IBM, Other Multinationals "Detaching" From the US 812
theodp writes "If you're brilliant, work really hard, and earn a world-class doctorate from a US university, IBM has a job for you at one of its US research sites — as a 'complementary worker' (as this 1996 piece defined the then-emerging term). But be prepared to ship out to India or China after you've soaked up knowledge for 13 months as a 'long-term supplemental worker.' Newsweek sketches some of the bigger picture, reporting that IBM, HP, Accenture, and others are finding it profitable to detach from the United States (even patenting the process). 'IBM is one of the multinationals that propelled America to the apex of its power, and it is now emblematic of the process of creative destruction pushing America to a new, less dominant, and less comfortable position.'"
who cares what IBM do (Score:2, Interesting)
Entrepreneurship is what is cause of success in US. That made all big companies work in first place. As long as there are smart people in US and smart people with ideas and execution to create companies, we're fine.
Stop Running Trade Deficits (Score:3, Interesting)
Stop running trade deficits. Tariffs against lopsided trade are not the big evil that right-wing economists say they are. If other countries stopped running trade surpluses with us, they'd have to create a stronger local consumer class, which would start to even out monetary differences and even out imports. Balance balance balance.
re: Chasing them away? (Score:5, Interesting)
I recommend reading a book called "IBM and the Holocaust" (http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com).
This is a company that happily accepted huge sums of money from the Germans during WWII to computerize the process of hunting down and exterminating Jews, and even "hardened" several of their facilities so they'd survive Allied bombings. All the while, they claimed to be an American business.
It's arguable that in a sense, they "left" the United States back then, even if they still retained a big physical presence here. Despite the law preventing IBM from being able to move their profits out of German banks during the war, they STILL happily worked on their projects for them, knowing full-well they couldn't even touch the money for years.
That's what unregulated capitalism does (Score:1, Interesting)
Makes the developing world rich like it made us rich.
Re:OK, I guess. (Score:1, Interesting)
P.S. Any spelling errors is because I haven't installed the plugin for Opera yet.
Here's the real problem. This would all pan out if people would just start buying real, Made in the US. cars, electronics, and browsers.
Re:So? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ceteris paribus, economizing resources is intrinsically good for everyone.
Obviously there are some implementation details that get in the way of that always working out. Recognizing and correcting market failure, force and fraud should be the primary function of government regulations meant to ensure we all benefit from the "economy". The US government has clearly demonstrated it is not up to that task.
Worse, there are entire swaths of activities that much of American society considers "beneficial" which actually constitute unwarranted force: foreign warfare, welfare, retirement entitlements, unchecked immigration, employment policies, monopolization of natural resources. Few states, let alone the US, even philosophically recognize most of these as such. As far as I am aware, none recognize them all.
Businesses will naturally move to states with the most beneficial regulatory environment for them. Those with high labor costs will move to states with high populations or unchecked immigration. Those with high materials costs will move to states where they can easily monopolize natural resources or where an imperialistic military will ensure resource availability. Those that perform dangerous work will move to states with socialized healthcare and little ability for legal recourse by injured parties. Polluting industries will move to states with few environmental regulations. Et cetera, et cetera...
But the US economy will never function for the benefit of all Americans until all unwarranted force is regulated and eliminated and economic activity proceeds on a voluntary basis for all involved.
Re:And the solution...? (Score:2, Interesting)
The entire concept of a free market is based on a system free from external influence, force, fraud, or coercion. Am I the only one who notices that this isn't practical in a global setting without a centralized government?
The only thing the Invisible Hand is doing is slapping down any businesses that are actually trying to do things in a fair and respectable way.
In my view, the answer is easy. Take away the benefit of bad business. You want to sell products in the United States, just prove that all people and processes employed in the manufacture of the product meet the minimum standards of the United States. I know what most people would say; that would create a humongous amount of bureaucracy! It is true, but it would put everyone on a level playing field and on the bright side create lots of American jobs administrating it.
Re:they're not stupid! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, let them all move to India/China/etc, then.
Let them move to countries that rely more on rote memorization of facts, and little in the way of independent thinking. Let them move to countries where the employees could feed themselves for a year by stealing a few pieces of their product. Let them move to countries where the government could very well decide that the company isn't pious or nationalistic enough, and take over their assets.
America has many great and successful companies for a reason.
It's hard to put a dollar amount on how much money will be lost by them moving overseas, but I guarantee it'll be a net loss. I look forward to hearing some CEO's say, "Well, we had record profits this year, but no one can seem to actually find any of this money, and we can't even pay rent on some of our offices anymore!" Metrics aren't perfect, and no one with a marketing degree or above the level of middle management seems to know that.
US 1.3 trillion exports/demographic advantage (Score:1, Interesting)
The US is still the third largest exporter.
Folks have predicted the demise of the US many times and it has not come to pass.
It never will.
US 1.3 trillion exports
http://home.earthlink.net/~root.man/exports.pdf
Largest export countries (EU is not a country)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports
140
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2009/countries/US.html
10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimitz_class_aircraft_carrier
China is a nightmare, police state with huge problems.
Their population is aging rapidly. They are on the verge of revolution with thousands of riots a year.
execution vans
http://tinyurl.com/d2wzev
falun gong organ harvesting
http://tinyurl.com/nlx7z4
China demographic nightmare
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810166,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/globalwarmingisascam
dangerous demographics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w3meSupCME
http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/dangerous_demographics
http://tinyurl.com/depopulationreality
Re:Do what Canada did in 1965. (Score:4, Interesting)
That policy works until other nations start retaliating against your primary export.
Canada managed to get away with it for a while because Canada isn't that significant in international trade and primarily trades in raw materials. But, in the end, even Canada preferred free trade over protectionism, which is why it joined NAFTA.
Re:And the solution...? (Score:5, Interesting)
That would be the sensible solution, I agree. But I suspect it in no way would benefit the corporations who whine about corporate tax: they want it to have a high headline rate (so they can whine) but lots of hidden deductions (so they don't have to pay it). In particular, if you were to pick any exception as a place to start eliminating loopholes, you'd immediately run into an army of lobbyists who care very much about that particular exception. They're all there for a reason, after all, and usually the reason is that someone with deep pockets really wanted that loophole.
Re:And the solution...? (Score:5, Interesting)
The truth is, nowadays more than ever, getting a top management position is due to effectively manipulating other people - and who is more effective at manipulating than corporate psychopaths, especially in the chaotic world of publicly traded corporations?
This is why
1) executives rarely care for the long-term viability of the company they lead, opting instead for a short-term uptick where they can cash in and then leave.
2) these people can always find another executive position, once they leave their previous company, regardless of how dire the state they caused their company to get into - they can manipulate people so well that they will find an accepting armchair immediately.
3) BODs are filled with people who just move from company to company, from one executive position to the other.
4) golf is so damn important for them - that's where they network and prepare their parachutes.
I strongly recommend you read this book. [amazon.com] It's an eye-opener.
Re:And the solution...? (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with all of this, and it's sad that someone has to point it out. In a globalized economy, the US is not able to compete on price. We don't have the natural resources. We don't have the cheap labor.
We can only compete on quality. We have many advantages. Low population density, decent schools, lots of infrastructure. But with free trade, even that probably isn't enough to keep us on top. Developing countries will eventually catch up.
If we import immigrants to compete with third world countries, we will become a third world country. If we export capital in order to "raise up" third world countries, same result.
Let's face it. We aren't particularly productive. Our government is not particularly great. We aren't particularly "free".
But we have a head start. So we don't have to bend over backwards in order to prevent companies like IBM from leaving. They don't do anything that other companies can't do. Western countries are still their primary market. Their employees are still educated in Western schools.
So let's just shut the door behind them. Raise tariffs on so-called "multinationals" that produce elsewhere and sell here. And rid ourselves of the delusion that Americans owning stock in these companies is worth the loss of jobs and revenue that goes with them when they decide to flee the country.
Some Perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Look I am an Indian, and I think that there are a few things all of you need to know.
America is not going anywhere for now. The fundamentals of your future lie in the hands of your people, especially the select few who have a vision and can buck the status quo. As long as you have plenty of such individuals you are going to weather any geo-political storm.
Whereas in my nation life is so linear that it is a goddamn joke.
Almost every kid is expected to be an engineer and most of these engineers hardly even know what the hell they are talking about. As Feynman would say their knowledge is fragile.
Our educational system itself is a joke. Trust me on this.
At the same time entrepeneurs are discouraged and looked down upon. They are sorta treated with ice, as everyone wants a *son* in an MNC with a prestigous MBA. So, basically our society is choking itself. Sure, these people are awesome paper pushers, but despite the fact that some of them do have a decent brain they all seem to fail to do anything different.
No revolutions are put into motion. No brilliant new synthesis are formulated. No groundbreaking patents are filed. In short, the truly important stuff is in stasis.
Your society whereas pushes its outliers and that is why, as Kay once put it, most software is written on one side of the atlantic. I think that you should stop looking at IBM and start looking at MIT. That is where your future lies.
And seriously drop all of that economics mumbo-jumbo. As the foundations of society are the ability to create things, transport those things and dessiminate them. I think that those earning a living by making a killing in stocks are living a sham.
Oh and Thomas Jefferson would kill himself if he saw Bush in action. Despite his failings Obama is, at least, a breath of fresh air. So, value him for that. At least he had the courage (unlike me) to step up to the plate.
P.S. - /.s javascript is screwed, haven't they heard of simplicity?
More than 60% of IBM revenue comes from outside US (Score:1, Interesting)
Why the heck would they then concentrate their facilities and jobs in US? Again get it clear - more than 60% of the money they make is NOT from US. They are not a US company, and this is to be expected. They are moving their business where their money is. Plain and simple.
It is the next step in Internation Corp Evolution (Score:3, Interesting)
You've heard of offshoring labor to a foreign nation for a lower cost in labor?
International Corporate Evolution is the new trend. When in a nation with a bad economy offshore the entire company to a richer nation like in the EU that has a lower corporation tax and a lower tax on the wealthy.
You see labor needs to be offshored to the lowest cost third world nation like China, India, Thailand, Russia, where the cost of labor is low. That is the first step in International Corporate Evolution.
The second step is to expand your business to a foreign nation to compete with other corporations in foreign nations. If a company does not do that, foreign companies might move to their nation and buy them out (ala Anhiesier Busch Beer) or expand and build a company right next to yours and try to shut yours down. It is like a game of corporate chess, you need to move a piece to their location before they move a piece to your location and checkmate you.
The third step is to offshore highly talented employees (like with PHDs and tons of experience) and management to a nation that is wealthy and has a good economy but has lower corporation taxes and lower wealthy taxes. Move the bulk of your local company to that nation and downsize any employees that aren't as valuable.
The fourth step is closing down buildings in the local nation that has the bad economy and high taxes.
The fifth step is moving back to that nation after the bad economy has recovered and tax rates have been cut again and bringing the talent back with you. But if the economy does not recover and the tax rates are not cut, this is like a strike against the government to offshore the entire company to punish them for higher taxes and ruining the economy.
Re:Who's chasing them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exxon, [wordpress.com] They paid about 44% in 2007 and 47% in 2008. BTW, that comes to around 35 billion per year in taxes they paid.
The rate isn't there to be actually paid. The government provided deductions and exemptions in order to steer businesses into certain directions and to get certain things accomplished that wouldn't have normally happened. The rate, just like you do no pay your actual rate, is 1: graduated progressively so it will never be the entire amount, and 2: it's there only for people and companies who do not follow the direction the government wants them to.
Re:Who's chasing them? (Score:1, Interesting)
Jesus fucking christ, are you telling me that if no left wing published their findings, they disappear? Damn, either find fault with the numbers or shut the hell up. And no, guilt by association does not adequately refute anything mentioned. Either counter it or get lost.
I mean this attitude is old and falacious at best. Oh, here is a valid set of numbers but because no one with a different opinion did the same stiudy and they are plitically biased, we will completely ignore them. What the fuck, when has guilt by association refuted anything and why is your feble little mind attempting to make the asertation? There are tons of other damn sites on the internet that say the same fucking thing. It would really be different is they were saying something no one else was but it seems that the only thing shattered here is your world view. Grow the fuck up.
BTW, You seem like someone who just heard something from your favorite sources and thought it was the gods honest truth. Your doing exactly what fox viewers do and I bet you have no fucking clue to why you think you can use Fox News as some insult. Go be a damn tool somewhere else.
Re:Solution is You and Me (Score:4, Interesting)
Except for periods where I feel burnt out and need to slack a bit, if I'm not sleeping or running on the treadmill, then I'm coding for myself or my employer.
My existence, at the moment, is probably a bit pathetic to some (though I make time for some all Friday night to Saturday morning benders) but I'm am building up cash for investments through working a lot harder than my co-workers and I'm working on my own stuff which, hopefully, will turn into something I can I can either deploy and make money with or sell.
In the end I fully expect to retire early. My goal is to retire 1 year early. That doesn't sound like much but I do find if I set the bar lower, I then find I'm going to achieve that quite early on and raise the bar and keep raising it as time goes on.
It just depends what you want. Do you want small bits of work over a long period or bust your nuts for a shorter period and relax for a longer time?
You need money to make money. If I bust my balls now coding and buying up trademarks and hopefully some patents then hopefully I can spend more time doing fuck all.
Maybe this is the wrong mentality and I'll die tomorrow having busted my balls with nothing in return but this is the gambleI'm taking.
I am an American who moved to the UK and that did change me. For starters, I don't have to buy private health care.
Things have change a bit in how they work but the over all theme has stayed the same; you don't get something for nothing and smart hard work always pays off.
Re:And the solution...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not just that, but what risk exactly?
They're paid enough that if they reduced their own personal cost of living to that or a normal working class citizen, they could get fired after one year and easily live off the salary for 10 years without having to worry about getting a job.
Sure, if they do something insanely horrible, they might not be able to get a job as a CEO again, but that doesn't mean they can't work as unskilled labour like everybody else in need of a job.
But that never happens. When's the last time you heard of a CEO being fired for gross incompetence and having to live off of food stamps and government support? So, yeah - what risk exactly?
Hell, if you gave me 100 million dollars, I'd gladly go on national television in the US and say that I was personally responsible for the current economic collapse. Hell, I'd gladly spend 10 years in jail for it, as long as I had that 100 million dollars (well, better make sure it's in euros actually) when I got out of jail.
It's not like "white collar" criminals are given a hard time in jail - look at Bernie Madoff [wikipedia.org]. He caused 13,200 million dollars of losses, and he's still alive in jail. I haven't heard that he's been the victim of any kind of violence there either, yet you'd almost expect someone in jail to know someone on the outside who lost fortunes.
So yeah - what risk exactly?
Re:And the solution...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Corporate taxes are a joke. They just get passed on to the consumer anyway . . .
Q: How do you get a laissez-faire capitalist to stop talking about market pricing, supply and demand, etc?
A: Bring up taxes or any other cost that he doesn't like and suddenly it gets passed straight through to the consumer.
Money mobility caused this (Score:5, Interesting)
Following the Great Depression and World War II, the leaders of our society decided to start taxing the wealthy more and more, while using that money for the betterment of society as a whole. It was called the New Deal. And this policy worked quite well, propelling America into a period of rapid economic growth, while at the same time creating a profound sense of economic security for the middle class. Vacation pay became the norm (it largely didn't exist before the Great Depression), and middle class Americans had enough disposable income to spend on luxuries like vacations.
This system was made possible by several other policies that prevented the rich from quickly withdrawing their money from the country. If you were wealthy in the UK in the 1950's, it was extremely difficult to get your money out of the country. It became common in this period for rich British citizens to build huge sailing yachts, which they sailed to other countries and then sold. They used their boats as a store of their wealth (read Myles Smeeton's Once is Enough for a story of one such couple).
Then came the right wing "neo-liberal/neo-conservative" politicians. When they got into power, one of the first things they did was to remove the barriers to capital mobility. Money was able to flow almost completely freely across national borders. This has brought economic growth for some, especially in countries like China. But it has also ensured that the countries that originally used taxes on the wealthy to ensure a healthy middle class were at a huge disadvantage. Rich individuals have withdrawn their money from America, and invested it in countries like China.
What many of us don't realize is that the complete and free mobility of capital will lead to the virtual disappearance of the American middle class as we have seen it over the past four decades, because it will ensure that money will flow away from countries with high taxes towards productive countries with low taxes. The country will increasingly look like Britain in the 1800's during the beginning of the industrial revolution (i.e. the world of Oliver Twist). There will be a very wealthy class. And there will be a worker class, which will comprise the vast majority of the population. Things like vacation pay, comfortable pensions, affordable quality health care, and disposable income will slowly but surely disappear for the vast majority of the former middle class. I am not prophesizing this; I am watching it happen before my eyes. IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING! Take an honest look at America right now, and tell me that our standard of living isn't slipping. And this at a time when we have never been able to make products more efficiently!
And to those of you who reflexively demonize those like me as "liberals", ask yourself this question? Are you a Billionaire? If not, then why are you thinking like a billionaire? Why do you think that lower wages for most of society is in your interest? Why do you think that taxing billionaires and spending that money to build roads isn't in your interest?
Do you think that the $20000 you have invested in stocks will pay for your comfortable retirement? What you seem to forget is that the billionaire who owns $200 million of those same stocks will make slightly more than you. And he will use the money he makes to buy even more stocks. Meanwhile, you, with your ever decreasing salary will have less and less disposable money to invest.
Keep paying $$$ to your CEOs, healthcare, lawers.. (Score:1, Interesting)
I am not the US citizen (yet), and still I do not understand how America can compete having such insane cost of upper management salaries, healthcare, and insane bureaucracy caused by crazy legal system. You allow these suckers to get millions a year and ask regular folks to work like slaves. My physician pays half of his salary to get insurance. It is now much cheaper to go oversees to get a better dental and medical treatment.
Re:And the solution...? (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of blaming them for leaving, why don't we stop chasing them away?
I have a better idea - bar them from operating in the US altogether, and give their smaller competitors an opportunity to fill the void.
Re:And the solution...? (Score:4, Interesting)
Chasing them away? They seek lower "labor overhead" and they are getting it overseas. Taxes are far from the only and certainly not the most important reason for what we are seeing. We limit the amount of cheap labor they can import and punish them for breaking the law when they abuse the worker import programs.
It seems to me that being a bit more protectionist rather than less is an appropriate measure. Take away more than their foreign workers -- take away their government contracts and their right to operate in the U.S. entirely. Sure they might survive even under those circumstances, but the U.S. is STILL likely to be their biggest customers.
We have a horrible imbalance of wealth in the U.S. that people don't like talking about. We've heard about the disappearing middle class but no one seems to be listening or caring. The problem is that the stuff that is being sold is less and less affordable by the people in the U.S. For the past 20 years, people have failed to notice it because we've all been practicing "Reaganomics" or "debt financing" or "deficit spending" or however you prefer to phrase it. Instead of having a savings and an investment portfolio, the average American doesn't even have more than $2000 in the bank at any one time living paycheck to paycheck and trying to keep their credit cards paid. That can't work for much longer as people are making less and less money.
The free market without controls and preventative measures allows unscrupulous people to get away all sorts of evil things. Greed knows no limits and greedy people know no limits. Screaming for "more free market" is just a cry for "please look somewhere else while I pull another Enron or Madoff!" The free market forces leading to the brain drain in the U.S. has been weaking this country for a VERY long time and we're just about to hit the bottom that the few have been warning everyone about. The U.S. won't be #1 much longer and we can see why.
Re:Its the law of the jungle (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh yes, as long as we're doing quid pro quo, let's send everyone who talks about the horrors of living in China and such actually live there themselves - while I admit there are problems there, my Chinese friends have never thought it's as bad as you seem to believe. Oh, and let's make everyone who complains about "idiot CEOs" pay the same tax rate as upper management too.
Why do you people somehow think that "corporations" (by which I assume you mean upper management, as corporations don't think) want robots? Sure, there are some jobs where you just need someone to go through the motions; but there are plenty of other jobs where you need someone who's capable of improvising, someone who's capable of making intelligent decisions, and the kinds of "slaves" you describe above don't meet that criteria. So some jobs get shipped out, but new jobs get created; if our workforce is capable (which your post seems to imply, by highlighting how much worse the workforce is in other countries) then they'll be hired for those sorts of jobs instead.
Re:Solution is You and Me (Score:4, Interesting)
It's been well documented for seven years now: http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/ [ibmandtheholocaust.com]
Re:Money mobility caused this (Score:4, Interesting)
Following the Great Depression and World War II, the leaders of our society decided to start taxing the wealthy more and more, while using that money for the betterment of society as a whole. It was called the New Deal. And this policy worked quite well, propelling America into a period of rapid economic growth, while at the same time creating a profound sense of economic security for the middle class.
Your post presents a very important issue. I want to provide citation to reinforce your point.
To those who doubt the above. Please first take a look at the calculation of "Marginal Tax Rates":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_tax_rate [wikipedia.org]
Specifically, please note:
"The marginal tax rate may increase or decrease as income or consumption increases, although in most countries the tax rate is (in principle) progressive. In such cases, the average tax rate will be lower than the marginal tax rate: an individual may have a marginal tax rate of 45%, but pay average tax of half this amount."
Now consider the marginal tax rate calculation for the labor tax code of 1954. A few months ago I added the column for GDP adjusted income. That column is misleading. The correct deflator to use when adjusting individual income is PPC (Product Per Capita, AKA: GDP Per Capita)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Code_of_1986 [wikipedia.org]
Now consider the marginal tax rate calculation for the labor tax code of 2003 (the most recent year for which Wikipedia has the table):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobs_and_Growth_Tax_Relief_Reconciliation_Act_of_2003#Single [wikipedia.org]
Now, calculate the actual tax rate tables, being careful to apply marginal tax calculation.
Where do the tax lines cross? Above what level are you better under our current tax policy than during the period of greatest economic expansion in United States history? Or, conversely, below what income level are you worse under the current tax structure than during the period of greatest economic expansion in United States history?
The answer was a bit of a surprise to me. It is $251,000. That is the inflection point. Why does that surprise me? Two reasons: First, it's a bit lower than I thought (I had been mentally using GDP until tonight -- but that is not the correct deflator for income per person). Second, and more importantly, it is the number Obama has used several times when referencing the dividing line between rich and not rich. Is that intentional? Did he (or his economic advisor) reach that conclusion by doing the exact same calculation? Perhaps -- given that 250,000 is a number commonly used when pulling figures out of one's ass, it is entirely possible that it is just coincidence. Still, it makes me wonder...
But I digress. In short, people making less than $250,000 (about 95% of the population) are paying a greater percentage of their income as taxes than they were during the greatest period of economic expansion in United States history.
Said differently, people making more than $250,000 (about 5% of the population) are paying a lesser percentage of their income as taxes than they were during the greatest period of economic expansion in United States history.
Please note: This is assuming that you completely discount capital gains, the distribution and tax policy changes of which shift the inflection point much further in favor of the very few, very wealthy.
One More Time: During the greatest period of economic expansion in United States history our tax policy was enormously more progressive than it is today.
For further reading, including statistics that show the gargantuan concentration of wealth that has occurred as the tax policy shifted, see Piketty Saez 2007.
Comment removed (Score:1, Interesting)
not sensationalist... (Score:2, Interesting)
..just realistic. I saw the crash coming a long time ago and set out to become as independent as possible, including dropping demand for having to have so much of my life connected through the federal reserve note. I think I was accurate in the face of events over the last ten years. Way more than the bulk of wall street economists (the shills I mean) and especially the government who have lowballed the effects near constantly. Even with cooking the books, changing the way they count unemployment, changing how they create what it costs to live (dropping food and energy prices from their calculations) etc, it has still been worse than what they predicted. Near every quarter they have to readjust this or that. (I have a lot of journal entries on economics if you want to look, under "the almighty buck" but most of my other writings on the subject are gone now because they were on sites that are defunct)
Now not all big name economists got it wrong, the ones who also predicted it correctly are still saying that we haven't hit bottom yet, so I'll tend to believe those guys.
The biggest clue that the Feds were getting concerned that they had screwed up was when they stopped releasing all the money stats, the M3, which helped them push massive inflation easier.
As to living cheap, well one, I just am not doing apartments and random roomates, I am near retirement age and.well, just ain't gonna. My apartment days are long over. My GF and I share a small cabin and live on a farm. We3 have dogs and cats anf chickens and cows and a large garden, and that's jibe with apartment and roomate living. No mastter how cheap you get in an apartment, you are still 100% dependent on the whole system staying intact, which is a risk I simply will not take at this time..because I think it's near nuts to do that. If you do that you are relying on the biggest crooks and conmen in the world to have your best interests at heart..I just can't buy that being a smooth move.
I determined that moving to the the semi stix and being directly involved with food production and also we get a lot of our normal energy here directly onsite using firewood and having our own well, etc would be the best future proofing method. To get independent. Trying to eliminate the middleman as much as possible, we even have a modest solar array now and so on. We have little to no debt as well, a big help. Yes we buy in bulk and also grow in bulk ourselves, example we have enough stored food to last well over an entire year, even without having our garden, etc. Took awhile but I got there. I believe in wealth creation, just not filtering it through what I see as the dropping in value fed reserve note, so I switched to dealing in tangibles as much as possible..
We'll see what happens, but my prediction is it will get a lot worse here in the US and might take generations to recover, not just years or even decades.
The dominance of the fed reserve note as the international reserve currency is clearly in peril now, which is by far and away the big kahuna when it comes to quality of life in the US since we have offshored the bulk of wealth creation manufacturing. We need to import manufactured stuff now, and have been doing it with printed up pieces of paper. IOUs in other words (a "note" is a legal term for a debt instrument), and we we try to get them back to finance government, we just issue another form of IOU to these foreigners who hold our debt and they are getting *antsy* over that now and are slowing this effect and practice. It's slow, but the trend is steady and what you can read about it is it is a clear pattern and will continue. The fed note is medium term doomed right now, and as it goes, bye bye middle class USA.
We started out having our own manufactured items being exchangeable for imported oil (the petrodollar rise and the dominace of the fed reserve note after Nixon's move), but seeing as how that is not so much the case anymore, all these various outside nations now are questionin
Re:Solution is You and Me (Score:3, Interesting)
While I will admit that the industrial revolution in America produced some incredibly awful pollution, I can't stand for a moment the assertion that the USA is the most polluting nation on the Earth. That is a flat out lie and an attempt to skew statistics in some anti-America hate that doesn't really know what is happening.
By nearly every possible measure, America is a much cleaner and healthier place to life, raise children, and grow food. Environmental laws that exist within the USA are having an impact... both positive for the environment and negative in terms of business growth. That several American presidential administrations and the various groups of senators over the years have chosen not to get themselves tied up in Euro-centric treaties that would further punish America in ways that doesn't help improve the natural environment may not be nearly as bad as it sounds.
Nearly every possible measure of pollution, from air quality, water quality, concerns about ground water contamination, even radioactive waste disposal and even nuclear weapon testing have shown a significant and positive improvements. While not perfect, the air quality in Los Angeles has improved significantly since I was a young boy. In New York City, you are finding worms rotting out the wooden piers at the docks... something that didn't happen as recently as the 1980's. Beavers are even coming back to Brooklyn and building lodges for the first time since the 1700's. The air in Pittsburgh PA is actually breathable where a hundred years ago the soot and air pollution was so bad that you couldn't see more than a hundred yards (meters) or so due to the steel mills. These are just a few examples and there are hundreds of others.
That there may be other problems you can point to, sure, but on the whole it is disingenuous to assert that America doesn't care about the environment... or that this is strictly a leftist issue either. The issue is how you take stewardship of the resources you have available, and when to do the right thing.
BTW, the exact opposite is true in China. The Yellow River is all but dead for most of its length, and certainly it is unhealthy to use for anything other than as an open sewer. The air quality of Beijing was so bad that during the Olympics they had to do the draconian move of simply shutting down all private automobiles and even most trucks going into and out of the city. Certainly the air quality of Beijing is far and away worse than Los Angeles county ever could have dreamed of and is nearly as bad as it was in Pittsburgh at the beginning of the 20th Century. Due to lousy farm practices, a considerable amount of the Chinese top soil actually lands on my back yard... in America. The dust storms that come from China from time to time are so incredible that the dirt literally is carried completely across the Pacific Ocean.
China simply is not being a sound ecological steward of their environment and it shows in nearly every possible statistic that can legitimate measure pollution. The only reason why China isn't mentioned as the worst polluter on the planet has more to do with official reports than with actual consequences.
I am not ashamed at all of the environmental record of America, and I'll put it up against any other country of the world that has steel mills and is involved in heavy industrial production with as diverse of an industrial base as exists in America.
Re:Solution is You and Me (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all you have to consider the intent of my post: I wasn't saying there is no downside, nor was I trying to give a comprehensive overview of every facet of Flexicurity, I was trying to point out that there are other options: social welfare doesn't have to mean finding a job for everyone, even at the cost of retaining useless jobs. It can mean training people to become capable of doing useful jobs. Now, I think Obama and a lot of Democrats are actually stuck in the old mindset, where money from the rich gets redistributed to support the poor, when they should be looking to find ways to help the poor support themselves and become productive members of society. There is a huge difference between these two mindsets, and I was trying to help people see that there are alternative approaches.
Now, is Flexicurity the proper approach for the United States? Probably not, we are a different country with a unique set of challenges, immigration is one of those, as you mentioned, another is our massive slums and poverty zones. Any sort of social program ought to take these into direct consideration. These people in the slums are a group who all have similar problems, mainly they don't know how to escape the life cycle of poverty they are stuck in, and they are filled with self-doubt (this is my experience from working in slums). If we can address these problems, then we will massively improve the quality of life of many Americans. These are not necessarily easy problems, but they are real problems that need to be solved.
We do that (Score:2, Interesting)
We can and freeze a lot here. We grow our own beef and chickens and get some eggs, plus there's a big pond to fish from and we get bass from it. It's so close and easy to get fish from I don't bother with trying to can it, we eat it fresh when we want to or throw a few fillets in the freezer. But I hear ya, I could do that, should try it just for garnering another thing to learn to can I guess. And can't hardly keep up with the garden now, we've be canning and freezing a lot of the surplus. Running two stand alone chest freezers and the side freezer on a two door big freezer/fridge combo. Modest increase in electric bill for a huge decrease in grocery store bill, it is a good trade. Shelves full of home canned stuff, plus we store our own dried beans and so on. Here's a cool one, we have propane heat plus wood heat, but the last two winters we didn't use any propane at all, zilch. I just cut and split some extra wood, done. That saves a lot of cash right there, but the propane in the tank is still good for decades if we really need it for emergency use, and it is paid off.
The whole deal is to try and get what you would normally spend cash on, without needing the cash, and eliminating the middleman suckage. I haven't found replacements for every bill yet, like this internet connection, but we have done a lot so far. By going directly to the tangibles, it saves bunches and your hourly "pay" goes up in a sense. It is a way to "insure" both future availability of something you need, plus lock in a price better when you do all or most of it yourself. Independence rather than dependence.
Here's a direct figure for you: by growing our own beef, we pay moderately more for hamburger than you can get it at the store on sale..but all the other cuts of beef are the same "price" to us, so we save a ton. We eat ribeyes for barely hamburger price, and that is organic grass fed to boot. Price that in the store, heh. Same with our organic garden produce.
I don't do my own butchering on a whole beef, just too big and no walk in fridge/cooler for the required hanging and aging, so that's the biggest expense, just the slaughterhouse fee, which isn't that bad overall. I find someone to take one half, we take the other half. Chickens I do myself, I can knock one out pretty fast now. In a pinch though I can butcher a whole beef, I mean if I *really* have to, I have done it before twice, but I will admit I am not as good or fast as a pro butcher who does it all day long as a biz and is set up for it with huge meat saws and electric grinders, etc.
And then there's the normal thrifty action, hit the thrift stores/ yard sales for good used clothing, all that stuff you can imagine. I try to avoid buying anything brand new unless necessary. Even my tools, if there is something I need that I don't already have, I'll hit the pawnshops first before shelling out the full price scratch. My computer desk here is just an old platform bed I built and used for years, no longer needed, so now it sets across a bureau for my precious gadget junk (has to go someplace..I am a nerd, can't throw out old gadgets;) ) and my file cabinets. Done, "free" executive sized desk. My computer is built from cheap parts mailorder from tiger, then recycled hard drives and optical drives, and I only did that because the last one was broken, physically broken, stopped booting and it was an old 200 mghz pentium pro! I was using that until two years ago or so (I think around fedora core 8 maybe? Don't remember, around then). We don't do cable TV(not even available here) or satellite, but get by with an old regular TV and one of the perverter boxes and over the air signals. Movies we buy used tapes or disks or I download free to copy documentaries and so forth (I don't peg leg anything, but am in favor of serious copyright law reform there). Books I buy used and ye aulde ladee hits the library. We have some *really* nice and expensive carpeting here, I got it for free for tearing it out at some rich folks house, they didn't