He said "if this is the heartbeat of America then America's in a lot of trouble"

Those were the words of a laid off temporary Delphi autoworker on the local news tonight. (Delphi is a local GM plant) It appears that the UAW union has settled their new labor contract, which has left their temporary workers out of a job. Further proof of how in need this country is of good manufacturing jobs...........I couldn't have said it better myself. :bglasses:

 

Joe, I was GM for 24years....now Delphi.WE are NOT GM anymore....just getting GM wages untill the next contract.After that i expect all the Delphi jobs to go off-shore and thier mfg. jobs here to be gone! NAFTA was the beginning of the end....i just hope i can retire before this contract runs out or transfer back to GM.NOT a pretty picture from my point of view.
They said that "moral" issues drove this election......
People's morality is tested when they lose a good job thru no fault of thier own.....it changes some people worse than others.Morality takes a hit when someone who had a good job and was supporting a family is now sitting around watching "Jerry Springer" twice a day on cable!
Peace not War as a jobs program.
One bomb at the right place and time could have accomplished all GW has
done so far in IRAQ.

Peace WildBill

P.S my son-in law is in Fallujah right now...i pray everyday.........

 

I agree with you Bill. This past election did not make any sense and since we have GW in charge again,we're in big trouble.

Heaven help us.

 

I am praying for our troops everyday also.......what he is doing is very honorable, and I hope all of our soldier's efforts, risking their lives is not in vain.

The Delphi plant here used to be Harrison radiator, I didn't know it was not a GM plant. As for NAFTA, I think that was the worst slap in the face to the American worker in recent history..........and it was not like Clinton wasn't warned. I can still hear Ross Perot talking about "the giant sucking sound". :bglasses:

 

Amen buddy.


Thanks

 

Create Jobs: Bring Capital Home

One of the central contradictions of the Kerry Democrats is that they love jobs, but they hate the businesses and employers who create them.

The economic agenda of the Democrats these days starts with the premise that taxes on employers should go up. John Kerry wants to raise the highest income tax rate from 35% to 40% or more. Since two of every three tax filers in the highest income tax bracket is a business owner, it's hard to conceive how these higher tax rates on job creators will increase hiring.

We know how to create jobs in this country. The Bush tax cut of 2003 has led to nearly one million new jobs in just the last year. Going back further in time, from 1982-2000 the United States was a job creation machine. A brief glance at the Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates that over that 18-year boom period, U.S. employers hired 36 million new workers--a level of new job creation unprecedented in world history.

Where did the jobs come from? The Reagan tax cuts. It turns out that one of the unappreciated impacts of the reduction in personal, corporate, and capital gains tax rates in 1981, was that the United States overnight became a mighty attractive place to invest. From 1982-2000 the U.S. imported about $1.5 trillion more in capital than Americans exported. This in-migration of capital led to a boom in new factories, plant expansions, technology centers, and industrial output. For all the talk of "out-sourcing of jobs," the truth is for the past 20 years the U.S. has been a massive importer of jobs--thanks in large part to falling U.S. tax rates, especially compared to Germany, France, and Japan. In the 1980s and 1990s the U.S., in fact, created more new jobs than all of the Euro-zone and Japan combined.

Foreign investment in the U.S. creates jobs. I recently drove through Jackson, Miss., and on the interstate I passed by one of the largest factories--at least five city blocks long--I have ever laid eyes on. It is a Nissan factory, and it employs more than 5,000 Americans. These were high-paying manufacturing jobs.

The Bush tax cuts, especially the cuts in capital gains and dividend taxes, have created a mini-boom in investment spending. Business investment and productivity levels have soared in this bullish environment of low interest rates and lower tax rates on investment income. In the year since the Bush tax cuts, the unemployment rate has fallen by half a percentage point. At a 5.6% unemployment rate, we are now well below the 8% unemployment average of the European Union, thanks to their higher tax rates, more generous unemployment benefits, and more rigid union work rules. Meanwhile, John Kerry has a bad case of Euro-envy and wants us to be more like them.

All of this is to say that if we want to generate more good-paying jobs here at home, a precondition is to continue to lure investment to these shores. Congress is now debating a tax bill that would do just that. The centerpiece of that tax bill is legislation originally sponsored by Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada and Republican Rep. Phil English of Pennsylvania. Called the Homeland Investment Act, this tax cut would serve as a magnet for such capital and would cost the Treasury virtually nothing in lost revenues. It might even gain tax receipts for Uncle Sam. The plan would allow U.S. firms to repatriate profits that they have earned overseas without having to pay the corporate income tax rate of 35% on this money. Instead, firms with large foreign profits--companies like Hewlett Packard, Pfizer, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems--could bring this investment capital into the U.S. and pay a one-time border entry tax of 5.25%. This means we make money on something that we want firms to do anyway: Invest their profits in America.

New Factories

How much new investment could we expect to get from this tax change? Independent analyses by Price Waterhouse Coopers and Bank of America predict a windfall ranging from $135 to $300 billion of new capital within a year of passage. To put that number in perspective, U.S. taxpayers just sent $85 billion to Iraq to rebuild that nation. The Homeland Investment Act brings in two to four times that amount for the "rebuilding" of industry and factories here at home.

Currently, about $600 billion of U.S. corporate earnings are parked offshore to avoid the hefty tax penalty imposed on bringing these funds back to America. We in the United States are virtually the only people in the world who force our companies to pay taxes twice on income earned overseas. For example, a U.S. firm doing business in Germany pays an income tax in Germany, then a full corporate income tax in the U.S. if the money flows back to the U.S. In this example, the firm has an incentive to reinvest the profits in Germany, not here.

The victims of this policy are U.S. workers and shareholders in American firms. Shareholders lose because of the double tax penalty on corporate profits repatriated back to the United States. Stock values would rise if the Homeland Investment Act were passed, just as stocks rose when Congress cut the capital gains and dividend taxes.

On average, it costs about $50,000 to $100,000 in business investment to create a new manufacturing job in the U.S. By that measure, the Homeland Investment Act could mean the creation of as many as 500,000 new jobs next year for factory and technology workers. That is the equivalent of 100 new factories the size of the one I saw in Jackson just a few weeks ago. For many economically depressed communities, this act could mean financial salvation.

Now back to the Kerry Democrats who argue--predictably--that this plan is a corporate tax giveaway. These very same Kerry Democrats complain in their next utterance that American firms who invest abroad for tax-saving motivations are "Benedict Arnolds." But this tax plan gives multi-national firms a powerful incentive to import tens of thousands of new jobs and the Kerry Democrats hold up mindless roadblocks, as they entangle themselves in their own moronic class warfare rhetoric. As I said: They crave jobs, but abhor the idea of businesses' making money.

So now a tax plan that costs the Treasury almost nothing, brings hundreds of billions of dollars of investment capital into the United States and creates jobs is waning in the U. S. Senate. Who are the Benedict Arnolds in this debate?

 

Kevin......NOBODY knows all the facts and figures about our economy-
DEMOCRATS or REPUBLICANS. It's all a bunch of "SPIN" from both sides.
How much good the 300 to how many hundreds of BILLION$$$ of
our dollars that we've wasted and gonna waste in IRAQ could have done in THIS country???.Now we gotta rebuild Fallujah.Sure hope your local hospital is not having people DIE because they do not have the latest and best medical equipment. Keep reading and and accepting all that's printed
(in what you read)......
it will make you sleep better at night.

Peace Now WildBill

 

Bill,
The American public is up in arms about outsourcing and companies going overseas. I just wonder how many of them have IRA's they contribute too, or have a flex-spending plan at work? Aren't these ways of reducing the amount the government takes from them? It seems to me to be the same thing as what corporations are doing. Keeping as much of their money as they can.
If you do any research one of the main reasons for jobs going over seas is our wonderful government. Politicians are good at blaming corporations for moving overseas but they are constantly passing more laws and want to increase taxes on them. It just seems The Homeland Investment Act might be a step in the right direction to get manufacturing jobs back in this country.

I wonder why almost half of Americans think more government is the answer? It hasn't worked yet.


I think the following letter makes interesting reading.

Kevin


Invest In The U.S.A. / Homeland Investment Act Coalition



The undersigned U.S. companies and trade associations are greatly encouraged by the progress the U.S. economy has made in 2003 and applaud the actions taken by the Congress to make this progress possible. We also share your commitment to policies that will build on this recovery, and create a climate of strong job growth, capital investment and entrepreneurial innovation.
In that regard, we are writing to urge Congress to take immediate action on a proposal (known as the Invest in the USA Act in the Senate and as the Homeland Investment Act in the House) that will generate more than 650,000 jobs in 2005 and reduce the federal deficit. It addresses the issue of whether Congress wants to encourage the more than $500 billion of foreign earnings accumulated overseas by U.S. companies to be invested in the United States or left outside the U.S. to be invested in foreign countries.
This proposal would allow U.S. companies a one-year opportunity to bring foreign-earned income to the United States subject to an effective 5.25 percent tax rate, thus substantially reducing the current tax disincentive to investing foreign earnings in the United States. This would draw in hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment for the U.S. economy, enabling U.S. companies to remake themselves at home and create new and better jobs within the United States.
This common sense proposal has broad, bipartisan support as demonstrated on May 15, 2003, when it was included in the Senates growth package by a vote of 75-25. More recently, members of the Senate Finance Committee included the Invest in the USA Act in S. 1637, the Jumpstart Our Business Strength Act, which passed the Committee by a 19-2 vote on October 1, 2003. Enactment of this legislation this year will complement prior Congressional actions to improve the economy, and move the country more rapidly toward several very important economic objectives we share with you jobs creation and betterment, innovation and growth promotion and sustained investment in the United States.
Honorable William First, Majority Leader Page 2

As you may know, Dr. Allen Sinai of Decision Economics studied this proposal and concluded its enactment would trigger:

More than 650,000 additional jobs in 2005
$75 billion of deficit reduction in the first 5 years
Increased GDP, peaking at an additional 0.7% - 0.9% in 2005
Increased business capital spending, peaking at $78 billion in 2005.

Given the extraordinary potential this legislation has to energize U.S. economic growth and job creation, as well as to enable U.S. companies to stay ahead of the curve and succeed in a worldwide economy, we encourage your advocacy, support and leadership for this critical U.S. jobs and U.S. investment legislation.

Sincerely,

AeA (American Electronics Association)
American Apparel & Footwear Association
Association for Financial Professionals
Business Council for International Understanding
Computer & Communications Industry Association
Information Technology Association of America
Information Technology Industry Council
Medical Device Manufacturers Association
National Association of Manufacturers
PhRMA
Pacific Northwest International Trade Association
Semiconductor Industry Association
Software Finance and Tax Executives Council
TechNet
Alpharma
Altria
Amgen
Apple
AT&T Corp.
AT&T Wireless
Ball Corporation
Bausch & Lomb
BDBecton Dickinson
Biogen, Inc.
BMC Software
Boston Scientific
Bristol Myers Squibb
Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation
Honorable William First, Majority Leader Page 3
CMS Energy
Cummins
Dell
Delphi Corporation
DuPont Photomasks, Inc.
Eastman Kodak Company
Eli Lilly and Company
Elpac Electronics, Inc.
Gillette
Guardian Industries Corp.
Guidant Corporation
Hewlett Packard
Honeywell
IMS Health Incorporated
InFocus Corporation
Intel
International Paper Company
Johnson & Johnson
Limited Brands, Inc.
Mark IV Industries, Inc.
Marsh & McLennan
Mattel
Mercury Computer Systems
Murphy Oil Corporation
Network Associates, Inc.
Nike
Oracle
PerkinElmer, Inc.
PRIME TECHNOLOGICAL SERVICES, INC.
Qualcomm
Reebok
Rimage Corporation
Sara Lee
Schering-Plough
Square D Company
Storage Technology Corporation
Sun Microsystems
Toys R Us
United Technologies
Varian Medical Systems
VERITAS Software Corporation
Verizon
Wyeth
Xilinx






Kevin

 

We first have to get our factories home from China and Mexico first before we can blame business taxes......there's a lot more to the whole picture than just that. Starting with clean air acts. :bglasses:

 

Something else to consider, is we need to slap some people in the face about not wanting to work.

Case in point, a friend of mine's mom has been complaining she can't find a job, and that they need the money. She went to check out a job about 20 minutes away, and they offered her $8/hr plus benefits. She decided that wasn't enough money to make the desk job worth it.

I don't know about you, but when you need a job, and someone offers a legit job, you take it. But, so many people won't do the job cause they feel the pay is beneath them, or the job is beneath them.

For the record, I work in IT, and happily make a small sum in comparison to historical wages in the field. However, I have come to respect that there are people who need the job just as much, if not more than me that are willing to be paid less than me.

If people keep demanding high wages for every job, and won't work for a reasonable wage, then jobs will continue to be outsourced. We need to solve the internal problem, people want everything for cheap, and want to be paid a lot. You can't exactly have both, things need to scale in a linear fashion. If everyone is to be paid a high wage, then the products they produce will have a higher price tag.

And, now I step down from my podium.

 

John hit the nail on the head! The days of high paying manufacturing jobs are gone. And the factories aren't gonna come back from China and Mexico. People need to realize that the job market in this country has changed, and people need to change with it.

I read in the paper today that Visteon is offering a buyout to all it's salaried employees based on length of service. They want to cut x amount of jobs through the buyout or they will lay people off. It's not just hourly people who go through this. But this is typical of corporate America. Companies are downsizing to increase profitability. This is done to please the shareholders, not because of some government posturing. It's all about money, and the government really can't do anything about it. These people who leave Visteon will find another job, because they have skills and experience that an employer somewhere is in need of. If you have skills that are in demand, you will always have work. If you don't, maybe it's time to get them.

 

The whole "jobs lost/created" thing is a dead issue, bush has already lost that one with something along the lines of "a higher percentage of jobs were lost during bush since the great depression". Ouch.

 

The company I work for just went through its second downsizing of management personnel this year, nearly 50% total. Next year it will be the production people. Everyone knows it and can't do a darn thing about it. :rant: Between China and Mexico manufacturing things for pennies on the dollar and sending them back into this country for next to nothing, is killing manufacturing. Next year we begin a bringing in more automation to replace more people. Our labor force will be reduced by at least 30%. The real sad part is thatthe laid off people around here have to compete for the "new" $7-8hr jobs with illegal immigrants!!! :blast: Sad, sad sad.............. :af:

 

Not to change the subject, But I watch Imus on msnbc alot, anyway this morning some reporter was telling about how a GI shot the wounded irag guy. Imus new alot of the facts about it and cornered the reporter on what really happened and all of a sudden the whole story was different. It not the same GIs that were there the day before, and they were not prisoners, one of this unit was killed the day before by a booby traped body and the kid who shot him was shot in the face the day before. I guess my point is we can't even get the whole story on things from or own media people. If we had cameras and this kind of reporting in WWII we would probably all be goosestepping right now. I wonder how many GIs this Irag guy has killed. Any way later on msnbc this same reporter repeated his one sided report after Imus jumped him about the real facts. What is the average person supost to believe with the media being so inept. Then people complain when we have the red white and blue waving all over this country. What a joke. I am sorry if I hurt anyones feelings, just calling it as I see it. Tom

 

Bill Clintons NAFTA does it again! :af:

 

The media does not simply report the news anymore. They are intersted mainly in high ratings. To obtain them, they have to "create" a great deal of what they report. Thus, the birth and nurturing of "sensational journalism". Just watch news promos for the different networks, and you"ll see what I mean. More viewers = higher ratings = higher advertising revenue during their show. You can thank Rupert Murdoch and FOX Network for most of this.
My $0.02

 

Business tax cuts do not stimulate the economy. Hoover gave tax breaks to stimulate the economy= great depression, Ike gave tax breaks= Hudson/Kaiser died Stude/Packered stumbled together for a few more years big downturn in the economy, Nixon gave tax breaks= stagflation was the bs we got, started the permanent decline of U.S. wages when adjusted for inflation. Regan gave tax breaks= largest number of bank failures since HooverBushes tax breaks are bankrupting our children and grandchildren and an actual decline in wages. I guess we have tax break and spend cosnervatives now. Business spending is only 1/6th of the cash flow consumer spending is 2/3's four times as much. If you have a business and you are not selling your product a tax break won't get you to build more, you'll do what they have been doing buy your competition out and lay off his workers or buy a factory over seas. The result of these free trade treaties is corporations will jump from county to country driving down wages till all our economies are the same as China or South America.
Judd

 

JUDD, you hit the nail on the head :TU:

Peace WildBill

 

I'll second that :TU:

 

There is one factor that needs mentioning and that is the role that the unions have played in forcing the mfgs to go overseas. Seems nobody wants to admit that the real problems began for the automakers due to the unions strong arm tactics. How many ex-GM workers here that put in many years of service would be willing to disclose their hourly pay, number of personal, sick and holiday days,their medical coverage package along with a description of the jobs they performed? I'm willing to bet none of us as an employer would offer the same compensation package if we had to pay for the same job.