Agreed.
Thing is, in most cases, the financial incentives don’t point toward this kind of end. I know it’s a popular thing to be like, “fuck the government no matter what! they can’t tell me what to do!”. But when people do that they’re actually saying, “fuck my fellow citizens and hooray for the people who exploit them and make my country poorer!”.
I did make a post about incentives to keep the companies from leaving or bringing them in. And fellow citizens are becoming less dependent on their own selves and too dependent upon government. Sorry, but, I hate seeing the slide that we are on. Building cooperatives , tax incentives to education would be more helpful overall. If citizens want the companies to stay then they need to talk to the companies and not send in government.
Talk to the companies? And tell them what? We’ll work for the same compensation as a person in the 3rd world? Please don’t leave us? I know that it was the american workforce that helped you build up so much power that you don’t need us anymore and can go to india and china, but pretty please let us be your slaves for less than a living wage?
What would you suggest we say to the companies? We’ll buy your stock? You can decrease our dividends? I mean…I’m just not following you here. Most of the companies that are doing this kind of stuff could never have become so strong anywhere else in the world. All we’re asking is for a bit of consideration for the environment that our country provides for them that allows them to profit more than any time or place in known history.
In the US, the government is supposed to represent the people. So if you haven’t noticed, since the companies don’t seem to have the interests of the people here in mind, we sort of need someone or something with some power to act as an intermediary so that there’s some shot of getting something done. I really don’t understand the whole hatred of the government doing anything for the people bit that so many people are on. You don’t think that the companies are even more corrupt that the politicians?
People talk about how individuals who receive money from the tax pool are entitled and are a problem for the economy. But they don’t mention that companies like google are legally allowed to move half their gross income overseas and cut their tax bills in half. If that loophole closed, then we’d have revenue off the 32 billion that they move to Bermuda, and we could use that to fund education. But I suspect you think that’s just people mooching off the government teat and an example of the government trying to steal money from google through taxation.
You think that google would move to China is they were to have to pay their tax rate on all their gross income?
I mean do you like it when you see a bunch of board members of multi billion dollar international conglomerates cheating your city, county, state, school systems, infrastructure programs etc? Just because you like the idea of people giving the government the finger? It’s you that suffers. It’s the people in your town and the children in your local schools and universities. The only people who win in those scenarios are guys who want to buy yachts and retire with a billion dollars. Oh, and I guess people who think that Ayn Rand is a philosopher and that selfishness is a virtue.
And where and why did those board members get so wealthy? The poor handing their money over to them to buy products they do not need. It takes two to Tango. I blame both. The wealthy could not be wealthy unless people made them so. And you do not get wealthy over night. People allowed this and now they should work together not depend on another. And you should know by now I am neither republican or democrat. Since Rand is so uber conservative , why would I respect her?
Hello HaHaHa
The phenomenon is not concentrated to the US. It is not just Boeing opening facilities in Asia but also Airbus. I agree that globalization threatens the wages of workers in western nations, no doubt, but my point is that raising legal barriers against globalization will not work. We need to be competitive, as a nation, when it comes to offering the best total cost of ownership to all companies, foreign and domestic. WE cannot criminalize globalization because that will not tie up wealth in America but speed up its drainage. Instead we need to move resources to make America an enticing place to move operations.
Greed…who is free of it? To me, those that speak against the wealthy are often envious of the wealthy. They rally against the 1% while people in China and India students become the only replacement for an American middle class. It is the distance that they see, and which they judge as insurmountable, that make them rail against the wealthy.
I believe that people have the government that they deserve. The “general public” does not exist. We are always fractured and divided along different lines, such as ideology, economic status and even race. Because of this, private entities AND governments will always work FOR some and AGAINST others.
Tell that to the thousands of immigrants who come here to live better lives rather than living in total destitution. Everytime I see a guy at a stop light asking for a buck I can tell that he is not an immigrant and I get mad, because people risk their lives crossing a desert, constant threat of deportation to get the lowest wages we have available (and illegal), but they never lose their dignity.
This story is the story of crime itself. But here’s the problem: Wealth is a limited good. The general public may rise and take away the wealth for themselves…and then what? What happens when it is all spent? Cuba has been afforded a moment of renewal. Many say that the Castro regime will receive a cash windfall. Where they go depends on how friendly the regime becomes to capitalist corporations. Without foreign wealth, foreign banks, which will ask for interest on any loans, life in Cuba will be improved instead of transformed.
Many people in the western world, especially in US, do not have clear understanding of this issue of globalization/immigration. They do not realize that it is a two way sward, which cuts both ways. If it helps in some cases, it also harms in some others cases too. One cannot cherry pick from the premises of the globalization according to its convenience. A country has to take a side in broader terms, either you are open or not. Remember, how much door one opens, applies to the both of incoming an outgoing. But, US citizens talk about only incoming too, not outgoing.
Take any example. Most of the computer manufactures are from the US, like Apple, Dell, HP etc. But, right now, none of these make computers in the US. Apple’s manufacturing facilities are basically at Taiwan while Dell and HP makes at China.
One may conclude from this that these companies are betraying US by outsourcing their manufacturing facilities otherwise US citizens would get employment in those facilities. But,it is not true.
The fact of the matter is that most of the MNCs cannot afford to manufacture in the US now because of the wage differences. and if they do, their competitors like Sansung, Asus and many others from China and India will throw US MNCs out of the business. And, that would result even to more job cutting in US, as US based MNCs at least keep research and management bases these. The same formula applies to the most of the industries, except very highly technological ones like arms or space technology.
Secondly, what if countries like India and China ban Coke, Pepsi or MacDonalds, Ford etc there too? What if citizens here also claim that these US companies not only hurting local business here, but transfer their profit to their mother country too? Is that demand not also seems to be justified? Would that not hurt US employment more? Then, who would be held responsible for that further layoffs? And, how the behavior of US MNCs are any different from some of the US immigrants sending some of their earnings to their parent countries?
In the global capitalism, capital cannot afford be a nationalistic. If you are want to let something out, some other thing will also come in from that open door too. It cannot be exclusively one way.
People like Trump and Sanders are making a fool of the US people. And unfortunately, people fell in that trap too.
with love,
sanjay
You think that the world’s wealthy elite got their money from poor people buying things they don’t need?
For the most part yes. There are a few that exploited need but, then the people allowed the exploitation.
Excellent post
Corporations receive benefits and enjoy freedoms that citizens generally do not. Corporations also appear to have been granted citizen rights… which is just weird.
The point is Kris that much corporate profits arent generated by production but by market control, by excluding large parts of natural beneficiaries from the loop, by minimizing the earthliness of the production and comsumption cycle. Basically by coercion made possible by a degree of leverage that no functional economy allows for - the type of leverage where there is no counterforce to be found in the world. Its not entiretly different from a body that cant control cellgrowth in one of its parts.
This isnt strictly Capitism.
Except governments now are bought off and funded by large corporations or mega-banks. Remember, in the United States corporations are people too! (Banks apparently also and they’ve bought off the national D.O.J.)
How does that work well into your plan?
Until heads roll and executions takes place nothing will change in this country as we’re sinking steadily into collapse.
Within that collapse heads will roll and executions will become common place. Burn the whole stinking edifice of this nation into the ground…
Goddamn son you sound like Stalin himself.
Great solutions. Just kill the evil bankers and the workers out of the goodness of their proletarian hearts will make sure the utopia of fair distribution will come upon the earth.
Ha ha ha…
Too bad that joke was already told.
All revolutions are violent especially when the powerful, corrupt, and decadent rule with impunity. Voting or changing the system from within?
A complete waste of time not to mention also naive. They own all of that and have various stop measures in place. The hopeless optimistic multitudes…
Honestly. I look at it from the forefathers perspective, hang them all for treason. For conspiracy against the world/nature, secrecy to prevent human advancement, overwhelming greed that produces poverty, enslavement behind currency, war crimes and earthly crimes, etc.
Now if I can just persuade you to the anarchist side of things. Baby steps… 
And the blame must be put on the shoulders of citizens. We elected people into office then allowed them to decide their pay and benefits. We allowed them to take away voting rights. We keep electing crap into office and blame government and corporations for misery. We pick up our little luxury items and bitch about how much crap we do not have because we allow people to remove our votes and rights. What would scare the shit out of those we bitch about if we stop lining up for corporation goods and services, if we do not go to the fake voting places. If we start from the bottom and clean ourselves up with great leaders and self reliance.
Our government is in cahoots with corporations because we voted the government in and turned a blind eye. You do not ignore your employees, you supervise them, you control their actions. You could create chaos by having an all out civil war against the government but, you will just , in the confusion, allow manipulators and users to gain control again. Each community must clean their house and then move outward peacefully and determined.
The problem of any democracy is an ignorant majority so easily coerced. This is why all social experiments with democracies fail.
I think that this is the point of contention for me. Are you aware of how much money that energy companies, pharmaceutical companies, the healthcare system overall, the insurance companies and so on profit? I’ve got a feeling that things people need are what are being leveraged the most. I highly doubt that most people in poverty are so because they felt they had to have an iphone and a big screen tv. Even if they have those kinds of things, those expenditures would be a small fraction of even a welfare income over the course of a year. You can get a iphone for 49 bucks with a contract and a no name 50 inch tv for a few hundred. I just don’t see how that’s driving poverty.