This article sums it up.......without manufacturing we are doomed to be a poorer country.......and the fix is arduous and long and not all that effective. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BF28720101216?pageNumber=2 One telling statement is that the long time unemployed need to get off unemployment because it is keeping them from taking low-paying jobs. Translation......they and we as a country are going to be poorer.....plain and simple.....except for those in the financial sector and a few others already at the top of wealth scale.
I tie it to the rise of Gator Football, back in the day when ND football reigned supreme we were a mfg MF! Now it's all gone south.
The culture of the American production worker has to take a massive change of direction. Remember that auto workers used to have a "job bank" which was nothing more that sitting on their asses and receiving 95% of their pay. It was such a cushy arangement that there was reverse bumping that occurred. Workers with little seniority would be laid off an put in the job bank. But the workers with high seniority were jealous of those getting paid for not working. So they'd use their seniority to bump the lower guys out and take the free rides for themselves. ******** union agreements like this bankrupted GM and Chrysler. Last summer I posted an article that told about how landscaping businesses couldn't hire unemployed because they chose the do nothing benefits over jobs that paid not that much more. Instead of working and paying taxes, these loafers just want to suck taxpayer benefits. And their co conspirators in the Democratic party want to keep the good times rolling. Just as the UAW destroyed the domestic auto industry, the teacher unions are making our educational system third world. Higher wages, smaller classes, dumber kids.
Gipper..... I think I responded to that article by pointing out that for anyone serious about returning to a viable job.....one that enables bill paying.....taking a piss poor low paying job instead would be the kiss of death. You have to realize that minimum wage or barely above min. wage equates to poverty. Again....the above statement only applies to those serious about finding serious jobs that make ends meet. For any others who just want benefits to enable them to slack off then I agree with you 110%. For someone used to being middle class.....raising a family and being an average middle class American to accept a poverty inducing job instead is a very tough pill to swallow.
MCG read how Germany pulled out of their problems. Their uneducated blue collar workers found out that manufacturing jobs were no longer a path to a middle class life. It was a pipedream of Walter Ruther and his successors. They took advantage of inept, short-sighted auto execs who lacked vision and then the courage to save the day. The days that a high school dropout can get a job at an auto plant become an apprentice millwright and eventually make $100,000 a year with overtime are long gone. They no longer will outearn bookkeepers, nurses, physicians assistants, and computer programers. Perhaps if so many former auto workers weren't still sucking so much out of the big three, today's workers could be paid more but just like social security and medicare, the pyramid scheme can only last so long. We can't compete in a global economy in manufacturing. As mentioned in the article our housing industry still can provide some middle class incomes for the uneducated but the recent financial crash has damaged our housing industry. We seem to be going down the path of Spain and Greece. We're using the government to hire the unemployed. It doesn't work.
:idea: There are no jobs for Americans in the housing industry, except as independent contractors who hire illegal aliens. The great advantage that the illegal workers have is that they don't have to pay taxes, so they can work for less...
I've got a muster zone right across the street from my house! Neighbor lady started a cleaning business years ago and now has a staff of 10-12 Hispanics who show up every morning in cars with license plates from New York, North Carolina and PA. I had a guy ( he was legal! ) working on my A/C this summer. One of the Hispanic workers backed into his truck as it was parked in front of my house. My neighbor's husband came running out of his house, checkbook in hand, practically tackling my guy. They negotiated a cash settlement on the spot. No police reports. By the way, my neighbors take 4-5 vacations/cruises per year which you can do when you don't pay payroll taxes of any kind.
Bingo! That is our problem for a long time to come. From the second American manufacturers began to outsource work to foreign countries because of cheap labor our manufacturing jobs were doomed. Companies unable to successfully outsource to cheap labor have also been severly affected if not put out of business. George sees cheap labor operating across the street with illegals. It all adds up to a persistent pressure downward on our own labor income rates and that has even trascended now to higher skilled office jobs and sales. My former industry.....the moving industry.....has seen a culling of higher paid sales people in the neighborhood of something like 60-70% and I recently read a newsletter put out by a hiring firm that specializes in that industry that essentially said those jobs are not coming back. In essence.....we are doomed to be a poorer country....destined to compete with countries where $10,000.00 a year in income is upper middle class. My feeling is that only the manipulators of money.....the financial sector......will continue to see their incomes soar mainly because they have a captive market enslaved to their services because of the abandonment of company sponsored retirement plans.
Wow....captive, enslaved? Just out of curiousity, who do you think managed the money resident in the "company sponsored retirement plans" prior to their "abandonment"? In truth, the core difference is that people now have more discretion and freedom to choose among more options available to them rather than dictated to them and limited by the bureaucrats in the HR department. And now that individuals are free to choose their own providers, just how many thousands of financial service providers do you you think they are free to choose between and thereby become captive and enlsaved to? Fascinating perspective as always.....
True BT...in that before dissolving company retirement plans altogether firms moved away from company funded plans to funds managed on Wall Street. In either case Wall Street will continue to see the cash pour in.....especially in light of the fact that Social Security has nothing but gloom and doom forecasted for it. It seems like the financial sector is the real Golden goose for making a high paid living going forward......even if Wall Street doesn't perform....doesn't have any parameters of performance for the clients. Clients lose billions.....Wall Streeters still make bundles of cash. Go figure.
Sounds easy.....send your kids business school to study finance and then off they too can go to the easy millions on the Street.....don't need to perform, make a ton without breaking a sweat......what's the problem? Won't need Obama-care to continue health care insurance for them....send 'em to the Street where they hand out multi-million dollar bonuses regardless of performance like confetti and let them steal from the "captive, enslaved" masses..... this is America. Everybody is free to go where they want to seek their fortune.....let me know how it works out for 'em....
No.....they MUST perform for the company I'm certain of that. But does that translate into performance for the ever growing client lists? I interviewed with Kidder Peabody back in the early 80s for a stock broker position. The job required cold calling on the phone and success was better achieved by actually aggressively landing possibly reluctant clients and then by making those clients money with wise investments to the point where they passed your name on to other prospects with money to invest. You don't make that client money....you don't succeed. Is that still norm BT......or is so much cash pouring in that it's just a matter of managing that cash to the benefit of the firm above all else?
You'd have to ask their clients....common sense would suggest that if they didn't perform, they either a) wouldn't get paid, or b) clients would go somewhere else where their interests are more closely aligned, or c) perform those same services themselves....firms in any industry that don't meet the needs of their clients over time go away - they do not prosper. Those that do take their place...... If none of the above hold, then the only logical conlusion would be that the client is an irrational imbecile......but in your world, logic is a scarce commodity and your view of commercial and economic behavior is unique and one that is so far removed from observed reality that it is best left in the realm of fairy tale conspiracy, imagination and fantasy......I don't want to ruin your trip, carry on.....
OK BT I understand. No one on Wall Street is successful.....makes any money.....unless the client/investor makes money first. Thanks for clearing that up. 8) From a NY Times article on Wall Street pay: "To understand the trends in Wall Street pay, it makes sense to look at how the financial sector ballooned in recent decades, before the financial crisis. In the last 40 years, financial profits went from just under 20 percent of corporate profits to around 40 percent before the financial crisis. Financial company stocks became 22 percent of the Standard & Poor’s financial index by 2006, up from 13 percent in 1999. And in New York City, the capital of finance, nearly $1 out of every $4 that companies paid employees in 2007 went to a financial worker. As Wall Street grew in influence, its workers’ pay ballooned, increasing sixfold since 1975. That was nearly twice as much as non-financial worker pay increased in the United States, according to data from Moody’s Economy.com." I find that interesting since the DOW has barely moved from where it was 11 years ago....standing at 11,723 in 1999 and at 11,558 as of this morning.
Just out of curiousity, show me where I said that......typically, arguments that have merit don't need to rely on distortions to make their case.... Well, by your logic then they are grossly underpaid......using your reference point of 1975 for pay levels, at the beginning of 1975 the Dow stood at 768. It has increased 15-fold since then.....you do the math. Your logic would suggest they have more than earned their pay and are on the verge of being cheated.....it's makes for great theater to sit back and watch you argue with yourself.....carry on.
The more important point BT is that Wall Street is up 6 fold in pay over 3 fold in pay for all other workers since 1975. What.... have they done to earn that sort of separation? And yes.....many funds have either lost money or have been moribund over the past 11 years.....certainly not justifying exorbitant bonuses and pay increases during that time. The magic bullet for Wall Street.......the Golden Egg.......is all of the increased infusion of cash going into the markets in the past 15 years comparative to the 60 years before it. Do you deny that has happened and do you think it is because people are just THAT enamored with the performance of Wall Street fund managers and stock brokers that they are compelled to throw more and more cash that way? Wall Street pay could triple in the next 5 years and where else are Americans going to shelter their hard earned cash from taxes and save for retirement? It's absolutely a captive market.
Payrolls at financial firms have grown faster than the US average because the businesses that employ them have grown faster than the economy on average as a result of the increased demand for their services given the aging of the baby boomers and their generational accumulation of financial assets, relatively greater usage of debt over time by consumers, financial and non-financial companies and public entities - world wide....there is no vast right-wing conspiracy. To illustrate, just imagaine how much faster payrolls at software companies or mobile communications companies have grown than the US economy in aggregate..... there is no right wing conspiracy there either.....it is a function of the changing structure of the economy away from labor - where we are non-competitive - towards intellectual capital where we enjoy competitive advantages..... As to the captive audience, I just don't know what to tell you.....there are thousands upon thousands of financial service providers available for people to select completely at their own discretion.....if one does not suit the needs of a specific consumer/entity there are scores of providers lined up to take their place.....if they can't satisfy you on Wall Street, try Main St or Anywhere St USA.....you are free to walk and take your money anywhere, here or anywhere else in the world. The only thing you are captive to is your own ignorance..... You are so blinded by your biased and irrational, uninformed views and so completely uninterested in facts that it is just impossible to hold a reasonable discussion on the subject.....it is - again - just a complete waste of time. Somebody else's turn.....or not.
Pillow cases do not provide a tax shelter for retirement income planning the last I checked. So you will not agree that the lack of retirement plan offerings in the private sector in this country is a big reason for all of that increased investment activity, employment and compensation on Wall Street. The performance of Wall Street in the past 11 years is very commendable and every investor should have significantly large gains over those 11 years.......and Wall Street compensation is therefore commensurate with those gains enjoyed by so many. So it is done then.