I could not agree more. I believe the real problem in this country is too many people manage and very few do any real work. I can not help but believe the levels of managment and outsourcing from start to finish hinder real work.
It seems whenever I need to call a company for some reason I end up on the phone for hours and at some point request to speak to a manager. And then usually their manager. Nobody has any empowerment (theres a work that sucks) to make a decision or commitment. The company I am calling may be saving a buck but it is costing me plenty in wasted time.
In general my managers have made more money that I did. I have also worked as a contractor in a chain I knew was 4 deep and the customer was being charged $250.00 and hour and I got $65.00 to actually do the work. I think current business theory is not actually working too well.
Basically, while the article brings up the interesting concept of what offshoring information can do, this particular case of offshoring is really not the greatest example, since the breach of contract occured in the US.
This is a totaly screwed up comment. This is one one hell of a good example of one of the problems with offshoring. Giving out personal information is much worse than a breach of contract.
The real problem displayed here is the originator of the data had NO IDEA what was being done with the data. As a patient of the hostpital it is the hospitals problem to insure my data is not incorrectly used. Contract be damned they did not do this. As a result that data was outsourced to a country where it could be abused with no consequences. The system does not work. Nobody was responsible for the data. No questions about it.
I also do not feel any pain for the company in Florida that has been doing this for over 20 years. They failed to control the data. At every level management wanted cheap and they got what they paid for.
The World Trade Center disaster hurt the lives of thousands of people. An unscrupulous big firm overseas being used by uncrupulous firms here could do much more damage to lives.
GWB is the, and I mean this as THE, representative of the United States to every other country in the world. This guy cannot be bothered to learn how to speak "American". I have lived and traveled much of the United States for the last 40 years. With the advent of global communications I have noticed the general speech of the US is merging together when communicating together. I have gone into many small towns, stopped in dinners and heard some god awful dialects. Usually when they talked to me, an outsider, they instantly "americaicanized" the dialect.
This does not always happen. Again, in general, this tended to not happen in the deapest back waters of the country. For GWB to refuse to learn and speak as a representative of the United States lables him as a back water hick.
I agree partly with that statement. There are executives that realy have a handle on things. I think they are a small minority.
I really and trully beleive the current situation in business is backlash from bad managment (exective level). Lets face it a large number of the companies founded during the 90s that are now going bust did it on ideas that were stupid at best. It is not a wonder they have and are failing in bunches.
I should probably clarify that I consider the investors in a corperation on an even level with the management. This is specially true for a start up. There was a lot of investing in silly things in the 90s and the current lack of any investment at all is a back lash to this.
Good or bad corperations and their managment have the power position in this country. As an example consider the situation in Silicon Valley. In the late 90s new graduates were being bussed in and given $85,000 and $90,000 per year salaries to write web pages and such. For a student in, lets say Kansas, this sounds like a lot of money. For China and India it is a truck load of money. In Silicon Valley this will rent a small apartment with an hour commute, food and beer part of the week. This situation is directly the responsibility of corperations refusal to operate anywhere else.
So, management suddenly realizes they have created the big doodoo, as my daughter would say, and need a new "idea" to run under. This time it is outsourceing. These thricks are what I refer to as the "management trick of the day". They are suddenly seen as the thing to do and every good executive jumps on the band wagon.
The trouble is they are knee jerk reactions. Yes this is saving money at the moment but what is the long term result of these actions? Like the crap with the dot com bubble I do not trust them to give any real interest to the future. Lets face it, an executive that can get out with several million today will be covered in the future. I have studied many economy texts and find them all lacking to a large extent. They always forget that the economy is made up of people. Enough of this.
I have though many times of opening my own company. I actually have one that has done Linux consulting for several years now. I have a number of ideas for projects I would like to do. Several of them could probably be money makers. The problem with software is it takes a lot of time to get it right for the kind of projects I do. I do not have the capital, and will probably not be able to get it, to spend the next 2 to 3 years doing design and developement and then a nother 1 to 2 years trying to market it. I will have to stick with doing Linux consulting on the side. The truth of the matter is that this is drying up considerably and the type of stuff I did is also being outsourced.
Actually if you look at where most large companies started this is a load. Most companies got big because of the Idea of one person or a small group or they just happened to be there at the right time. All to often when the conditions go away the company goes down or on auto pilot.
Go get an MBA. As an engineer (if your any good) you will gag at most of the ideas. Out sourcing is the management trick of the day.
There is more to economics and society than make it cheap to beat the competition. For societies to function all levels have to participate in an active and working economy.
America has built a working economy over the years with the participation of companies, employees and a mediator known as the government. Government has played a big part at all levels that is often hidden from view. As an example one of the reasons gas is cheap in this country is the governments interest in the middle east.
As a part of my MBA I took a class in business economics. Nothing else was required. I got a very good example of business economic thinking from the teacher. He worked as an economist for Southwest Gas and Electric in Arizona. During the problems in California, providers in Arizona were required by state regulation to provide Arizona first at the agreed upon price (I beleive $.ll / kwh at the time). This guy told us the company looked at this as a loss of over a dollar per kwh because they could not sell this power to California and leave Arizona citizens high and hot.
It is and has always been the job of government to ensure the long term success of their voters. Businesses get a licence as part of an agreement with goverment to ensure the health and welfare of the society they live in.
NAFTA, the WTA, etc. were all created by corperations. India prevents foreign workers and protects it markets like crazy. China does the same thing. At the same time they care very little about their workers. Money is far more important.
WTF does this have to do with socialism. Common welfare has everything to do with democacy. Oh I forget, we have allowed the corperations to buy out our politicians and rights.
Ethics are dead but it is not only at the CEO level. If americans put push hard enough these companies will change. The problem is that americans are just as short sighted as the businesses. I like to call this the Wall Mart syndrom.
At one point in time Wall Mart made a big dead about supporting "Made in America". I find it hard to find a product (other than groceries) there that is made in america.
There has been a lot on this discussion about not being able to live on minimum wage. This is very true but it may just be possible to live better on minumum wage and not buy that DVD player and pay bucks to rent movies.
I personally believe CEOs such as Ms. Carly HP are guilty of treason and selling out America. But the truth of the matter is most Americans are just as bad.
1. What is not to understand. Did she own the music? No. Did she get it? Yes. How many articles are out there on the web about this problem? Loads.
If she did not have an idea what she is doing then she should not be allowed to use the computer unsupervised.
Having said that you are correct that the system is broken. It simply comes down to every body not buying music AND NOT DOWN LOADING IT. At some point in time the artists will quite signing contracts with the big labels and they will die off. At the some time nobody will be guilty of theft or copyright violations.
Nothing is remarkable about it at all. American companies are giving them all this technology for two reasons.
First they think they can save a buck and beat the competition on price. This is a falacy. When everybody does the same thing it is self defeating. It is just driving profits down for everybody and eleminating the people who buy their products here.
Secondly, and you can yell its not true all you want, it is for all practical intents required to relocate to China to sell there. Just look at the trade imbalance and it shows the truth. What the american companies have not yet realized is China will take the technology and use it else where. They are trying to design their own CPU, where did they learn how to do this? They have a space program. Who has given them the technology to maybe be successful?
Intel, HP, Motorola, IBM are the culprits along with the Walmarts, Kmarts and american citizens that insist they should have a house full of useless trinkets that do not cost much.
Free markets always have two ends. Producers want to maximize profit and consumers want things a cheap as posible. One of the problems in this country is that no one wants to look at the true cost of prodution and equate that to a reasonable probit margin.
In the best of all worlds consumers both consumers and producers would be informed of new needed intrastructure and both would be willing to take it into consideration. Currently both consider it a necessary evil if and only if it is in danger of immediate failure. The electical system is not the only example of this. I consider the fact that I have a hard time finding any clothing, electronics, etc. that has a made in anywhere but south east asia on it.
I find it some what unnatural that businesses could be as blind as they are but I find it unconsionalble that out corrupt government could let things get as bad as they are.
While getting my MBA the economics professor was a guy that worked for one of the Arizona power companies. He presented some interesting information.
Arizona requires in state power producers to supply in state first. At the time, in 2000, were were paying 9 cents per Kilowatt hour of which 4 cents were production and 5 cents transpertation charges.
As an economist his departent produced a report for the government and the company stating the company was loosing (I think these are the numbers) over 80 cents a Kw/h. They were acutally showing a profit of 3 cents a Kw/h but since they were required to sell it in Arizona and could not send it to California they could state a loss over posible revenues.
He never would answer the question about whether they were able to show a net loss on this aspect or not. In any case he indicated the Enron costs could be correctly stated and still very much mis state the real costs of production.
I hope others are following our discussion and will chime in at some time.
Yes this could affect pensions plans including 401K. But looking over my 401K plans I hve been pretty much a looser for several years running and I think we need to take a closer look at this. I'll get to the sales taxation issue further down.
I actually think american businesses have screwed up royal by believing they should all go public. Going public rarely has had any relation to furthur building of a company. It has actually been more to allow the original investers to cash out quickly at others expenses. The late 90's were an exception but as seen this lead only to a big screw of investors. It has also incoraged bad practices ala Enron, Tyco and Worldcom.
The purpose of a business is to make money for sure. If it is done in a manor that hurts society in general it is the peoples right, through the government, to control it. This is the actuall reason why governments require a license to do business.
The other side of this is that at some time a business becomes just so large that it is impossible to grow in any realistic fashion. At that point in time the stock price will almost surely drop. After all the price of the stock after initial offering has no real basis in the companies ability to perform. A good company can be providing work and economic health for many employees and providing a large profit and its value will still drop according to the stock market.
I have forgotten the actual number but I believe I have recently seen a statistic that 60 or 70 percent of business in the US is actuall done through small business. This is a stagering sum that goes pretty much unnoticed by wall street. To actually reconize this would be to cut their power base in the market.
The point of all this is that I would like to see the ability for my 401K to direct a portion to a fund to support small business with loans. I think the small percentage interest I get there will probably out perform my current 401K posibilites. It should at least cut some of the fund managers getting big bucks for shoving the money from stock to stock (usually more than the profit on the sale of the stock).
As for the sales tax. I actually have no real problem with that. The one consequence is that it will definity place a heaver tax burden on the working poor. I think well fare is a necessary evil that should be minimized and doing this will probably increase it and it's influence.
I am also not sure how it will effect the taxes of the wealthy. While they are known for consicuous consuption it is often taken to places where they are not taxed by america. It could very well be a net loss here.
I think the tax problem needs to address the issues first of how to illiminate the need for taxes. First and foremost is a smaller government more focused and real issues. Secondly it is actually the governments job to see that no one entity can cause harm to the american nation and its people.
I take this to imply the world on a whole for the most part. This means that we should there, as well has here, be concerned that representitives of america do not cause harm anywhere.
I believe China and India are good examples of governments that place their own good over there peoples. China in particular have devalued their currency to the point where the lack of effecencies are irrelevant. We can send work over there for cheaper no matter what. Most of the workers still live in abject poverty while the government sucks of much of the money coming into the country.
This has the further consquence not of only of loss of jobs here, but also of loss of tax revenue to pay the expenses of people out of work. I also strongly believe these other countries have nothing to loss and will take all knowledge sent and force the american companies out very soon. The arabs did this with oil and China, India, etc. will do this with high tech. Net result in a co
Run that by anyone who has worked in any general labor trade, manufacutring, etc. over the past 20 years. This is certainly not the case.
That is actually part of my point. I have also worked in manufacturing on the assembly line. Spent a year working at little better than minimum wage butting IV tubes together for Cutter labs. That was when I decided I needed to get it together and go back to school. I have a pretty good idea what it cost to make an IV set. It is not even close to the price on a hospital bill. There are a lot of Corpertions who make big money on the pain society feels. I have no problem with not taxing a company that has no profit. I do think that correctly taxing a company will incourage more downward movement of revenue dollars. There will not be such a big reward for screwing the employees.
If corperations were taxed and not people we would be paid less but effectively have the same spending power.
Not sure if that's true, but a better scenario would be if people were taxed and not corporations. In the latter case, lower income strata are not forced to purchase higher-priced products to subsidize the corporate tax burden, yet the middle-class continue bear the greatest tax burden.
Whatever is done the middle class will continue to provide most of the tax dollars to the government simply because they will buy products representing a higher percentage of their income. Either they give it this way or they give it as a yearly income tax. It all costs the same. What is different as I said is the overhead will be reduced. Government should not encourage scavangers.
I think the problem is much higher that normally recognized. As far as personal income taxes go corperations also pay a high price to comply with government rules. After all they pay to have all the with holding accounting and reporting done. Most americans do not realize that the corperation also pays at least as much social security as is taken out of an employees pay check.
Either way they cost of taxation comes back to the empoyers and they pass it back to the customers. Decreasing overhead always helps on the bottom line. Moving personal income taxes to corperate taxes will eliminate a large portion of over head.
This is all very true but I'd like to see anybody get the/.ers to go in a coordinated direction. That would be worth the time to try.
I think the problem is both easy and hard at the same time. Money always talks. Little pieces of it doing the same thing add up to big money also. If we can get americans to agree something is bad and support a boycott things can change rapidly.
My current best pet project is a boycott of chinese products. Well, actually pretty much anything from asia. I recently read something about some mexican workers that were stunned when they found some to the mexican trinkets they were selling had "made in china" stamped on them. I am also trying to boycott any company sending work to china.
If you could get 1 percent of the american population to participate in this companies like wall mart and that crowd will take immediate notice. This would probably mean at least a 2 or 3 percent drop in profits.
All taxes contribute to the end price of products. We get paid more to cover the taxes we pay. If corperations were taxed and not people we would be paid less but effectively have the same spending power. What our current system does is support a whole load of societal free loaders known as personal tax accountants and a few hundred thousand IRS employees. Simple do the math.
And no uncontroled pure capitalism does not work. In order to live in a society there has to be a benefit. Pure capitalism is always an all for me situation and uncontroled leads to chaos.
Our consitution dictates a nation that is of the people, for the people and by the people. That is in reality no longer true. Political campaigns are paid for by big money. Right or wrong, if you pay for it in a capitalistic society you should expect to benifit more from it than anyone else. And it does happen.
Having said that, governments need to look at what they do very carefully. Ours does not. Everything is done pretty much willy nilly on a "look at me" or "shit, gotta cover my ass" basis. There is not continutity and reason to most of it.
The next question is how do people start changing the system. I have recently moved to San Diego due to my previous position being moved off shore. I look at the recall here as as a fiasco but maybe there can be some good from it also.
But again, it is the candidates with money that are at the forefront. I am tempted to vote for the porn queen but probably will vote for Arnold. I do not think that he will be much better but he is basically middle of the road in the directions that more reflect my concerns. At least things will be different and that can't be all that bad.
I agree with most of what you say. The only problem is that pure capitalism does not work. The result is always periods of expansion for the wealthy and then the poor schmucks tearing it apart at some point in time. In the past revolutions were posible. Today most governments can purchase the firepower to prevent this from happening.
I agree that we are over taxed and it needs to be reduced. I do not believe that is what is contributing to the move offshore. We have build an econonic system in this country where the corperation and its success are placed above all else. The reality is that coperations can only grow so big and then they have no place to go. But they still have to grow to placate investors.
Then we place an oranization in the middle such as the WTO and give them power to dick with the economy everywhere. Lets face it its power is driven by capitalism which recognizes the corperation as above all else.
This brings on companies suing countries for banning their products. What about the case of (I think it was Similac) suing african countries for this reason. Mothers conviced by advertising this was better for their babies were watering it down because they could not afford full price.
What about Steffi Graff all broken heated because she was accused of owning a sweat shop in china. Whe had not idea of working coditions in the Nike factory.
What about whole towns in america but out to pasture because their factory was moved off shore. And not the service industries have not compensated them for their loss of income. Do not give me that bull shit.
Our government is a mish mash of stupid self intrest people and laws. It is the governments job to protect the people. Sometimes it means militarily. Sometimes it means from internal self centered scum bags. But then that is most of the polititions and the CEOs / corperations that are paying them.
The good of a country and the good of a company are two different things. China understands this very well and our government are jerkin themselvs.
I have never suggested Clinton did not do a lot of really crappy stuff. I have suggested that other presidents were also not squeeky clean. We just need to look at the big picture and assign the real blame to the real people as well as credit.
I do believe that our current president is worse. At least Clinton knew what he was doing was wrong. Bush believes in things, makes up the circumstacnes to support it and then believes his own backwards logic.
He started out totaly ineffectual and got hit peepee wacked badly over it. He is a person with absolutly no middle ground and reacts without thinking. Because 9/11 was occomplished by a bunch of muslims then all are at fault. He chooses to pick on easy targets first.
He is finding out that Sadam was an easy target. A country that is totaly muslim, and has all predujices against america of the 9/11 perpetrators, is not an easy target to fully concure.
He lied to us from the start about the cost of the Iraq war, he has lied to us about the WMDs, he has pissed of the rest of the world with his arrogance. Now the american people are starting to ask questions about the cost of the war.
He is still making patriotic speaches in the U.N. that will get him no where. Clinton admited he could not keep his dick in his pants. So the fuck what. When Bush admits he has lied to world about much more important stuff I will consider anything he has to say in the future.
I admit he did bad things with the FBI. Well Bush is doing bad things with information form the CIA and I consider that worse. And what about appointing friends. What ahout Ashcroft. This is a man that his own state elected a dead man instead of. Can this be good?
No politition is honest. That is the plain and simple fact of america today. If they are they will not last long.
The next question has to be wether you are big enough for them to care for. Require was probably to big a word but for particular industries the pressure can be extreme if you want a piece of the chinese pie.
I have been of periphery of projects and have worked with groups in many other countries. I have not had very much direct contact but twice I dealt with aspects. Once we were purchasing some pieces and this was not problem. The second was trying to expand our technology into China.
First they wanted to pay nothing at all for the product. Second they wanted all the source code, schematics, etc." for not money up front. After several years of this crap the company spent lots of bucks for no return.
I do not know what you are trading in China. It is irrelevant to the big picture. Dollars are streaming to China for cheap labor and even more cheap plastic junk. They can neither afford to buy american products nor do they want them for the most part. The problem is and will remain gib american corperations must grow and connot. They must try to get into new markets even if they do not really exist and does not good for either side.
Our children will look back and wonder how we could screw up so badly.
If you are importing cheap junk then I am boycotting you. If you are selling out american workers then I am boycotting you. Please let me know what your product is so I can put it on the do not buy list.
At some point in time americans must realize they cannot expect to be paid to produce products and expect to get everything in return for cheap. It just does not work that way.
I am not sure if you ment to say you have no love for the american or chinese government.
Either way I believe the Chinese goverment has every right to encorage the developement of a chinese version of Linux. I do not believe any american / european developer can understand some of the intricacies of using the chinese character sets. Only they can do it correct for themselves and Linux is the stepping stone to the solution and still maintain good connectivity to other systems in the world.
My problem is with big corperations in America. They cannot understand or really compete in the chinese market. China looks like it is taking market economy stance for its future but it is still a communist country. The chinese government hates the rest of the world and will take everything sent to china in the end.
Big corperations are at a stand still if they cannot find new markets. Literally Microsoft, Intel, IBM, etc. have no where to go but down. Thier new markets are actually non existent because the people do not have the money/capital to participate with these companies.
In the mean time, the CEOs are all telling each other we have to do this and giving jobs to these countries. It is and will remain futile to do so. In a few years americans, and europeans by the way, will look around and try to figure out what they did wrong.
If you want to change this there are two ways. First start voting for canidates for office that are not paid for by the corperations. Pretty hard to do today. And secondly simply do not by anything labeled "Made in China" or "Made in Malaysia". Wall mart will go out of business despite the american image they try to portray. Also as a part of this we need to find out which companies have transfered support services to other countries and boycott them.
I believe you are one of the Ant people of sector Omega. If you were from earth you would have already realized that an America CEO does not give a truck load of gouda about giving forthright and good advice.
What the chinese government is proposing does posible harm to Intel.
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I could not agree more. I believe the real problem in this country is too many people manage and very few do any real work. I can not help but believe the levels of managment and outsourcing from start to finish hinder real work.
It seems whenever I need to call a company for some reason I end up on the phone for hours and at some point request to speak to a manager. And then usually their manager. Nobody has any empowerment (theres a work that sucks) to make a decision or commitment. The company I am calling may be saving a buck but it is costing me plenty in wasted time.
In general my managers have made more money that I did. I have also worked as a contractor in a chain I knew was 4 deep and the customer was being charged $250.00 and hour and I got $65.00 to actually do the work. I think current business theory is not actually working too well.
Basically, while the article brings up the interesting concept of what offshoring information can do, this particular case of offshoring is really not the greatest example, since the breach of contract occured in the US.
This is a totaly screwed up comment. This is one one hell of a good example of one of the problems with offshoring. Giving out personal information is much worse than a breach of contract.
The real problem displayed here is the originator of the data had NO IDEA what was being done with the data. As a patient of the hostpital it is the hospitals problem to insure my data is not incorrectly used. Contract be damned they did not do this. As a result that data was outsourced to a country where it could be abused with no consequences. The system does not work. Nobody was responsible for the data. No questions about it.
I also do not feel any pain for the company in Florida that has been doing this for over 20 years. They failed to control the data. At every level management wanted cheap and they got what they paid for.
The World Trade Center disaster hurt the lives of thousands of people. An unscrupulous big firm overseas being used by uncrupulous firms here could do much more damage to lives.
GWB is the, and I mean this as THE, representative of the United States to every other country in the world. This guy cannot be bothered to learn how to speak "American". I have lived and traveled much of the United States for the last 40 years. With the advent of global communications I have noticed the general speech of the US is merging together when communicating together. I have gone into many small towns, stopped in dinners and heard some god awful dialects. Usually when they talked to me, an outsider, they instantly "americaicanized" the dialect.
This does not always happen. Again, in general, this tended to not happen in the deapest back waters of the country. For GWB to refuse to learn and speak as a representative of the United States lables him as a back water hick.
I agree partly with that statement. There are executives that realy have a handle on things. I think they are a small minority.
I really and trully beleive the current situation in business is backlash from bad managment (exective level). Lets face it a large number of the companies founded during the 90s that are now going bust did it on ideas that were stupid at best. It is not a wonder they have and are failing in bunches.
I should probably clarify that I consider the investors in a corperation on an even level with the management. This is specially true for a start up. There was a lot of investing in silly things in the 90s and the current lack of any investment at all is a back lash to this.
Good or bad corperations and their managment have the power position in this country. As an example consider the situation in Silicon Valley. In the late 90s new graduates were being bussed in and given $85,000 and $90,000 per year salaries to write web pages and such. For a student in, lets say Kansas, this sounds like a lot of money. For China and India it is a truck load of money. In Silicon Valley this will rent a small apartment with an hour commute, food and beer part of the week. This situation is directly the responsibility of corperations refusal to operate anywhere else.
So, management suddenly realizes they have created the big doodoo, as my daughter would say, and need a new "idea" to run under. This time it is outsourceing. These thricks are what I refer to as the "management trick of the day". They are suddenly seen as the thing to do and every good executive jumps on the band wagon.
The trouble is they are knee jerk reactions. Yes this is saving money at the moment but what is the long term result of these actions? Like the crap with the dot com bubble I do not trust them to give any real interest to the future. Lets face it, an executive that can get out with several million today will be covered in the future. I have studied many economy texts and find them all lacking to a large extent. They always forget that the economy is made up of people. Enough of this.
I have though many times of opening my own company. I actually have one that has done Linux consulting for several years now. I have a number of ideas for projects I would like to do. Several of them could probably be money makers. The problem with software is it takes a lot of time to get it right for the kind of projects I do. I do not have the capital, and will probably not be able to get it, to spend the next 2 to 3 years doing design and developement and then a nother 1 to 2 years trying to market it. I will have to stick with doing Linux consulting on the side. The truth of the matter is that this is drying up considerably and the type of stuff I did is also being outsourced.
Actually if you look at where most large companies started this is a load. Most companies got big because of the Idea of one person or a small group or they just happened to be there at the right time. All to often when the conditions go away the company goes down or on auto pilot.
Go get an MBA. As an engineer (if your any good) you will gag at most of the ideas. Out sourcing is the management trick of the day.
There is more to economics and society than make it cheap to beat the competition. For societies to function all levels have to participate in an active and working economy.
America has built a working economy over the years with the participation of companies, employees and a mediator known as the government. Government has played a big part at all levels that is often hidden from view. As an example one of the reasons gas is cheap in this country is the governments interest in the middle east.
As a part of my MBA I took a class in business economics. Nothing else was required. I got a very good example of business economic thinking from the teacher. He worked as an economist for Southwest Gas and Electric in Arizona. During the problems in California, providers in Arizona were required by state regulation to provide Arizona first at the agreed upon price (I beleive $.ll / kwh at the time). This guy told us the company looked at this as a loss of over a dollar per kwh because they could not sell this power to California and leave Arizona citizens high and hot.
It is and has always been the job of government to ensure the long term success of their voters. Businesses get a licence as part of an agreement with goverment to ensure the health and welfare of the society they live in.
NAFTA, the WTA, etc. were all created by corperations. India prevents foreign workers and protects it markets like crazy. China does the same thing. At the same time they care very little about their workers. Money is far more important.
WTF does this have to do with socialism. Common welfare has everything to do with democacy. Oh I forget, we have allowed the corperations to buy out our politicians and rights.
Ethics are dead but it is not only at the CEO level. If americans put push hard enough these companies will change. The problem is that americans are just as short sighted as the businesses. I like to call this the Wall Mart syndrom.
At one point in time Wall Mart made a big dead about supporting "Made in America". I find it hard to find a product (other than groceries) there that is made in america.
There has been a lot on this discussion about not being able to live on minimum wage. This is very true but it may just be possible to live better on minumum wage and not buy that DVD player and pay bucks to rent movies.
I personally believe CEOs such as Ms. Carly HP are guilty of treason and selling out America. But the truth of the matter is most Americans are just as bad.
Two things:
1. What is not to understand. Did she own the music? No. Did she get it? Yes. How many articles are out there on the web about this problem? Loads.
If she did not have an idea what she is doing then she should not be allowed to use the computer unsupervised.
Having said that you are correct that the system is broken. It simply comes down to every body not buying music AND NOT DOWN LOADING IT. At some point in time the artists will quite signing contracts with the big labels and they will die off. At the some time nobody will be guilty of theft or copyright violations.
It is a tax if it goes to a government. How much of the "Retail" from walmart is ending in the Chinese governments coffers?
I think you are right. When will the citizens of of America wake up, kick a bunch of polotician ass and stick a red hot poker up corperate sell outs?
Nothing is remarkable about it at all. American companies are giving them all this technology for two reasons.
First they think they can save a buck and beat the competition on price. This is a falacy. When everybody does the same thing it is self defeating. It is just driving profits down for everybody and eleminating the people who buy their products here.
Secondly, and you can yell its not true all you want, it is for all practical intents required to relocate to China to sell there. Just look at the trade imbalance and it shows the truth. What the american companies have not yet realized is China will take the technology and use it else where. They are trying to design their own CPU, where did they learn how to do this? They have a space program. Who has given them the technology to maybe be successful?
Intel, HP, Motorola, IBM are the culprits along with the Walmarts, Kmarts and american citizens that insist they should have a house full of useless trinkets that do not cost much.
You bet your booty they will. And they are doing all on American dollars. Shop at Wallmart and put a china man into space.
Sounds like a new advertising campain to me. I hope all you out of work programmers are listening in.
Free markets always have two ends. Producers want to maximize profit and consumers want things a cheap as posible. One of the problems in this country is that no one wants to look at the true cost of prodution and equate that to a reasonable probit margin.
In the best of all worlds consumers both consumers and producers would be informed of new needed intrastructure and both would be willing to take it into consideration. Currently both consider it a necessary evil if and only if it is in danger of immediate failure. The electical system is not the only example of this. I consider the fact that I have a hard time finding any clothing, electronics, etc. that has a made in anywhere but south east asia on it.
I find it some what unnatural that businesses could be as blind as they are but I find it unconsionalble that out corrupt government could let things get as bad as they are.
While getting my MBA the economics professor was a guy that worked for one of the Arizona power companies. He presented some interesting information.
Arizona requires in state power producers to supply in state first. At the time, in 2000, were were paying 9 cents per Kilowatt hour of which 4 cents were production and 5 cents transpertation charges.
As an economist his departent produced a report for the government and the company stating the company was loosing (I think these are the numbers) over 80 cents a Kw/h. They were acutally showing a profit of 3 cents a Kw/h but since they were required to sell it in Arizona and could not send it to California they could state a loss over posible revenues.
He never would answer the question about whether they were able to show a net loss on this aspect or not. In any case he indicated the Enron costs could be correctly stated and still very much mis state the real costs of production.
I hope others are following our discussion and will chime in at some time.
Yes this could affect pensions plans including 401K. But looking over my 401K plans I hve been pretty much a looser for several years running and I think we need to take a closer look at this. I'll get to the sales taxation issue further down.
I actually think american businesses have screwed up royal by believing they should all go public. Going public rarely has had any relation to furthur building of a company. It has actually been more to allow the original investers to cash out quickly at others expenses. The late 90's were an exception but as seen this lead only to a big screw of investors. It has also incoraged bad practices ala Enron, Tyco and Worldcom.
The purpose of a business is to make money for sure. If it is done in a manor that hurts society in general it is the peoples right, through the government, to control it. This is the actuall reason why governments require a license to do business.
The other side of this is that at some time a business becomes just so large that it is impossible to grow in any realistic fashion. At that point in time the stock price will almost surely drop. After all the price of the stock after initial offering has no real basis in the companies ability to perform. A good company can be providing work and economic health for many employees and providing a large profit and its value will still drop according to the stock market.
I have forgotten the actual number but I believe I have recently seen a statistic that 60 or 70 percent of business in the US is actuall done through small business. This is a stagering sum that goes pretty much unnoticed by wall street. To actually reconize this would be to cut their power base in the market.
The point of all this is that I would like to see the ability for my 401K to direct a portion to a fund to support small business with loans. I think the small percentage interest I get there will probably out perform my current 401K posibilites. It should at least cut some of the fund managers getting big bucks for shoving the money from stock to stock (usually more than the profit on the sale of the stock).
As for the sales tax. I actually have no real problem with that. The one consequence is that it will definity place a heaver tax burden on the working poor. I think well fare is a necessary evil that should be minimized and doing this will probably increase it and it's influence.
I am also not sure how it will effect the taxes of the wealthy. While they are known for consicuous consuption it is often taken to places where they are not taxed by america. It could very well be a net loss here.
I think the tax problem needs to address the issues first of how to illiminate the need for taxes. First and foremost is a smaller government more focused and real issues. Secondly it is actually the governments job to see that no one entity can cause harm to the american nation and its people.
I take this to imply the world on a whole for the most part. This means that we should there, as well has here, be concerned that representitives of america do not cause harm anywhere.
I believe China and India are good examples of governments that place their own good over there peoples. China in particular have devalued their currency to the point where the lack of effecencies are irrelevant. We can send work over there for cheaper no matter what. Most of the workers still live in abject poverty while the government sucks of much of the money coming into the country.
This has the further consquence not of only of loss of jobs here, but also of loss of tax revenue to pay the expenses of people out of work. I also strongly believe these other countries have nothing to loss and will take all knowledge sent and force the american companies out very soon. The arabs did this with oil and China, India, etc. will do this with high tech. Net result in a co
We get paid more to cover the taxes we pay.
Run that by anyone who has worked in any general labor trade, manufacutring, etc. over the past 20 years. This is certainly not the case.
That is actually part of my point. I have also worked in manufacturing on the assembly line. Spent a year working at little better than minimum wage butting IV tubes together for Cutter labs. That was when I decided I needed to get it together and go back to school. I have a pretty good idea what it cost to make an IV set. It is not even close to the price on a hospital bill. There are a lot of Corpertions who make big money on the pain society feels. I have no problem with not taxing a company that has no profit. I do think that correctly taxing a company will incourage more downward movement of revenue dollars. There will not be such a big reward for screwing the employees.
If corperations were taxed and not people we would be paid less but effectively have the same spending power. Not sure if that's true, but a better scenario would be if people were taxed and not corporations. In the latter case, lower income strata are not forced to purchase higher-priced products to subsidize the corporate tax burden, yet the middle-class continue bear the greatest tax burden. Whatever is done the middle class will continue to provide most of the tax dollars to the government simply because they will buy products representing a higher percentage of their income. Either they give it this way or they give it as a yearly income tax. It all costs the same. What is different as I said is the overhead will be reduced. Government should not encourage scavangers.
I think the problem is much higher that normally recognized. As far as personal income taxes go corperations also pay a high price to comply with government rules. After all they pay to have all the with holding accounting and reporting done. Most americans do not realize that the corperation also pays at least as much social security as is taken out of an employees pay check.
Either way they cost of taxation comes back to the empoyers and they pass it back to the customers. Decreasing overhead always helps on the bottom line. Moving personal income taxes to corperate taxes will eliminate a large portion of over head.
This is all very true but I'd like to see anybody get the /.ers to go in a coordinated direction. That would be worth the time to try.
I think the problem is both easy and hard at the same time. Money always talks. Little pieces of it doing the same thing add up to big money also. If we can get americans to agree something is bad and support a boycott things can change rapidly.
My current best pet project is a boycott of chinese products. Well, actually pretty much anything from asia. I recently read something about some mexican workers that were stunned when they found some to the mexican trinkets they were selling had "made in china" stamped on them. I am also trying to boycott any company sending work to china.
If you could get 1 percent of the american population to participate in this companies like wall mart and that crowd will take immediate notice. This would probably mean at least a 2 or 3 percent drop in profits.
All taxes contribute to the end price of products. We get paid more to cover the taxes we pay. If corperations were taxed and not people we would be paid less but effectively have the same spending power. What our current system does is support a whole load of societal free loaders known as personal tax accountants and a few hundred thousand IRS employees. Simple do the math.
And no uncontroled pure capitalism does not work. In order to live in a society there has to be a benefit. Pure capitalism is always an all for me situation and uncontroled leads to chaos.
Our consitution dictates a nation that is of the people, for the people and by the people. That is in reality no longer true. Political campaigns are paid for by big money. Right or wrong, if you pay for it in a capitalistic society you should expect to benifit more from it than anyone else. And it does happen.
Having said that, governments need to look at what they do very carefully. Ours does not. Everything is done pretty much willy nilly on a "look at me" or "shit, gotta cover my ass" basis. There is not continutity and reason to most of it.
Ashcroft was a canditate in Missouri.
The next question is how do people start changing the system. I have recently moved to San Diego due to my previous position being moved off shore. I look at the recall here as as a fiasco but maybe there can be some good from it also.
But again, it is the candidates with money that are at the forefront. I am tempted to vote for the porn queen but probably will vote for Arnold. I do not think that he will be much better but he is basically middle of the road in the directions that more reflect my concerns. At least things will be different and that can't be all that bad.
I agree with most of what you say. The only problem is that pure capitalism does not work. The result is always periods of expansion for the wealthy and then the poor schmucks tearing it apart at some point in time. In the past revolutions were posible. Today most governments can purchase the firepower to prevent this from happening.
I agree that we are over taxed and it needs to be reduced. I do not believe that is what is contributing to the move offshore. We have build an econonic system in this country where the corperation and its success are placed above all else. The reality is that coperations can only grow so big and then they have no place to go. But they still have to grow to placate investors.
Then we place an oranization in the middle such as the WTO and give them power to dick with the economy everywhere. Lets face it its power is driven by capitalism which recognizes the corperation as above all else.
This brings on companies suing countries for banning their products. What about the case of (I think it was Similac) suing african countries for this reason. Mothers conviced by advertising this was better for their babies were watering it down because they could not afford full price.
What about Steffi Graff all broken heated because she was accused of owning a sweat shop in china. Whe had not idea of working coditions in the Nike factory.
What about whole towns in america but out to pasture because their factory was moved off shore. And not the service industries have not compensated them for their loss of income. Do not give me that bull shit.
Our government is a mish mash of stupid self intrest people and laws. It is the governments job to protect the people. Sometimes it means militarily. Sometimes it means from internal self centered scum bags. But then that is most of the polititions and the CEOs / corperations that are paying them.
The good of a country and the good of a company are two different things. China understands this very well and our government are jerkin themselvs.
I have never suggested Clinton did not do a lot of really crappy stuff. I have suggested that other presidents were also not squeeky clean. We just need to look at the big picture and assign the real blame to the real people as well as credit.
I do believe that our current president is worse. At least Clinton knew what he was doing was wrong. Bush believes in things, makes up the circumstacnes to support it and then believes his own backwards logic.
He started out totaly ineffectual and got hit peepee wacked badly over it. He is a person with absolutly no middle ground and reacts without thinking. Because 9/11 was occomplished by a bunch of muslims then all are at fault. He chooses to pick on easy targets first.
He is finding out that Sadam was an easy target. A country that is totaly muslim, and has all predujices against america of the 9/11 perpetrators, is not an easy target to fully concure.
He lied to us from the start about the cost of the Iraq war, he has lied to us about the WMDs, he has pissed of the rest of the world with his arrogance. Now the american people are starting to ask questions about the cost of the war.
He is still making patriotic speaches in the U.N. that will get him no where. Clinton admited he could not keep his dick in his pants. So the fuck what. When Bush admits he has lied to world about much more important stuff I will consider anything he has to say in the future.
I admit he did bad things with the FBI. Well Bush is doing bad things with information form the CIA and I consider that worse. And what about appointing friends. What ahout Ashcroft. This is a man that his own state elected a dead man instead of. Can this be good?
No politition is honest. That is the plain and simple fact of america today. If they are they will not last long.
The next question has to be wether you are big enough for them to care for. Require was probably to big a word but for particular industries the pressure can be extreme if you want a piece of the chinese pie.
I have been of periphery of projects and have worked with groups in many other countries. I have not had very much direct contact but twice I dealt with aspects. Once we were purchasing some pieces and this was not problem. The second was trying to expand our technology into China.
First they wanted to pay nothing at all for the product. Second they wanted all the source code, schematics, etc." for not money up front. After several years of this crap the company spent lots of bucks for no return.
I do not know what you are trading in China. It is irrelevant to the big picture. Dollars are streaming to China for cheap labor and even more cheap plastic junk. They can neither afford to buy american products nor do they want them for the most part. The problem is and will remain gib american corperations must grow and connot. They must try to get into new markets even if they do not really exist and does not good for either side.
Our children will look back and wonder how we could screw up so badly.
If you are importing cheap junk then I am boycotting you. If you are selling out american workers then I am boycotting you. Please let me know what your product is so I can put it on the do not buy list.
At some point in time americans must realize they cannot expect to be paid to produce products and expect to get everything in return for cheap. It just does not work that way.
I am not sure if you ment to say you have no love for the american or chinese government.
Either way I believe the Chinese goverment has every right to encorage the developement of a chinese version of Linux. I do not believe any american / european developer can understand some of the intricacies of using the chinese character sets. Only they can do it correct for themselves and Linux is the stepping stone to the solution and still maintain good connectivity to other systems in the world.
My problem is with big corperations in America. They cannot understand or really compete in the chinese market. China looks like it is taking market economy stance for its future but it is still a communist country. The chinese government hates the rest of the world and will take everything sent to china in the end.
Big corperations are at a stand still if they cannot find new markets. Literally Microsoft, Intel, IBM, etc. have no where to go but down. Thier new markets are actually non existent because the people do not have the money/capital to participate with these companies.
In the mean time, the CEOs are all telling each other we have to do this and giving jobs to these countries. It is and will remain futile to do so. In a few years americans, and europeans by the way, will look around and try to figure out what they did wrong.
If you want to change this there are two ways. First start voting for canidates for office that are not paid for by the corperations. Pretty hard to do today. And secondly simply do not by anything labeled "Made in China" or "Made in Malaysia". Wall mart will go out of business despite the american image they try to portray. Also as a part of this we need to find out which companies have transfered support services to other countries and boycott them.
I believe you are one of the Ant people of sector Omega. If you were from earth you would have already realized that an America CEO does not give a truck load of gouda about giving forthright and good advice.
What the chinese government is proposing does posible harm to Intel.