All right Corporate America Listen… Up!!!

reply to post by NorEaster


That is simplistic nonsense. Give me an example of a firm you could actually impact in this fashion.

Most large multi-nationals don't produce stand alone products, they produce components of products. The products they do sell are part of a large value chain that contains many products produced by many, many other firms. Killing one impacts thousands down-stream, from actual producers of component parts, to shipping firms, to advertisers, to retailers and so on.

Want to boycott GE? Don't get in an airplane because the make the engines of most of them. Don't watch TV or turn your lights on because the supply generators to most of the nations power plants. Don't get an MRI because they make those too.

Want to boycott Monsanto? Don't wear clothes with any color because they make the lionshare of dyes. Don't use any plastics.

Want to boycott Exon/Mobile? Don't drive your car, use plastic or any lubricants.

By the way, what do you suspect will happen to the $billions that corporations give away once you drive them out of business? Target gives $5M/day to charity. Wallmart is the largest protector of land in the country. Oh, I guess we can fill those gaps by raising taxes on the "rich". Problem with that theory? The "rich" will either be out of a job because the company they worked for was put out of business by the "citizen" revolt you think would be so wonderful. Hugo Chavez is using that model and its working out great for those folks.

You're brother sounds like a smart gent. Sounds like he's not buying your tired old "take down the man" bromides.

reply to post by NorEaster


1. Its not an anti-union rant or pro-business rant. It's a "it takes two to tango rant."

2. They lost most of their power because they kept insisting on policies and regulations that killed job growth, but kept their workers happy in the short term. Now that lack of growth has lead to their lack of union members, hence their supposed lack of power as you put it.

3. If the unions have no power anymore, then how come the unions control so many of businesses' positions and entire civil service areas? Why do they have a voice at all and why do workers keep paying dues?

4. My argument is old? The big, bad business and banks argument has been going on as long as the first guy said "worker's of the world unite."

My point is that the solution is creating trade agreements that benefit US businesses AND workers, while uplifting the safety and welfare of foreign workers and businesses.

Originally posted by dolphinfan
Labor costs are too high in the US compared to other countries.

yea I guess ur right.
1 wall street banker ceo makes about the
same salary as 270 employees.
yep, gosh darnit, then pesky
labor costs are just killing us???

Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein just got
a $12.6 Million stock option bonus and a salary
increase from $600K to $2M yearly.

Yep, them pesky labor costs are killing us.

Originally posted by indianajoe77
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Ok, but how does your solution answer the questions I put forth to you?

Oh, I forgot, rail, rail, rail against business.

Corporate America and Wall Street are the big players, so that's who you target.

Read The Art of War. Read between the lines and between the chapters. Inhale the essence of the book. If you want to restructure a complete mess, you attack it at its core. Not at the edges.

I answered you union rant. Unions don't have the power of Wall Street and the giant international corporate entities. That's just the truth of things, and so the corporates have to be hit if someone really wants to reshift the situation in this nation. They own everything. The US government doesn't even make its own weaponry. It doesn't do its own reasearch and development anymore to any real degree. Corporations literally hold the keys to the US survival as a society. They own the public utilities and infrastructure. We can't even upgrade our electric grid unless a dozen private corporations agree that it's worth their time and trouble to allow us to pay through the ass to have it upgraded.

We can't have highspeed rail or electric vehicles unless we can bribe large private corporations to make those electric cars or allow us to invest in highspeed rail. We don't even have permission to pay our own government heathcare premiums if we really want to, and we can't because private corporations have decided that they want us to pay them instead - and we have to, even if it means that we are forced to pay 3-5 times as much for 1/2 the benefit coverage. They own that service and they will not allow us to choose who we want to do business with when it concerns our own healthcare and means of surviving illness.

And you think I'm just a big business basher? Reread what I just wrote. You can't do any of that either. You can't have any of that. The corporations that you seem to be defending here won't allow you to have what you want if (1) you can't pay their price for it or (2) if they have decided that they don't want to provide it to you - for any of a myriad of reasons, though profit breakpoint and market potential usually dominate that determination.

And that doesn't piss you off at all?

Christ, what happened to your sack?

reply to post by indianajoe77


I haven't ignored anyone, just haven't took in all the responses, foregive…

reply to post by boondock-saint


Labor costs are higher in the US than in other countries, due to the rights and safeties our workers have compared to other countries.

I'm not suggesting lower American worker wages. I'm suggesting we demand equal rights and safeties for the workers of countries we trade with. That would level the field.

reply to post by NorEaster


The reason they need to be "bribed" as you put it, or subsidized by the government, which is what it is, is because high speed rail and electric cars are not cost efficient to create or produce at a price people can pay. See, workers, hopefully union workers with benefits, need to build that car. Materials need to be developed and produced. That costs more than the car can be sold for. Toyota saw this when their Prius sales dropped off when the government stopped giving a tax break to buy a hybrid.

In the US, only 1, count 'em, 1 high-speed rail system is actually making enough money to cover its operating costs, and even that is subsidized.

I still haven't seen how your "break the system" model solves anything but breaking the system. What next then?

LABOR COST...I here that allot, I wish I would have saved this inside information from a very large corporation I no longer work for, but I didn't; it is around 4% of making a product from what I remember. The other costs that are much higher is electricity, transportation, material and supplies, even inventory plays a role...labor cost is next to nothing when you look at from that point-of-view...

reply to post by Shdak


I don't know what type of firm you worked for, but in a services organization, labor costs are upwards of 65% of the expense line.

reply to post by dolphinfan


I did say for a product, didn't I?

Originally posted by indianajoe77
reply to post by NorEaster

 

1. Its not an anti-union rant or pro-business rant. It's a "it takes two to tango rant."

2. They lost most of their power because they kept insisting on policies and regulations that killed job growth, but kept their workers happy in the short term. Now that lack of growth has lead to their lack of union members, hence their supposed lack of power as you put it.

3. If the unions have no power anymore, then how come the unions control so many of businesses' positions and entire civil service areas? Why do they have a voice at all and why do workers keep paying dues?

I have a Teamster pal who just plain loves the fact that he's retired and can feel secure. God bless hi,m. He worked 30 years at the same trucking firm, and now he's got his harley and his little Cape Cod house and he and his wife are loving life.

That's the American dream. To work hard, do the right thing and get to have a few years at the end to just enjoy life a little. No one lost anything over him getting to pitch in toward his retirement. No one had to suffer over him getting to keep his job for 30 years as he contributed to the success of that transportation company. He did his job, he kept his end of the bargain, and the union made sure that the company did too. A win-win, and that's what it's all about.

I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but it sounds like you got your talking points from AM radio.

4. My argument is old? The big, bad business and banks argument has been going on as long as the first guy said "worker's of the world unite."

In the 60s and 70s, it was uneven against business in this country, but that's all changed and in the last 10 years or so - actually, since Bush 1 left and Clinton brought his "new Democratic Party" into the mainstream - the corporate stranglehold has been getting tighter and tighter. And it's not just the workers getting creamed. My brother invented the PLM product that Nike, Timberland, Liz Claiborne, Jones NY, Reebok, Adidas, Sketcher, JC Penney, and dozens of the largest footwear and apparel companies and their supply-chains around the world, have standardized their entire product development/manufacturing process on. We presented that product - FlexPLM (go ahead and Google it) - to the world as a small vendor and literally revolutionized the entire Footwear and Apparel industry overnight as a result. Then we got blacklisted by every rating firm that exists, and that scared the sh*t out of all the companies that had fallen in love with us and our revolutionary product development solution. If a company can't prove its viability, then it's dangerous to partner with them or buy from them. We had the product and we had the customers. The financial players simply shut us down, and they did so for a reason.

What happened was that we woke up the sleeping giants, we woke up the others to the fact that someone had slipped through without doing the dance - hiring one of their own (a professional CEO from their cast of usual suspects) for more than we felt it would've been worth - and we'd been targeted to be an example of what NOT to do in large business ventures, Our contracts evaporated - all breached, of course, but it'd be years of litigation that we couldn't afford, so in net effect, it was as if the contract laws didn't really exist in our situation. It looked bad, but we found a "white knight", and we agreed to be acquired instead of simply going bankrupt and losing the product.

That acquisition ended up being a one-year deathcage match between their marketing department and me (just me) to prevent the Industry perception of FlexPLM from being damaged - as they worked to drop the value of that product to as close to zero dollars as possible. I actually succeeded in mitigating the damage to only a 9 million dollar decrease in reasonable market value by the time the deal finally went through. I - of course - was immediately terminated, and the product - since 2005, when it was purchased - has gone on to transform the $650 mil company that bought it into a $1.3 bil company, as all their other product lines went the way of all other business in the last number of years. China is quickly being standardized on this one product, and you can't imagine the number of suppliers that exist in China alone.

That company hasn't had this level of success ever, and we knew, they knew, the financial people knew, everyone knew that this would happen with this software product. The product is a revolution for an industry that was ten years behind the technology curve of the rest of the manufacturing world. But because we weren't in the club, we weren't allowed to profit from what we'd created. We had to give it to them, for pennies on the dollar, and after two years of brutal survival, and be grateful tat they didn't simply take it from us - not that they ever understood the product or why it was better than what they'd been trying to sell to those companies.

Point of that story is that big business destroys small business' chances of ever becoming big, regardless of what the small business brings to the table in talent or innovation. Its not just about hurting working people. It's also about hurting those businesses that they decide they won't tolerate.

My brother should be a multi-millionaire CEO of his own software company. He earned it. He did what no one could do, and he was forced to give it to *ssholes who simply made a few phone calls and got his future shut down in his face. That's the talent and hard work those bastards brought to the table. Just like what happens to thousands of brilliant people like my brother every year in this sick predatory society.

He's fine, and still works for that company that screwed him over so badly. They need him. No one in the Footwear and Apparel Industry trusts anyone else to tell them the truth, and he lands contracts after contracts around the planet. Imagine if he'd been allowed to be a real player. But that would've been impossible. We grew up in NY Housing Projects, and he never went to the right prep school or the right college or belonged to one of those Greek houses that those professional business management types belonged to. All he had was talent and incredible insight, and the ability to take a great product and launch it to international acclaim.

Youd think that would've been enough to let the kid be one of the boys, but nope, 21st century corporateland doesn't allow outsiders in, and that's why things have to change. Not to put new faces in the board rooms, but to air the goddamn places out for once. They've lost the capacity to be human beings, and we've begun to suffer as a result of that inbreeding. Time to kill off the bloodlines - professionally speaking, of course.

My point is that the solution is creating trade agreements that benefit US businesses AND workers, while uplifting the safety and welfare of foreign workers and businesses.

Big Corporate Business is the only thing benefiting from these trade laws. Hit them and watch the changes happen fast.

reply to post by Shdak


Yes you did. Here is an interesting read about the labor differential between Japanese and US car manufactures.

A tidbit:

"A big reason is the cost of labor. As analyzed by Harbour-Felax, labor costs the Detroit Three substantially more per vehicle than it does the Japanese.

Health care is the biggest chunk. GM (Charts), for instance spends $1,635 per vehicle on health care for active and retired workers in the U.S. Toyota (Charts) pays nothing for retired workers - it has very few - and only $215 for active ones.

Other labor costs add to the bill. Contract issues like work rules, line relief and holiday pay amount to $630 per vehicle - costs that the Japanese don't have. And paying UAW members for not working when plants are shut costs another $350 per vehicle."

money.cnn.com...

Personally I like the bit where they have to pay the workers 95% of their pay when they are not working. God Bless America and God Bless the UAW

reply to post by Shdak

My point is that Corporate America should be standing up for America and pushing for a fair trade act, they should be saying, the NAFTA program didn’t work to make America better…They should be pushing for a change now. They should be standing up for the people who made them what they are today…

There IS no Corporate America any more!

Statistics (courtesy of Bridgewater) showed in 1990,before WTO was ratified, Foreign ownership of U.S. assets amounted to 33% of U.S. GDP. By 2002 this had increased to over 70% of U.S. GDP.

www.fame.org...

Thanks to the idiots in the District of Criminals it was raped, dismantled ,packaged up and sold. Both the Republicans and Democrats are to blame.

I know this is a bit long but if you want to know what actually happened to American business please read it.


Ronnie Reagan's administration ignored/ was lax in enforcing the anti-monopoly laws and Security and Exchange laws during the 1980's and therefore encouraged the leveraged buyout feeding frenzy.

Billy Clinton (1993 - 2000) aided the bankers in the RAPING of the USA. He signed off on the bills that repealed the Depression ERA McFadden Act and the Glass-Steadman Act (the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999) signed off on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. These changes allowed the formation of todays VERY powerful MegaBanks.

The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 allowed the credit default swaps — CDSs to be completely unregulated. This lead to the US government bail out of AIG so they could pay the banks to foreclose on tax payers. CDSs are "foreclosure insurance" - No wonder the banks are so eager to foreclose and not to modify loans!

However the worst thing that Clinton did was ratify the World Trade Organization Treaty and give China "Favored Nation" status. The WTO did away with quarantine, border inspections, and the tariffs that protected our industry.

Back to the 1980's and leveraged buyouts.

Leveraged buyouts involve an investor, financial sponsors or private equity firms making large acquisitions without committing all the capital required for the acquisition. To do this, a financial sponsor will raise acquisition debt which is ultimately secured upon the acquisition target... en.wikipedia.org...

In other words the investor is placing a mortgage on property he does not OWN!!!

This is not moral or ethical and given what happened during the Great Depression, I would be very surprised if laws were not enacted to prevent it. SO - Where the heck was CONGRESS. Where the heck were the COURTS when this was going on???

If you want to know what the US government did about it...

...In January 1982, former US Secretary of the Treasury William Simon and a group of investors acquired Gibson Greetings, a producer of greeting cards, for $80 million, of which only $1 million was rumored to have been contributed by the investors. By mid-1983, just sixteen months after the original deal, Gibson completed a $290 million IPO and Simon made approximately $66 million.[9] The success of the Gibson Greetings investment attracted the attention of the wider media to the nascent boom in leveraged buyouts.[10] Between 1979 and 1989, it was estimated that there were over 2,000 leveraged buyouts valued in excess of $250 billion[11] en.wikipedia.org...

This is the result of all those leveraged buyouts:
A sampling of the industries with over 50% foreign ownership, according to Source Watch

www.sourcewatch.org...

* Sound recording industries - 97%
* Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage - 79%
* Motion picture and sound recording industries - 75%
* Metal ore mining - 65%
* Wineries and distilleries - 64%
* Database, directory, Book and other publishers - 63%
* Cement, concrete, lime, and gypsum product - 62%
* Engine, turbine and power transmission equipment - 57%
* Rubber product - 53%
* Nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing - 53%
* Plastics and rubber products manufacturing - 52%
* Other insurance related activities - 51%
* Boiler, tank, and shipping container - 50%
* Glass and glass product - 48%
* Coal mining – 48%
[And the list goes on and on]

The big question is WHO profited from "eating the seed corn"

Remember every single dollar the bankers loan out whether it is to the US Government, business, or home owner is created on the spot. In other words it is legalized COUNTERFEITING. The byproduct of all this money printing was the increase of the money supply from $60.5 billion in 1966 to $2016 billion in Dec 2010 AND it caused the minimum wage to rise from $1.00 to $7.25. (My Mom in the thirties was paid 25 cents an hour and that was considered a very generous wage for an office manager)

....These days, corporations seem to exist for the investment bankers.... In fact, investment banks are replacing the publicly held industrial corporations as the largest and most powerful economic institutions in America.... THERE ARE SIGNS THAT A VICIOUS spiral has begun, as each corporate player seeks to improve its standard of living at the expense of another's. Corporate raiders transfer to themselves, and other shareholders, part of the income of employees by forcing the latter to agree to lower wages. January 29, 1989
New York Times:
LEVERAGED BUYOUTS: AMERICAN PAYS THE PRICE

And guess what folks it is STILL going on!

‘Whitewashed Windows and Vacant Stores’ - January 26, 2010

...So, the businesses that provided jobs are gone, the office and retail space sits vacant, likely in default. The windows get broken, the walls get tagged, the weeds grow, trash blows, and, with no one to stop it, nature begins the process of permanent destruction. The value of those businesses and real estate is now gone.

Each of these failed enterprises is a sad testament to the times we live in, but taken in their entirety, they foretell an even grimmer future. It will be a longtime before the jobs return.

The failure of Linen’s and Things is a prime example of how Wall Street plundered Main Street, robbing retailers, big and small, and leaving a trail of failure, unemployment and boarded up buildings behind.

Once Wall Street realized that success can only be so profitable but failure has unlimited potential, the race was on to loan money and securitize the debt.

Just like sub-prime residential mortgages, commercial real estate financing and corporate raiding offer opportunities on many fronts. Private-equity groups bought up large retailers and buried them in debt. Leveraged buyouts, as their name implies, are exactly that, leveraged, in that most if not all of the purchase price is borrowed money. The buyer has little, if any, skin in the game.

The nearby Mervyn’s sits empty, another casualty of a leveraged buyout. In 2004, investors, including Cerberus Capital Management, Sun Capital Management and Lubert-Adler purchased Mervyn’s with $800 million secured by Mervyn’s own real estate. Then the stores were leased back to Mervyn’s at substantially increased rates. Dow Jones reported that investors took $400 million out of the company before filing for bankruptcy.

You might be familiar with the mall-based, teen-focused, accessories chain, Claire’s Stores. It was taken over in 2007 by Apollo Management LP for $3.1 billion. At the time, the chain had over $245 million in cash on hand. Today, the cash is gone. Struggling under the weight of $2.3 billion in debt, sales continue to decline....

OK here is the BIG question. What the heck is Congress doing to protect our country from these predators???

I understand your sentiment and corporate America is culpable to a degree however most of them (except for the larger politically connected ones Like Goldman Sachs etc.) are just a cog on a larger problem and that is the monetary system and those who control it. The politically connected have regulated industry to the point they cannot compete in the US unless they relocate to other countries. IOW they can't bring jobs back and stay in business.

They are culpable in that they entered the greed of the fatal model of the ever expanding economy being necassary for wealth generation. This economy is fuelled by inflation and people came to count on this expansion as a means to create wealth, it was false. It is like putting more on a credit card and saying you are now more wealthy. This has been most glaring in the real estate markets but has been in all markets and is still playing out in the rest of them.

THERE IS NO BRINGING BACK THE JOBS OF THE ECONOMY FOLKS! Any seeming recovery will be short lived and just an effect of deliberate inflation. That is all they can do until it collapses it is a mathematical certainty.

What we need is a new model for the future society. A decentralized locally sustainable model of communities based in freedom and liberty with a freedom of monetary choice and no centralized government control over markets or money designed to meet the needs of the individual and the community based on voluntarism and not on force.

IOW someone has to build one and show the way.

Originally posted by indianajoe77
reply to post by NorEaster

 

I still haven't seen how your "break the system" model solves anything but breaking the system. What next then?

It makes them take the US public seriously. It makes them realize that they exist only because we allow them to. I'm about making them sit up and pay attention. We need jobs and a closing of the gulf between the incomes of the professional executiove class and the rest of us. They've been sitting on 2 trillion dollars in investment cash that could've made the difference in our nation's economy over the last two years.

You can't figure out what the next step would be? Are you kidding me?

Make them agree to a more level playing field, and then work with them - in good faith on both sides - to make that happen.

reply to post by NorEaster

There's this Internet that exists now, and on it, regular meatheads (workers who don't mean a damn thing to geniuses like you) can get emails about your brilliant business best-practices and they can get the word sent on pretty damn fast to others like them who resent super capitalists and their bottom-line thinking. I wonder how long it'd take before some other B2B relationship of yours decided that it's better to pay a little extra for that widget than to be chum in the water (like you) as the real meateaters begin to circle.

The problem is NOT capitalism. The problem is "FRAUD" You will also find that Capitalism is the scapegoat of the BANKSTERS and takes the blame for the injustices caused by Fractional Reserve Banking! A "Fractional" Reserve that has now become a ZERO Reserve.

You do not get rapid massive accumulation of wealth if you have to invest real wealth that is wealth you created through your own productive labor.

When a bank can create fiat currency out of thin air and use that fake money to create a mortgage on YOUR land that is FRAUD! SEE: First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Daly (1969)

When a bank creates fiat money out of thin air and then lends it to an "Investor" who uses it for a hostile takeover of a healthy well run business and then tears it apart and ships it overseas. That is NOT capitalism that is THEFT! (What I am talking about is Leveraged Buyouts I discussed in my last post)

Remember Bankers HATE capitalism because capitalism, the reinvesting of REAL WEALTH to produce more wealth, is their direct competitor!

Paul Warburg wrote the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and his brother Max funded the Bolshevik Revolution.

...Later evidence indicates that the bankrolling of the Bolsheviks was handled by a syndicate of international bankers, which in addition to the Schiff-Warburg clique, included Morgan and Rockefeller interests. Documents show that the Morgan organization put at least $1 million in the Red revolutionary kitty. (Hagedorn, Herman, "The Magnate", John Day, N.Y. See also Washington Post, Feb. 2, 19?8, p. 195.) Bankrolling the Bolshevik Revolution

Therefore it is no surprise that the American liberal media likes to lambaste "evil capitalism" considering J.P. Morgan has controlled the US media since 1917.

U.S. Congressional Record February 9, 1917: J.P. Morgan interests bought 25 of America's leading newspapers, and inserted their own editors, in order to control the media. (NOTE: 1917 was the year the USA got dragged into WWI) www.mindfully.org...

(April 13, 2010) JP Morgan controls 54 U.S. daily newspapers,and owns 31 television stations. www.newsandtech.com...

Think about it. The USA is 14 TRILLION in debt. That debt is because of three things, WAR, "social programs" and regulatory bureaucracy. The bankers set us up for the WARS, wars that only they profit from, by funding and manipulating both sides. Is it any surprise they also use "Liberal Political Activists" to set up expensive social and regulatory bureaucracy?? Inefficient bureaucracies that some how always aid the mega-corporations and kill off their small competitors?

Here is a hint. Close to 50% of the 14 TRILLION in debt is owned by banks. Over 40% is owned by the Federal Reserve.

Here is how that Federal Reserve Debt was created.

...Congress needs more money... They go further down the street to the Federal Reserve building. The Fed has been waiting for them, that's one of the reasons it was created. By the time they get inside the Federal Reserve building the officer of the Fed is opening his desk drawer. He knows they're going to be there and he's ready and he pulls out his checkbook and he writes a check to the US Treasury for one billion dollars or whatever the amount is that they need. He signs the check and gives it to the treasury official.

We need to stop here for a minute and ask a question. Where did they get a billion dollars to give to the treasury? who put that money into the account at the Federal Reserve System? The amazing answer is there is no money in the account at the Federal Reserve System. In fact, technically, there isn't even an account, there is only a checkbook. That's all. That billion dollars springs into being at precisely the instant the officer signs that check and that is called "monetizing the debt," that's the phrase they throw at you. That means they just wrote a check, a big rubber check. If you and I were to do that we would go to jail but they can do it because Congress wants them to do it....
www.bigeye.com...

In case you haven't figured it out yet, you and I are nothing but free-range serfs of the bankers.

Between 100% of your tax money going to pay interest on the government debt, housing/rent payments going to pay fraudulant mortgages and the business loans rolled into the price of goods, we actually hand over a larger percentage of our hard earned wealth to our hidden overloads that the serfs did in the middle ages!

No wonder none of the information about how the central banking system actually works is taught in school!

reply to post by NorEaster


I don't disagree with you on the trade law component of this issue, nor the issue of greed of executives in firms, which is something I look at prior to investing in any firm. I have no problem with a CEO making $50M in long term compensation, say 7 years if, over those 7 years he has created significant shareholder value, grew the business and the firm was a responsible member of the community. The canard that "Wall Street is killing America" is completely overly generalized. For every Jamie Dimon there are 5000 folks working in operations roles in those firms. Folks getting up at the crack of dawn, travelling 2 hours to work, making $70K/year in a high cost of living state. Bash Dimon and his buddies all you like, but understand that Wall Street is made up of middle class folks.

The real failure here is by the government, not the corporations. 6 years ago I outsourced 200 IT jobs in the state of Washington. Where did those jobs go? West Virginia. They went to West Virginia because the state is depressed, has a fine university system and hence intelligent, capable workers. The economic value of the deal was 65 cents on the dollar vs. keeping the jobs in WA. Are all of the cost savings wages? No. Much of it has to do with reduced turnover, lower recruiting costs and lower real estate costs and taxes. These are folks who have good jobs with fantastic benefits. What would I have saved by shipping those jobs to India? About 5 cents on the dollar more if you do the analysis honestly and thoroughly. West Virginia is a cheaper place to do business than India for quality high-tech jobs.

How was the infrastructure built in WV to create the center to house those jobs? A Canadian firm built it.

The government could easily get into public/private partnerships to create these types of facilities in depressed areas. They could market the value of doing business in places like that. Why don't they? Because the unions won't tolerate the jobs being moved from say, Illinois to Alabama. The federal government could easily provide long-term contracts and tax incentives to firms to move work to depressed areas of the country, areas that have been hit hard by a loss of manufacturing jobs. Why don't they? They don't because the unions would make the deal 80 cents on the dollar and then it is cheaper to ship the jobs to India or Vietnam, etc. They won't because the unions in Illinois won't support the politican who looks to do the right thing by the country by moving those jobs.

Why did it take a Canadian firm to realize the potential of these areas of the US and begin to build infrastructure in them (they have since built one in Alabama and are looking to build another one in Mississippi)? I don't know, but it is certainly sad. Why did they do it? Because they were "greedy" and understood that strategically it was a smart move. They were also not held hostage to politicians who were held hostage to unions.

This is not a black and white issue. The corporations, Wall Street, unions, educational establishment and government all have had a hand in it. We can argue all day about who is the most to blame and on that, I doubt we will ever agree. I think we can agree that there are some reasonable simple, easy to implement solutions to at least some of the problem. The problem is that the key destroyer of these efforts are unions.

Why is it that every year when they attempt to unionize the Toyota facilities in Tennessee the UAW fails? Because the workers have quality jobs with good benefits and want their facility to be a profitable so that they can continue to keep those jobs. They don't want or need the UAW.

What car that is sold in the US has the highest percentage of US built parts, the most "American" of vehicles on the road today? The Toyota Camry.

They are betting that your addiction to goods and services is stronger than your philosophical or social repugnance to their actions.

The fatal flaw in their plan is that, at some point, we won't even be able to afford the "cheap prices" they use to try to justify their profiteering and their plan does not account for future generations of buyers.

reply to post by dolphinfan

Moving jobs overseas is symptomatic of a larger problem and that is the anti-business culture in the US....

Dr. Richard Day, an agent of the Rockefeller's stated:

The stated plan was that different parts of the world would be assigned different roles of industry and commerce in a unified global system. The continued preeminence of the United States and the relative independence and self-sufficiency of the United States would have to be changed… in order to create a new structure, you first have to tear down the old, and American industry was one example of that. Each part of the world will have a specialty and thus become inter-dependent, he said. The US will remain a center for agriculture, high tech, communications, and education but heavy industry would be “transported out.” Dr. Richard Day to a meeting in March 1969 that American industry will be sabotaged and shown to be uncompetitive... The Comming Depression

Shortly after that John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Barack Obama’s top science adviser co-authored a college textbook advocating a campaign to “de-develop the United States”

In their 1973 book “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions,” Holdren and co-authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich wrote:

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States. De-devolopment means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation. Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries."

“The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge,” they wrote. “They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.” grendelreport.posterous.com...

NEVER, NEVER make the mistake of thinking that what we are seeing today is not the results of long range planing. Nicole Johnson wrote a very well researched article detailing the Committee for Economic Development's decades long plan to remove American farmers from their land.

...In its 1945 report "Agriculture in an Expanding Economy," CED complained that "the excess of human resources engaged in agriculture is probably the most important single factor in the "farm problem'" and describes how agricultural production can be better organized to fit to business needs...

...A report published in 1962 entitled "An Adaptive Program for Agriculture"[3] is even more blunt in its objectives, leading Time Magazine to remark that CED had a plan for fixing the identified problem: "The essential fact to be faced, argues CED, is that with present high levels farm productivity, more labor is involved in agriculture production that the market demands �" in short, there are too may farmers. To solve that problem, CED offers a program with three main prongs....

...Their plan was so effective and so faithfully executed by its operatives in the US government that by 1974 the CED couldn't help but congratulate itself in another agricultural report called "A New US Farm Policy for Changing World Food Needs" for the efficiency of the tactics they employed to drive farmers from their land.... www.opednews.com...

The final phase of their plan, the complete takeover of America's independent farms by the transnational Ag Cartel, has just been implemented with the passage of the "food safety" law in December of 2010. The family farm will be as dead as dinosaurs within the next decade and the Corporate takeover of the World Food Supply will be complete.

By now, most farmers and honest economists have conceded that the pork industry has virtually eliminated independent pork producers as the NPPC, Farm Bureau, State Universities, politicians, and others of like persuasion have pushed forward the agenda of big business and the vertical integration of this industry into a carbon copy of the poultry industry, aka Corporate Agribusiness. Note I did not call these operations "farms" as they prefer to call themselves. By no stretch of the wildest imagination are they farms.

While many forward thinking individuals and organizations forward this consolidation of the pork and poultry industry as exactly what it was -- a takeover of the food industry... Those opposing the corporate agenda were labeled radicals, doom-sayers, and un-credible. (Given the accuracy of predictions made by the opponents of corporate farming, I prefer the label incredible!). So, now I would ask those supposedly knowledgeable defenders of vertical integration, "What is the live pork price? Where are the markets the independent producer was assured would be there? And, given the price of "on the hoof," why have prices in the meat case remained high (and in some instances even higher) than when prices were in the 40 to 50 cent range?"

Look out beef industry; here it comes! Cattle Buyers Weekly reported in their October 5 newsletter on the trend toward concentration in the feedlot industry. And guess who tops the list in numbers of fed cattle for 1997? The same giant corporation that ranks number 3 in pork production, Continental Grain Company (Boulder, Colo), with an estimated 975,000 head of beef. Others sharing the spotlight with CG in the top 30 among cattle feedlots are ConAgra (Greeley, Colo) and National Farms (Kansas City, MO). Interestingly, these three also are among the top producers involved in mega hog confinement facilities. See the writing on the wall yet?

Before you grain farmers get to thinking you are out of the corporate takeover, need I remind you that many of the same corporations that are now in the livestock business are also in the grain-buying business? And guess what! Low grain prices make their live-stock enterprises more profitable!

Remember the grandiose promises of "Freedom to Farm?" Who do you think initiated this legislation that has resulted in $1.50 corn this year? And it was none other than the "Bigger is Better" lobby (aka Farm Bureau) that helped convince many farmers that "Freedom to Farm" was in their best interest!

...When the independent farmer is gone -- and make no mistake, he is being eradicated rapidly -- there will be no competitive supply and demand market. And consumers will pay the price, as will the nation, at the supermarket -- and beyond. www.inmotionmagazine.com...

The FARM WARS:

USDA officials claimed in our court hearing that, “The farmers have no rights. No right to be heard before the court, no right to independent testing, and no right to question the USDA.” www.vtcommons.org...

Henshaw Incident nonais.org...


cases currently handled by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense (FTCLDF) starting with the lawsuit against FDA. www.ftcldf.org...

Monsanto lawsuit against seed cleaner wholefoodusa.wordpress.com...

Virginia is not the only state where we are seeing open attacks on farmers for the sake agri-business interests and USDA gain cvillenews.com...

Minnesota: MDA Considering Criminal Prosecution of Consumer www.ftcldf.org...

Trial held for Howell County cheese maker www.ftcldf.org...

Dirty Tricks: USDA Funds Big Ag’s Attacks on Environmental Working Group’s “Shoppers’ Guide to Pesticides” politicsoftheplate.com...

Sneak Attack on Organic Dairy Pasture and Feed Requirements by Horizon, Dean, Kraft , USDA, & Industry Bureaucrats: www.organicconsumers.org...


LET THEM EAT GRASS
When we are faced with rampant hunger because of the regulatory, financial, trade and foreign policies of the past 100 or so years, those of us who have been crying from the roof tops for people to take an interest in what really sustains them may be very well justified in saying, “Let them eat grass.” Remember, No Farmers, No Food.

reply to post by NorEaster

They've lost the capacity to be human beings, and we've begun to suffer as a result of that inbreeding. Time to kill off the bloodlines - professionally speaking, of course.

Gee, I prefer Madame Guillotine. Considering the millions of children intentionally starved to death, I think it is fitting and just. The 2011 food riots have already started.

I am a pro - small business Capitalist. The Mega Corporations need to be dismantled.

Even Purdue University, an AG school agrees: THE GLOBALIZATION OF CORPORATE CRIME: FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL CARTELS OF THE 1990s - August 14, 2002