Not just IT workers - EVERY displaced or laid off worker. That includes medical billing, radiologists, tax preparers, etc., etc. As it stands now, manufacturing workers whose jobs get outsourced get extended training and benefits. White collar workers aren’t eligible.
Too many people here are consumed by the thought of “lower prices” without concern for the impact caused by those lower prices. Wal-Mart is recognized as having some of the lowest prices around. But to do so, they pay their people crap wages, they don’t give many of them benefits, they hire illegal aliens to help keep prices low, they have 50-70% annual employee turnover and their products (many of which are made in China) are generally recognized as shoddy. And remember, low prices are meaningless, if too many people don’t have jobs and can’t buy anything.
Finally, to repeat again (sigh), people who are out of work don’t pay income taxes. Without taxes (or enough taxes), the government can’t provide the services that everyone wants without borrowing, which creates deficits, which, if excessive, leads to serious economic problems. We are seeing heavy service cuts in California right now. Schools are cutting out ALL sports programs, closing libraries, eliminating after-school activities. Parents have resorted to conducting fund raisers for their schools to try and keep extra-curricular programs going. This works for wealthy school districts, doesn’t work well for poorer districts. Meanwhile cities are laying off police, fire and other essential employees and cutting back on a whole host of other services because of lack of dollars to pay for these items. As has been said, there isn’t any free lunch!
For the MILLIONTH time, do not assume that Indians who work in IT jobs are working for peanuts. They get paid a healthy wage by local standards.
And, I am amazed at how many continue to hang on to the Silicon Valley boom period where jobs were being created at an amazing rate. Things change, recession and all that… it is up to us to adjust to the economy. It would be nice if there were some sort of safety net though.
You are conflating H1-Bs and off-shoring and you sure aren’t the first. H1-Bs here are competing for jobs with you for comparable salaries. You have any idea how many H1B visas are allowed in a year? 65000. And with millions of highly skilled students and potential scientists and entreprenuers (who played and still play a substantial part in creating jobs) from other countries vying for positions here under the paltry 65000 cap, you are actually whining about this system. Off-shoring, I can understand, to an extent. But, complaining about H1Bs is just unbelievable.
It is well-known that income growth has been highly disproportionate over the last 3 decades or so with executive salaries going through the roof. Some will say, that is what the “market dictates”. I don’t think the market is fair because the CEO/Board of Directors circle is a nice old-boys network with each one scratching each other’s back. There is definitely a lack of restraint and regulation at that end. I have read about many instances of CEOs getting bonuses and salary hikes while they lay off workers or reduce wages. Some executives are responsible and some aren’t. But, the questions are:
Can we legislate this? If yes, how? Should we? Will we see some benefits to the middle class?
The links you posted in this regard concern 2 lawsuits. Do you have information that large numbers of such suits are about to be filed? Did you read the chapter in question? It does contain a paragraph indicating that government acions concerning normal health and welfare are not to be considered in violation of the chapter. I also note that most of the experts in those articles admitted that the suits you seem to be complaining about are not within the spirit of the chapter.
So, I have to ask, what exactly is your objection to Chapter 11? Do you disagree with the notion that a government should not be able to seize assets without cause, or are you simply upset that the clause seems to be misaplied in these 2 cases?
Well, but even when you add in the other fedral taxes, the rich still pay a larger share of the taax burden than the percentage of the income they earn. Also, wasn’t the recent tax cut an income tax cut? Would it really have been prudent to consider a cut in the payroll tax, for instance? Wouldn’t the complaint have been that such a cut was a cut in Social Security funding?
[QUTOE]What is truly class warfare is to cut the tax burden of the wealthy by a larger percentage than the tax burden of the poor at a time when the wealthy have seen nearly all of the benefits from the economic growth in the last 20-odd years while the poor have treaded water or even lost ground and the folks at the median has only seen a very modest benefit!!
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Except its not. A tax cut is a tax cut. Complaining that the wrong tax was being cut might be a valid criticism. But that has not been the criticism. Complaining that we need a tax increase would have been a valid position to take as well. But that has not (by and large) been the position of any major politicians either. The position has been that the Bush tax cut amounts to government larges to “Bush’s country club buddies”. And yes, that is class warfare.
But we do. Maybe not at the rate you like, but they do get used to solve all of the problems we are talking about.
Except that this is exactly what the problem is. Certainly we have enough resources to feed everyone if all the resources (or a very large proportion of them) were centrally controled. However, central control of most resources does not work either. Are you possible talking about another option?
Well, if I may, I’d like to suggest that at least part of the problem is that investors like mutual fund investors tend to be silent partners. If I recall correctly, the mutual fund investor rarely use their influence to affect corporate policy. This partly leads to the run away CEO compensation you mentioned. I’m not sure that new legislation is necessary, but it seems that the owners of corporations certainly need to act to take back control, as it were.
What makes you think you are entitled to keep making the same salary forever? I once slept with the most stunning woman you can imagine. Does that mean I have the right to sleep with her until I get tired? I once did some business which made me a lot of money. When buyers stopped buying I stopped making money. Should they be forced to continue buying? Again, why do you think you are entitled to keep making six figures? Did you save for a rainy day? With that salary I hope so. Some people never make six figures. Maybe I could complain that you were overpaid and were overcharging due to market shortage. If you have no problem with the market when it works in your favor, why do you complain when it works in mine?
I do not know how many ways to say this: Just because you made a lot does not mean tyou are entitled to that the rest of your life. At one point the market valued your skills and paid you accordingly. That is better than many people do in their lifetimes. You should have saved. Or not. That is your problem.
i have never made a six figure salary so I find it very hard to feel pity for you. I feel much more sympathy for the guy in India who is much worse off than you are. OTOH I know very well about being jobless but I do not expect papa government to take care of my interests.
sailor, I guess that’s what I was trying to say. You put it more bluntly. I was taken aback when I read that s/he was making six figures and now into the 50s, is complaining about the state of the market. Did s/he ever feel they were overpaid when the market offered 4/5 jobs with sign-on bonuses?
I know there was a flap recently about a janitorial service hired by W/M that used illegal aliens, but you’ll hace to come up with some facts to support the thesis that there are a significant enough number of illegals hired at W/M that it affects the overall salary structure.
W/M is succesful because people choose to shop there and they like it! If the products are shoddy, then why do people keep buying them?
You need to do more than complain about market conditions. Offer some solutions and demostrate that they won’t make matters even worse.
I’m not going to be your personal librarian or search engine for common information that has been in the news and written up in many places during the last year. The information I quoted is fact. Go check check Businessweek, Fast Company, Business 2.0, Fortune, Forbes, WSJ, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, etc. If you find what I posted is inaccurate, then you post a meaningful rebuttal. And Wal-Mart isn’t the only one, just the biggest doing what I mentioned.
I HAVE offered solutions. Problem is, some people don’t like them because they mean higher prioces and higher taxes. But that is what is going to happen.
People like Wal-Mart because prices are low. OTOH, many manufacturers don’t like doing business with them. And as evidenced by the high employee turnover rate, many people don’t feel their being treated well and don’t like working there either. Did you read the stories a few months ago about how Wal-Mart had a policy of locking its employees in for the 3rd shift at night? One guy crushed his ankle and couldn’t get out to get to the hospital. Here’s the Link. Or how about this one: Wal-Mart transforms into ‘Lawsuits R Us’ titan? Try Googling “Wal-Mart lawsuits”. Wonderful company! And when you shop with them, you are supporting the way they choose to do business. Of course, that doesn’t matter to many. They just want low prices.
As had been said here and elsewhere so many times, prices are low for a reason and there is a cause and effect for low prices. We are seeing the effect now in our economy. And it will only get worse until we recognize that low prices aren’t the end-all for everything.
Hm. It seems that losing our jobs is our own fault, so we deserve to be unemployed. That’s the way the free market works, right? Now here’s a problem: unemployed people tend not to buy as much as employed people. They certainly don’t buy new cars and other high-ticket items. Unemployed people are, therefore, useless to the Economy. I suggest that any person whose job has been outsourced should just be euthanized. That way we won’t have over-qualified people competing for low-paying jobs, and they’ll be better off because they won’t be living under bridges and holding up signs. Employed people, who are smarter than everyone else because they are employed, won’t have to look at the jobless. And euthanasia shops will need to hire some of those unemployed people, thus saving their lives.
You see, it’s all about profits. The Dollar is the only thing that matters. It doesn’t matter how many people lose their jobs, their belongings, their homes… As long as prices keep going down, that’s all that counts.
I disagree. His point (stated in over the top terms) is actually rather well made. See, the thing is (and I know that I have brought this up in this very thread) this big-picture all hail the sacred Market point of view is only half of the equation. It boggles the mind how some folks seem so willing to overlook the human wreckage and misery that this seemingly eternal boom/bust cycle causes.
Do we really want to live in a world where the overall school of thought is that labor (you know, human beings) are just tools to be used by business and then discarded when they no longer are needed. I think that we can do better than that.
Well, it boggles others us that some people overlook the worse human wreckage and misery caused by attempts to “fix” the market cycles. They don’t work. If you want to talk about adjustments to the safety net, that’s one thing. If you talk about errecting trade barriers, you hurt us all.
Earlier in this thread I threw out the idea of “unemployment IRAs”. That’s the sort of market oriented help that I think will do the least damage to the overall economy.
Hum, no. Please point me to the post and poster who have said the free market is an end in itself. Please.
Because what I say is that the free market is a better system to provide the maximum amount of people with the maximum amount of satisfaction. And I have given my argyuments as to why I think this is so. Among my arguments is the fact that experience supports this assertion and it does not support the assertion that market intervention by governments makes things better.
Implying that I support any system as an end is just a lie. Of course, it is a convenient lie when you have no rational arguments against mine. I am of the view the a free market gives us the best results. I am of the view that freedom is an end in itself and governments should have compelling reasons to limit our freedoms. I am of the view that nobody knows what I want better than myself nd my freedom to choose should not be curtailed.
now, if you want to limit my freedom and forcefully take my money in the process you better have a good reason. You seem to say it will make a better system for all of us but experience indicates otherwise. it is up to your side to prove it. Just telling me there are people who are unhappy means nothing if you just make things worse. Show me a country where your system has been implemented and the people live better than in western, capitalist countries.
Well, it’s been a while since I read those links myself but I think the legal issues were far from settled and it was/is not clear how they were going to turn out. Actually, I think that part of the reason Greider exposed all this was in a hope that with the light of public scrutiny thrown upon them, it might be less likely for the tribunals that decide this to interpret Chapter 11 as broadly as the companies that filed suit (and I do believe there have been more than two of them but I’m not sure) want it to be. I don’t know how the legal issues have or will turn out but the fact that resources have been expended in this way and that governments have been threatened with legal action because of environmental laws that they have enacted is a bad thing. At the very least, future agreements need to be written so that such suits can be thrown out immediately as not having any sound basis in the trade agreement.
Well, I believe that by most measures, before the Bush tax cuts, the overall tax system was believed to still be progressive…although fairly mildly so…if you consider all the taxes, and as we discussed in other threads it really depends on your assumptions (e.g., how you assign the costs of corporate taxes). It is also modulo the issue of income actually being able to be not reported at all, as David Kay Johnston talks about.
Okay, there is a lot of confusion in these few sentences:
(1) Does that mean that just because Bush decided to cut income taxes, he is then free not to consider the distributional effects on the tax burden as a whole? Bush could have chosen to cut the income tax in a way that would not make the tax structure as a whole more regressive if he had, e.g., not cut the top rates.
(2) You seem to be implying that social security has to be considered separately. I don’t even understand this argument on general principles but even if you sort of say, “Payments to social security don’t count because that sort of a quasi-pension system that you pay into and get back out of,” you are ignoring an important point that is looming larger and larger these days: The government has been borrowing from the surplus in the social security trust fund to fund the rest of government over the last many years (with the cumulative amount expected to be like $2 or 3 trillion, I believe, by the time social security stops running a surplus in ~2017) and there is increasing evidence that the people in charge don’t see a necessity of paying that money back. Alan Greenspan, who of course endorsed Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy (and was also on the commission that hiked payroll taxes to produce these surplusses) is the latest to come on board and say that we need to cut social security benefits because of the looming problems in social security. Most of these people now cite this ~ 2017 date as a dat of reckoning when, in fact, unless they are planning to rip off the social seurity fund, the day of reckoning is not until about 2043. (And projections out this far are just educated guesses…over the last 10 years or so, I believe that date has moved out into the future at a faster rate than time itself has advanced.) So, conservatives seem to want it both ways: You can’t talk about social security taxes when you are discussing overall tax burdens and how Bush’ tax cuts effect them but you can “borrow” (with apparently no plan to pay it back) from the surplus of these collected taxes to fund the rest of government, while cutting the income tax in a way that gives the rich a huge windfall.
I don’t understand the logic here. Apparently, one is still not allowed to discuss the way in which the income tax is cut and who benefits from this? Is it the will of God that the income tax be cut in this way?
I stick by my position: The class warfare is what Bush has perpetrated by enacting these tax cuts. (And, as Warren Buffett notes, his class is winning.) Telling the poor and middle class that they are under attack is not “class warfare”.
Well, what happens then is that you enact policies under the guise of how they are going to give us all these resources. Then, you let those vast resources accumulate to a small minority of the population while the rest get a few crumbs. And, then you argue that discussion of how the policies might be made to actually get the resources to those who need them are off the table either because they are “class warfare” or “anti-globalization” or “protectionist”.
There are plently of other options. There is the option of actually discussing what is happening and devising policies that are not designed to encourage the flow of resources just to a wealthy few. You can also increase international aid and other such things. Again, I am not an expert on what the best solutions are. You need to consult someone like Joseph Stiglitz who really is an expert on this. But, as I have been saying, the first step is acknowledging the problem…And, that seems to be where we are stuck at the moment.
I agree. I am getting a little tired of poster after poster making the pro-off-shoring people look like a bunch of ideologically-blinded marker-worshipping morons. Please take your blinders off and read the actual arguments; there is no point in this thread if you only want to pop in and throw mud.
I have, in fact, said that I would like to see some sort of safety net for unemployed workers and it saddens me that there is none right now. Many other posters have chimed in with ideas as well. The solution (according to us) is not to ban off-shoring, not because we love the lucre but because it will eventually not just hurt a few, but all of us.
Don’t worry - I think you’ll get your progressivity back in about 5-10 years, in spades. Because you’re right - huge amounts of revenue are going into the government today in the form of Social Security ‘savings’, and the government is spending it. That means in about 10 years when the boomers retire in large numbers, there will be a MAJOR re-alignment in government. Because we’re facing a double whammy - not only will the amount of SS revenue drop substantially, leaving lesss to borrow from, but the amount of money the government has to pay out will exceed that revenue. At that point, the social security program will force major changes in government financing. The options I see are:
Means-testing social security. But that has to be put in place today for there to be any hope of it passing politically. Because once the boomers retire, it’s going to be very hard to cut their benefits.
Increasing the retirement age. Again, this should be done today. You might get away today with saying that the retirement age in 2015 will be 68. Trying to get away with that in 2010 will NEVER fly.
Cutting spending in other government programs to shore up Social Security. Never happen. We’ll never stand for the kind of cuts that would be required.
Raising taxes. Bingo. This is what will happen, in my opinion. And since the wealthy pay the majority of the taxes, they’ll bear the brunt of the raises. There’s your progressivity back.
So… Add it all up, along with rising energy prices, and we may be heading into an extended period characterized by large numbers of wealthy retired people, smaller numbers of heavily taxed working people, and slow economic growth. Then the boomers will die, and things will start to straighten out.
As for outsourcing making us stronger… The problem with this issue is that there are a lot of distractions clouding the basic issue. Seeing foreigners hold a job that you once had is a lot different than seeing your job go away because it is obsolete or unnecessary. But really, they are the same thing.
I mentioned this in the other thread, but try this thought experiment, and see if it clarifies your thinking.
Imagine that aliens landed in the U.S., and gave Americans a special black box. That box could produce computer programs cheaper than Americans can. It can make many other good cheaper than Americans can. If a pair of jeans costs $10 to manufacture in the U.S., this special box will allow you to put $5 in, and the same pair of jeans comes out the other end.
Now, if you were king, would you throw this magic box in the ocean and pretend it never existed? After all, if you use it you’ll cost a lot of jobs.
So, what will it be? Is this alien production box a good thing for America? Or should we throw it in the ocean and hope it is never found?
