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OT: Road To Recovery

To improve our economy in a real and lasting way, we have to become more competitive with the rest of the world. Make no mistake, there's no other path to prosperity. You can't "protect" your way to wealth with tariffs and taxes. Nor should we have to govern ourselves like a banana republic merely to survive.

We have enormous advantages in technology, infrastructure, capital markets, and, until recently, the rule of law. We have one big disadvantage: labor costs. To maximize our advantages and overcome our big disadvantage, we need to cut the costs of government and lower the costs of capital formation (which can easily overcome high labor costs). To do this, we must drastically cut the size of our government. The federal government alone equals more than 40% of our gross domestic product. That is obviously unsustainable in a world where our competitors are only paying 12%-15% of GDP for government. And most importantly, we must eliminate taxes on corporations and capital.

Reply to
Robert Baer
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The path to prosperity is paved with good education. Anything else is just a placebo to make you feel OK for a short while. Don't get cheaper, get smarter!

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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Reply to
Nico Coesel

This is the usual right-wing idiocy. The problem with the US isn't high labour costs, but low labour value per unit cost. You need to educate your work-force better, and take better care of them once you've got them educated, which in turn means more government intervention - since no employer wants to pay for educating people who will go on to work for the competition, and no employer wants to take care of workers who aren't actually working for them.

The US could economise on it national expenditure for defence - which at the moment matches the total spent by the next ten countries down the pecking order. Historically, the top dog spent was much as the next two countries down the pecking order.

And the reason that the US federal government spends 40% of the national GDP - like most other advanced industrial countries - is that it can. The sort of country that only spends 12% to 15% of its GDP via the government does so becaue a much greater proportion of their GDP is devoted to keeping the population fed and housed, and couldn't be redirected without killing off an appreciable proportion of the work force.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Reply to
Bill Sloman

The rather lower taxes the US has compared to other industrial countries are certainly a short-term advantage, but eventually it will cost in crumbling infrastructure, higher costs due to a more poorly educated workforce, increased debt servicing costs etc.

If your competitors are all investing heavily and you are not.. all you can do it hope they are investing foolishly.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

You mean a bunch of free loaders!

You seem to know something on that subject..

Reply to
Jamie

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US corporate rates are higher than most of its competitors. In California, we have the Federal rate plus 10% state income tax. Plus employers pay FICA, disability, unemployment, property, and miscellaneous taxes. And generally pay for employee health care. Add that up and you can easily hit 75% or so.

Employees are so expensive, we use them sparingly. There's a strong incentive for business owners to milk the business for their own benefit, and not invest and hire. Different public policy would change those incentives.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

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They are free loaders during a recession, and people that employers can't hire enough of when the economy recovers. Having them starve in the meantime, or move to some remote area where accomodation is cheap, or making successful careers as life insurance salesmen, is just the kind of "free market logic" that has made the US what it is today - an economic basket case with an enormous negative balance of trade.

More than I'd like. Ageism is another stupid mechanism for keeping experienced and qualified potential employees out of the workplace - its less painful than starvation or having to rehouse to cheaper accomodation a long way from potential jobs, but still mightily irritating if you are in the wrong age-group.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Reply to
Bill Sloman

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The only country that does similar things to the US with lower overall rates is Japan, and it's only 0.8% lower.

I agree that high corporate income tax rates are a bad idea, but perhaps not as bad as payroll taxes, especially fixed payroll taxes.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com
Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

What was that?

Right, if you say so.

Reply to
Jamie

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From your comment I assumed that you were aware that I lost my last job at the end of May 2003, and spent the next four and bit years - until I turned 65 - drawing unemployment benefit applying for jobs at the obligatory rate of one a week. Over the four years I got some four job interviews, and no job offers. I had expected to have to got something within a year - I'm good but pretty specialised in electronics for scientific instruments, which means that the market for my services isn't all that broad - but the advice from employment agents was that I was too old to appeal to Dutch employers, who don't like hiring people over 45 and expect people over 55 to take early retirement if they get half a chance.

The right-wing nitwits on this user group seem to think that my incapacity to find work reflected some kind of moral inadequacy in my job-hunting - they seem to think that if I tried harder, I would have been able to find work. This wasn't an opinion that I ran into when I talked to people who actually knew something about the Dutch job- market, but our right-wing nitwits do have fixed opinions about lots of subject they know very little about.

I believe I can be relied to know what I find irritating.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Reply to
Bill Sloman

Check..They cannot say you are too old (against the law), so they say you are over qualified. They would rather pay half wages to a greenhorn out of college and $pend years training the GH than save money, get the job done right the FIRST time via an experienced hand. The "over qualified" excuse is *very* irritating.

Reply to
Robert Baer

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There is no anti-age-discrimination legislation in force in the Netherlands. Compulsory retirement at 65 is he norm.

The greenhorn isn't going to disagree with their preferred approach to solving any given problem, which is something that I did frequently in my last job - the boss was bright, and had a Ph.D. in process chemistry, but knew very little about electronics and less about instrument design. He didn't take kindly to being educated in these areas.

But the over-qualified can be very irritating - particularly when they turn out to have been right.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Reply to
Bill Sloman

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-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Reply to
Bill Sloman

- but the advice from employment

So were you required to look only for jobs with Dutch employers?

During my working career I worked in California, Alaska, Washington State, and Alabama. And was unemployed for six days.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

He's a 'Post Hole Digger'

--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

hey

Really? One wonders where the wisdom went.

As a psychologist you seem to be as inept as you are as a physicist. I don't use my Ph.D. as any kind of crutch - if you actually know what you are talking about, academic qualifications are irrelevant, not that you'd know about that.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Reply to
Bill Sloman

That was a requirement imposed by my wife.

I did rather better than that, until I turned 50, when new jobs became harder to find.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 = =A0 =A0

Reply to
Bill Sloman

Nope. You overlooked the obvious... Slowman is incompetent. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

     I can see Election Results and Dismembered Democrats :-)
Reply to
Jim Thompson

more

costs).

And likely incontinent. ;-)

--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

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=A0 =A0 =A0 Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson confirms his status once again.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Reply to
Bill Sloman

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