greg334
Veteran Expediter
Thanks, I feel that way about others too.
Well you know when you look at other countries, even France for that matter, we lag in many things, one is a true business friendly environment. Many miss the boat on that one, they think that what you posted is being business friendly but it isn't by any stretch of the imagination. With the Marxist ideals aside ... let's look at those you posted.
The states and cites are competing for revenue, they are willing to give up some revenue for the future revenue produced by the company through their spending and the employment of people. Really simple when you understand that this is to the benefit of their communities, not to the country at large. Really also a great illustration of how our country can work - local to state to federal is where the power should flow.
Drafting sessions are not and will never be where bills are voted on. BUT how would you want it to be, take for example the auto industry, do you want people who have no clue of how a car works to write safety legislation or do you want the companies input on how to write it?
If we depended on the government to actually write something like a car safety bill, we would be all on bikes.
So who actually cares what the oil execs did, I mean what is important is the prospering of the industry to provide those jobs, right?
The funny thing about the oil industry which many seem to forget when they see the profits of those mean ol' oil companies is that Oil Production is not like manufacturing or anything else - it is a labor intensive industry which pays good to excellent wages. When you put the brakes on drilling or any production from transportation to refining, you are putting the brakes on jobs because that work can not ever be outsource to India or Mexico or China. ON the other side of the coin, I mentioned this a lot, it takes less people to make things than it did only 10 years ago.
Ask yourself, what is preventing those jobs from being created?
Is it maybe an unfriendly attitude towards that industry as a whole that is maybe the blockade to the jobs we need?
Oil in the ground waiting to be used, people sitting around and waiting for jobs but a government so unfriendly to the industry that they punish the people who are so in need of work by stifling the industry.
Maybe that is a good illustration about unfriendliness?
Well OK ... I would like to see them gone too but realistically they were created to help the farmers in the 20's by stabilizing prices through government intervention - so much helping the little guy. At that time there were no mega farms and no really ADM running them, so now it is a different story but if we get rid of them for one, we should get rid of them for all - no exceptions.
What about eliminating our per diem rate, it is the same thing and really this is one deduction that gets flagged for audits so how much do you think it really matters in the bigger scheme of things?
I bet it doesn't because it is not targeting the large exec who doesn't give a crap about write off but has to deal with business more than 8 hours a day.
Nope not any of those but I do know when compared to countries like say Hong Kong or even New Zealand, we rank pretty low on the friendly scale. I guess if you want to take the adversary position that all business is bad, then yep we are pretty friendly in a roundabout way.
Actually I did provide you with an bit of proof, in the early 60's there was a big whoop about poverty and the Kennedy administration sent out volunteers to first interview people and then make a survey of the poverty in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and Virginias. Those people who struggled with life and accepted it was put off by the idea that they were considered poor, there were even assaults of those volunteers and I think a couple murders. This was one thing that you may miss, it isn't about being told you are poor but the embarrassment that you are being told you are poor when you are told you should be compared to others. I forget the physiological term for it but it is a state of acceptance when you have nothing to compare it to. You see this in the marketing of products, even here with some phones and technology, you ain't nothing without an iwhatever. Some time ago, PBS had an hour long documentary on this very subject. So you want more proof, start researching.
I was discussing this very issue at lunch today and it is amazing how much people remembered before the war on poverty and how people simply didn't look at what their neighbor has but what they have .... and ... wait for it .... wait.... AND LIVED WITH IT.
Well if you can't figure it out, I will help you with it.
I understand, not any issue with it, but it is beyond just making money, it is about work and opportunities.
Actually this is SOOOOO wrong it ain't funny.
It does improve their lives and in many ways. If someone wants to be complaicent and sit in the same job, then that's all they do and they can and will become useless to the employer. However if you have to compete to keep your job, not by lowering your wages (I will say something later about that) but by being more of an asset for the employer and maybe the customer, then you are not being useless.
What I mean is that with the closed shop mentality, both union and non-union, the worker doesn't have to do better, they are tied into that job through their contract or their agreement (it is two different things) so they don't strive for better, in many cases they don't want to do better because they know they will have a job there doing the same boring thing every day - how exciting.
So removing that factor, the worker has to do more than show up and put a nut on a bolt - they have to think.
The other half of this is competition with someone from the outside. If I have no job, and go into say GM's volt plant to offer my services for say $9 an hour without benefits, the worker who is sitting there putting that nut on the bolt now has to worry about me, so that added incentive to better themselves is there through wage competition. I know that may not make any sense to you but again the worker who takes control of their own lives and finds ways to better themselves (it doesn't have to be school) will have more oppertunities than the one who doesn't.
Ford used to have a reward system that the bean counters put in place in the early fifties. It was simple, you wrote on a piece of paper an idea, an improvement or some change that would help Ford, their product or the customer, put into a box near the time clock and you got either a percentage of the savings/sales or you got a flat reward depending on your salary IF they used it. The workers of Ford were brought into the company again as a voice, and again many of them took advantage of that. A few who got big money went to school and bettered themselves, moved up in the company and caused others to move up by being an example. This I think went on till 1955 when the UAW demanded it end because it was unfair. You figure that one out.
Well until you take an ethics class for your MBA, you can't really back up the idea that a business has a moral obligation - they really don't. Their obligation is to their investors, themselves and maybe to the worker if the worker is part of the company. BUT also remember that we are in strange times, we don't need 400 people to do the same work 20 can do now. So being socially responsible can be nearly impossible and it goes right back to something I said earlier, we are not a business friendly country.
Yep all true and yep it is a big deal that we don't have those jobs but again looking at the picture, two reasons why we are in this situation and both are political - one is that we have too much ambiguity in our world right now and no one wants to spend any money until it is clear what we can expect in the future but also the more important thing is most of our problems were caused by a lack of oversight in our government with a lack of accountability which is the foundation for the distrust which amplifies the ambiguity.
Now people aren't working, businesses aren't paying taxes, employees aren't paying either, and the whole country is in financial trouble - except for a certain favored bunch of - yep, executives. And of course, the politicians themselves.
BUT you put toooooo much emphasis on the execs when it is not the problem nor should be a focus of jealousy. I mean so what if they make billions, I don't care because I am not in the position to buy enough stock to make them go away but on the other hand someone has to make decisions to move the company forward and make money.
Here is the bottom line Cheri, big businesses are not the employers we need to help out but because we don't get the idea that it is the medium and small business that matters, the more regulations you put on the big ones, filters down to the small ones and stifles employment.
Think about it this way, I want to hire ten people, I have the money to hire then but without a clear idea of what laws will change, what regulations will change - I can't take the risk to hire anyone.
I hope this time around I made more sense than just typing letters on the screen.
clcooper, ever hear of Fascism?
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