United States Heading towards a Depression?

Hey Breeze Wood.. did you see where Ford is bringing new jobs....... to India?

How does your idea of a government that is in control of jobs, value of money, etc... figure into that one ?

Why does Ford get to send jobs overseas, when Americans are literally dying for jobs ?


Let me guess, you are going to tell me it is good for America ?

 

Your article sums it up nicely:

If you saw the event, the President got on stage after Jimmy Hoffa talked about "taking the [Republican] sons of bitches out". Let me ask you, is any of this the language of consensus building? Bill Clinton used to personally get on the phone with Republicans he thought would be in opposition to some of his ideas, and solicit their input. This is how a leader defeats gridlock in Washington.

With this President, you have him talking to highly partisan Union Leaders in language of "Warning shots across bows", "taking them out", and "holding them accountable". He's not a leader, he's a thug. He rattled on for hours addressing his special interest supporters that represent 6.9% of private sector workers, talking about the other 93.1% of private sector workers as if they were all capitalist pigs who hate the common working man.

No, David Gergen and the rest called it two months in advance. Obama is not even going to try and build concensus with his "Jobs" bill. It will be filled with massive spending targeted at his special interests and seasoned lightly with a few bi-partisan items like an extension to the payroll tax cut, so he can campaign on it's failure to pass as evidence the Republicans are not interested in jobs. I wonder if anyone will remember the first $850 billion dollar stimulus that went nearly entirely to state workers unions was supposed to create "shovel ready jobs" for bridge and road construction. He's betting on the electorate having a short memory. We'll see what the media tells us to think.

 

Not that I am a huge fan of Ford, but they are the only ones that have actually shown a profit and stayed above water WITHOUT any government bailouts.

Crystler is still defunct and GM is not far behind. Both took bailouts and both make their cars in Canada last I checked.

 

Can't blame Ford for that..
Multinational companies are enjoying complete government support in building infrastructures, highly skilled yet relatively cheaper work force, low taxes and the best of all, no employee Unions here in India.
Indian workers are happy to have a job, they don't threaten to go on strike every now and then.

Plus Indian automobile market is huge and ford is having a good part of it.. No wonder Ford wants to build better infrastructure that will create new jobs. It's an incentive for them. After all, business corporation are here to make profits.

Now in US, Democrats love unions and high taxes, not really an incentive for any corporation to 'create' new jobs there.

 

You know, twice, since I had this new Internet account I have had to ring Optus (call centre in India) and I have had the nicest experience ever....the last time I rang, after they solved my problem, they wished me 'sweet dreams' lol. It was past midnight here at the time. They're very nice people and do their job well imho.

 

I think you caught it, but you were speculating with Corwin earlier in the thread that Obama was going to come out with partisan legislation in September that Republicans couldn't support, and by not doing so, would garner more votes for Obama in 2012. So, I was wondering if the job plan would be that piece of legislation. And, I agree with your post, what was said at the event, was no way to actually get support from Republicans. However, Republicans don't seem to want to work together regardless. I looked online and found the text of the speech. As far as revealing his plan, the only piece that he mentions was getting construction workers back to work with roads and bridges. I guess on Thursday we will find out the rest.

This is my favorite part of the whole speech:

As far as comments in this thread blaming unions for American companies sending all their jobs overseas, saying well of course, they are going to go where they can pay the lowest wages possible - all I can think is that my vision of America is not sweat shops and minimum wage jobs. I think American companies that depend on profit from American consumers, should hire American workers. Otherwise, the relationship to me seems parasitical (is that a word?).

 

You are the first one to say that mate. People only told me stories of horrible accent, height of incompetence and the 'worst nightmare came true' experience so far. And they somehow figured out that I was personally accountable for that.

Although companies are spending thousands of dollars on the training (both product and voice & accent) and they have a very strict selection criteria.

 

Yeah.. The thing is, unions in America no longer protect the interests or safety of workers. Companies that move jobs overseas do so in order to obtain a reasonable amount of work for a fair amount of compensation. To an average union worker their fear is having to pay for their own health care and pension. That's a far cry from a "Sweatshop" and "minimum wage"... Most companies pay far beyond minimum wage and offer some great benefit packages without the coercion and intimidation that unions provide.

Let us also not forget the punitive unemployment compensation insurance and other forms of taxes that make hiring American workers cost prohibitive.

Look, companies that make profits do not need to be bailed out. The whole purpose of running a business is to generate a profit. Without that, you cannot expand, innovate and increase your labor force.

 

This is what everyone's been saying - Obama will introduce a bill with enough special-interests spending to choke a horse, all guaranteed to make sure that if you are not in a union, you will be unemployed. Then, when this insane bill isn't passed by Congress, then Obama can blame the Republicans.

I'd like to see John Boehner call a challenge to Obama's bluff. Boehner should say that Republicans will pass the bill if Obama will take complete responsibility for it's success or failure. If Boehner did that, Obama would be so scared he would shit bricks.

 

I think if you talked to most unemployed Americans, what they would want would be a job making a decent wage. As long as you have that, you can put aside money for retirement and health. The outsourcing problem is huge. If we could bring back a lot of those jobs, unemployment wouldn't even be an issue. My interest is mainly that American workers make a decent wage...

 

It's not about minimum or low wages.. It's about the quality of work and price ratio.

The 'sweatshop' thinking is a general misconception, I'm not sure about China, but Indian workers working for MNCs are not being exploited. It's just a populist statement crafted by misleading lefties.
An Indian working for an MNC is one the happiest person because most of the MNCs pay far better salaries than other domestic companies. And trust me, domestic companies pay more than enough.

You are thinking one dimensional, If we talk about products, american companies are competing against other Asian imports that are way cheaper. In order to remain competitive, American companies are forced to cut costs. There are only three ways to do that.

1) Compromise the quality, use cheap material.
2) Find a cheaper yet effective work force
3) Government can impose higher taxes on import and reduce taxes on domestic products, effectively making imports more expensive than the domestic one.

Solution 1 is not good at all, solution 3 is not happening, so companies are forced to go with solution 2.

Let's face it, American workers don't come cheap and they don't offer better services. Using an all american work force will increase the price, consumers want bang for their bucks. That's why Chinese products are selling like hot cakes in the US. Last year when I was in New York, no matter where I looked, I found cheap Chinese products.

What you consider decent wage in america, half of it would make an Indian king of the country.

This video, although completely fictional, holds some truth (in a loose sense) -

[video=youtube;B5NuuJQT8ZM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NuuJQT8ZM[/video]

 

Yes

That is certainly the image being painted by Democrats who want to retain their seats next year. "We tried to fix it, but those Republicans wouldn't let us". It defies reality. When Obama and the Democrats got their clocks cleaned in the midterms, he briefly discovered an ability to reach across the isle and got quite a bit of legislation pushed through in a matter of a few weeks.

Left or right, most Americans realize where the buck stops. Its very hard to push blame for failure downhill.

I liked both Mia and Webby's comments regarding Unions and offshore labor, but I'll add this. It seems pretty clear our leadership hasn't thought through the effects of globalization on quite a few of our laws, whether it be entitlement programs that are being pillaged by mass illegal immigration, or wage requirements put on companies competing in a global market place. There is a balance that has to be struck between decently paid labor and the cost of goods one needs to be able to compete in a global marketplace, otherwise the relationship between Unions and their employers can very quickly become parasitical.

Public employee unions in particular, have employers who really don't feel the need to be responsible for the taxpayer dollars they spend. If the money spent on higher wages will keep their party in office, they do it. Those unions in particular can only be described as parasites attached to the taxpayers.

In my opinion, the dust will settle on globalization when our politicians start striking trade deals that require reciprocal import tax rates with places like China. Sadly, India and china often levy very high import, VAT, and luxury taxes on goods not domestically produced, making it quite difficult for us to compete in their markets, unless we build the products in their country, with their labor, like Ford does. We may not have workers in America that will work for pennies an hour, but we have automation that could quite literally crush their cheap labor force. It should also be noted that only a portion of products produced are really well suited to globalization, after taking into account transportation costs, or in the case of software development, proximity to the customer.

A major overhaul of our corporate tax code could also go a long way toward making our companies competitive, though I have yet to fully educate myself on how GE manages to get away with paying nothing in Federal income tax.

 

I would totally support that.


Edit: I just wanted to add something. I do think Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee. If anyone wants to read his economic plan, it's here (PDF). I haven't really read it yet, but plan to. I just thought it was kind of interesting. Here is the very beginning part of his plan, and what he says he will do on just the first day of Presidency.

 

Obama to propose $300 billion to jump-start jobs

One thing is certain, if it costs 300 billion it is Democratic and is sure to be effective. Just as they curtailed the 07-09 Recession.


"We should not approach this as an all-or-nothing situation," they said (Boehner and Cantor), striking a conciliatory tone in the first moments of a post-summer session of Congress.

Well, after this Summer isn't it surprising those two have now a conciliatory tone - someone should have told them earlier the campaign does not begin till "after" Labour Day.....The Administration has found its footing afterall and is as well somewhat ahead in the pols over the R House.


Even the Senate Democrats are showing a little life.....6 billion in relief funding including 4 billion for the 2012 budget year.


Billion Dollar Spending is alive and well.....all hail the Liberals.

 

Very nice quote Rebecca. I'm pretty mouthy so you know where I stand. How do you feel about the actions Romney's spelled out?


On a completely different topic, check it out:

It just struck me as odd when I considered that the president has not declared a state of emergency for Texas to release FEMA funding, after declaring a state of emergency in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Virginia for the storm that wasn't. Is there any way to see this other than political retaliation against the top polling candidate for the opposing party? Time to 'punish those enemies", the 1000 newly homeless Texans.

 

All in all, it's impressive that at least Romney has a economic plan he's publishing for all to see. It looks okay. I thought it kind of funny, for the first day he wants to undo everything Obama did. LOL. From what I've read so far, he might possibly have a few solid ideas of getting the economy back on track without just throwing money at the problem. However, I would address "The American Competitiveness Act - Reduces the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent." I think we should only make the tax rate lower for companies that aren't engaging in outsourcing. In other words, if their work force is mainly American workers, we can cut them some slack on taxes.

It's so sad. I read that four people have died as well. Of course, political retaliation would have no place, especially in a tragic situation like this.

[video=youtube;m67ZokFYl2A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m67ZokFYl2A[/video]

 

Agreed, that's why I mentioned it. I hear it all the time too.

When it boils down to the nitty-grittys, I think it's more the people (racists or protectionists?) complaining about losing their jobs to "overseas" than it is really about Indian incompetence... You start off the convo knowing that you're about to be annoyed because of the accent and pretty soon you will be...

Plus, it's harder to argue it's a bad thing if they happen to be better at the job than the locals were.

Go in with an open mind and it's just the same as if it was an Indian sitting in Sydney. Why should it matter that they're not?

 

With all the fears, which are certainly reasonable to have, I still trust that we will steer towards saver havens. I like the fact that the Obama administration keeps coming up with new ideas on how to tackle the poor job situation.

I want to stay positive and keep having an optimistic attitude.

 

Even the Democrats will tell you Obama care is awful. I thought I was cynical, but how much cynicism does it require to introduce a bill you know is bad for the country, just to provide a scaffold that you can "fix later" to deliver the socialized medicine you think will be good for the country by repairing the bill years down the road? We have big problems with health care in this country, and one day, a leader and consensus builder will pass something that works with overwhelming bi-partisan support.

I also think a 40% flat tax rate for business is obscene. I think at 25%, you might see non-American companies opening up businesses here that employ Americans, but then again, the tax rate could be 90% and GE and much of the fortune 500 will pay an effective rate of 0% without addressing those issues in the tax code.

Customer service people are little more than readers of scripts. Every answer they give you is pulled from a flow chart meant to guide every caller into one of several possible outcomes. How do you say someone was better at reading a script than someone else? If you get angry with the customer service you received, be angry at the options made available to the person reading the script. Why is it liberals see racism in anything?

If you just got off the phone with HP and they told you to pound sand on your defective year old laptop computer, you are going to be pissed off. The fact the call center is in India or the Philippines is just an extra aggravating factor at that point, with or without your call handler having an accent. Its just the exclamation point on the sentence from the producer of your product that reads, "I don't give a f*ck about you!".

You make the same call to Motorola and they replace your year and a half old wireless headphones without a receipt and you think to yourself, "Now that is a company that cares about it's customers and reputation." The fact you could tell by the accent your customer service agent was from both black and from the southern part of the US becomes an exclamation on that sentence as well.

I no longer buy HP or Sony products of any sort, but recommend Motorola and Dell(who outsources their call centers to India) to my friends, and it has nothing to do with either racism or protectionism.

Do you buy more products from companies that have a reputation of being Green"? If so, why would do you care that a company cares about the environment but not if it employees your own countrymen as part of it's path to profitability?

I can picture you as a baseball team manager. Its the bottom of the 7th and your team is losing badly because pitcher has walked in 15 runs, and you decide, "I'm going to stay optimistic". LoL.Just remember, theres no crying in baseball.

FYI, there is nothing "new" about Obama's jobs ideas. Lenin died decades ago.

 

A point to add, Dell has it's own captive units in India. Dell runs it's customer service centers, so they have control over what kind of people they are recruiting, what kind of training employees are getting, they ensure that work environment is up to the mark all the time, employees are well paid and quality is maintained. Dell doesn't stress on call targets, instead the main criteria of employee performance evaluation is customer satisfaction.

While HP has outsourced the service to a third party, they have virtually no control over employees. Employee evaluation is based on how many calls they take in a day. Employees are paid less and there are incentives if they sell an HP product, so the employee is more interested in selling you some accessories or upgrades than solving your problem.

So of course when it comes to quality of services, Dell scores over HP.