Got me to thinking?

Years ago my financial adviser suggested I invest in foreign markets. Said OK.

Is some of my money part of the reason factories are closing in the US and moved to
another country? Is some of our retirement money, 401's, pension investments and
personal investments building factories directly or indirectly in other countries? Are
we part of the reason factories are moving out of the US?

Just a thought, are we a part of the reason jobs are leaving the US? I really don't
know, just thinking.
geo

My thought is Yes, in a round about way....

I say yes. All the abundant ideas are doing is destroying this country. A lot of companies that are trying to survive are investing in robotics to eliminate the employee the government is forcing the company to over pay. So many manufacturing businesses are relocating to other countries to survive.

Corporations have responsibilities to shareholders, that is the bottom line. This was different back when there were more family owned companies and the families were part of the community. In my view a move towards employee owned companies and away from the large multi national consolidations is the only hope for this country. I see all the companies moving towards automation with the automation equipment typically coming from the parent companies home country.

All the talk about environmental regulations killing business is propaganda, it is the labor cost that cause companies to relocate.

I try to buy products made in North America. It usually cost more but it makes me feel good and maybe it helps a bit to encourage local manufacturing. It is scary looking at food products to see where they are made after hearing about the lack of regulation in some countries.

All the things pushing companies out of the US would fill the net for days. Your money is a very, very small part of the issue. The bigger issue and cause is the total production cost here in the US has skyrocketed. Included in this cost are many things: wages, benefit cost, EPA rules, OHSA, General government interference are just some of the main ones.

All of them make producing things here more costly. That coupled with few penalties for out side manufacturing have lead to this happening.

A old friend has a shop supply business. He bought a small company that made grease fittings. The total labor cost slowly drove the cost of the fittings to double what he could buy them for. So he closed the business and sold the equipment. The equipment went to Columbia. They now ship fittings back to him for less than 50% of what it cost him the last year he manufactured them here.

I am all for more closed borders. Tariffs where and are a good thing in my opinion. All countries need to protect their people/business from outside forces. This also includes farm products. A country that allows cheap US grown corn to wipe out its domestic production is putting itself at the mercy of the US. That is not good long term. Free trade should have limits in both directions. This one world market only works if there is one world standard of living. I am not ready to live in a dirt floored house and raise house fulls of kids in poverty.

I am not sure we could win WWII if it happened today. We do not have the manufacturing power we did then. Too many of the basic manufactured products are no longer made here in the US. So it would not be switching car plants into Bomber factories. It would building them from the ground up and then finding the man power to work in them. I just do not think we could do it. There are too many skills that are GONE. Plus the rules and regulations would make building anything take many times longer than it did then.

Hi, my brother was telling me a small firm in usa manufactured light fixtures and lamp shades etc. He was checked on by government and given a fine so big it bankrupted his company. His charge was because he didn't have a mix of race for employees, they were all white. How does that help? Now 11 people out of work, all were paying taxes not to mention the firm itself. How about all the stuff these employees buy and pay tax on that. No end to that. Some rethinking needed. Ed Will Oliver BC

(quoted from post at 08:47:47 05/29/16) Corporations have responsibilities to shareholders, that is the bottom line. This was different back when there were more family owned companies and the families were part of the community. In my view a move towards employee owned companies and away from the large multi national consolidations is the only hope for this country. I see all the companies moving towards automation with the automation equipment typically coming from the parent companies home country.

All the talk about environmental regulations killing business is propaganda, it is the labor cost that cause companies to relocate.

Click to expand...

Not true. Lead smelting has been driven out of the country. Both EPA and OSHA rules have driven jobs offshore. I know of a company that prided itself on making their product entirely in the US. That is until to stay competitive they had to move the operations to make the brass parts offshore. That was also EPA driven.

For the OP: I doubt it has much to do with those jobs moving. The biggest factor IMO is us. Average Joe citizen. We as a whole want cheap products. To supply those cheap products they have no choice but to go off shore. If the average citizen demanded quality those jobs would move back. Another thing that effects jobs is automation. Over the long term with current wages it's cheaper to use automation and robotics than it is to hire people to do the same job. And that's been going on for a long time. Heck I remember seeing a film about JD welding the frames for the "sound guard" cabs where a robotic arm place the precut pieces (cut by an automated process) into a jig and then the jig clamping down and the welding done with robotics. Just how many UAW workers lost jobs because of that? Ford went to a lot of robotics in the 80's when plants were shut down during the recession. Look at the number of jobs that went away with more modern farm equipment. The round baler eliminated stacking bales by hand. GMO's and Roundup eliminate the need to cultivate row crops. One man today could do what took 4-5 men back in the good old days like in the 60's and early 70's. So not all jobs moved. Some were just eliminated.

Rick

It could be but there is just as much chance that the factories etc. owned by the companies you have investments in produce goods for a broad range of markets. I have made my living outside the US for 40 years and I know that the national oil companies we work for are in direct competition with US companies but the truth of the matter is that those same US oil companies also have large investments and producing wells all over the world. After 9/11 I gave serious thought to whether I should be in the middle east any longer, kind of felt like I was working for the enemy, but on the other side of the coin the US needed the oil at the time and the taxpayers are subsidizing the transportation of middle east oil and have been for decades.

He does not have to have a mixed race of employees as long as he did not discriminate in hiring or firing, both of which are charges that are extremely hard to prove in most cases, someone would more or less have to admit to it or be recorded in the act. There is either more to the story or the business owner caved without a fight.

The current philosophy running rampant in the US is the "rich don't pay their fair share" and the nnalert are screwing us with "corporate welfare" all at a time where other countries have figured out "the rich" and "big corporations" make money and when they do that jobs also follow. Many countries have figured out if you set a minimal tax rate on corporations, say less than 10% you get 10% of an awful lot of money, add in the fact the CEO and the higher paid executives in the company will domicile where the corporate head quarters are giving you a handful of six figure income to tax and it's no wonder they've decided this was a good thing, we on the other hand haven't figured this out because we're to busy being mad at the folks who provide us goods and services because they made money doing so. Try reducing corporate taxes here and the left and the press will crucify whoever proposes it as "corporate welfare" and you'll have a bunch of $10-$15/hour paid protesters on your doorstep wanting to burn things. Combine that with free trade and it's a mathematical equation on where the jobs will go. Add foreign companies doing business in the US and foreign ownership of US companies with many of the sales of the US companies to foreign investors caused by tax predictions garnered from the current and projected budgets of the wonder kids we sent to Congress and it's a wonder we have as many left as we do.

We bemoan about JOBS, yet my kids and I get beat up over my "foreign" cars, between us we have a Dodge Grand Caravan, a Ford F-150, a Toyota Camry, a Honda Accord, a Ford Fusion and a Subaru Outback. The Toyota, the Honda and the Subaru were all assembled in the USA (Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana). The F 150 and the Dodge were both built in Canada, the Fusion in Mexico. So on a jobs basis I'm helping the economy by driving Japanese cars and trucks.

The Company I'm working for is in the process of building a new egg farm to produce cage free liquid eggs. We had executives out shopping for the equipment last week. They weren't in America but were in Denmark, Holland and Italy. Why-because that's were all the egg breaking equipment is made.

Economies go through different phases or stages. Right now the US economy is in the process of switching form free market capitalism to state run control of all productive assets. To do this our government, through the people we elect, are promising us all kinds of goods and services like free or subsidized health care, free college education and a myriad or other things. They are promising that they'll soak the rich and make them pay "Their fair share" (all of it) for our free government bennies. The problem is once the state gets full control we won't be able to get it back and the "evil Rich" will move somewhere else where they don't have to pay for everyone else's stuff, the government will raise the tax rate on everyone to pay for the free stuff so we'll end up back paying for our health care and education only it'll be through he government and they'll keep 40-60% of every dollar we pay for these services.

Foreign investments in trouble due to the European Union and all of the immigrants expecting a FREE LIVING. I was advised to bring mine home to the US of A.

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. I doubt that it has much bearing on it. Government and politics has more to do with it than anything. Some are saying that it's wages and benefits and on the surface that does look like a big part but how much of the wages are affected by government regulations through minimum wage and insurance?
There are so many contributors that, unless you are Warren Buffet, what you have invested isn't a drop in the lake.

When I was working for a corporation, part of my job was in the accounting department.At that time wages and benefits only added 3% to the finished product.

Was having a conversation with my wife a while back. She's the office manager at a violin shop.
Same job for 25 years.
When she first started the cost of compliance took about 20% of her time - insurance, health care, workman's comp, unemployment ins, taxes, OSHA, even environmental regs - because they have a dumpster - city, state and fed, etc.
Now about 30% of her time is filled on compliance.
That's a 10% loss in her productivity and a similar loss to her employer's and the nation's bottom line.
Meanwhile, there are probably 10% more bureaucrats working for all various agencies checking her work for any errors or evidence of non compliance.
That doubles the nation's loss on her productivity.
This is just one woman at one little company. Imagine the loss on a Hundred million workers.
The long and short of it is there is too much regulation in America. That's a big part of why we can't compete.

You can place the blame where you will, my $02 opinion will not change a thing. But these facts I do know: 20 to 30 years ago, every small town in Mecklenburg Co., Virginia had a small factory making either clothing or shoes. They did not pay high wages, but enough to support a family at lower middle class level. NONE and I mean O of these factories are left. All due to either NAFTA or WTO agreements. Both nnalert and nnalert are guilty in this situation. However, what is done is done, what we must do is look ahead and decide what the future will look like. Is it re-education of layed off workers? Or perhaps place more emphasis on technical training in secondary schools? Financial assistance for community colleges? Sitting around and placing blame on one side or the other does not move us ahead in the global market. I know some religious institutions have divested in what they consider tyrannical regimes, but with the intricacies of the financial markets it can be hard to decipher exactly where your funds are going. One would need a sharp market analyst to get a true picture.

Rewarding question. I know a lot goes into why we lost business. Was some of Us money in market investments used to make new facilities, ex build Milwaukee 1.5 million state of the art facility in Hong Kong?

I am not sure we could win WWII if it happened today.

I was watching Band of Brothers a couple months ago, and the thought popped in my head that not too many would sign up to go to war for their country like they did for WW2. We are in a real sad state.

You invested your money in foreign companies and are wondering if you are the reason many good jobs are leaving the U.S.? That is almost comical! Of course it has. You have sold out the next generation to make sure your pockets are padded. I guess you got to do what you got to do, it is your money and if you want to strengthen the Chinese, then that is your right. Now when your kids and grandkids are working at the low paying fast food jobs or Walmart just remember what you and another couple of million Americans did for THEIR future. My father in law must of been from made from the same mold as you were. I married his daughter in 1990, at the time he was making $30+ per hour in a Union job. He has a garage full of Harbor Freight, Chinese junk tools and spends a ton of money buying foreign made products. He talks about union brotherhood but did nothing to invest in this country to support the next generation, he just wanted the cheapest goods. My wife works a fast food job, her brother works at an appliance rental store, grandkids work at low paying jobs. All are under employeed, but they all still work hard and are honest. Oh , and by the way guess who pays the price for all this expensive health care for his ailing generation, My generation does through our taxes. And none of us even have health insurance, we all had to pay the link_disallowedcare tax, because we DONT have Insurance! You are not wholly part of the problem, but your thinking and has definitely not helped my generation. We don't want a handout, just an opportunity! But, hey, you got yours, so what does it matter? JOHNNY B DYER

Oh, and our Government has their share of the blame coming to them also. They sold the citizens out a long time ago and are
still doing it.

I also like to buy American made. I do get laughed at but I feel good the way I do it. I retired after 50 years in the Teamsters Union . I don't owe a cent to any one. Tow cars paid for and two homes also paid for and I have with my Teamsters check and my SSI income I have more income each Month than we can spend Based on our life style. So I must have did something right. ? Now I'll tell you about a super conservative dairy farmer friend of mine .Back in 1960 we were helping fill silo and went in for dinner. He said he was sorry for putting Oleo on the table and not Butter. He said that the little bit that they bought wouldn't make a difference. ? He always griped about the price of milk and still bought oleo. 1st to go was the cows second was the machinery and last was the farm. I often wonder just how much olio cost him.