Where does it end, Part 451

[Lyion]

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007 ... 02027.html

IBM has begun massive layoffs in a quiet manner, starting with 1300 employees, but by the end of the year, the total will rise to at least 100,000 and probably closer to 150,000 employees, nearly 40% of their U.S. workforce. Some people will be temporarily retained as contractors at a fraction of their salary, and eventually, IBM will also dump many of the unprofitable customer contracts worked on by Global Services or outsource the work to Asia.

[araby]

It's pure evil. Will these people lose their pensions too??

I know it's hardly relevant or even close to the kind of damage this does to fellow Americans-but the ticket companies online are just as evil. They buy all of the tickets as soon as they go on sale, forcing everyone to pay double what they would have paid if it were general admission. I think it should be illegal-how can they control that?

How can you tell a person-such as the CEO of IBM what to do with their company?? I don't know when it will end.

[Eziekial]

How can you stop people for looking to buy the cheapest computers they can find even if they are made in china? Hard to argue with Dell's business model, they just give the consumers what they want.

People have tried to market "Made in America" products and they've had a medicum of success. It's very hard to sell at a premium price without a vastly superior product.

[Spazz]

What we should do is put sky high tariff on anything made outside of the states. Problem solved

[Phlegm]

What we should do is put sky high tariff on anything made outside of the states. Problem solved

Then the other countries would retaliate with tariffs of their own.

[Eziekial]

exactly and you end up having to buy a compac computer that runs slow and costs $8k and your hanes t-shirts at walmart are $40 a piece.

great idea

[Eziekial]

plus no fancy cars from germany, only fruits and veggies in season are available, and no ipods. (actually that may be a good thing)

[Yamori]

Is it the fault of these companies that it costs about 5x more to hire and pay American workers than it does for Chinese or Indians?

We should be yelling at the politicians that have made this situation what it is by messing so much with the economy.. With nearly 50% taxes on wages (huge cost of living and minimum wage needs bump), minions of accountants needed for taxes (increased number of employees needed for US companies), workers posing a perpetual risk for legal liability via harrassment and wrongful termination suits, and government induced inflation (paper money with no backing being printed at an ever increasing rate, artificially raised cost of living due to forced wage-fixing collusion with unions, ect..) - is it really the fault of these big companies to be moving their business somewhere cheaper? :/

Doesn't it strike anyone else as odd that (what, $2 an hour?) is a living wage for people in other countries?

[Lueyen]

exactly and you end up having to buy a compac computer that runs slow and costs $8k and your hanes t-shirts at walmart are $40 a piece.

great idea

This would spur a need to produce those products at home, causing a growth in our manufacturing. The situation can not continue if by enlarge companies are allowed to outsource the creation of goods and services and they are consumed here. In short we can not only be consumers, we must produce something. As more jobs go overseas, American purchasing power will decrease and if those overseas jobs market to Americans they will suddenly find themselves with less sales. In the end we will reach a point of equilibrium with the world in that the standard of living will be lowered for us and raised for other countries as the market "balances" it's self out. Our middle class won't disappear, but it's standard of living will mirror that of other countries (as it will be in the future not necessarily now), although it will most likely be not as good for us but better for others.

[Eziekial]

Lueyan, that's horseshit and you know it. I'm heading out to watch the La Hoya fight but tomorrow if I'm bored, I'll break out the whopping stick and go to town.

[Lueyen]

Lueyan, that's horseshit and you know it. I'm heading out to watch the La Hoya fight but tomorrow if I'm bored, I'll break out the whopping stick and go to town.

Well unfortunately I won't likely be back on the board until next weekend, but feel free I'll catch up when I get back. I am interested as to why you think what I said is horse shit.

[Scatillac]

I just dont know what to say anymore. Over the past year ive followed alot of stuff in business and politics. I read about it for hours everyday. All that it brings to me is depression. I cant help but feel that the entire country is selling itself to the rest of the world for the sake of a little more profit for its shareholders. People are getting "TOO GREEDY" profits are higher than ever, the stock market is reaching newer highs every day. For anyone to just shrug this off is just immoral.

Ive seriously been considering leaving the country and moving to Australia.

When you delve deep enough into everything you begin to realize that the citizens of the united states no longer have any form of control over what happens in this country.

The bottom line is America is gone, it is now a continent of corporations, and the people that work for them.

[Eziekial]

I'm sorry I called your post horseshit, it's just a different opinion than my own and you have your right to it. I recommend reading "The Law" by Bastiat as it is what I've based my opinion on. Listen to the candlemakers petition which I linked here for your listening pleasure as it's directed at protectionism that you have proposed.

http://www.freeaudio.org/fbastiat/Basti ... tition.mp3

http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html is the text version if you can't stand the narrators voice

It's a little heavy and if anyone wants cliffnotes, please let me know.

[Alphonso]

boo unions and health insurance prices

[Gaazy]

Bye Scat, enjoy Australia, and dont let the door hit you on the way out

[Lyion]

Yamori, you wrongly blame the government for the cost of living here and the fact we like being a first world nation. I'm sorry, but personally I'm glad we don't live in a second or third world nation with a vast majority of our people living below the poverty line in Medieval style dwellings.

The problem is also not 'The Corporation'. Most of them play by the book and do what they are supposed to do, compete and fight for dollars.

The problem is the lack of vision in relation to the 'World Economy' by our government and their sole 'big vision' mentality.

A certain amount of free trade is good, but this needs to be tempered based on our quality of life with regulations that help equate the playing field with the communist and dictator nations whom can leverage their lack of human rights, lack of health care needs (since, who cares if a subject dies in china or other non free nations.. Certainly not the leaders) and disparate society rules.

Corporations will do what they can to maximize profits. That's fine. However, we need to have laws in place to ensure that the first focus of our government is the ability to protect and move forward our way of life, with an eye at protecting us so we are not forced to degrade this way of life due to 'global competition' and a lack of regulations in regards to goods and services with the only goal being the corporate bottom line.

Competition is good and is the engine of capitalism. However, open competition does not mean allowing free trade to countries whom do not have freedom. Likewise, competition does not mean the right to leverage foreign workers to displace ours for the bottom line. The main reason this is done is based on open competition and the need to cut labor costs, since other corporations are outsourcing.

If we have actual fair regulations in place disallowing all these H1Bs, massive service outsourcing, and other anti US worker trade practices in place then the companies will still be profitable, but won't be able to massively move jobs to other nations which not only tremendously hurts our middle class, but also allows a brain drain of creativity. They will still be successfull because the other companies will be required to do the same thing and in the long run it'll keep our creativity here, and allow us to trade with other countries whom are free and with a similar quality of life.

[Eziekial]

Labor costs are not the be-all end-all of corporate bottom lines. If you look at just wages, most business owners will tell you that they are well below market value here in America (at least all the ones I talked to when running for office which was considerable) but when you factor in the "soft" costs such as liability insurance, payroll taxes, and regulations; it adds up. I've meet a lot of very smart people, much smarter than me try to dance around this issue of wages, offshoring, and protectionism and by far the most sage advice I ever heard was from an old "coon ass" small business owner who's grand dad was a famous cajun musician. We'd been discussing this topic for a while and he said:

"If a business doesn't make money, it doesn't make sense (cents)"

There you have it. I've yet to find a simple sentence that sums everything up like that does.

[Reynaldo]

What kills me is 50k / year jobs going overseas while we have no qualms paying pro athletes 5 million per year.

Take the contract Clemens just signed (18mil that he's actually going to get), split that to 3600 people and they all could get a 5 grand a year raise.

[Markarado]

These pro-athletes sustain an entertainment economy that provides thousands of jobs to non-athletes as well. Without them those people would not have jobs.

[mappatazee]

These pro-athletes sustain an entertainment economy that provides thousands of jobs to non-athletes as well. Without them those people would not have jobs.

you mean, they cannot work at anything that does not follow from having millionaire pro-athletes?

[Markarado]

What's your point? That they can find other jobs? Of course they could. Why should they have to? Because your pissed off that pro-athletes make a lot of money?

My point is that without these pro-athletes there wouldn't be these jobs available (those in the industry and related industries). They help to create jobs. Why shouldn't they be rewarded for that?

[Evermore]

the government needs to stay the fuck out economics all together

[Eziekial]

DING! WE HAVE A WINNER!

[Reynaldo]

These pro-athletes sustain an entertainment economy that provides thousands of jobs to non-athletes as well. Without them those people would not have jobs.

Point taken, but I still don't think that warrants them making more in 1 year than most of us will make in our lifetimes.

[ClakarEQ]

We've had this discussion before but what is going on here is perfectly normal and in line with your statements, a bit of me being devil's advocate.

Corporations will do what they can to maximize profits. That's fine. However, we need to have laws in place to ensure that the first focus of our government is the ability to protect and move forward our way of life, with an eye at protecting us so we are not forced to degrade this way of life due to 'global competition' and a lack of regulations in regards to goods and services with the only goal being the corporate bottom line.

They are making our way of life better, just you aren't part if it, just like the poor and low-middle class. Your sacrifice allows my "way of life", and this IS the American way. No laws are needed to protect you, as it is 100% in your power to join the "upper" ranks.

Competition is good and is the engine of capitalism. However, open competition does not mean allowing free trade to countries whom do not have freedom. Likewise, competition does not mean the right to leverage foreign workers to displace ours for the bottom line. The main reason this is done is based on open competition and the need to cut labor costs, since other corporations are outsourcing.

This isn't anything about freedom or other countries being "fair", this is about money, and how much a company or person can make. You make it sound like you're looking for equality amongst some percentage of Americans, this is against the American dream, these folks just want a piece of pie and who cares if it is your piece, you aren't doing enough to earn it so I'm taking it.

If we have actual fair regulations in place disallowing all these H1Bs, massive service outsourcing, and other anti US worker trade practices in place then the companies will still be profitable, but won't be able to massively move jobs to other nations which not only tremendously hurts our middle class, but also allows a brain drain of creativity. They will still be successfull because the other companies will be required to do the same thing and in the long run it'll keep our creativity here, and allow us to trade with other countries whom are free and with a similar quality of life.

There is no proof to this. If a company can make more profits by outsourceing 100% then there shouldn't be a problem.

It seems like folks are getting uncomfortable with the times just because there is a potential threat or lack of security in your job and/or way of life. Suck it up and deal with it, the poor have been doing it for years.

This country isn't about the middle class, it is about the upper class and if you aren't part of it then you aren't trying hard enough. You are what you sew, don't complain when you have the means to correct it, work harder, do more, etc. This is exactly what a good lot of you would be telling the poor inner city kids, but now that it effects the "middle-class" we've got this sky falling attitude.

/d-advocate off.