Alex:
It’s people like you who are getting these outsourced jobs. Instead of bitching, why don’t you support those like you who went to college, waited, survived, raised a family, and finally found a job. These people should be applauded, not villified. Look at cities like Bangalore and Manilla and be happy that you didn’t live there.
Heinz Pickles
Check some of your Heinz products.
Sen. John Kerry keeps talking about U.S. corporations leaving this country and setting up shop in foreign countries, taking thousands of jobs with them.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Kerry’s own 32 factories in Europe and 18 in Asia and the Pacific. In addition, their company, the Heinz Company, leases four factories in Europe and four in Asia. Also, they own 27 factories in North America, some of which are in Mexico and the Caribbean. 80% of Heinz products are made overseas. I wonder how many hundreds of American workers lost their jobs when these plants relocated in foreign countries. I also wonder if the workers in Mexico and Asia are paid the same wages and benefits as workers in the United States. Of course they’re not. However, Kerry demands that other companies that relocate should pay the same benefits they did in the U.S. Why does he not demand this of the Heinz Company, since he is married to the owner? If Kerry is elected, will he and his wife close all those foreign factories and bring all those jobs back to America? Of course they won’t. They’re making millions off that cheap labor.
You liberals act like outsourcing of jobs is a new concept unique to the Bush administration. Wake up.
When I used to work for a very diversified fortune 50 corporation in the early late 80’s/early to mid 90’s we went through the whole maquiladore thing down in Mexico and moved some manufacturing operations to Eastern Europe, as well.
In fact, if I would have had my way we would have moved alot more to Eastern Europe than we did.
The point you seem to miss is that decisions like this are ultimately made in the absence of emotion. We truly operate in a global marketplace which has tremendous implications, both good and bad.
Unless you have tremendous brand equity, a component of your sales is price competition. It is unavoidable and leads to some tough decisions.
Get used to it. Sometimes you’re the bat, sometimes you’re the ball
Although he will never be elected President, hypothetically, Kerry could not do a fucking thing to change this. Period. He can flap his gums all he wants and all he is doing is wasting oxygen.
If you don’t like it, make the decision to carry your own bags and keep the tip. Then get back to us after you fail the first time and tell us what you learned.
[quote]jackzepplin wrote:
Heinz Pickles
Check some of your Heinz products.
Sen. John Kerry keeps talking about U.S. corporations leaving this country and setting up shop in foreign countries, taking thousands of jobs with them.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Kerry’s own 32 factories in Europe and 18 in Asia and the Pacific. In addition, their company, the Heinz Company, leases four factories in Europe and four in Asia. Also, they own 27 factories in North America, some of which are in Mexico and the Caribbean. 80% of Heinz products are made overseas. I wonder how many hundreds of American workers lost their jobs when these plants relocated in foreign countries. I also wonder if the workers in Mexico and Asia are paid the same wages and benefits as workers in the United States. Of course they’re not. However, Kerry demands that other companies that relocate should pay the same benefits they did in the U.S. Why does he not demand this of the Heinz Company, since he is married to the owner? If Kerry is elected, will he and his wife close all those foreign factories and bring all those jobs back to America? Of course they won’t. They’re making millions off that cheap labor.
[/quote]
As much as I dislike Kerry, I always feel obligated to point out the facts.
Alex - Thanks Dude.
Keep up the good fight. It’s the Two party system that keeps them both honest.
wsull-this is the political forum, you must have missed the banner at the head of this section, if you don’t want to HEAR(not spelled here) his point of view on politics don’t come to this section.
I thought Alex raised some fairly good issues, not too many that I support, but I don’t know why you guys jumped all in his shit when he was just stating opinions. His statements were not attacks on our country, and any rebuttal should not include,“why don’t you go live in such and such(crappy ass countries.)”
[quote]AlexPSU wrote:
Trust me, I wasn’t bitching. I was explaining my situation. And I am doing something about my life. My second job is the job I love, and I’m working on turning that into my own small business.
And I’m doing something else to improve my situation…
I’m voting Kerry/Edwards!
Of course, you’ll vote for Bush, a man who thinks that companies that ship jobs overseas deserve tax breaks.[/quote]
Don’t fool yourself. Kerry is only running the populist outsourcing lingo for the election – not that he would be above demagoguing it later if it were to suit his purposes, of course, but he’s not doing anything against outsourcing. And this is coming from someone who supports Bush IN SPITE OF some of his ridiculous trade restrictions (see: steel tariffs, etc.). There is always the danger Kerry could sandbag other free trade agreements with a bunch of unrelated crap, but I think even those aren’t a strong enough worry for it to be an issue.
Don’t believe me? Consider:
[From http://www.danieldrezner.com]
Kerry advisor Laura Tyson said:
After briefly singing the praises of liberalized trade and capital flows, recommending Jagdish Bhagwati's In Defense of Globalization for those who wanted to know more, and arguing that trade is "necessary, but not sufficient" for global economic development, Tyson acknowledged that her remarks were somewhat at odds with much of what Kerry's said on the campaign trail.
"When people say, 'well, listen to what the Kerry campaign has said about trade in some of the primaries, we are concerned that Senator Kerry will move the US away from trade integration,'" she said, she tells them to "think about the issue of national campaigns in the US" and to "recognize that what might be said in one primary ... is not an indicator of the future."
Or consider this:
[From The Kerry Watch on http://www.nationalreview.com]
KERRY’S CEOS: A GANG OF OUTSOURCERS? [08/04 01:14 PM]
The Bush campaign quickly points out that forty of the business leaders who have endorsed Kerry work for businesses on Lou Dobbs’ “Exporting America” List:
Zubaid Ahmad, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan Securities
Crandall Bowles, Chairman and CEO, Springs Industries
Eli Broad, Chairman, AIG Retirement Services, Former Chairman, President and CEO, SunAmerica
John H. Bryan, Former Chairman and CEO, Sara Lee
August A. Busch IV, President, Anheuser-Busch
Vinton G. Cerf, Senior Vice President of Technology Strategy, MCI
Mark Chandler, Vice President and General Counsel, Cisco Systems
Richard Fisher, Chairman Emeritus, Morgan Stanley
John Gage, Chief Researcher, Sun Microsystems
Charles M. Geschke, Founder and Chairman, Adobe Systems, Inc.
Charles K. Gifford, Chairman, Bank of America Corporation
Robert Haas, Chairman of the Board, Levi Strauss
Dr. Sidney Harman, Executive Chairman, Harman International
Alan Hassenfeld, Chairman, Hasbro
William H. Hayden, Senior Managing Director, Bear Stearns & Co.
Leo Hindery, Jr., President, AT&T Broadband
Robert Hormats, Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs International
Thomas S. Johnson, Chairman and CEO, GreenPoint Financial Corp.
Bruce Klatsky, Chairman and CEO, Phillips-Van Husen
Michael S. Klein, CEO of Global Banking, Citigroup
Chris Larsen, CEO, E-Loan
Gerald M. Levin, Retired Chairman and CEO, Time Warner
Raymond J. McGuire, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley
Heidi Miller, EVP, JPMorganChase
John Morgridge, Chairman, Cisco Systems
Phil Murphy, Senior Director and Former Head, Goldman Sachs Investment Management Division
Charles Phillips, President, Oracle Corporation
Jeffrey Raikes, Group VP, Microsoft
Daniel Rosensweig, COO, Yahoo!
Robert E. Rubin, Member, Office of the Chairman, Citigroup
Henry B. Schacht, Director and Senior Advisor, Lucent Technologies, Former Chairman and CEO, Cummins Engine
Dan Scheinman, Senior Vice President, Cisco Systems
Jonathan Shapiro, President, Lillian Vernon
Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google
Lou Susman, Vice Chairman, Citigroup
Stephen Volk, Vice Chairman, Citigroup
Theodore Waitt, Chairman, Gateway, Inc.
Jason H. Wright, Senior Vice President, Merrill Lynch & Co.
Benjamin M. Rosen, Chairman Emeritus, Compaq Computer Corp. (merged with HP)
(?Lou Dobbs Tonight,? CNN.com, Available At CNN.com, Accessed 8/4/04)
Do you really think all those corporate types are saying, “You know, this outsourcing thing we’ve been doing is bad, bad, bad, and I just wish we had a President who would step in and stop us from doing things to maximize our profits.” Either they know he won’t do anything, or they think he might and are thus trying to ingratiate themselves and move his thinking. More likely the former though.
And, of course, outsourcing isn’t even problematic. It’s a good thing. Consider this finding from the Brookings Institute, which is actually against outsourcing:
[from http://www.danieldrezner.com]
http://www.brookings.edu/comm/policybriefs/pb136.htm
"If the disappointing employment growth of the past several years came about because America's production needs were being met to an increasing degree by production from foreign rather than American workers, as Americans increased the share of consumer and capital goods they bought from abroad, or as domestic firms expanded the share of their operations located abroad, this should show up as a rise in the inflation-adjusted value of imports relative to GDP. During the 1990s the import share rose steadily, but apart from some short-term fluctuations the share leveled off thereafter. It is difficult from this data to see how changes in the combination of import substitution and offshoring could have played a major role in explaining America's job performance in recent years.
The estimates on imports of goods come from relatively comprehensive U.S. customs data. Conceivably, the surveys of business firms used by the Department of Commerce to collect data on service imports may be missing some of the increase attributable to offshoring.... [bold]But the absolute size of any such errors in the import data cannot realistically be anywhere near large enough to alter the earlier conclusion that the speedup in productivity growth was by far the dominant factor behind the disappointing job growth.[/bold]" (emphasis added)
Or check out these admittedly pro-outsourcing opinions:
On how outsourcing creates American jobs by increasing insourcing:
[quote]wsull wrote:
Quit your bitching! Nobody wants to here your political standpoints. You live in the best nation there is! move to Iraq if your not happy here, and then we will see how well you do. Only you are responsible for the outcome of your life.[/quote]
Ah, Alex - welcome to the unstoppable ignorance of the T-Nation Political forum. Once, a long time ago, there were others like you - reasonable people who held simple liberal beliefs who replied to those who disagreed with rational and respectful answers. But, unfortunatly, those days have decayed into what you now see: an insurmountable gander of drones, typing violently and squashing away the viewpoints of those who don’t follow the Neo-Conservative line of thought.
Good luck, my friend…I wish I could offer you my support, but I wish to spend my time more productively now. Don’t be suprised however, if I wander in now and again and drop some knowledge bomb-based “suck its” to these stupid bastards.
RSU
Alex,
Since you are new here, and you seem to be sincere, I am going to cut you some slack. Normally, I just bash liberals for the fun of it.
It is a sad fact of life that college plans and degrees, do not always lead to huge salaries.
I hope that your part time business goes well, and it does indeed become very successful.
Just remember this. Once your business does become successful, check back in with us then. Let us know if you still cling to your liberal ideals about the greatness of government programs. I am afraid that you are in for a rude awakening.
Never mind large corporations, talk to owners that are involved in the nearly insurmountable task of running a small business today. As more and more of the government requirments, that used to be reserved for large business, find their way onto the shoulders of small business, it is becoming almost impossible for the true small business to survive.
I just wish everyone would wake up. I get so tired of hearing about how business is always getting the tax breaks. Who do you think pays the taxes for big business, or any business. The same thing is true for social programs. Government money is not free. Every dime comes out of someones pocket.
Your comments about how you like the programs that help people, and small business are kind of funny. Programs equal bills, and somebody has to pay the bill.
Bush only forbids federal money for stem cell research. Whether this is the correct decision or not is yet to be seen. In a capitalist society, if it’s a worthwhile idea, like stem-cell research may be, private money for research will find its way into the pockets of the needed businesses.
As far as outsourcing and John Kerry’s economic plan, check out:
http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett200403310749.asp
Much of Kerry’s talk is merely lipservice to uninformed voters.
Hey RightSideUp!!!
I’d be lying if I said I missed you. However, you do produce some amusing posts.
Let me translate your last post. You are playing the victim. You are saying that the “reasonable” people are the liberals. You are implying that those of us who use facts as our guide are hopelessly misguided. In short, those of us who are happy with George W. Bush must be insane.
Let me set the record straight for Alex and anyone else who happens to run across your recent post. You are being quite hypocritical. Anyone can look up your name and read your posts. Your liberal hysteria is there for all to see.
In summary, forget the “holier than thou” attempt. Those of us who know you, aren’t buying it.
See you in November,
JeffR
“I like the idea of being taxed and having programs put in place to help the middle class and small businesses.”
Of all the things said on this thread, I find this the most disturbing.
Big fan of Marx are you?
A socialist in the T-Nation?
J.Max
RSU:
“These stupid bastards” I see you have not elevated your political discourse. However, you want others to treat you with respect.
Remember that it works both ways. While it might feel good to attack others personally it never feels good to be on the receiving end, as you know!
[quote]skwotz wrote:
Bush only forbids federal money for stem cell research.[/quote]
I have something of a problem with that.
See, I perceive the job of a federal government as being the support of things that are not distinctly in the interest of smaller entities – like a state, for example.
A state that grows a lot of corn has an interest in things that relate to growing corn. That state should support research on growing more and better corn, because there is self-interest involved. This localised benefit provides the incentive for states to support that research.
In the same fashion, a small beef farming county or city in that state might support things related to beef farming. A company that manufactures and sells equipment for a given industry might support research related to that industry. The research is supported by those who will benefit.
Stem cell research does not have a localised benefit to investors. In fact, medical research in general only has a localised benefit to investors when it produces a patentable process. The people who most directly benefit from medical research are almost invariably sick, and unless they also happen to be rich, their hospital bills have probably made the idea of research support laughable.
So I think the federal government is really the only place that would provide the funding. If we outlaw federal funding for it, we’re effectively preventing the research without saying outright that it’s forbidden.
[quote]skwotz wrote:
Bush only forbids federal money for stem cell research. [/quote]
This is not exactly accurate - Bush forbids funds for EMBRYONIC stem cell research.
Stem cells are not exclusively found in aborted fetuses. They are in the amniotic fluid, and placenta, if I’m not mistaken.
Bush has no problem funding research on the latter.
This whole stem cell research debate has been fueled by the pro-abortion crowd.
[quote]Right Side Up wrote:
wsull wrote:
Quit your bitching! Nobody wants to here your political standpoints. You live in the best nation there is! move to Iraq if your not happy here, and then we will see how well you do. Only you are responsible for the outcome of your life.
Ah, Alex - welcome to the unstoppable ignorance of the T-Nation Political forum. Once, a long time ago, there were others like you - reasonable people who held simple liberal beliefs who replied to those who disagreed with rational and respectful answers. But, unfortunatly, those days have decayed into what you now see: an insurmountable gander of drones, typing violently and squashing away the viewpoints of those who don’t follow the Neo-Conservative line of thought.
Good luck, my friend…I wish I could offer you my support, but I wish to spend my time more productively now. Don’t be suprised however, if I wander in now and again and drop some knowledge bomb-based “suck its” to these stupid bastards.
RSU[/quote]
I think pinko scum sums it up quite well!
[quote]CDarklock wrote:
I believe in everyone’s civil rights and right to privacy. And I believe that sometimes, we have to violate one person’s rights to protect everyone else’s. That’s why we register convicted sex offenders. If we can violate their right to privacy, why not a suspected terrorist?[/quote]
You’ve answered your own question.
Key phrases: “convicted sex offenders” and “suspected terrorists”
In the first case, we’re dealing with people who have legally lost (given up) some of their rights through their own actions.
In the second case, we’re talking about people who HAVE NOT BEEN PROVEN GUILTY. Until they are proven guilty in a court of law, they deserve their constitutionally guaranteed rights.
As it is, we’re hearing about new violations to people’s rights constantly due to abuses of PATRIOT act powers. A huge number of them have nothing at all to do with “terrorist” activities, even though that is used to justify the abuses.
And before anyone jumps out and screams “Oh, no! Another dirty liberal! Everyone mob him and tell him to go to some other country” (as seems to be entirely too common in these forums), I’ll point out that I’m a Libertarian. I think both the Republicans and the Democrats are a bunch of worthless bastards who are doing (much) more harm than good.
[quote]RIT Jared wrote:
Outsourcing is a very real problem, and I don’t think that Kerry has any kind of a workable solution. You can’t just subsidize all the companies that outsource. That’s impossible. The amount of money they save by outsourcing these jobs is enormous. When there are 2nd and 3rd world people that can do jobs just as efficiently and effectively as you can, but for 1/3 the cost, thats a hard bargain. Not to mention the lax environmental laws.
My opinion is that until these countries raise their standards of living, certain jobs will always be outsourced. Neither Bush nor Kerry has control over that.[/quote]
Outsourcing is not the problem. As far as Harvard Business Professor and author of “Stratagies 1,2 & now soon to be realsed 3” Micheal Porter states in a Charlie Rose interview that outsorcing is only a cost of maybe 1% of US jobs even if that. And a lot of companies are thinking twice about outsourcing. They are starting to have problem w/ no speaking english engineer in India and other countries. So, in the long run most compinies will not out source. So, instead of readucing cost the cost is actually increasing.
Alex,
Why is Kerry a better canidate? Please save the, “anyone but Bush” stuff.
You have said that you are for John Kerry, but what do you think that he is going to do different than the current admin?
As one of the people that are truely undecided, please inform me on what seperates the Senetor from our current president.
I pose the same question to BB, and to his left of center friend, Lumpy. Why is the one canidate better than the other.
When I speak to people that support Kerry, I come away with two items:
1- that he is not Bush, &
2- They do not know what he stands for.
Bush supporters just repeat what they hear on Hannity, or Limbough.
Please inform me why you think you canidate will win in November.
Sugs
[quote]ZEB wrote:
RSU:
“These stupid bastards” I see you have not elevated your political discourse. However, you want others to treat you with respect.
Remember that it works both ways. While it might feel good to attack others personally it never feels good to be on the receiving end, as you know![/quote]
Oh save it you hypocrite! I know you’d like to lure me out into one of our periodic “duels,” but you’ll have to reveal far more of your obnoxious side to bait me!