a marginal cost - the tax cost of increasing production (hours in your case) by one unit. Since the tax brackets are not a continuous function (they have discrete steps), occasionally this is a problem but only rarely. The odds of this happening to a given person are really quite slim. You may have been one of the unlucky few but if so you are without question the exception to the rule.
This is almost as bad as demanding reparations for persons who were never ever slaves, nor were their parents. WW2 ended over sixty years ago. That's two generations. When are we going to move on?
I think we obviously HAVE moved on. Do you see a lot of boycotts over IBM products out there, over what happened during WWII? I don't think so.
The point is, Watson was in charge of IBM at that time, and it's clear that despite being in charge of the whole company, his allegiances were to Nazi Germany. (He even accepted the highest civilian honor Hitler could award a person with.)
Nobody's talking about demanding reparations here. I brought the topic up simply to illustrate that large corporations really have no "allegiance" to a country, just because they happen to have a corporate HQ placed there. Their agendas and claimed "requirements" for staying in a place are subject to change at any time, possibly based on nothing more than a change of management.
Job flight didn't start under Bush either - a lot of it happened under Clinton.
I think it is hysterical when fools attempt to attribute long term global economic trends to the policies of their recent political foes. Globalization is a process that has little to do with any single US president. Clinton, Bush, and/or Obama could no more stop globalization than they could stop the tides from occurring. Trying to credit or blame any of them for trends that seem to (but probably didn't) start during their respective administrations is at best a straw man and mostly just sounds foolish to informed ears. Globalization is a trend that has been occurring for decades. Improved communication networks have increased the pace recently but global trade has been increasing rapidly for decades (actually centuries). The various attempts in this thread to pin these global trends on presidents not fitting a particular blind ideology may feel good to you but makes each person that makes such arguments sound like a fool.
"Job flight" as you call it has always occurred and always will. Work tends to migrate to where the cost is lower. Always has and always will. If you actually can be bothered to look instead of uselessly trying to blame a president for economic realities they had nearly nothing to do with, you'll find countless examples of businesses moving to where they have a cost advantage. It doesn't even have to be absolutely cheaper, just comparatively cheaper to the alternatives.
The fact is that the pursuit of certain policies - or even the lack of pursuit of certain policies - has made the USA uncompetitive.
Has it really? The US has the largest and by many measures I've ever seen, most competitive economy in the world. There is a lot of hand wringing lately about China recently - which to those of us old enough to remember the 1980s, sounds a LOT like the hand wringing over Japan 20-30 years ago. Yes, there are new competitive pressures and the US economy will have to adapt. Some policies will have to change and some people will be made uncomfortable by those changes. It is a serious discussion but there is no reason to think that everything the US is doing is broken or that the US economy will be unable to adapt. It won't be easy but then it never has been.
The USA could have a lot more engineers available in its domestic workforce, thus driving down the cost of such skills, if its education system wasn't infested by numerous interest groups all intent on protecting themselves while ignoring the interests of students themselves.
You are a LONG way from proving that unions of any kind are directly or indirectly responsible for the state of US education or for the number of engineers graduating holding US citizenship. If you are going to blame teachers unions for the lack of engineers, you need to make a LOT more coherent and substantiated argument than the handwave I've quoted above. I think you'd have an easier time blaming pro sports or American Idol for the lack on interest in engineering but please, dazzle me.
These interest groups are mainly left-wing, of course. Just look at how many teachers' unions supported Obama over Bush, and it's pretty obvious.
Yes, teachers unions generally support the Democrats who historically have been more supportive of unions in general for a variety of complicated reasons. Unions often have serious and significant flaws but they often serve a useful purpose as well, namely to advocate the interests of the union membership. One has only to look back on some of the more abusive employment practices in years gone by to understand why they exist and continue to exist. Union membership is not an inherently evil proposition. There is nothing inherently wrong with groups of people with common interests n
We can and freeze a lot here. We grow our own beef and chickens and get some eggs, plus there's a big pond to fish from and we get bass from it. It's so close and easy to get fish from I don't bother with trying to can it, we eat it fresh when we want to or throw a few fillets in the freezer. But I hear ya, I could do that, should try it just for garnering another thing to learn to can I guess. And can't hardly keep up with the garden now, we've be canning and freezing a lot of the surplus. Running two stand alone chest freezers and the side freezer on a two door big freezer/fridge combo. Modest increase in electric bill for a huge decrease in grocery store bill, it is a good trade. Shelves full of home canned stuff, plus we store our own dried beans and so on. Here's a cool one, we have propane heat plus wood heat, but the last two winters we didn't use any propane at all, zilch. I just cut and split some extra wood, done. That saves a lot of cash right there, but the propane in the tank is still good for decades if we really need it for emergency use, and it is paid off.
The whole deal is to try and get what you would normally spend cash on, without needing the cash, and eliminating the middleman suckage. I haven't found replacements for every bill yet, like this internet connection, but we have done a lot so far. By going directly to the tangibles, it saves bunches and your hourly "pay" goes up in a sense. It is a way to "insure" both future availability of something you need, plus lock in a price better when you do all or most of it yourself. Independence rather than dependence.
Here's a direct figure for you: by growing our own beef, we pay moderately more for hamburger than you can get it at the store on sale..but all the other cuts of beef are the same "price" to us, so we save a ton. We eat ribeyes for barely hamburger price, and that is organic grass fed to boot. Price that in the store, heh. Same with our organic garden produce.
I don't do my own butchering on a whole beef, just too big and no walk in fridge/cooler for the required hanging and aging, so that's the biggest expense, just the slaughterhouse fee, which isn't that bad overall. I find someone to take one half, we take the other half. Chickens I do myself, I can knock one out pretty fast now. In a pinch though I can butcher a whole beef, I mean if I *really* have to, I have done it before twice, but I will admit I am not as good or fast as a pro butcher who does it all day long as a biz and is set up for it with huge meat saws and electric grinders, etc.
And then there's the normal thrifty action, hit the thrift stores/ yard sales for good used clothing, all that stuff you can imagine. I try to avoid buying anything brand new unless necessary. Even my tools, if there is something I need that I don't already have, I'll hit the pawnshops first before shelling out the full price scratch. My computer desk here is just an old platform bed I built and used for years, no longer needed, so now it sets across a bureau for my precious gadget junk (has to go someplace..I am a nerd, can't throw out old gadgets;) ) and my file cabinets. Done, "free" executive sized desk. My computer is built from cheap parts mailorder from tiger, then recycled hard drives and optical drives, and I only did that because the last one was broken, physically broken, stopped booting and it was an old 200 mghz pentium pro! I was using that until two years ago or so (I think around fedora core 8 maybe? Don't remember, around then). We don't do cable TV(not even available here) or satellite, but get by with an old regular TV and one of the perverter boxes and over the air signals. Movies we buy used tapes or disks or I download free to copy documentaries and so forth (I don't peg leg anything, but am in favor of serious copyright law reform there). Books I buy used and ye aulde ladee hits the library. We have some *really* nice and expensive carpeting here, I got it for free for tearing it out at some rich folks house, they didn't
I recommend reading a book called "IBM and the Holocaust" (http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com).
This is a company that happily accepted huge sums of money from the Germans during WWII to computerize the process of hunting down and exterminating Jews, and even "hardened" several of their facilities so they'd survive Allied bombings. All the while, they claimed to be an American business.
It's arguable that in a sense, they "left" the United States back then, even if they still retained a big physical presence here. Despite the law preventing IBM from being able to move their profits out of German banks during the war, they STILL happily worked on their projects for them, knowing full-well they couldn't even touch the money for years.
The claims about IBM and the holocaust are distorted - and I am an orthodox Jew.
I have an even better idea - how about looking at the facts - IBM's presence in the USA is not shrinking by any means. This whole article is based around the myth that IBM's USA workforce is shrinking but that simply isn't true.
I can't stand for a moment the assertion that the USA is the most polluting nation on the Earth.
Oh boo-hoo! The data doesn't fit your preconceived notion of reality. It is an objective and easily verified fact that for a wide variety polluting emissions, including gases, particulates, and chemical, the US produces among the most pollution on earth, both in total and per capita. This is in significant part due to the size of the US economy and population (largest and third largest in the world respectively) and really shouldn't be surprising. Furthermore environmental regulations are almost always opposed on economic grounds (sometimes sensibly, often not) by various companies and industry associations. Do we really need to get into American's love affair with oversized, over-polluting automobiles?
That is a flat out lie and an attempt to skew statistics in some anti-America hate that doesn't really know what is happening.
Ahh, I get it. Everyone that points out a flaw in America must hate America. Sorry, as an American I'm not buying that shitty argument. Patriotism isn't a substitute for facts. The US has made good progress in environmental stewardship but let's not pretend that we live in some sort of unpolluted garden of eden shall we? I think if you bother to consult with any epidemiologist or someone who actually studies pollution and its effects you'll find that there is some pretty nasty stuff out there. I can introduce you to several if you like. I grew up less than 20 miles from a superfund site near Cleveland (Diamond Alkali Painseville Works if you care) that last time checked still has not been cleaned up decades after production ceased. I live in the US and I'm not so naive as to think that pollution isn't a very real and serious problem.
By nearly every possible measure, America is a much cleaner and healthier place to life, raise children, and grow food.
Cleaner than what? Cleaner than who? Cleaner than when? Be specific. There are plenty of places in the world measurably cleaner than the many places in the US. There are plenty of industrialized countries with measurably fewer health problems from pollution and longer life spans. The US has made progress (sometimes very impressive progress sometimes not so much) but don't pretend it is even close to ideal. The US generates FAR more particulate and gaseous pollution than most countries on earth. Really only China comes close and they are handicapped in dealing with it by their economic growth needs. (Hard to control pollution when you need 8% annual growth in the economy) I hope the US government continues to improve environmental policies but the US frequently isn't even leading the way much less the cleanest.
The Chinese, Indians, Koreans and Japanese never had any.
Workers were expected to be owned by a company for life,
No trade unions, no insurance, crap wages. That's the plan for the globalists.
In the end it will come down to a choice between revolution and slavery.
America is hell-bent on the slavery option.
Put it this way: Albert Einstein discovered relativity while working part time as a patent clerk in Switzerland. The Swiss have standards. Einstein wasn't enslaved enough from being prevented from creativity. Even if Asian countries produces Einsteins, they would have these Einsteins walking around with no clothes or food (India, China), or else worked to death and called 'crazy' (Korea Taiwan etc)
The erosion of standards, and corrupt litigation of ethical practice is stifling innovation and basically preempting a 'planet of the apes' type scenario.
Is this what you want:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKOEQVgONh0
...who have allowed the mega-corporations to become far too powerful.
I have no issue with the development of the Third World, but not at the expense of the Western World - all that is happening here is more and more of the money going into the pockets of the rich elite.
If a corporation trades in the US, Europe or other rich parts of the world but, at the same time, outsources more and more jobs outside those countries, then the governments need to step in and tax their profits heavily.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
So, the big multinational company tries to leave your region and wont hire you unless you are willing to leave to say India too.
So, you stay in U.S., for now unemployed.
You would be thinking "What should I do now?" You should remember, how the U.S. started - colony, 3rd world country, pioneering, hard work, ...
So you should simply begin to care for yourself: start your own small company, be self employed, ...
While doing so, you would realize how much you're paying to the state and what you get from state in return. So you will push the state to drop the "services" which do not have good price/benefit ratio. Like all the stuff which some big copanies lobbied for themselves at the expanse of small people.
And you either succeed or die.
I guess you would succeed, but of course only because you are skilled and work hard.
And IBM? They can lobby also say in India. They might even make same stuff happen to India as previously U.S. and India will become the world power. But if the ways of IBM do not change, India will too grow "over regulated" and thus "too expansive" and they will move on.
Good things:
Bad things:
hany
...it bears repeating: When it comes right down to it, the ethics, the morality, the honor, the patriotism, even the religion of "the right" comes to a screeching halt right at the edge of their wallets.
There is an article on third-world diseases showing up in the U.S. http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/22/1910245/Developing-Worlds-Parasites-Diseases-Enter-US. It is, of course, accompanied by observations that the lack of a national health care system is a threat to national security from those who think rationally.
Equally inevitably, said article provoked a storm of "Health care is not a right!" and the rumor-mongering of government control over who does and does not get health care from "the right". Questions of the national interest - of what is going to be the best course of action to take to protect America over the long term - simply cannot crack their walnut-like, short-term, and "Me First!" thinking.
To the point. This detachment of the mega-corporations was, to my mind, the entire goal of "free trade"; that fact is reflected in how inequitably free trade was structured. There is simply no way that the American worker with their cost of living can compete with an offshore worker whose cost of living is 1/5th, 1/10th or less of the American worker. It simply cannot be done.
The mega-corporations and America's wealthy few - the people who control really big money - wanted to isolate that money from the well-being of the American people and thus have the ability to sacrifice the national interest in order to further enrich themselves. (Although I am quite sure that they told themselves that they were just "distributing their risks through the expansion of their portfolios", those proud American worker/consumers - "labor" or "human resources", in their terms - have long been their most hated enemy.)
As this article and the state of our economy make apparent, they have achieved that goal.
Now it may get far worse; the money-before-country thinking of our corporations and wealthy few does not exclude protecting the ability of our nation to be the dominant military force on the planet. For instance, what was the first thing that China did with the dual-use technology that our corporations transferred? They knocked a satellite out of the sky. Did any of our wealth few or our corporations evince any alarm whatsoever?
No.
It is pure conjecture at this point to suggest that the people who really control our "right" would flatly sell our country out. But I note that the man who runs the media conglomerate that has dedicated itself to promoting division in the United States and the philosophy of "Money justifies all actions." has dual citizenship; I would suggest that keeping an eye upon the number of our wealthy few who pick up additional citizenships might prove to be a useful barometer with which to gauge the future.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
on the way out, IBM.
Seriously, IBM has been increasingly becoming irrelevant in recent years, the only things that make them worthwhile is their fledgling processor market, which in comparison to intel and AMD, is quite pathetic, their servers, which most companies settle with Dell or other brands, their Linux support, which is why I think most of Slashdot is up in arms about this -- Then their patent portfolio.
Fine, let them move to another country, when that country, if china, decides to execute or jail the company execs and install their own puppets, They're no longer these powerful corporate gods. They're only this powerful because the US government allows them to be. Chances are, if they move to China, China will see it as a better move to take them over completely, slowly but surely. Then the country of China will own their extensive patent portfolio. Why do you think china is suddenly cracking down on copyright and patents? They want to be recognized by the world, so when they get ahold of huge patent reserves that companies like IBM have, they can wield them against their competition. Guess what happens if the US, a dwindling power, denies those? The US will have sanctions put on it.
Now's the time for some startups to quickly fill IBM's void.
This country was FOUNDED by 'Enlightened Liberals.' There's a great fascist state you can go participate in RIGHT NOW: Isreal. Go have fun, fucking Zionist.
You know, when we attacked a nation that had not attacked us.
Oh yes, our allies of convenience...heh.
No sale.
Blar.