Political & Elections

SamuraiLandshark · Guru

RE: Failure to Create Jobs

BigG · Guru

The unemployment rate fell because people gave up on getting a job.

THAT IS NOT A GOOD THING!!!

What good is a society that can only provide meaningful work for its top third?

SamuraiLandshark · Guru

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/unemployment-rate-drops-to-9-but-job-growth-is-painfully-slow-535893.html

longprime · Guru

Lots of cash in savings accounts and shortterm assets. Its not moving and stagnating the economy. Businesses are not spending either, even with all the tax incentives and political will.

As a Boomer, with one half of this family pulling a pension. I'm scared not of inflation but deflation.

poetgrl · Senior Member

I like a lot of what you said, but I don't agree with taxing business transactions a million and over at 65%. For one thing, the manufacturing world requires these business entities in order to be able to operate. If these financial instituttions cannot play with the money, they cannot make enough money to lend.

I think taxing capital gains in the financial sector as income would do enough.

For me, the objective is not to penalize anyone for making money, but it is to incentivize investment in the US.

Also, Do you really want the government to have 65 out of every 100 dollars over 1 million? I sure as heck don't.

Bullet · Senior Member

BTW, that was me posting above, and not Pima. Forgot to log her out when I sat down the the family computer. Not the first time that happened! Sorry!

Just want the expected spears in rebuttal thrown at the correct person....

pima · Guru

1) Stop the flow of jobs to cheaper markets through financial penalty in the form of significant tax penalties for companies who shift labor or services overseas. Make it so it isn't cheaper to have the worker in China or customer service phone rep in India. Doesn't "punish" other countries, just punishes our own industries for cutting costs at the expense of the worker. These companies may cry foul that their costs will climb due to higher labor costs here in the US. My response: then cut those huge bonuses your giving your CEOs as the way to balance your labor costs.

2) Stop the move of American business away from manufacturing and towards the financial sector by taxing business financial transactions over $1M at 65%. Your company focuses exclusively on making profits through the transfer of money from one area to another as their business model and you don't like having to pay higher taxes because of it? Fine, learn to build something instead. (and hire the workforce to build it).

3) Enact and enforce reciprocal tariffs and export / import quotas with all trading partners. Want to sell your goods here, you must give us equal opportunity to sell our goods there. Don't want us to charge a high tariff for you goods, don't expect unequal levels of tariffs for your goods.

4) Stop the flow of intellectual preparation outside of our borders by cutting the level of student visas by half. In addition, foreign students who want Post-Graduate degrees from American Universities should be required to stay in America for 5 years after they receive their degree. For every student who doesn't comply with this rule, their home country forfeits a visa. Why should we be training their best and brightest if we don't get the benefit from it? Our graduate level educational superiority is perhaps our biggest advantage, use it.

poetgrl · Senior Member

Yes. He also said that his health care plan was the key to job creation and cost control.

I don't think Obama knows squat about the economy.

Okay: How about this: Lower business taxes to 20% instead of the currently world's highest 35% as an incentive to job creation. How about fully 100% tax deduction on any investment in research and development?

Or, do you just want some "vague" non-numbers solution which is really just talk?

-- Edited by poetgrl on Saturday 22nd of January 2011 05:14:28 PM

john doe · Guru

Obama's take on the issue:

Obama Says Foreign Markets Are Key to Increasing Employment Growth in U.S.

President Barack Obama said opening foreign markets to U.S. goods is key to jump-starting the nation’s economy and boosting hiring.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said exports will be an integral part of future economic growth, citing recent deals with South Korea, India and China.

“If we’re serious about fighting for American jobs and American businesses, one of the most important things we can do is open up more markets to American goods around the world,” he said.

Obama has called for a doubling of U.S. exports over the next five years as a way to reduce the unemployment rate, which in December was 9.4 percent.

The president singled out $45 billion in export deals with China, $10 billion in export deals with India announced last year, and a trade agreement negotiated with South Korea that could all together support 355,000 U.S. jobs.

“Opening new markets to American products. That’s how we’ll create jobs today,” Obama said.

During a visit to a General Electric Co. plant in Schenectady, New York, yesterday, Obama named GE’s chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, to head a group of outside advisers on economic growth.

Obama said he is confident that Immelt will help generate “good ideas about how we can spur hiring, educate our workers to compete in the 21st century, and attract the best jobs and businesses to America.”

poetgrl · Senior Member

john doe wrote:

There is only one way - education and innovation just like the rest of the world is doing.

John, while I might agree that there are educational advances in other countries, I do not believe that stealing technology from the US amounts to "innovation."

I do not believe protecting your manufacturing base and then asking us to have an open policy is "global policy."

In almost every country there is a penalty for removing jobs from the country of origin of the corporation. The US plays an open regulatory role in the world and then turns on its citizens with higher and higher taxation. I'm not sure I "see" this as a good policy going forward.

It hasn't worked so far. Since NAFTA, we have seen only a decline in our productivity and job base. This is especially prevalent in the middle states.

I am asking you what you would do. Doing nothing is not an option.

BigG · Guru

The "rest of the world" is protecting their job base (Germany, France, Norway, etc.) or prospering by stealing our technology (China) .

We are the only nation that allows multinationals to strip capital from our society with no restrictions.

Close the borders and hang the outsourcers as traitors. That is what they are. Trials in absentia and hunter killer teams can take care of expatriates.

If you are not a US citizen first, before you are a business executive, there is no place for you here and you have no right to ask US citizens to bleed and die for your property rights.

I am sick of the "one world" crap that is improvishing the United States.

It will be interesting and ironic to see GE trying to get the Chinese courts to protect its property there.

-- Edited by BigG on Saturday 22nd of January 2011 03:21:04 PM

-- Edited by BigG on Saturday 22nd of January 2011 03:23:32 PM

john doe · Guru

I guess I would also add - what makes you think that anything can be done We tend to look for solutions or explanations for some things where there are not any solutions.

john doe · Guru

There is only one way - education and innovation just like the rest of the world is doing.

poetgrl · Senior Member

Well, okay. I'll bite.

What do you suggest that we do, at this point, to get strong, well-paying jobs back into our country?

How are we going to continue to be a prosperous nation without a strong middle class?

ETA: What difference does it make if the rest of the wolrld has a growing consumer class if we are not actually making anything here, or if our MNC's are making things, but only in those other countries, with only a few executives here in the US?

-- Edited by poetgrl on Saturday 22nd of January 2011 02:02:54 PM

john doe · Guru

I don't trust you. The rest of the world combined has more people and a much faster growing consumer class than the US.

poetgrl · Senior Member

We're a massive consumer culture. Trust me. We'd be better off if we had our own markets.

john doe · Guru

This is a great idea! Then those countries can increase tariffs on our goods and all will benefit.

poetgrl · Senior Member

I really think we've simply gotten to the point where we need to put huge tarrifs on goods manufactured in other countries, particularly if they are manufactured in other countries by US companies, but also, just in general.

This was our original tax scheme in the US.

Now, we tax ourselves to death and support the manufacturing products of the rest of the world. It's senseless.

BigG · Guru

Interesting article;
http://www.nationaljournal.com/member/magazine/what-happened-to-15-million-u-s-jobs--20110120?page=1

US firms prosper while US workers, including college educated white collar workers, languish or deteriorate.

Could the lack of job creation be the result of focusing on short term results that generate bonuses for a few executives and neglecting product development and capital investment that would create long term viability?

The purpose of management is not to sit on cash which can draw almost no interest in todays economy. The purpose of management is to turn cash into capital assests and make more money from the cash flow from operating same.

US investors are seeing how well their bets on the short term are paying off. S&P; flat for a DECADE!

Of course the Wall Street shills are pushing the short term gains that exist while glossing over the long term losses from stocks.

How long does a trend have to persist before it is "historical"?

"US stocks have historically lost money for average investors. Only the connected, inside traders have prospered". When will Wall Street admit this is the new paradigm? I am betting only when it is obvious to the meanest intellect that they make money the old fashioned way, they steal it.

-- Edited by BigG on Friday 21st of January 2011 08:46:13 AM

-- Edited by BigG on Friday 21st of January 2011 08:49:38 AM

Political & Elections

Obama's take on the issue:Obama Says Foreign Markets Are Key to Increasing Employment Growth in U.S.

Obama's take on the issue:

Obama Says Foreign Markets Are Key to Increasing Employment Growth in U.S.