Community

It has been said that a recession is when your neighbor looses his job.
A depression is when you loose your job!

The shift of jobs overseas has been going on for decades.
The general US population was not upset by the first few waves of job losses as the jobs lost were those of Union workers.
It is a myth that the majority of union workers are under-worked and over-paid.

There are 2 core societal problems that are accelerating the demise of US jobs.

First, we continue to demand cheaper goods with more features.
Take electronics devices. Most are made with custom components and cannot be repaired at an acceptable cost.
Oops, there goes another industry, repair shops.

Second, is the lemming like attitude of investors and corporate boards.
They are almost universally focused on the results for the current quarter, and have no concern for what may happen in 5 years.

I do not have a panacea to correct the problem. I do have a few suggestions as to how to make corporations stand up and take notice:

Limit the pay of company VPs and officers to a fixed multiple of the lowest paid contracted workers compensation.

Restrict stock options so that they the option cannot be exercised early than 5 years after they were awarded.

Require top managers to take a cut in compensation equal or greater than the percentage reduction they make to the workforce.

Limit corporate mergers.

On a more realistic level, the answer is for EVERYONE to support their local businesses and retailers.
Stop shopping at WalMart and Amazon.
Go to a local restaurant and not a major chain.
Support "Living Wage" laws in your community.

Another problem has to do with the perception of high taxes and wasteful government spending.
It is very easy to target programs that you do not personally use. We need to start looking at the programs that we do use, and propose cuts to them.
What road that you use could use less frequent repairs?
What teacher that helped your child should be laid off?

We need to make our communities OUR communities.

Chas

The current administration does not have the balls to play hardball with China. We have a $600M trade deficit with China, who has an artifically devalued currency pegged to the dollar. They are perfectly happy with this and in no mood to change, why would they. We seem to have pissed most of the world and they are content to let us stew in our juices. Our corporate leaders can't seem to move their headquarters to offshore tax havens fast enough and our Gov. still lets them bid on contracts even though they are forgein entities, all the while shifting and dodging campaign financing laws. We probable havent had a politician enter office, worth less then $1M, in 30 years. We have judges deciding elections and corporations picking candidates. If you really want to influence politics, choose carfully and vote at the checkout stand. That is how to influence the corporations that influence the politicians. If you don't like HP or Dell outsourcing tech support to Bangledesh avoid those manufactures products. Tell your representitives to get the offshore vendor off the approved vendor lists. Your dollar is more important then your vote, use it wisely.

In a word 'Greed' is the reason. Yes many companies must now move production to east asia just to be able to compete with those that have already gone there. But the main ingredient to all of this is the desire to boost the bottom line. And it's not just the labor. If you are manufacturing Ni-Cd batteries in the US. The enviromental regulations alone will cost a fortune. But in east asia the employees walk around floors that are covered with cadmium and Nickel dust and never think twice about it. Another example: Take a look at the printed circuit board industry. The number of shops forced out of business due to the continually rising cost of environmental compliance is unbelievable! And probably the largest problem is just not having enough lobbyists in washington. The mining and petroleum industrys have much more leanient regulations because they have much richer lobbyists. Where do your batteries and PWB's come from??

Jim Phelps and I agree 100%. I would go a step further to say that the goverment should create incentives for jobs to stay. After all, the tax base is draining and I would think it would be beneficial for the goverment to protect that tax base.

Or another way would be to restrict business pricing of the products or services they provide here in the US. If they keep claiming that it is cheaper to make elsewhere then we better see their products or services prices reduced considerably. Last I checked they were not reducing any prices.

How about a tax on imported product that was made here but no longer made because it was "cheaper" to make elsewhere? That way the tax could help the unemployed people that they created.

Increase the CEO's tax heavily, the more they decide to ship job the more we tax them. In fact lets make it so after a certain level they must leave the country and no longer are they welcomed here. They sure love their country clubs and the good life that this country provides to them but they don't want to help the people of this country. If they love India and China some much then they should move there.

Buttom line is that if businesses don't feel the same pain that we have to feel, they will continue to rape this country anyway they like.