Outsourcing manufacturing...

Today I am starting with a quick quiz.

Ready?

Question 1) What do you get when you move a factory from inside the USA to a location outside the USA?

Question 2) What do you lose when you move a factory from inside the USA to a location outside the USA?

Question 3) What is the name of this process?

Answers:
1) You get a reasonably equivalent product made less expensively.
2) You lose people that can afford your product (a.k.a., customers).
3) This process is known as: Saving Too Much Money!

Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company (not known as a working class hero), understood that an employee who could afford to buy the product that he or she helps to make increases one’s customer base (a.k.a., growing the business).

A question to promote discussion:
1) How does one’s vendor manufacture an equivalent product for less money, even after shipping costs are factored in, while still making a profit?

Answers may be found in an old post on this very blog!

Continuing… We are in a recession where jobs are disappearing by the millions! How is it going to help the consumers, who are approximately 70% of the economy, when their jobs continue to reappear outside of our country?

If you are angry when you think about what you’ve just read, then you understand the problem and need to discover how you might become a part of the solution; every little contributory effort counts.

If you don’t see a point to this post, then you are probably part of the management teams sending these jobs overseas and need to remember that your job is also able to be done by folks in countries that have pay rates significantly lower than yours.

What are we to do?

It was reported, in the New York Times, that a letter was sent by seven former CIA directors asking President Obama to stop the Justice Department’s investigation into past abuses… These issues have, they stated, already been investigated. So, reviewing these events will not produce any new, more embarrassing, information about illegal activities. Will they?

The former directors don’t seem to understand that the rule of law must apply to everyone to be effective. The people at any government agency must evaluate how best to do their jobs and if they feel it is necessary to operate outside the law, there will be consequences.

The directors say that there will be disclosures that will help al Qaeda elude capture… Like Osama Bin ‘Forgotten?’

We are a nation of laws that encourages others to follow our lead. Are we to become hypocrites? Do we want others to follow that lead?

Remember, “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” That is a quote from a former President of these United States: Bill Clinton.

Thoughts for today...

“Blue Dog” Democrats, and others, say that they want to make sure that health care reform controls cost.

Every other industrialized country in the world has at least a public health insurance option, cover nearly everybody and pay less than half (per capita) of what we pay.

The only folks who don’t understand this simple fact are those looking for an excuse to do nothing.


In the meantime… don’t forget to re-regulate the financial services (a.k.a., the market, Wall Street) industries!

The market defines innovation as finding new ways to avoid: regulation, review and responsibility.

Wall Street spews tales of its own wisdom and the incompetence of government, while seeking bail-outs from said government (requiring enormous quantities of the taxpayer’s money) when they find they’re snared in a trap of their own making; accepting dollars while admitting no culpability.

Dear Progressive Democrats and Independents,

We’ve allowed others to control some of our issues, and it is well past time that we took control back.

‘Pro-choice’ and ‘family planning’ have been mislabeled as ‘pro-abortion.’ Ask any Republican you care to why they belong to the ‘retro-active abortion’ party. How is it acceptable to kill an adult, while claiming to be ‘pro-life?’

To those who say that the government should not be involved in anything, because the government can’t do anything right… How did we come to live in the country that is the only super-power in the entire world? It is the strength of the U.S. military; part of our federal government and state military reserves!

Heard of the Internet or GPS? They were developed by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency); a part of the military and federal government!

Only 66 years after the first, manned, powered flight one country landed people on the moon and returned them safely to Earth; NASA, a federal government agency, accomplished it. Efforts by NASA, DARPA, NSF, NIH, NSA, etc… have led to the computer on your lap, phone in your pocket, music and movies stored on media the size of a commemorative postage stamp, etc…

Have you heard of one of the world’s foremost cancer research and treatment centers? MD Anderson Cancer Center, a part of the UT system. How about the Scott and White clinics, hospitals and research center? These are a part of the TX A&M system.

Did you know that two, of three, top tier universities in TX are public universities? UT Austin and TX A&M College Station!

The roads, schools, emergency service providers, airports, seaports, post office, water, sewage, etc… The things one takes for granted, are brought to you by your municipal, state or federal governments, or by a contractor to same.

Is government perfect? No. Does it get everything right, all the time? No. Do you know of any individual or institution that can answer yes?

If someone tells you that there shouldn’t be a public health option, because the government can’t do anything right… Tell them that they need to be grateful that the rock they dwell beneath is here in the USA, because here they are free to choose not to understand the simple facts listed above.

The artificial dispute twixt science and religion.

There is an artificial conflict between science and religion being pursued and exacerbated by those whose intent is more feudal than religious. Religion has long explained the unknown to human society, because, “I don’t know,” is the most difficult pronouncement most people can imagine.

As people began to observe and understand the world around them, natural curiosity encouraged efforts to discover ever more. Knowledge became powerful, and some used it to accrue social power, status and/or material wealth. Some used what was known as a basis for learning more and others learned so that they might teach and encourage more folks to do the same… The groups are not mutually exclusive.

O’er the course of human development people have often associated knowledge with mystical or religious authority, and those who would leverage that for power and wealth tried hard to keep information to themselves. By the Renaissance period of the western world, knowledge had become too widespread and the genie was out of the bottle.

Losing control of knowledge was bothersome, but not overwhelming to the aristocrats (who were rapidly evolving into plutocrats of the post feudal period), because high social status was still largely limited to white, wealthy men and their entourages.

Events of the Renaissance had led to scientific and social experimentation that spawned a phrase which became the basis of a new nation: “…that all men are created equal.” That phrase was to lead to a society that would, eventually, resemble that remark.

There has always been (and always will be) a segment of the population that finds the aforementioned phrase, at best, distasteful. Now, as the phrase approaches near complete social acceptance and practice, we begin to see an increasingly restive movement of plutocrats, aristocrat wannabes, (and their sycophants) attempting the restoration of old ways.

Trying to return to the past has been an effort governed largely by civility, but as desperation rises civility often falls by the wayside. In population, we who are melanin challenged are due to become the largest minority in the USA. In positions of wealth and power, there is an ever increasing presence of women and less melanin challenged minorities.

Religion can be interpreted to appear as if it conflicts with science in a manner that allows it to be used as a lever against the social progress of the last millennia. That most scientists have religious beliefs, and most religions are comfortable with the progress of science specifically, and society generally, disproves the fantasy of those desperate for a return to anachronistic ways.

What the party of, "NO," know, but aren't telling.

A few things to consider…

On Taxes:

As one’s income rises so does one’s tax rate, but what also rises is the number of pages, of the tens of thousands of pages, of tax code that apply to you; net tax rate actually declines.

On Public Health Insurance:

Study after study reveals that in the USA we pay far more, and get far less, for health insurance benefits than in any other country in the industrialized and developing nations of the world.

The party of, “NO,” says we will wind up with health care like the Canadians; where the doctors come south (to the USA) to make more money and patients go north (to Canada) to get better health care.

On Capitalism:

Unregulated markets have proven time and again that they’re like toddlers let loose in a grocery store; messes will be made and things will get broken.

Toddlers are newly mobile, curious children and Wall Street is populated by highly educated adults; theoretically. If you study the Ups and Downs of the US economy you’ll note a common underlying theme: compensation often increases exponentially as a Wall Street employee demonstrates less and less understanding of risk and the unintended consequences thereof.

On the Party of, “NO:”

The party of, “NO,” receives a great deal of consideration (money and other valuable trinkets) from lobbyists representing the, “free market,” to allow said market folks to play in an unregulated arena of other people’s money. When the folks on Wall Street inevitably take excessive risks and lose that money, they expect the government will bail them out, with taxpayer’s (more of those other people’s money) dollars, while assessing no blame; remember that US Treasury Secretary Paulson demanded $700 billion taxpayers’ dollars: no restrictions!

If the party of, “NO,” has it’s way the enormous, federal deficit will resume its 30 years of growth and Wall Street’s gaming will continue without accountability; just because they made the mess…

BTW:

Public (or Single Payer) Health Insurance could clear the way to eliminate: Medicare, Medicaid and the Veteran’s Health System! Put that in your budget calculator!

The Capitalist v. Government Tango

The print, radio and television mouthpieces of capitalism are expressing trepidation about the federal government’s ousting of CEOs. Thus demonstrating, once again, that when one (or more) doesn’t understand that something’s in their best interest they’ll object, no matter how ignorant it paints them.

The American auto manufacturers (once known as the big three) came to the US government, hat in hand, asking for billions of dollars in federal (read: taxpayer’s) assistance; similar to what they’d done in the 1980s. Reappearing on the government’s doorstep cemented the reputation, as incompetent, of the American auto industries’ executives.

The financial services industries, and the previous administration, waited till the US economy was in freefall before coming to the folks that have always bailed them out before: the American taxpayer. Perhaps they were concerned that the taxpayer would tire of freeing these folks from the traps that they’d set for themselves; possibly even hold them accountable, finally.

Companies, auto and finance, were allowed to grow, “too big to fail,” in an unregulated business environment. They demonstrated certainty that they wouldn’t have to face the consequences, intended or otherwise, of their actions.

The vast majority of the aforementioned industry’s leaders seem terrified of the bankruptcy courts, because the proceedings become public record. Corporate legal departments move rapidly to seal said records, but apparently there is insufficient confidence in the success of such an effort.

Taxpayers have provided the money to recover from all the recessions and depressions that have occurred since capitalism took root in the world. Imperial and mercantile economies were also built on the backs working folks; nothing new here. What is reasonably new is the ability of voters, in a democratic republic, to call for an accounting of the expenditures and that makes the plutocrats nervous.

When one looks at the US federal government’s history of taking control of businesses it should be remembered that that government took over some industries after the Great Depression and it was recovering the economy prior to the start of our active engagement in World War II; contrary to some recent attempts to rewrite that bit of history. One also needs to remember that the US war effort during WWII was successfully run by the War Department (a.k.a., the Department of Defense).

It is true that the government should not run most industry, excepting most common carriage business efforts. It has, however, been clearly demonstrated (time and again) that when capitalism is allowed to operate in an unregulated environment it gets massively carried away with itself: creating innovation, profiting from it, creating excess (recurring irrational exuberance), leading to bubbles, bubbles burst in spectacular and intentionally unanticipated (read: unprofitable to anticipate) fashion.

The government/taxpayer, once again, needs to underwrite, clean up and re-regulate the businesses that undermined the economy; then move back to the sidelines. There needs to be a friendly, continuous competition between the capitalists, the regulators and the voters/customers, because none work best on their own.