Middle class revolt
- Thread starter dddooo
- Start date
Thats the root of the problem is spending $2 Trillion a year on nothing but employing a bunch of people in make work jobs that suck the life out of the economy. Few realize that the poor pay taxes without knowing it because half the cost of everything is taxes of one kind of the other. Taxes to pay some bloated goverment, either local, state etc. Think of the jobs out there if everyone had twice the money they do now??
In about 30 years the young people of today will come face to face with what was left them, a $30 Trillion dollar debt with interest payments bigger then our entire budget is now. This will cause a revolt unseen in America. A revolt where a generation will do whatever is neccessary to get it's house in order and create fiscal discipline unseen in our country. Goverment will be completely redone to do only what private companies can't do and in 30 years their will be nothing that they can't do.
I think the article speaks about the entire country, it's using Portland as an example. How come all these regulations did not bother business during the 90s and they are suddenly an issue now? Oh, and do you really think there are no regulations in India, China and other countries? Huge bureaucracies, corruption and government incompetence, confusing and convoluted taxation, no legal protection, legal systems based on cronism and bribes... They are not exactly developed and civilized societies and some of them are not even democracies.
The real reason is that if an employer has a choice of hiring an american engineer and paying american salary (let's say $50,000 and benefits) or hiring an indian engineer and paying $5hr the employer will hire an indian 10 times out of 10 regardless of taxation and regulation issues in both countries. And when american employers hire chinese and indian workers, chinese employers hire chinese workers and indian employers hire indian workers it's only a matter of time before America loses its middle class.
does it help the situation if unnecessary regulations increase that 50000 salary to 60000?
Why do you think neocons pushed hard for the new UNpatriot laws? It makes it extremely easy to put people away forever without any judicial process. Here's a neocon working at operations......"hmmm.....I hate that Ted Kennedy...haha, I'll put his name on the list!" ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html )
Get my point? under the new laws, a vengeful moron sitting in a windowless office has more power than the guys we elect. And guess what, there's nothing you or I can do about it. Then they have their recent push to weaken the constitution so they can push their version of morality onto the rest of us. It just goes on and on with these incompetent fools.
Taxation and government waste are very important issues but they have nothing to do with the premise of the article. Even if the government is privitized as you suggested before and absolutely all regulations and taxes are eliminated even then an employer will always prefer a $1hr chinese worker or $5hr indian engineer to their american counterparts charging $20-$50hr.
Besides privitized government will outsource all work to India and China further increasing competition in Portland for the same number of McDonalds jobs.
Comparing to $10,000 salary in India (and it's a very high salary over there) it's not going to make a difference.
You point would be valid if business was moving from over-regulated Oregon to unregulated Montana, but that's clearly not the case. The business is moving from over-regulated Oregon and unregulated Montana to even more over-regulated, lawless, corrupt countries like India, China, Russia, Romania etc.
PS We can't pump our own gas in NJ either and it's the wealthiest state in the nation.
I recall the late '70's they were saying the exact same thing. Detroit was getting their ass kicked by the imports, wages were down, laying guys off left and right, gas was rationed (you only got gas on odd or even days depending on the last numeral on your license plate). The prime rate got as high as 21% while I was selling real estate (or attempting too, anyway). Just before this I was living in Orlando and commuting to a construction job in Melbourne. I met guys who had worked for NASA, working construction jobs and even McDonalds. You could ride around Titusville and see whole subdivisons almost completley deserted. Walter Cronkite did a teevee special about how we would run out oil in the mid '80's. I attended a seminar on "creative" financing because everyone said the 30 year fixed rate mortgage was history. I met guys that lived in their cars and went downtown to soup lines. I really get pissed when people say things are bad now.
And guess what? A few years later this country saw the greatest bull market in it's history.
And guess what? A few years later this country saw the greatest bull market in it's history.
And guess what, I heard these stories in 2000 and 2001. A few years have already passed, we're probably at the end of the current business cycle and nothing good has happened. History repeats itself until it does not.
Besides we did lose the auto industry and there is no reason to believe that it was a good thing. True it was replaced with new high tech industries, now that we're losing high-tech industries what are they going to be replaced with?
When all these conversations started several years ago (2000-2002) the proponents of outsourcing kept promising that new better industries would spring up very shortly. Still waiting...