OT: Why there are no new jobs?

All of the idiots aren't in Washington....

Many choose to accept that partner rather than one of the many other partners they could choose because of the excellent business environment that has resulted from the arrangement.

You can whine and moan all you want, it doesn't change the fact that this is one of the very best countries in the world for starting a business. If you don't like it, why don't you take your business somewhere else? Have you had any better offers?

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Rick

There are workarounds. Hire illegal aliens off the books. Offshore most of your manufacturing and programming and customer service. Hide the profits in Ireland. That's what big boys do, the ones who can afford to pay lots of lawyers and politicians.

Yeah, that's the old "America, Love it or Leave it" mentality. Well, jobs are leaving it. ...and you're happy about it.

[...]

That is what my former employer did, shedding tons of well-paying US jobs in the wake.

Yes. From Costa Rica.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Pretty much all advanced industrial countries offer the same kind of deal. Some of them will fine-tune it in the hope of attracting start-ups, but if you want to business in a country country that offers universal education, public transport, a legal system and a bunch of other luxuries, you'll have to pay for them.

most_Always_Do_Better

makes the point that the USA is a remarkably unequal country, so that the p eople who have already set up a business get a rather better deal from the government than anybody who is starting up a new business and has to pay fo r lobbyists - on top of everything else - to get favourable deals from the administration.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

[...]

Here's the real deal. First, you must find a product or service that people really need. Most people already have plenty of food (although truly healthy food may be costly) and essentially free water. And also most people have access to shelter, although it can be expensive. Those are traditionally all that people actually *need*. As a civilized society, we may say that health care is a basic need, but it is not available to some people because of cost or inability to get insurance.

The common denominator in these necessities is money, unless society provides them for free (paid for by those who have money).

Now consider the usual conservative whine that nobody should get anything for free (unless they are seriously disabled) - they must get jobs and earn the money they need. So now we must examine these jobs and how to create them. Fundamentally, jobs are created by need for the products and services they provide. But we already have plenty of food, and there are lots of vacant houses, and plenty of doctors and hospitals to provide health services. However, people need money for these necessities, and no new jobs are needed unless the demand skyrockets.

If you want to create jobs for the "common people", as some people claim they can, you might do something like invest in building a new shopping center that will temporarily create construction jobs, many of which require skills and physical stamina that many people don't have, so they are often filled by foreign labor. Then the stores open up, selling goods that are mostly made in China, and they hire a bunch of local sales people to sell the same stuff that is already being sold by the other shopping center a few miles down the road. What happens?

People are attracted to the new stores and start going there, rather than the old store that was not very busy anyway, so they gradually lay off workers and eventually go bankrupt. These laid-off workers beg for jobs at the new store, and may accept pay cuts for the privilege. The construction workers spend their paychecks and then move elsewhere, so sales start falling and workers are let go.

And then some wise guy says they can create more jobs by opening yet another shopping center...

Meanwhile, the top management and owners siphon off the profits and make other investments. They don't really need to start new retail businesses, but some may do so because of subsidies and incentives and sweetheart deals that leave them fat and happy if and when their business goes t*ts up.

You may say we need more high-tech jobs, and factories to produce goods locally instead of China and India and Mexico. But those who have the skills to take such jobs demand high salaries, so it is not profitable for investors to start and build such local businesses. And what sort of goods are to be produced? Demand must be created by convincing affluent people that they need new cars and new cell phones and TVs and bigger houses and the latest fashions, so there are intensive advertising campaigns to convince people they need these things and can pay by credit. But we've seen how well that has worked, and it is worse now that home values and real wages have stagnated.

There just isn't enough demand to support the plethora of new, "good" jobs that conservatives are always promising by shrinking government and reducing taxes and regulations on businesses. Government *does* create jobs, despite right-wing dogmatic belief. And the government would literally have to remove all regulations and give investors money to make the prospect of running a business (especially manufacturing) in the US.

There is plenty of wealth to go around, but most of it is stagnating in the hands of the top 1%. Reagan's corporate tax cuts and trickle down economics proved disastrous, but the economy turned around when he later provided tax cuts to benefit the middle class, and then by the effects of the collapse of the USSR, the IBM PC revolution in 1982, the stock market/day trader phenomenon, and then the dot-com and housing bubbles. But these mostly produced many millionaires and billionaires, and short-term rich people who trickled back down to the lower end of the middle class when their excesses got the better of them.

The middle class and the lower class need money so they can spend it and stimulate the economy, rather than hoard it like the top 1%. Like it or not, redistribution of wealth is absolutely necessary for our nation's stability and survival. It can still be done equitably (and not equally, as right-wing-nuts seem to fear), but continued and growing disparity will inevitably lead to collapse and violent revolution. If every one of the 1% would lose 90%, or even 50%, of their present wealth, they would still be at least multi-millionaires and would hardly have their lifestyles diminished. But the 99% would see their wealth doubled and tripled, yet only to levels equivalent to what was normal during the 50s and 60s when we were truly prosperous and everyone had a fair chance.

Yeah, that's a lot to read, and the conservatives probably ignored it all, holding onto their own smug beliefs in their superiority and absolute knowledge. I don't claim all of my statements and beliefs are perfect - it is very complex, after all. But I think they hold much more validity than than those who believe we can return to BAU based on their hazy recollections of yesteryear and the era of unlimited growth and infinite resources.

Those days are gone, "comrades", and like those jobs, they "aint coming back"!

Engineering jobs? Seems like plenty of folks are trying to get into the US to have those. H-1B visas ring a bell? Obviously we still have a very competitive market for Engineering.

So why are you still here? Is that a better place to do your job?

--

Rick

Well put.

Yup and they are getting in because as said IN THIS GROUP, they don't even want to pay new out of the school engineers ANYTHING because they don't kno w shit. So you hire them from the foreign countries. there are videos out t here that teach how to avoid hiring USians for these jobs. It is not all th at they are that much better, it is their attitude.

Workers in the US have an attitude, they are more defiant, arrogant and dis respectful than those in other countries. At least they used to be and I am sure the higher class ones still are. I was. I quit a job like eight times and got called back nine, what do you think my attitude was ? I got every dime I could out of them AND had reign of the place. While making more per hour than the owner. And this went on and on, like for ten years.

I want nothing to do with that big pond. they NEVER treat you right because you cannot force them to do it. I like the small pond.

We did that in the 90's with this company and it's still needed. As long as people eat so much junk food the market is guaranteed.

Here is where we disagree. It is not the government's job to create jobs. How wrong that usually goes has been extensively demonstrated in socialist systems.

If there aren't enough jobs each person has to become creative and yes, sometimes like during a recession that requires taking a job "below one's pay grade".

Then we must either increase our level of value creation in the various jobs or lower our standard of living. I prefer the first. I also strongly believe in living within ones means. We must be willing to accept no-growth situations and concentrate on what we already have, not what we want. Be thankful for it, which at least in my prayers I am every day.

It is a normal course of events in human history that man invents ever better method to achieve his goals with less and less labor. Highly developed countries such as ours will be at the top and, therefore, create the highest value additions. xxxxx hours of work does not only result in a train with hundred of cars full of tomatoes but instead it can result in a shiny new aircraft. Which can then be exported for much more money than canned tomatoes.

This naturally forces people to have to step up in their skill sets. Here many groups lament that they are oh so disadvantaged. Not buying it. We have to ask ourselves why it is that Asians who often came with barely more that the clothes on their bodies excel in making it and also score hightes in SAT and other goals, by far. I know why that is.

A Ponzi scheme, just like what many governments do.

Then there are only three option for the worker:

a. Increase their skill level.

b. Accept lower wages.

or

c. Emigrate.

Real value in a society is only created by export. Trying as a society to survive just by creating increased inland demand is as stupid as trying to live off of a "service society". It does not work in the long run.

It does not. Only as a sort of Ponzi scheme.

The government only has to make things competitive and this does not require tossing all regulation. Some of the more stupid ones, yes. Mandating a corporate tax rate that exceeds even that in left-leaning countries is not the way to do that. Jacking up the price of electrity to more than 2x of other places is not the way to do that. Allowing a predatory tort law isn't either. And so on. It's simple, really.

The current administration is destroying the middle class piece by piece. Example: They tout that Obamacare "works" yet all it does is flush people into yet another welfare system. Government essentially pays most of the premiums and many other costs. They started taxing the middle class health plans, the folks that still pay their own way, which made their health insurance even more expensive. Great wealth redistribution, ain't it? I personally met people who, in consequence, hung it up. They quit working so much and plopped themselves into Obamacare. As a result of this and other failed policies our labor participation rate fell by several percentage points. That is really dangerous because even if we get a better administration next time around, which I seriously hope, the labor participation rate typically never bounces back.

Most of the 99% would just fritter it away and then complain again. Why is it that the "poor" I meet have trouble making rent yet they drive Cadillac Escalades and the like, "need" 60" TV sets, buy a $5 coffee every workday, have $200+/month family cell plans, $100 gym membership, cannot live without a $80/most cable TV, and so on? That's where the key problems are.

Or ask yourself this: Why is it that I comfortably live with a $7/mo cell plan that suffices even for business use? Same for my wife. For about a decade now, and before that we didn't even have a cell phone. Our car are 18 and 19 years old and are simple basic models, our antenna delivers TV for free, we make our own coffee, my gym is in nature and also free.

What is BAU?

Jobs that the unions, government or predatory lawyers have driven out of the country will usually not come back.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Most businesses do not consist of engineering jobs alone.

Sure. Engineering jobs are plentiful here. I want to partially retire and my clients don't let me.

H-1B is abused. People often come in because making $35k/year is still better than making $15k where they came from. This abuse is trivially easy to stop and I have explained numerous times how. Sad to say but it seems the only other person that seems to understand how or is willing to even say it is ... Donald Trump :-(

a. Engineering work is plentiful in the US.

b. Especially in view of the failed policies of the current administration I'd be more than willing to emigrate to a nice place in the Caribbean. But I have a family and not everyone has an easy time to learn yet anotehr language. Which you have to or will remain a foreigner forever.

c. I absolutely do not like moving. Else I'd be out of socialist California since a long time because in my line of work it no longer matters where one lives. As long as there is >1Mbit/sec Internet and Fedex goes there.

Wasn't it you who farmed out production to Mexiko? Care to elaborate?

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I did read it, you've made a lot of assumptions, and not all of them are right.

The way we create jobs: someone has an idea--sees a need, or a better way--risks their money, and starts or expands a business to address it.

Let's tax that! Let's make 'em file loads of paperwork no one understands! Let's tax capital! Let's impede the productive employment of labor! And let's make sure that no one who tries and succeeds makes a profit! :-)

If you want to know in great detail why the U.S. isn't making jobs, here's top-notch economist summarizing the U.S. situation to some European ministers:

You can learn a lot about the U.S.' status in the first ten minutes, or hang in longer and learn in documented detail why all of the welfare states--ours, & Europe's--are absolutely unsustainable, and all headed to fiscal collapse.

Cheers, James Arthur

Don't feed the socialist troll P E Schoen, from Baltimore of all "perfect" socialist places >:-} ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142     Skype: skypeanalog  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

But you said "better" offers from Costa Rica.

Really? So standing between you and Costa Rica is a copy or two of Rosetta Stone?

Obviously the "better" offer in Costa Rica isn't very much better.

I don't know where Mexiko is. My production is in the US, local in fact. I'm not the one saying things are better elsewhere.

--

Rick

Gee Jim, I didn't take Paul's post as a troll at all. He poured his heart out in a lengthy, detailed post. And he's frustrated with the way things are going, which is easy to understand.

The only problems I saw were a few assumptions early in the logic chain, so I tried to offer some info.

Cheers, James Arthur

Better for the production part. There are engineering jobs as well though. As I said, for me it doesn't really matter where I live. As long as the word "winter" does not exist in their vocabulary (per SWMBO).

I wouldn't go to Costa Rica, more the former Dutch colonies. While I am fluent in Dutch and Papiamento doesn't sound totally foreign to me it wouldn't be fair to my wife. And no, courses do not get you there, local full immersion is the only way and that takes a lot of time. Here is why: Imagine someone learning English at Berlitz, at school or via Rosetta stone. Perfect English. Then he or she gets an assignment way out in the boonies in jaw-jah. I have been in meetings where Europeans with an excellent command of English participated and during the breaks I had to explain just about everything over again. They hadn't understood a thing. Not just after Texans were presenting, also when Californians did.

It was for my former employer. They are now there, along with scores of well-paying production jobs that have vanished here.

Then it must have been someone else in this NG who has his stuff produced in Mexiko. Some of my designs are produced overseas as well.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Is that near Vietnam? I'm not familiar with that country.

--

Rick

• Which alludes to a VERY sore point. Is there any other country in the world that does not require immigrants to learn the local language?

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the advantage of more shopping centres is that there are more attempts made at successful business, out of which the most capable survive.

profits from shopping centres that go bust? self contradiction there.

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wish I could find such deals

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that's not the only way to stimulate demand. Another approach is to recogni se the existing demand and serve it. Medical technology is a good example o f that.

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demand is endless. You don't need to create it. For example we always need new medical technology to address a long list of killers and lesser ills.

If you serve existing demand, it has much higher chance of providing someth ing that's actually of value to society. Artifically created demand is more likely to not be.

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it does both of course, stifle jobs and create jobs

that's rubbish

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According to you, the wealthy stagnate it and the unwealthy spend it. Reali ty is anyone with significant money doesn't put it under the mattress. It g ets invested in shares, which fund businesses. It goes into rental property , which provides needed accomodation. Even if it just goes in the bank, the bank lend it to businesses and house buyers.

If anything the difference is that the wealthier use it more wisely on aver age.

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then a lot of the wealthy would say sod this, I'm moving abroad. Hint: its largely the wealthy that start businesses, and its businesses that pay ever yone an income.

NT