Economy: America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People

[1prophet]

Cost is still a big factor in that and unions. There aren't any unions in china. Foxconn plants actually have suicide nets to catch employees jumping off buildings. Sounds like a fun place to work. I suppose corporates could just raise the price of their goods to keep the margins intact? Maybe we could end up with a two tier system.

Where cheaper versions of the iPhone are made in china and the premium version (which is exactly the same) is made in the US. It's been done that way in the watch world for a long time now. Where the same seiko watch can either be made in malaysia, the phillipines, china or japan. The version made in japan costs more simply because it was made in japan. Higher wages and costs.



Nope. It's not good for society but then that's the governments problem. Even just reading this forum it's obvious there are americans who seem to view the US through rose coloured glasses. I read this article about rexnord and how when they offshored jobs to mexico and moved the rest to business friendly texas. All of the original employees lost their jobs. While the CEO made 40 million dollars for significantly reducing costs and that's how corporations work it's all about the shareholders.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/us/union-jobs-mexico-rexnord.html

Hope I am not sounding to militant. I have seen what employees mean to multi nationals. As soon as they aren't profitable anymore they are gone.

EDIT: The scary thing is it makes perferct sense to me that the CEO would make 40 million. It's his job to increase the company's profitability and that's exactly what he did.

So did this guy in the name of profit,

his only problem was society hasn't degraded enough morally so that what he did would be as acceptable as a CEO outsourcing jobs to avoid the associated costs of healthcare, environmental laws, labor laws, wage rates/laws, and safety laws that get in the way of profit for the "dear shareholders" while all the trickle down koolaid drinking parrots defend it under the indoctrination called "profit only matters" which includes many of our socially, politically correct tech/silicon valley type liberals, but give it time.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

Someone gets a visa to come here and then get a green card, it takes over a year. During that time they are "illegal". One of my friends had to wait for 13 years since they lost his file.

So shut the fuck up bitch.

Wait, are you telling me an legal alien can get a visa, overstay the visa and still be awarded a fucking green card ?? Seriously they can be a damn criminal and get a green card? Well i can see a change in the law i'd approve.

 

[Jhhnn]

Explain to us all how the law the Republicans are pushing right now that removes property taxes/mortgage interest as deductible federal tax items is going to help ANYBODY own a home.

Did leftists put a gun to the banking industry's temple and force them to write 50 year, interest only loans? Of course it couldn't be the bankers fault, it was our fault, thus we as a nation had to bail them out. Privatize profit and socialize loss, that is the conservative mantra isn't it?

Both of you have a very, very poor understanding of what happened.

Boomerang's diatribe against leftists makes sense only if GWB, his regulators & Greenspan's FRB were "Leftists".

50 year mortgages didn't have anything to do with it, either.

See the movie or better yet read the book-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short

 

[ch33zw1z]

Explain to us all how the law the Republicans are pushing right now that removes property taxes/mortgage interest as deductible federal tax items is going to help ANYBODY own a home.

Did leftists put a gun to the banking industry's temple and force them to write 50 year, interest only loans? Of course it couldn't be the bankers fault, it was our fault, thus we as a nation had to bail them out. Privatize profit and socialize loss, that is the conservative mantra isn't it?

not often you see a Con arguing for more bank regulations

 

[Jhhnn]

People really don't get it. Offshoring & illegals hardly play into it at all. Technological progress is rendering our "work for a living" model of how to support a broad middle class obsolete. Less & less human labor is required to do the same thing in nearly every aspect of life and yet everybody is supposed to work for a living to have anything. Conservatives in particular see the whole thing as a moral imperative to work but not necessarily for capitalists to employ anybody.

We can't possibly thrive until we recognize that there are more stakeholders in our economic system that just the stockholders & the executives. The reason for our malaise is that we've allowed them to divvy up the pie the way they see fit for far too long. Whose country is it, anyway? Why should we let them keep grinding us down just to make money they don't need? What kind of freedom does that give Joe Sixpack, anyway?

 

[Indus]

Wait, are you telling me an legal alien can get a visa, overstay the visa and still be awarded a fucking green card ?? Seriously they can be a damn criminal and get a green card? Well i can see a change in the law i'd approve.

Yeah your chechnian bride out of russia is illegal.

 

[OverVolt]

People really don't get it. Offshoring & illegals hardly play into it at all. Technological progress is rendering our "work for a living" model of how to support a broad middle class obsolete. Less & less human labor is required to do the same thing in nearly every aspect of life and yet everybody is supposed to work for a living to have anything. Conservatives in particular see the whole thing as a moral imperative to work but not necessarily for capitalists to employ anybody.

We can't possibly thrive until we recognize that there are more stakeholders in our economic system that just the stockholders & the executives. The reason for our malaise is that we've allowed them to divvy up the pie the way they see fit for far too long. Whose country is it, anyway? Why should we let them keep grinding us down just to make money they don't need? What kind of freedom does that give Joe Sixpack, anyway?

Okay Mr. Middle class, riddle me this.

If its so obvious people who are stakeholders in new age industry... from computers to robotics, are going to be leaders of the future. Why did the prosperous middle class of decades ago waste their money on real estate, BMW's, vacation homes, electronics shit, and keeping up with the Jones', when there is literally nothing stopping them from putting their money into google, amazon, tesla, etc. etc

Cry me a fucking river they just had to have toys instead of build capital when they had the chance.


The middle class HAD power, and squandered it, culturally, economically, politically, etc. Carl Sagan red white and blue dildo up the ass style and they have no one but themselves to blame because they were the $%^& majority.

I'll be middle class but not by following middle class norms, oddly enough. I'll be middle class explicitly because I didn't follow their shitty advice and 35 year old idioms.

 

[Jhhnn]

Okay Mr. Middle class, riddle me this.

If its so obvious people who are stakeholders in new age industry... from computers to robotics, are going to be leaders of the future. Why did the prosperous middle class of decades ago waste their money on real estate, BMW's, vacation homes, electronics shit, and keeping up with the Jones', when there is literally nothing stopping them from putting their money into google, amazon, tesla, etc. etc

Cry me a fucking river they just had to have toys instead of build capital when they had the chance.


The middle class HAD power, and squandered it, culturally, economically, politically, etc. Carl Sagan red white and blue dildo up the ass style and they have no one but themselves to blame because they were the $%^& majority.

I'll be middle class but not by following middle class norms, oddly enough. I'll be middle class explicitly because I didn't follow their shitty advice and 35 year old idioms.

Could we have a little more victim blaming over here?

The profligacy of the upper middle class doesn't have much to do with the lives of median families. Not that you really want to know how that works but this should give you a clue-

http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

 

[OverVolt]

Could we have a little more victim blaming over here?

The profligacy of the upper middle class doesn't have much to do with the lives of median families. Not that you really want to know how that works but this should give you a clue-

http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

Wages stagnated but the profits still went somewhere. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. EPS perhaps?

Aww you know what $%^& it imma get a $50k car on a 6 year loan instead.

Did you hear, the Jones' went on TWO vacations? Honey we need to go ski cruiseboating.

 

[Jhhnn]

Wages stagnated but the profits still went somewhere. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. EPS perhaps?

Aww you know what $%^& it imma get a $50k car on a 6 year loan instead.

Did you hear, the Jones' went on TWO vacations? Honey we need to go ski cruiseboating.

That's right- straight for the gibbering bluster of denial...

 

[momeNt]

From the 1960s until now the USA has fallen from about 40% of the world's GDP to 20%. Wealth managed to stay concentrated in the top because of aggressive ad campaigns, (consumerism pushing purchases to China vs "Buy America") and aggressive political engagement. Us plebs engage politicans once every election cycle. The wealthy engage them all the time through campaign fundraisers, special interest lobbying, etc.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

The people who achieve the dream:

"Nonetheless, their ambivalence about recognizing privilege suggests a deep tension at the heart of the idea of American dream. While pursuing wealth is unequivocally desirable, having wealth is not simple and straightforward. Our ideas about egalitarianism make even the beneficiaries of inequality uncomfortable with it. And it is hard to know what they, as individuals, can do to change things." - Rachel Sherman What the rich won't tell you.

Even the 1%ers in the article above don't have the knowledge or perspective to see our global intended path.

"Migration, trade, foreign investment, and the spread of technology—all channels of globalization—work to induce wage convergence in interconnected and mutually reinforcing ways." - William Shaw Is the Labor Market Global?

Our heyday is behind us and we need to come to grips with that concept.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon challenges the view that economic growth will continue unabated, and demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated. Gordon contends that America's productivity growth will be further held back by the headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government.

Considering our proclivity for political and policy procrastination I suspect conditions in the U.S. to become considerably worse before anything gets better.

 

[senseamp]

Okay Mr. Middle class, riddle me this.

If its so obvious people who are stakeholders in new age industry... from computers to robotics, are going to be leaders of the future. Why did the prosperous middle class of decades ago waste their money on real estate, BMW's, vacation homes, electronics shit, and keeping up with the Jones', when there is literally nothing stopping them from putting their money into google, amazon, tesla, etc. etc

Cry me a fucking river they just had to have toys instead of build capital when they had the chance.


The middle class HAD power, and squandered it, culturally, economically, politically, etc. Carl Sagan red white and blue dildo up the ass style and they have no one but themselves to blame because they were the $%^& majority.

I'll be middle class but not by following middle class norms, oddly enough. I'll be middle class explicitly because I didn't follow their shitty advice and 35 year old idioms.

What happens to auto workers in the South if middle class stops buying BMWs? There is no shortage of money for most everyone to live comfortably. It's not a supply problem, it's a demand problem with money concentrated where it's least like to be spent.

 

[Jhhnn]

What happens to auto workers in the South if middle class stops buying BMWs? There is no shortage of money for most everyone to live comfortably. It's not a supply problem, it's a demand problem with money concentrated where it's least like to be spent.

Let's cut taxes at the top & reduce social spending to make the problem more acute... cuz freedumb.