If it is cheaper, Americans we don't care about the consequ

They don't pay income taxes, so our federal deficit is higher.

They don't pay into our social security trust, so the deficit is bigger and the day of reckoning is sooner.

They don't contribute to the medicare fund, so the deficit will occur much much sooner.

They ignore and bend the rules...and then pay $300 million in fines for violating our nations laws.

They have an import tax of 76% on our vehicles when imported into their country.

And still, we make our market wide open for them.

This did not happen in the last 6 years....it has been going on for the lost 15 years or more. That is the world free trade system our politicians brag about.

When you see a senior citizen in a new Korean car just remember, he is cutting his childrens throat.

I agree. Well said !

Yep

We have the best government that money can buy. And therein lies the problem.

The American voter is the dumbest animal on the planet. Carer politicians depend and thrive on it.

Edd,
Ross Perot predicted there would be a large sucking sound of jobs leaving this country if NAFTA became law. But everyone thought he was a crack pot.

And people wonder why our jobs left this country. Some want to blame BOX STORES, WAL-MART. I think they aren't the cause, just the result of the missing middle class.

I think the beginning of the end to the middle class began in the early 70's with the OPEC oil embargo. Our country runs on cheap energy. I remember when #2 fuel oil was $.11/gal and gas was $.25.

There is going to be more sucking sounds made when cheap coal is removed as an energy source.
George

In one district here,the local paper refused to endorse either candidate,said neither was worthy of the job. Neither the incumbent nor his opponent. Kinda says something when the members of the media won't even choose sides doesn't it?

So, whats the alternative? We place massive tariffs and duties on imported goods to "make it more fair" and the $15.00 blue jeans cost $45-50.00 when made by US company using US union workers at a US plant paying US taxes. The $40K pickup using imported parts suddenly becomes an $80K pickup when all the costs are added in, plus union wages and retirement. Might as well shut down Wally world and the internet for shopping too, can't have any low cost options that aren't taxed to death.

The fact is that if you look around you, no matter how much you try and how much bluster you strut about, if you have a choice between 2 identical items you will take the one that costs less. America priced itself out of the market and then taxed itself into a corner. Then we regulated and preserved ourselves to the point that we can't be what we were. Simple as that. How does the average person afford to live in the dream world where everything is made in the good ol' USA? You can't.

If its a BMW or Toyota it was probably built in Tenn.On the other hand if its a Ford,GM or Chrysler/Fiat a lot of parts or the whole thing was built outside the USA.Things ain't real simple anymore.We're in a World economy like it or not.Lack of productivity and too many people not working and contributing for whatever reason is the base problem.A dog can only handle so many ticks before it gets sucked dry of blood and falls over but the ticks do die with the dog.

And some times the parasite becomes so much a part of the host that you can't kill the parasite without killing the host.

Cut the corporate tax rate and allow drilling on federal land and water from coast to coast. Some people think corporations make enough money now and whether that is true or not is not the point because the only thing that will keep them from continuing to leave the US in droves is to lower the tax rates from the current 35% to at most 15%.

I am an older citizen and I do own a new Korean car made in the USA.
I do remember when I was going to college the talk of a service society where we Americans would b working only a few hours a week and most of the jobs would be in the service industry. Now look, most of our new jobs are in the service industry and more and more work less than 30 hours a week and for very low wages.
Our leaders have made the low wages easier to swallow by loading our stores with cheap imported goods.
As Bret4207 stated, we tend to buy the cheapest we can find, so who is to blame for the shape our countries' economy is in?

(quoted from post at 05:33:50 11/04/14) And some times the parasite becomes so much a part of the host that you can't kill the parasite without killing the host.

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Yeah, the days when we could make those choices are gone. We are part of a world economy now, like it or not. The change has hollowed out the middle class. Moving money around is more profitable than producing anything. And employes fewer people.

How many Chinese and Japanese parts enable your computer to work? Or your car or truck? Hmmm. Remember Pearl Harbor? Or the Chinese Exclusion Act? On the subject of Korea -we are allies with South Korea. Are you buying North Korean cars?? I've never seen one for sale in the US.

This was a time ago already, a county near me specified an American made contents road grader for their new purchase in a fit of patriotic flag waving...... (Or perhaps someone's brother in law ran the local grader dealership but that would be cynical of me.....)

After some investigation, it turned out the one with the Pacific Rim name on it had much more of it built in the USA than the one with the American name stamped on it. Kinda left them in a quandary as to which of the 2 bids then met the bid specs.! (Not sure how family favoritism turned out on that deal....)

Paul

Unfortunately our leaders never explained that what we save in the price of imported goods, we pay out in taxes to support the unemployed... because the jobs they are capable of doing....are gone.

The "60's and '70's war between business and the unions, which our government should have refereed fairly and for the good of the country,
put us under.

When government chooses sides,too pro-business or too-pro labor, it tilts the balance.

I think some countries are much better at managing the trade issues game than we are.

Who to blame? Everyone wants to blame the company. But look at it. If company A decides to import a product to offer it at a lower price company B has to follow because the customer will only buy from company A id they don't. Don't kid yourself. It's not new. We have been outsourcing for over a century! Why do you think we sent the Marines to China during the Boxer uprising? To protect a few missionaries? Missionaries were being persecuted in nations all over the undeveloped world at the time yet we only got involved in China. Our greed as consumers wanting more for less, for over a century has had this effect. Has actions by our politicians had an effect? Sure it has. Refusal to raise tariffs and trade agreements have had it's effects. But we forget the guy who granted an at the time unfriendly nation, China, most favored nation trade status. That is really hurting us now. But we the consumer are to blame. If we demanded only Made in the US products the companies would provide it. Writing about it on here isn't going to fix it. You are not going to fix it in the voting booth. You are only going to fix it with our wallets.

Rick

"Assembled" in the USA. About 20 hours of labor.
Big differance from made in the USA. They have accomplished their goal of convincing us that these are made in the USA products.

But the white collar jobs...design, engineering, accounting, finance, tooling, manufacturing processing, suppliers....aqll those high paying jobs...are in their home country.

Good points. Most Americans have very little understanding of how trade works, they only understand cheapest price. Ross Perot is the only candidate I can remember telling us about the long term consequences of our actions. And he lost.

Speaking of a service society. I had an uncle that said a sevice society would lead us to the end. He said we can't come out of a depression cutting each others grass we need manufacturing base to turn things around. This was in the early 80s.

America runs on cheap food also. Some say food is soon to be our next crisis much like oil has been.

(quoted from post at 14:28:47 11/04/14) "Assembled" in the USA. About 20 hours of labor.
Big differance from made in the USA. They have accomplished their goal of convincing us that these are made in the USA products.

But the white collar jobs...design, engineering, accounting, finance, tooling, manufacturing processing, suppliers....aqll those high paying jobs...are in their home country.

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ouldn't have said it better why can't people understand this?

(quoted from post at 13:22:51 11/04/14) So, whats the alternative? We place massive tariffs and duties on imported goods to "make it more fair" and the $15.00 blue jeans cost $45-50.00 when made by US company using US union workers at a US plant paying US taxes. The $40K pickup using imported parts suddenly becomes an $80K pickup when all the costs are added in, plus union wages and retirement. Might as well shut down Wally world and the internet for shopping too, can't have any low cost options that aren't taxed to death.

The fact is that if you look around you, no matter how much you try and how much bluster you strut about, if you have a choice between 2 identical items you will take the one that costs less. America priced itself out of the market and then taxed itself into a corner. Then we regulated and preserved ourselves to the point that we can't be what we were. Simple as that. How does the average person afford to live in the dream world where everything is made in the good ol' USA? You can't.

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ou're not the brightest bulb in the pack.I'll tell you a little story about brazil.They didn't have much auto manufacturing back in the 70's so they imposed 110% import tax on all foreign vehicles,now they are the 7th largest auto manufacturer in the world .see how that works we need to keep these junk toyotas and kubotas where they belong,not saying no imports(competition is good) just not nearly as much.does nobody else see the rest of the world is benefiting from free trade we are suffering.and if jeans were 50 a pair(some are more than that now btw lol)people could afford them because lots more folks would be working thus lowering the cost of things,not raising them,more people paying taxes means less of a burden on each person.I could go on and on with ASSEMBLED HERE NOT designed engineered etc. HERE where do you think the profits go in our economy? NO but sheeple will be sheeple.

Define Foreign cars please? Not to long ago I looked out on our drive way and saw 4 cars (me the wife & two kids) I saw a Dodge Grand Caravan, a Ford F-150, a Ford Fusion and a Honda Accord. Only two were made by "American" companies, okay 2 1/2 'cause the Honda was made by "American Honda", only one was "made" in the USA (The Honda) our Dodge was made by Daimler Chrysler (a German firm) in Canada, the F-150 was made by Ford in Canada and the Fusion was made in Mexico.

A lot of comments have been made about the government reducing our wages and employment and the causes for or it. Foreign competition was blamed. Years ago when I was a young man going to college I was required to take an economics class as a degree requirement. In basic economics it was explained the relationship between supply demand and price if we have a SUPPLY of something that overruns the DEMAND for that product the prices paid for that product will fall, kind of like corn this year, a lot of supply has reduced the price. Has anyone considered that the steady stream of low skills workers pouring across our southern border for the last 30 years may of created an over supply of low skills labor and depressed the prices?

We had massive immigration in the late 1800's and early 1900's but it was controlled, some folks were turned away and ended up in places like Canada (my great grandfather) or Cuba (a friend's family). At that time we had a massive and growing manufacturing economy that needed thousands/millions of entry level unskilled labor and the government managed to control the flow of immigrants to prevent and over supply of labor and a reduction of wages and the standard of living. Foreign competition is only one of the factors leading to the decline in real wages for America's working poor. The lower demand for durable goods (cars, trucks, appliances, farm equipment and such) has cost us a lot of fair paying manufacturing jobs, yes government taxes and regulation has lost some but so has onerous Union work rules and artificially high wages.

too many people not working and contributing for whatever reason is the base problem.

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So what would you have these people do?

Companies are constantly looking for ways to automate, mechanize, get more from fewer people. It's the only way they can stay afloat.

I guess you could throw out the migrant workers and give Americans their jobs, but who's going to work picking fruit/vegetables for a few pennies per piece, or who's going to pay someone $15/hr to pick fruit/vegetables?

Most corporations are owned by stock holders. The feds tax the corporation profits at 35% and then retax the profit when its sent to the stock holders..

Are you starting to see the problem?????????????????

AND... if you make any profits out of country, you first pay that country' tax, and then if you bring the money back to the us of a, you pay tax on it again, and then when you send it to the owners, they pay taxes on it again.

Do you now understand why even the companies are starting to move out of country????????????????????


You CANNOT TAX YOUR WAY TO PROSPERITY.

IF YOU TAKE FROM THOSE WHO WORK AND GIVE TO THOSE WHO DONT WORK... THE WORKERS WILL MAKE AS MUCH MONEY NOT WORKING. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

define foreign cars please? that's an easy one.companys that are owned within the united states.I guess that's the difference of foreign and domestic?

To quote the great Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and he is us".

I am with your uncle. When they started this service society bs in the 80s, I thought everybody can not work in a service industry.

Just within the last few days I had one of the newer fluorescent 65w night lights fail. I replaced it and in doing so decided to see if there were any visual indications of the problem. In the process of doing that I made a couple of realizations:

The light mounts on it's own galv. steel L shaped pole which somebody made the raw stock (from ores and high temp steel mill processes, including zinc plating process) and somebody else cut it and bent it.
Has the following:
A cast aluminum cover (more mill processes).
A stamped alum shade with plastic insert.
A photosensitive switch with added electronic circuitry
A fairly complicated circuit card with 4 transformers, electrolytic capacitors, couple of inverter power transistors and associated circuitry
A fabricated metal bracket to hold the light base inside the unit
A high voltage/heat tolerante receptacle (base) for the bulb
A Fluorescent bulb with more electronic goodies in the base
Somebody assembled it, stocked it, packaged it, shipped it, received it, advertised it, stocked again on the receiving end, and everybody in the process made money.

At the big box store it sells for under $40.

This ISN'T going away. If we manufactured that in the USA with 100% domestic parts no telling what the cost would be and it would sit on the shelf at the store because we couldn't afford to buy it.

Sorry but this is a fact of life and about 20 years ago we were warned that the USA was to become a "service oriented" economy and sure-nuf. We all know the a lot of the service jobs don't pay what the manufacturing jobs used to pay. But when you can buy this light for less than $40 and a 48" wide screen digital TV with remote and all the rest of the goodies for under $300, and all the appliances you buy for a song in your house and on and on, you don't need all that much income. Besides you are in a lower tax bracket and you pay a smaller % of income taxes.

So don't knock it. Go get yourself educated for the field of interest, paying what you want to earn, and find that job. I guarantee you they are still out there and so is the pay. Just have to hustle and find it.

Mark

Are you implying that I am for more or any tax??????????? Do you have a problem with reading comprehension???????? WHY DON'T YOU LEARN TO READ WHAT IS WRITTEN BEFORE YOU REPLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In short-- it's UNSUSTAINABLE. Lee Iacocca used to wish for a "level playing field". It's never happened.

Better yet, how many Americans would even perform the labor to pick fruits and vegetables? I'll bet even if you could pay $30/hr, you'd still have a hard time finding Americans willing to work more than a few days performing that sort of labor.

It's hard to figure things out...

We complain that jobs are going overseas, but if we can save a penny, we will buy an item without any thought about where it was made.

Another thing...Politicians are constantly promising to create more jobs while at the same time, putting tons of money into programs like STEM education because employers are telling them that they can't find employees for the jobs that already exist. What's wrong with this picture??

I work with several manufacturers and it is true that the low skill, manual labor jobs have either gone overseas or have been automated. At the same time, managers I work with tell me they can't find enough qualified workers. The modern factory requires a different skillset. The manual labor jobs are now done by robots or other automation. That is the only way companies can compete with low wage countries.

In any case, American manufacturing is alive and well, in part because of foreign investment by companies like Toyota, Nissan, volkswagen, Hundai, Seimens, and lots of others.

How come your idea, is good for America but does not work in reverse?

Japan 2014. Among the five “sacred” farm product categories Japan regards off-limits — rice, wheat, beef and pork, dairy products and sugar. Example, it imposes a 778 percent tariff on rice imported from the USA. a four-decade long policy that has helped to sustain the nation’s 1.2 million rice(and very inefficent & subsidized) farms. Sugar has a 328 percent duty while tariffs for beef and pork are 38.5 percent and 4.3 percent.

(forty years….the same timeframe as their attack on the American auto industry)


South Korea 2014 South Korea is negoriationg to reduce its 40% tariff on US beef over the next 15 years, rice limited to 24% market share, 50% tariff on oranges, 25% on pork.

As for imported autos, they are taxed on engine displacement on an aggressive escalating scale plus: a special consumption tax, an education tax, a value added tax, and an engine displacement tax, a special registration tax, a subway bond tax…and a host of special import regulations…..the result? Very few sales of USA auto’s in Korea.

Free trade? Fair trade?

Right on! The American economy depends on immigrant labor for farm workers, construction workers, and anything else that requires physical labor because Americans won't do it. Anybody on here tried to hire an American to help with farm work lately??? Case closed.

(quoted from post at 11:16:50 11/04/14) How come your idea, is good for America but does not work in reverse?

Japan 2014. Among the five “sacred” farm product categories Japan regards off-limits — rice, wheat, beef and pork, dairy products and sugar. Example, it imposes a 778 percent tariff on rice imported from the USA. a four-decade long policy that has helped to sustain the nation’s 1.2 million rice(and very inefficent & subsidized) farms. Sugar has a 328 percent duty while tariffs for beef and pork are 38.5 percent and 4.3 percent.

(forty years….the same timeframe as their attack on the American auto industry)


South Korea 2014 South Korea is negoriationg to reduce its 40% tariff on US beef over the next 15 years, rice limited to 24% market share, 50% tariff on oranges, 25% on pork.

As for imported autos, they are taxed on engine displacement on an aggressive escalating scale plus: a special consumption tax, an education tax, a value added tax, and an engine displacement tax, a special registration tax, a subway bond tax…and a host of special import regulations…..the result? Very few sales of USA auto’s in Korea.

Free trade? Fair trade?

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Trust me, I believe in fair taxing of foreign made goods. Why do you think they started building cars in the US? To avoid the tariffs. It did create jobs but it avoids taxes. They started moving plants here when there was a lot of talk about fair tariffs in the 80's. It ain't cheap to build and equip a new factory here. But they did it. How are we going to stop that?

rick

Did I say it was "good for America"? Re read the post. I said it was NOT going away and told you why. Can you comprehend that? Apparently not!

(quoted from post at 10:22:50 11/04/14) Unfortunately our leaders never explained that what we save in the price of imported goods, we pay out in taxes to support the unemployed... because the jobs they are capable of doing....are gone.

.

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Stop right there Edd, the vast majority of our unemployed are precisely where they want to be- on the gov't dole with a 100% assured income for doing NOTHING. Yeah, there are some folks on unemployment that are actually between jobs, but when the workforce participation rate hovers at 65% or less and jobs go to illegal immigrants because Americans won't take them...that's a pretty good indication that the "social safety net" has created a dependent culture with no interest in working. For that matter, why should they? Why bust your butt when you can sit back and do nothing all day?

(quoted from post at 11:07:38 11/04/14)

(quoted from post at 13:22:51 11/04/14) So, whats the alternative? We place massive tariffs and duties on imported goods to "make it more fair" and the $15.00 blue jeans cost $45-50.00 when made by US company using US union workers at a US plant paying US taxes. The $40K pickup using imported parts suddenly becomes an $80K pickup when all the costs are added in, plus union wages and retirement. Might as well shut down Wally world and the internet for shopping too, can't have any low cost options that aren't taxed to death.

The fact is that if you look around you, no matter how much you try and how much bluster you strut about, if you have a choice between 2 identical items you will take the one that costs less. America priced itself out of the market and then taxed itself into a corner. Then we regulated and preserved ourselves to the point that we can't be what we were. Simple as that. How does the average person afford to live in the dream world where everything is made in the good ol' USA? You can't.

Click to expand...

ou're not the brightest bulb in the pack.I'll tell you a little story about brazil.They didn't have much auto manufacturing back in the 70's so they imposed 110% import tax on all foreign vehicles,now they are the 7th largest auto manufacturer in the world .see how that works we need to keep these junk toyotas and kubotas where they belong,not saying no imports(competition is good) just not nearly as much.does nobody else see the rest of the world is benefiting from free trade we are suffering.and if jeans were 50 a pair(some are more than that now btw lol)people could afford them because lots more folks would be working thus lowering the cost of things,not raising them,more people paying taxes means less of a burden on each person.I could go on and on with ASSEMBLED HERE NOT designed engineered etc. HERE where do you think the profits go in our economy? NO but sheeple will be sheeple.

Click to expand...

Right to insults, eh genius? Where does the money come from to buy the $50.00 jeans? From the non-existant jobs at non-existant plants using non-existant union labor that wants $30.00 an hour to sew jeans? It won't work Mr. Brain Trust. Not without tearing the whole shebang down and starting over. People call sewing jeans "sweat shop labor". They won't do it. I don't know what dream you're living in, but the world doesn't work like that. Not anymore in the US anyways.

BTW, the Brazilian auto industry only exists because of investment by companies like Chevrolet, Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford, Fiat, Mercedes-Benz. Thats who was making cars there. In the 1990's the Brazillian market was opened to imports and Nissan, Renault, Peugeot, Citroën, Honda, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Chrysler and Audi all opened factories there. The only 2 Brazilian companies are Agrale and TAC. The most successful company is Troller, but it's owned by Ford.

Your line of thinking follows that of a lot of other tin pot dictators and despots- force people to buy what you want them to by making it uncomfortable to by anything else. They call that socialism in polite company where I come from. When tender ears aren't around we call it communism. "Da comerade! Ve make the sheeple buy vat the central committee dictates they should buy!"

when all else fails call em' a commy,now i follow your line of thinking :wink: you should be a politician sound and think like one.

Even when foreign, state and local taxes were taken into account, the companies paid only 16.9% of their worldwide income in taxes in 2010.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/01/news/economy/corporate-tax-rate/

(quoted from post at 02:08:22 11/05/14) when all else fails call em' a commy,now i follow your line of thinking :wink: you should be a politician sound and think like one.

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An excellent defense of your premise. Bravo!

Your position is that we force people to buy the more expensive item by removing any other choice through tax and tariff. That's not sustainable, not ethical and is not the way America works.

The answer is to lower US taxes across the board, ease regulation and use common sense law making to turn the US back into someplace people want to do business, to make it so that industry wants to locate here. We haven't been doing that for better than 30 years as far as I can see. Even then you have the entitlement class that isn't going to want to get up off the couch and work 40 or more hours a week.

You are exactly right about the bums on welfare.....but it was a lot easier to force the people off welfare when there was a job available. In many small towns in America there really is no longer a place to get a job, like a factory, a mill, or a quarry/mine.

And I don't see that the cities need an influx of uneducated unemployable folks....the cities are full of them already.

I think our leaders in designing the service/techno economy failed to grasp (or ignored ) the fact that 20% of our population was only capable of very simple, routine, low skill jobs. Those jobs went overseas...but the people stayed here and moved on to welfare.

I think you misinterpreted what i am saying.I'm not saying force anything as I said competition is GOOD what I am saying is buying so much foreign crap is what got us here along with gutting a lot of blue collar jobs and we need to reduce that.we need more jobs in turn more people working lowers the tax burden on everyone thus boosting the economy,thus lowering the price of goods eventually.I know there is jobs they say they have a need to fill but not everyone can be a rocket scientist.We need to have decent paying jobs for the average joe,not minimum wage which is a joke.look at the steel industry for ex. lots of good paying jobs basically gone, now we ship our scrap metals to china,that needs to stop. And anyways we're talking about new cars here?you telling me you can afford a new honda but NOT a new chevy?Come on now.

In my area, employers used to train their own workers. For example, JEFFBOAT, the large inland barge maker, used to conduct a welding school for now hires. When I hired in at TOWER Automotive in 2000, the company sent ALL its probationary workers to a 5-day, 40-hour MIG welding class at the local vocational school. If you couldn't pass the welding test at the end, well...you were probationary, and you could be let go right then and there.

Today, employers are looking for welders and other skilled workers who are ALREADY trained...and when they can't find enough qualified people, they want THE GOVERNMENT to train these people FOR them.

But they also want their taxes cut, after demanding THE GOVERNMENT pay to train their workers. So which do we do...cut government spending, which affects the funding available for education, so we can cut their taxes? Or do we spend the money to train these workers on the taxpayers' dime so there'll be a supply of already skilled workers?

Or maybe we could go back to the way it used to be, and let the employers pay for training their own workers. After all, that USED to work just fine; why won't it work NOW?

The thing is, right now NEITHER is paying to train these workers, because employers are cutting back their spending [except for executives] AND government is cutting back on spending. So then we have unemployed folks complaining that they can't get a job, and employers complaining that they can't find anyone who's already qualified. And I'm convinced that everyone agrees there's a problem, but NOBODY wants to pay the price to FIX THE PROBLEM...because they're all too busy trying to FIX THE BLAME instead.

Forty years ago, a local high school was involved in something they called Industrial Cooperative Education [ICE]. The ICE program partnered the school system and the businesses and the goal was to train the students in the skills the employers needed. These days, "cooperative" is apparently a bad word. No one cooperates with anyone, apparently because EVERYONE wants to be the "big cheese," and no one wants to cede even part of their authority for the greater good. So the schools and the businesses stopped cooperating, and then businesses complain that they can't find qualified employees. I don't know about YOU, but I can see a cause-and-effect relationship here.

And while schools fail to train students in the skills they need to get a decent job and employers wizz and moan about not having any qualified applicants, more and more products are made overseas by people who, somehow, ARE being trained to make things. In America, EVERYBODY wants trained workers...but nobody wants to pay the bill to train them. and THAT'S the core of the problem, as I see it.

If people only cared about quality over price, Packard and Hudson would still be building cars, and Chevrolet would be out of business.

(quoted from post at 08:56:20 11/05/14) In my area, employers used to train their own workers. For example, JEFFBOAT, the large inland barge maker, used to conduct a welding school for now hires. When I hired in at TOWER Automotive in 2000, the company sent ALL its probationary workers to a 5-day, 40-hour MIG welding class at the local vocational school. If you couldn't pass the welding test at the end, well...you were probationary, and you could be let go right then and there.

Today, employers are looking for welders and other skilled workers who are ALREADY trained...and when they can't find enough qualified people, they want THE GOVERNMENT to train these people FOR them.

But they also want their taxes cut, after demanding THE GOVERNMENT pay to train their workers. So which do we do...cut government spending, which affects the funding available for education, so we can cut their taxes? Or do we spend the money to train these workers on the taxpayers' dime so there'll be a supply of already skilled workers?

Or maybe we could go back to the way it used to be, and let the employers pay for training their own workers. After all, that USED to work just fine; why won't it work NOW?

The thing is, right now NEITHER is paying to train these workers, because employers are cutting back their spending [except for executives] AND government is cutting back on spending. So then we have unemployed folks complaining that they can't get a job, and employers complaining that they can't find anyone who's already qualified. And I'm convinced that everyone agrees there's a problem, but NOBODY wants to pay the price to FIX THE PROBLEM...because they're all too busy trying to FIX THE BLAME instead.

Forty years ago, a local high school was involved in something they called Industrial Cooperative Education [ICE]. The ICE program partnered the school system and the businesses and the goal was to train the students in the skills the employers needed. These days, "cooperative" is apparently a bad word. No one cooperates with anyone, apparently because EVERYONE wants to be the "big cheese," and no one wants to cede even part of their authority for the greater good. So the schools and the businesses stopped cooperating, and then businesses complain that they can't find qualified employees. I don't know about YOU, but I can see a cause-and-effect relationship here.

And while schools fail to train students in the skills they need to get a decent job and employers wizz and moan about not having any qualified applicants, more and more products are made overseas by people who, somehow, ARE being trained to make things. In America, EVERYBODY wants trained workers...but nobody wants to pay the bill to train them. and THAT'S the core of the problem, as I see it.

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Buzz, that's flawed logic as I see it. Raise the taxes so the government can fund training while the company packs up and moves overseas because of the tax increase? So the government spends money to train someone for a now nonexistent job and instead of be able to collect 10 or 12% taxes from the company they now collect ZERO. Sorry, that just doesn't work out. If the politicians would quit pork barrel spending they could run government training programs without raising taxes.

As far as companies not training people anymore goes. We are in a sugar beet area. Local companies train people to drive only to have them quit right after getting their CDL so they can go drive OTR. Other companies had that problem too. Also add in the liability the company faces should a trainee be injured or should a newly trained worker do a substandard job.

Rick

(quoted from post at 08:58:42 11/05/14) If people only cared about quality over price, Packard and Hudson would still be building cars, and Chevrolet would be out of business.

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Not true. Packard and Hudson failed at a time when almost anything American made had quality with far fewer factory defects than today. Had they survived until say the 70's I'd say you were right.

Rick

You've got it backwards...

The companies want the government to train their
workers, PLUS cut their taxes. As I see it, you
can have one or the other, but not both. I never
said a WORD about RAISING taxes...but it's hard to
INCREASE training at government expense, at the
same time you're cutting funding for education and
training. Looks like you want it both ways, too.

I think that the companies should go back to
training workers, the way they did not so many
years ago...instead of complaining that "it's
somebody else's job to do that."

The key is, FIRST you train them...THEN you PAY
THEM WHAT THEY'RE WORTH. They wouldn't leave to
work somewhere else if you paid them what they're
worth...because they ARE worth more money,
apparently, to the OTHER guy. If THE COMPETITION
thinks they're worth more money, why wouldn't the
company who trained them think so, too? If a
trainee does a substandard job, they don't get
certified...and as a probationary employee, even
if your company has a union, you can still be
fired for substandard work. Saw that happen all
around me when I worked at the frame plant. Lots
of "probies" who didn't do a good job were here
today, gone tomorrow.

Liability? There's insurance for that...and always
has been. Train 'em right, and that's not a
concern. There's no less liability for a newbie
employee than there is for one who's been trained
wrong, even if they're trained somewhere else.

I think your arguments are bogus. You want
smaller government that costs less, but you want
them to pick up the tab for the training that
business USED to do on their own. Who pays for
that? Oh, yeah...THE TAXPAYER...whether it's the
individual of the business, the TAXPAYER foots
that bill. Why should I, as a taxpayer, pay to
train YOUR workers, just because you WON'T pay to
do it? Let the folks who buy your products
ultimately pay for their training...and if I don't
buy your products, then I don't pay your business
expenses.

How's THAT sound?

(quoted from post at 11:57:35 11/05/14) I think you misinterpreted what i am saying.I'm not saying force anything as I said competition is GOOD what I am saying is buying so much foreign crap is what got us here along with gutting a lot of blue collar jobs and we need to reduce that.we need more jobs in turn more people working lowers the tax burden on everyone thus boosting the economy,thus lowering the price of goods eventually.I know there is jobs they say they have a need to fill but not everyone can be a rocket scientist.We need to have decent paying jobs for the average joe,not minimum wage which is a joke.look at the steel industry for ex. lots of good paying jobs basically gone, now we ship our scrap metals to china,that needs to stop. And anyways we're talking about new cars here?you telling me you can afford a new honda but NOT a new chevy?Come on now.

Click to expand...

No, I got the message alright. You want to use taxes and tariffs to make imports less affordable than domestic items. So you want to force people to not have the choice of buying anything other than domestic products in the mistaken belief that this will somehow create a bustling economy. The problem is that it won't work. It's never worked in the long run and it only allows competition among US producers. It wouldn't work now because you have a dollar that is falling in value every day through engineered devaluation. The only way to actual wealth is through taking a raw material and increasing it's value. That's how we rebuild the dollar. That and shrinking the number of dollars out there, but that brings another set of problems with it. But the US doesn't want heavy industry anymore. They don't want logging and mining. They don't really feel too warm and fuzzy about farming or fishing. The way we create real wealth is by taking a resource (iron, steel, aluminum, oil) turning it into a salable product at the least cost possible and then selling it throughout the world. Use any other item you want, it works the same way. You don't create wealth by trading money inside one nation, that's just recirculating the same money back and forth. You create wealth through international trading. You used Brazil as an example and yet you ignored the fact it was foreign investment that built Brazils auto industry, that it was Brazils favorable tax climate and low wages, along with their much laxer regulations as far as OSHA and EPA type issues, that made all those auto makers move plants into Brazil. BTW, the tariff in import autos in Brazil appears to be 55%, not 110%. Yes, there is a large market for cars in Brazil, but that's not because of a tariff, it's because they have a new middle class that didn't exist before. It has nothing to do with tariffs.

As far as your claim that, "... if jeans were 50 a pair(some are more than that now btw lol)people could afford them because lots more folks would be working thus lowering the cost of things,not raising them,more people paying taxes means less of a burden on each person.", you just aren't making the case. If all it took was raising the price of jeans to $50.00 or $100.00 to make the economy balloon, then it would have been done. Look, it's the same argument as raising the min wage. Proponents always claim that it will boost the economy. It doesn't, it tends to hurt the economy for a period, but that's besides the point. The point is if raising the min wage to, say, $15.00 an hour is good, then why not raise it to $20 or $35.00 an hour? Because there isn't a way to afford it and stay in business, that's why. Same with the idea of raising prices- it doesn't automatically equal more jobs, more tax payers, more anything. Over 50% if tax payers now pay no effective Federal Income Tax! In most cases they get a refund equal to far more than they paid in. Raise the min wage and the min wage earners are still going to be at the bottom and get the same treatment. That's why it doesn't automatically work. It would be great if it did, but the reality is, no, it doesn't work like that. Increased tariffs and taxation cannot create an improved economy without increased trade.

As far as the "junk Toyotas and Kubotas", again, you blew it. Why did Toyota and Honda get such a large market share back in the 70's and 80's? Quality and choice. They offered people something the Big 3 wouldn't offer, at a better price and they consistently improved their quality till it surpassed Detroit by a wide margin. Toyota and Kubota are anything but junk. Junk was what was rolling out of Detroit in the mid to late 70's and 80's. I owned and worked on American iron in those days. It was pretty rare to get 100K trouble free miles on a Ford, Chev or Dodge, but I put over 300K on 2 Toyota pickups with no major issues. I can tell you horror stories about a brand new Jeep Cherokee that puked the transfer case in my driveway with less than 1K miles on it. The Chevy Beretta that ate crankshaft sensors like Rosie O'D eats donuts, or the Diplomats that lost tranny after tranny after tranny only to then have the paint peel off the hood in strips.

I'm sorry, but you've misread the whole shebang. Get some reading done on basic economics and start there.

no you don't get it and obviously never will and toyota is junk and always will be along with kubota you are just an economy killer and are trying to justify such actions by typing this gibberish although I can sense you feel bad deep down for being a traitor to your domestic economy!

(quoted from post at 11:15:52 11/05/14) You've got it backwards...

The companies want the government to train their
workers, PLUS cut their taxes. As I see it, you
can have one or the other, but not both. I never
said a WORD about RAISING taxes...but it's hard to
INCREASE training at government expense, at the
same time you're cutting funding for education and
training. Looks like you want it both ways, too.

I think that the companies should go back to
training workers, the way they did not so many
years ago...instead of complaining that "it's
somebody else's job to do that."

The key is, FIRST you train them...THEN you PAY
THEM WHAT THEY'RE WORTH. They wouldn't leave to
work somewhere else if you paid them what they're
worth...because they ARE worth more money,
apparently, to the OTHER guy. If THE COMPETITION
thinks they're worth more money, why wouldn't the
company who trained them think so, too? If a
trainee does a substandard job, they don't get
certified...and as a probationary employee, even
if your company has a union, you can still be
fired for substandard work. Saw that happen all
around me when I worked at the frame plant. Lots
of "probies" who didn't do a good job were here
today, gone tomorrow.

Liability? There's insurance for that...and always
has been. Train 'em right, and that's not a
concern. There's no less liability for a newbie
employee than there is for one who's been trained
wrong, even if they're trained somewhere else.

I think your arguments are bogus. You want
smaller government that costs less, but you want
them to pick up the tab for the training that
business USED to do on their own. Who pays for
that? Oh, yeah...THE TAXPAYER...whether it's the
individual of the business, the TAXPAYER foots
that bill. Why should I, as a taxpayer, pay to
train YOUR workers, just because you WON'T pay to
do it? Let the folks who buy your products
ultimately pay for their training...and if I don't
buy your products, then I don't pay your business
expenses.

How's THAT sound?

Click to expand...

OK, so we tax companies to the point that not only do they outsource but now (as is what is currently happening) they leave the US taking not only their taxes but taxable jobs too? Be that of the CEO or the union, now unemployed worker? Gee double tax loss, no triple! And now the company can do what it's supposed to do...EARN MONEY! But not under current US control! And more US citizens and none citizens can draw welfare from a shrinking tax base?????

Rick

(quoted from post at 00:36:40 11/06/14) no you don't get it and obviously never will and toyota is junk and always will be along with kubota you are just an economy killer and are trying to justify such actions by typing this gibberish although I can sense you feel bad deep down for being a traitor to your domestic economy!

Click to expand...

Anpther fine fine defense of your position. Well done.....

Bret, what you are missing on the companies doing the training.

The company then stands the entire risk should something go wrong. They hire someone out of a trade school who screws up, yes they still have liability but a jury can be made to see that it isn't entirely the companies fault because of poor training. Plus with outside certifying agencies a company can limit their exposure. Now they build a faulty product because they tried keeping the cost of development down then they are 100% liable. In that case it often comes out that the engineering staff told management that it needed more work before being ready for the market. To very good examples of that were the tranny issues when IH released the 560 Farmall and Ford with the exploding Pinto.

One way or the other the consumer is paying for it. Through taxes or through the company passing off the cost of training in the price of the product. It would be interesting to know what an insurance company's take on employer run training programs today for something like welding. Unless the company was covering a wide range of welding skills, often much more than the job requires, how would they get them certified? For liability reasons you are going to want that cert through an outside source.

With todays courts a company is wise to only hire skilled workers who were trained and certified at an outside source IMO. Look at auto mechanics. They have to get their ASE certs for each system and it's no longer just taking a test. They have to have proof that they worked on each system. The only way to efficiently do that is with a dedicated course. No way a smaller dealership can train themselves.

Rick

(quoted from post at 13:58:10 11/06/14) Bret, what you are missing on the companies doing the training.

The company then stands the entire risk should something go wrong. They hire someone out of a trade school who screws up, yes they still have liability but a jury can be made to see that it isn't entirely the companies fault because of poor training. Plus with outside certifying agencies a company can limit their exposure. Now they build a faulty product because they tried keeping the cost of development down then they are 100% liable. In that case it often comes out that the engineering staff told management that it needed more work before being ready for the market. To very good examples of that were the tranny issues when IH released the 560 Farmall and Ford with the exploding Pinto.

One way or the other the consumer is paying for it. Through taxes or through the company passing off the cost of training in the price of the product. It would be interesting to know what an insurance company's take on employer run training programs today for something like welding. Unless the company was covering a wide range of welding skills, often much more than the job requires, how would they get them certified? For liability reasons you are going to want that cert through an outside source.

With todays courts a company is wise to only hire skilled workers who were trained and certified at an outside source IMO. Look at auto mechanics. They have to get their ASE certs for each system and it's no longer just taking a test. They have to have proof that they worked on each system. The only way to efficiently do that is with a dedicated course. No way a smaller dealership can train themselves.

Rick

Click to expand...

Rick, I wasn't addressing the training issue at all, never touched it, didn't mention it, not once. My posts were directed entirely at the idea of using tariffs and taxes to force people to buy a domestic product and the idea it would have a positive effect on the economy and future taxation.

(quoted from post at 06:05:31 11/07/14)

(quoted from post at 13:58:10 11/06/14) Bret, what you are missing on the companies doing the training.

The company then stands the entire risk should something go wrong. They hire someone out of a trade school who screws up, yes they still have liability but a jury can be made to see that it isn't entirely the companies fault because of poor training. Plus with outside certifying agencies a company can limit their exposure. Now they build a faulty product because they tried keeping the cost of development down then they are 100% liable. In that case it often comes out that the engineering staff told management that it needed more work before being ready for the market. To very good examples of that were the tranny issues when IH released the 560 Farmall and Ford with the exploding Pinto.

One way or the other the consumer is paying for it. Through taxes or through the company passing off the cost of training in the price of the product. It would be interesting to know what an insurance company's take on employer run training programs today for something like welding. Unless the company was covering a wide range of welding skills, often much more than the job requires, how would they get them certified? For liability reasons you are going to want that cert through an outside source.

With todays courts a company is wise to only hire skilled workers who were trained and certified at an outside source IMO. Look at auto mechanics. They have to get their ASE certs for each system and it's no longer just taking a test. They have to have proof that they worked on each system. The only way to efficiently do that is with a dedicated course. No way a smaller dealership can train themselves.

Rick

Click to expand...

Rick, I wasn't addressing the training issue at all, never touched it, didn't mention it, not once. My posts were directed entirely at the idea of using tariffs and taxes to force people to buy a domestic product and the idea it would have a positive effect on the economy and future taxation.

Click to expand...

Sorry, got you mixed up with someone else.

I agree with the tariff issue. They tried that in the 30's and it didn't put people back to work. It was only after we started selling massive amounts of war material to England that people really started going back to work. The government jobs programs didn't really get that many people working with dam and road projects. Industry, with increased sales, are the ones who created enough jobs to really start putting the US back to work. Roosevelt's lend lease program and his circumvention of the current neutrality laws that allowed companies to accept orders for equipment and ships are what put people back to work and finally pulled the US out of the depression. Our government today should look at the real history of the depression and job creation. Sure grade and high school history books would have us believe that the government job program is what saved us. But real history disproves that. Corporate America is the main employment force. When companies can sell goods and increase sales they hire.

Interestingly several sources claim the official government figures for unemployment during the depression around 50%. Historians for colleges are saying it was more like 80% at the worst. They also say that the government had no real way of knowing the exact figures because they lacked the means we have today to gather information.

Rick

Why do you keep changing this to talk about
corporate taxes going up?

I never ONCE said that corporate taxes should be
raised. NOT ONCE. But I did say that companies
who once trained their own workers now expect
government to do it...AND expect to receive tax
abatement at the same time.

So guess who gets to pay the bill for training
their workers? Folks who may never, EVER buy
their products. But I guess you think THAT'S
fair?

Let's make this really simple. Bob owns a farm.
Bob has dairy cattle. Bob has always in the past
trained his own hired hands to milk the cows.
Suddenly, Bob decides that it's the government's
place to set up a school and train his hired hands
to milk cows...PLUS, he thinks that the government
needs to lower his taxes. So even the guy who's
lactose intolerant and can't drink milk gets to
pay, because HIS taxes just went up TWICE...once
to pay for training Bob's hired hands to milk the
cows, and once to make up the government's budget
since Bob's taxes went down. In the past, when
Bob was training his own hired hands to milk the
cows, the only ones paying for Bob's training
expenses were the folks who bought Bob's milk.

Bottom line is, Bob wants trained workers, but he
doesn't want to train them. Plus, he wants his
taxes to go down BECAUSE he's no longer paying out
of his own pockets to train his workers.

So do you understand it yet? I don't know how to
spell it our any simpler. And if you'll notice, I
never said a WORD about RAISING BOB'S TAXES.
Because that wasn't part of the equation here.

(quoted from post at 11:03:34 11/07/14) Why do you keep changing this to talk about
corporate taxes going up?

I never ONCE said that corporate taxes should be
raised. NOT ONCE. But I did say that companies
who once trained their own workers now expect
government to do it...AND expect to receive tax
abatement at the same time.

So guess who gets to pay the bill for training
their workers? Folks who may never, EVER buy
their products. But I guess you think THAT'S
fair?

Let's make this really simple. Bob owns a farm.
Bob has dairy cattle. Bob has always in the past
trained his own hired hands to milk the cows.
Suddenly, Bob decides that it's the government's
place to set up a school and train his hired hands
to milk cows...PLUS, he thinks that the government
needs to lower his taxes. So even the guy who's
lactose intolerant and can't drink milk gets to
pay, because HIS taxes just went up TWICE...once
to pay for training Bob's hired hands to milk the
cows, and once to make up the government's budget
since Bob's taxes went down. In the past, when
Bob was training his own hired hands to milk the
cows, the only ones paying for Bob's training
expenses were the folks who bought Bob's milk.

Bottom line is, Bob wants trained workers, but he
doesn't want to train them. Plus, he wants his
taxes to go down BECAUSE he's no longer paying out
of his own pockets to train his workers.

So do you understand it yet? I don't know how to
spell it our any simpler. And if you'll notice, I
never said a WORD about RAISING BOB'S TAXES.
Because that wasn't part of the equation here.

Click to expand...

OK, the US federal government over the last several years has changed corporate taxes. So much so that companies are planning on moving out of the country taking jobs with them. No jobs means you don't have to worry about training workers. Pretty simple! Raising corporate taxes isn't working!

And like I said before. Legal issues with certain types of work that is critical to safety really can't be trained in house. Just too much liability and too expensive to run certified training programs in house. I know of a bunch of small companies that train non critical things in house.

A large part of the problems of skilled workers is a heck of a lot of people today were told over and over in school that they want to be the white collar person. I know of 2 trade schools that were took over by colleges that junior college was incorporated into the schools. The academics were selected o run those schools. They have spent considerable effort in trying to shut down the trade school side.

I understand where you are coming from about tax the companies to train the workers. It sounds logical when you are looking at the one small piece, but when companies are being taxed to the point where they are leaving the country that's bad and more taxes will only make it worse. Gotta look at the whole picture. Now our government waste enough money through stupid spending that they could pay most if not all of post secondary education for people who can't afford to pay for it themselves. So how about we stop wasting money and spend it on something that that will produce a larger tax base when these people have job skills that pay enough that they to will pay taxes?

Ever hear of the CEP program? Government run program to get people in school. For those who qualify not only is the schooling paid for but so is lab fees, books tools and more. In fact they actually pay the student to be in school. I know several people who have attended school via CEP. 2 quit right before they were going to graduate because they finally realized that the government was actually going to expect them to get a job once they had a diploma in hand.

Rick

(quoted from post at 11:55:29 11/04/14) The American voter is the dumbest animal on the planet. Carer politicians depend and thrive on it.

Click to expand...

As this was posted on election day, I couldn't help but laugh considering the general result.