johannielscom
Snorting silver salts
It's not all about money. My dad drove Fords for twenty years but since the quality of assembly has steadily gone down in the last seven, eight years, he now turns to a Japanese car. US Ford workers have a tendency to slap parts together for the foreign market, while they build cars for the domestic market. Price differences aren't all that big in the EU, import taxes make sure of that. Ford could make money here I guess.
But in general I agree. The symptoms of the illness are different in the EU but the disease is the same. I think Rogers remarks on capitalism are spot on, the stock market economy model is slowly killing off respectable businesses.
Poor banks, being forced by the competition to hand out big bonusses or nobody will come work with them :bang::bang::bang:
In the Netherlands, disfunctional health care managers who are sacked often get a bonus with them, because their contract specifies a bonus, but not a reason to leave the company! How sick is that!?
Politicians will not sanitize the economic model, they're already part of it. We need a revolution, I guess... Life gets confusing more and more, just now that we established communism is bad, capitalism doesn't smell too good either anymore...
gb hill
Veteran
Japaneese cars are turned out crap now. Toyota with it's massave recall over the gas pedel suddenly accelerating to failing the Government safty test. Hondas are crap always needing alignments. Your dad was a smart man. Best cars I owned are Fords.
gb hill
Veteran
Chris I agree with you 100% I know the struggles of the poor. Whats so bad is that most think President Obama will save us but he won't because he's tied to the mega elite! He is no better than the Bushes sending American to their deaths in a country like Vietnam & a war we can't win. BTW I can't figure what the war is about anyhow. Neither party gives a rats a$$ about us but some folks wont listen!
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
You sure those Fords were American made? I know that GM builds cars sold in Europe in Europe, not the USA.
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
I agree on Obama, I hated Bush II, but I warned people that Obama was not the Messiah either, he's the same lying sack of sh-t that all the democraps and republitards are. There's only one political party in this country and big business owns it.
emraphoto
Veteran
is this the part where we decide the capitalist endeavor is no longer in our best interest?
i wouldn't spend too much time looking north. we currently have a government bred out of right wing christian conservatives who spent their university years pining over Leo Strauss and deciding which public service to sell off first.
i wouldn't spend too much time looking north. we currently have a government bred out of right wing christian conservatives who spent their university years pining over Leo Strauss and deciding which public service to sell off first.
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Pickett Wilson
Veteran
While it's not a popular concept, there really are problems individuals and countries can get themselves into that there is no way out of. As has been suggested in an earlier post, with the word "revolution," it seems inevitable that society will fracture over economics at some point in the not too distant future. We like to believe in the fantasy of unlimited abundance, when the reality is that all our resources are finite. When those resources are controlled by a, relatively, few people or a few countries, you get the world as we know it.
How those resources get distributed more equitably is the big "gotcha" for anyone looking at the economic problems of this country or the world. Because anytime you say the words I've just said, people start shouting "socialism" and stone the messenger. So, I don't think there is really a solution that is acceptable to a consensus of folks, and thus no real solution short of major social upheaval, a reality that has, unfortunately, given rise to movements like the Patriot movement here in the United States.
How those resources get distributed more equitably is the big "gotcha" for anyone looking at the economic problems of this country or the world. Because anytime you say the words I've just said, people start shouting "socialism" and stone the messenger. So, I don't think there is really a solution that is acceptable to a consensus of folks, and thus no real solution short of major social upheaval, a reality that has, unfortunately, given rise to movements like the Patriot movement here in the United States.
yanidel
Well-known
that is only a small part of the issue. The real one IMO is what management of main US corporations has become : short-term minded, quick profit, risk adverse, politically correct and full of bull****. A huge army of headless clones is being assembled. Think out of the box is dying in the US.
wgerrard
Veteran
Well, Ford does seem to be turning a profit, especially from its international markets. We need to be careful, too, when assuming where a car is made. Ford makes Fords in facilities in a number of countries. I used to have a VW made in Mexico. Other U.S. VW's came from Pennsylvania. Most Hondas, and Toyotas I suspect, sold in the U.S. are made in the U.S. Given the profusion of robotics in modern auto manufacturing, I wonder how much impact employee attitudes actually have on build quality.
Chris and Johan are correct. The economic systems of the U.S. and Europe have been skewed to facilitate the creation of new and unproductive wealth by the manipulation of financial markets, resulting in the transfer of wealth to an elite comprising a tiny fraction of the population. E.g., the actual purchasing power of wages in the U.S. has not increased in a quarter century. Some initially kept pace by adding income produced by a spouse returning or joining the workforce. In more recent years, millions racked up debt that they subsumed into refinanced mortgages. Then, last year, the entire elaborate scaffold tumbled down.
Chris and Johan are correct. The economic systems of the U.S. and Europe have been skewed to facilitate the creation of new and unproductive wealth by the manipulation of financial markets, resulting in the transfer of wealth to an elite comprising a tiny fraction of the population. E.g., the actual purchasing power of wages in the U.S. has not increased in a quarter century. Some initially kept pace by adding income produced by a spouse returning or joining the workforce. In more recent years, millions racked up debt that they subsumed into refinanced mortgages. Then, last year, the entire elaborate scaffold tumbled down.
wgerrard
Veteran
Indeed. This is where the impact of the un-traveled American comes home to rest. The word "European" is used as a pejorative. People with little interest in and no personal experience of Europe have been propagandized to think of Europe as a gray morbid continent populated by uncreative proles who have sold their birthrights for a place in the dole queue. They have been propagandized to believe that a neighbor's success means their loss.
btgc
Veteran
I think there's also something similar like with software - decade ago proprietary UNIX servers ruled the market, not so today when many projects head out for x86 based Linux boxes. They cost times cheaper, and while there are many sites still requiring say, AIX servers, many customers are quite happy with Linuxes - ten years ago there simply were no option for cheap server platform. Many of them simply didn't need all the beef of RISC computing.
I think in similar way many clients have adopted to level of offering from stocks, instead having low prices. So many periodicals today use pictures from stocks to illustrate columns and similar. This is area where professionals mostly have lost their positions, thanks to wide-spread digital photography as amateurs can produce incredible amount of pictures.
In areas requiring added value, I guess photographers still have their jobs. If amateur takes picture with added value, consider there's another photographer grown up.
I think in similar way many clients have adopted to level of offering from stocks, instead having low prices. So many periodicals today use pictures from stocks to illustrate columns and similar. This is area where professionals mostly have lost their positions, thanks to wide-spread digital photography as amateurs can produce incredible amount of pictures.
In areas requiring added value, I guess photographers still have their jobs. If amateur takes picture with added value, consider there's another photographer grown up.
emraphoto
Veteran
"Because anytime you say the words I've just said, people start shouting "socialism" and stone the messenger."
it is interesting how profoundly the propaganda of the past 20 years has permeated. despite all the facts clearly indicating that the current capitalist system is not in the interest of 80 some odd % of the population, to raise the idea of an alternative is immediately met with derision. effective bit of propaganda i suppose.
it is interesting how profoundly the propaganda of the past 20 years has permeated. despite all the facts clearly indicating that the current capitalist system is not in the interest of 80 some odd % of the population, to raise the idea of an alternative is immediately met with derision. effective bit of propaganda i suppose.
wgerrard
Veteran
Many people seem to think of the world as a mean-spirited social Darwinistic kind of place where their success means someone else's loss, and too bad. They parrot the virtues of the free market (which are real and many) in support of corporate cliques that dominate and control entire sections of the economy. No free market there.
gdi
Veteran
It appears that way on the surface Chris, but there is more to it. I am not a laissez-faire evangelist, but government regulations often have unintended impacts.
Combine these:
- regulations restricting deduction of executive base salaries while allowing unlimited deductions of performance bonuses. This results in huge windfalls for Execs "growing" the stock price (performance) - at any cost.
- tax structures that provide US corporations indefinite deferrals of taxes on foreign profits until the profits are "re-repatriated", then offset the profits against foreign taxes when they do bring them home.
- Environmental rules at home that eliminate the possibility American workers competing on a level basis with the labor rates in offshore locations.
..... along with the shortsighted greed induced in executives by the dream of hundreds of millions (and other things I'm sure), and you get the movement of the manufacturing base offshore.
It needs to be pointed out that multiple conditions - political, regulatory, human behavior, etc. - contribute to the situation. (Jack Welch wished he could put factories on barges so he could easily move to the cheapest country at any point in time)
How can it be rectified? There are ways to address the above points which could help - but having the government "just get out of the way" is not the answer. Moving toward fair, and sensibly regulated capitalism is the best approach. Remove the incentives for moving offshore, paying less than subsistence wages, and polluting foreign lands - yes we will pay more for goods but many more would have jobs.
wgerrard
Veteran
Government in a democracy ought to function as a bulwark between the majority and the inevitable predations of the economically powerful. Wholesale removal of government "regulations" simply tilts the game even more in favor of the privileged. But, as the 1929 depression showed, the game falls apart when the tilt goes too far. Left unbridled, capitalism generates small clusters of domineering market-controlling corporations. Consumer choice no longer functions as a control. The only alternative is government "regulation" in the interests of the many rather than the few.
That's what created this mess we are now in, government 'regulation' and corrupto-crats in Fannie and Freddie and their cohorts in Congress getting sweet deals.
It wasn't capitalism. The Sherman Ant-Trust Act takes care of 'domineering market-controlling corporations.'
climbing_vine
Well-known
Respectfully, you should read any of the myriad quantified takedowns of the Fannie/Freddie theory/propaganda. It's not just untrue, it's essentially an impossibility.
I'm very familiar. It's not theory...heh.
What I don't understand is why those Fannie/Freddie crooks were not thrown in jail like various corporate pirates were?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQtq77RQRf0
What I don't understand is why those Fannie/Freddie crooks were not thrown in jail like various corporate pirates were?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQtq77RQRf0
climbing_vine
Well-known
Again respectfully, you're not very familiar if you think it's true.
You're right that it's not a "theory". It's propaganda that was cooked up specifically by the WSJ to protect the folks who are the WSJ patrons.
The short version of why it's a transparent lie, an impossibility, is that Fannie and Freddie's problems were a drop in the overall bucket compared to sub-prime loans and bad corporate real-estate loans.
It's popular wisdom because of this propaganda to think that Fannie and Freddie were the standard-bearers of subprime, but this is just a flat-out-lie. Fannie and Freddie were forbidden by statute from engaging in sub-prime loans. They had nothing. At all. To do with it. They like many others were a victim of investments that turned out to be full of packaged fund garbage from Wall Street.
climbing_vine
Well-known
That sucks, but the solution is never to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Inheritance taxes are a hard one to navigate (both practically and morally), but until someone thinks of something better they're the only bulwark against old-style European feudalism.
It's a system that needs a lot of work.