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Laid-Off Disney IT Workers Decry Offshoring At Trump Rally (computerworld.com)
dcblogs writes: Two former Disney IT workers spoke at a Donald Trump campaign rally on Sunday, telling about the shock of having to train their foreign replacements. Speaking at the large rally in Madison, Ala. was Dena Moore, a former Disney IT worker who trained her foreign replacement, and said tech workers are reluctant to talk about the problem. IT workers "are afraid, they're in shock," she told the cheering crowd. "They're not coming forward because we have been taught all our lives to make do and keep going on. But you know what? This little old grandma is going to stand up for what's right. "The fact is that Americans are losing their jobs to foreigners," said Moore. "I believe Mr. Trump is for Americans first."
The protectionist measures suggested by Trump will harm everyone including the ones supposedly being helped.
This is a bit of a misunderstanding of free trade. In theory, free trade *on balance* benefits everybody, but even with the theoretical best free trade agreement possible, some people are more adversely affected in the short run than others. And in practice, reestablishing equilibrium at a higher rate of output may be difficult to achieve, as argued in an important new paper about free trade.
It would be wonderful if there existed policy positions that have all upside and no downside, but free trade does not appear to be one of them.
No, she is a criminal. She should be in prison
I'm sorry but you are wrong. She has been chased nonstop for 20 years by republicans and she has never been found guilty. If you investigate someone by 20 years and you cannot prove anything maybe there just isn't anything there.
Had you said she sometimes uses shady practices I might have agreed (which politician and/or millionaire doesn't?), but this "she's guilty because I say so" is just empty.
No, colonialism is when you strip-mine the resources of a foreign nation at far below market value, because the foreign citizens lack either the knowledge or power to resist your exploitation.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Didn't Disney end up reverting a good portion of the layoffs?
Disney cancelled planned layoffs in New York and California after the earlier layoff of 200+ workers in Florida became public. The way the PR announcement got worded, those layoffs could still happen at a later date.
Didn't Disney end up reverting a good portion of the layoffs?
They did - when they got caught and called-out on it in public. Can't sell as many animated DVDs if you have a bad reputation, after all.
I'm fairly sure it has had another bad benefit for them as well. For instance, I remember a recruiter cold-calling me and asking if I wanted to work for them as a DevOps/Automation engineer. I politely told him that he can tell his client to collectively fuck themselves with a pole-ax, and specifically named their H1-B policy as the reason why.
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the first time he's been turned down that day, and I'm very certain that Disney is going to have a damned hard time hiring anyone that they cannot-so-easily replace (seriously - would you work for them in a capacity where they've demonstrated a complete disregard for employee retention?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You honestly believe that Trump is going to protect American jobs?
Oh hell no. I'm surprised he isn't having them made in Vietnam or China or India.
No. The question in my mind is simple: Vote for an insider who's lived in the political machine for decades -- wife of a two-term president -- or vote for the crazy outsider who spouts racism, intolerance and a populist message which happens to resonate with a lot of people who perceive the current situation to be the fault of everyone in Government.
Trump's is a powerful message, unfortunately it brings to mind similar vitriol spouted in the early third of the last century by someone who thought like that, spoke like that, and obtained power and carried out his narrow vision.
The difference between then and now, there and here, is our system of government. If you think Obama got cock-blocked at every turn, should Trump win, they'll do the same to him. They'll do the same to Billary, too.
So in a sense, our crazy-ass, broken political machine may well end up saving our sorry asses from our own misguided decisions.
After all.... the top gets rotated to present the illusion of change. Nothing really does change. The president can set tone, inspire and lead (or fail utterly to do it).. but the president cannot simply dictate "build a wall" or "throw 'em all out."
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I assume only long-term economic behaviors which have operated as such since hunter-gatherer man.
the reduction in unemployment you refer to are people settling for (two or three) jobs as unskilled labor
The reduction in unemployment is per-capita, and you don't get -3 unemployment for 1 person getting 3 jobs. Employment is a function of job availability, not a function of how job-ready the populous is; and job availability is a function of what the populous can buy.
My logic successfully and correctly predicts all gross economic behaviors throughout human history. Your arguments are idealistic platitudes. Particularly of note:
you assume all profits are fed back into the local economy
That's not what happens. Various economic factors drive prices down. Let's explore some.
Competition is the biggest one: either direct (food producers are *common*, so you can't overcharge on food without losing customers) or indirect (smartphones are more popular than Crocs, so you can't have that huge mark-up on Crocs and expect people to buy your product when they won't have money left over after buying a smartphone). Goods with bigger markets--more demand--are more ripe for competition; low-demand and low-flexibility goods and services (rental housing is a notable one; diamonds are another) aren't, and tend to hold bigger margins and drive off price competition more readily.
A special case of competition is supply-chain competition. When GM wants to build cars, they find a contract for, say, 100 million tonnes of steel per year for 5 years. There are a dozen steel mills with that kind of output. Say they each charge $500/tonne for steel. A steel mill makes that steel at a cost of $430/tonne. When approached, the steel mill goes back to the steel ore mine and the coal mine (you need coal to make steel) and negotiates for a contract for massive amounts of ore and coal to ensure it won't breach contract. The same process occurs: the costs of these things drop from $200 of coal per steel-tonne and $150 of ore per steel-tonne to something closer to the *labor cost* of those products. In the end, the steel producer gets his costs down to $230/tonne, and sells steel to GM for $232/tonne, netting a $200 million per-year profit (thanks to the coal miners and steel ore miners also cutting their margins razor-thin to capture a $200 million per-year contract for 5 years--a billion dollar sale they'd otherwise miss out on).
That kind of supply-chain contracting drives prices for things like cars and buildings down toward labor costs.
Market saturation is another factor. 1TB SSDs cost about $200 to make last year, but had a price of $700; now they carry a price of $330. All the early adopters have thrown in their money, buying up drives with huge margins; it's no longer **profitable** to charge those big margins, so Samsung et al have backed down pricing to capture the next rung of the market. The prices will eventually settle closer to labor cost.
Consumer resistance to inflation is another factor. Each year, the amount of income per production increases, causing a rise in prices; consumers dislike rising prices, and so will slow their purchasing. This causes downward price pressure. Manufacturers have attempted downsizing on goods they can't adequately cut prices on.
Let's take some real data.
The Consumer Price Index shows a general increase in prices per unit good of 0.8% across 2014 and 0.7% across 2015; the CPI for food shows food has inflated much faster than general inflation, at 2.4% and 1.9%, with home-cooked meals experiencing a 2.4% and 1.2% price increase (eating out became a lot more expensive in 2014--2.9% over the year).
The GDP per capita in 2013 was $52,607.9
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The top 20%tile are paying 90% of the taxes,
Even if that's true, what it means is that the plebes aren't being paid enough to pay taxes. If the richest among us want us to pay more of the taxes, they can pay us more wages.
It's paywalled but you can read the headline and first few lines. http://www.wsj.com/articles/to... Top 20% pay 84% of all taxes and bottom 20% not only DON'T pay taxes but actually get PAID by the IRS. We've had socialist redistribution of wealth in the USA for many years.
There's also the small fact that Bernie Sanders has already been addressing it -- long before Trump brought it up, in fact -- and conveniently has none of Trump's racist baggage either.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Do you have any idea how hard it is to be a long-time US Congressman and still manage to have so few assets? Why, not only would you have to forego taking even the smallest bribe, but you'd have to actively resist investing any of your $174,000/year salary in Wall Street, too!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
he's not a communist, he's a social democrat. stop repeating what you hear on fox news.
Poor people tend to pay a higher percentage of their income
as sales tax than rich people (though I dont have data to back that statement up.
could Google it..)
Not quite but almost. poor people pay a higher percentage of their income as sales tax on necessities than rich people. That makes sales taxes which don't avoid being placed on necessities inherently regressive.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"