93henfan wrote:Here are the kind of things that are killing the American middle class more than our tax structure:
Ford shifting all U.S. small-car production to Mexico
Greg Gardner and Brent Snavely, Detroit Free Press 2:16 p.m. EDT September 15, 2016
Ford plans to eventually shift all North American small-car production from the U.S. to Mexico, CEO Mark Fields told investors Tuesday, even though the company's production investments in Mexico have become a lightning rod for controversy in the presidential election.
"Over the next two to three years, we will have migrated all of our small-car production to Mexico and out of the United States," Fields said at a daylong investor conference in Dearborn.
http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/f ... /90355146/
But why are they leaving and what is being left behind? Corporations are pretty easy to understand, they want to maximize profits. Period. End of story. And that's fine. What we need to do, with that in mind, is work with that premise. The world that kalm wants to pretend existed at some point in the past, where businesses were patriotic and wanted to do the best for the nation or the society they lived in just never existed, it's always been this way. Until we accept that corporations don't owe us anything other than adherence to the law (i.e. don't break the law, don't spoil the environment, don't kill people, etc) we'll just be grasping at ideas that won't work long term. It's not a big world out there, and there are plenty of places where corporations can set up shop and exist just fine. Not every spot outside the US is some junta-run banana republic so there are plenty of places that are viable places to do business. We as a country have certainly helped to make the world safer in that regard, but we didn't do it alone and we aren't owed indefinite concessions by businesses as gratitude for doing so.
There's no doubt that our tax code is hugely complicated and frankly, that needs to be fixed. It's too expensive for one, but that's not even the most troubling aspect of it. It's the complication that is the problem, it's the complication that allows corporations and individuals with significant assets and knowledge to game and take advantage of the system. Until we make it more simple where more people can understand where the money is coming and going from them it's going to continue this way.
Infrastructure spending is another thing that keeps getting bandied about, as if it's some magical cure all. Frankly, it's not. Look at Japan. Might have the best infrastructure in the world at this point as they've been spending like crazy on infrastructure in the hope to get their economy out of the two decade morass they've been in. Has it solved their economic problems? Not in the least. Heck, they're probably one step away from true transporter (Star Trek) technology and they're still struggling. And not only that, but now they are saddled with the billions in public debt that was generated while they were building the best infrastructure in the world. It's great that we have wonderful political talking points about crumbling roads and falling bridges and such, but the reality is, we can get things from point A to point B in this country, and to other countries, in record time. Necessity finds a way and we've been finding our way without too much issue. We're not on the precipice of falling apart as a nation with regards to infrastructure and we won't be. We need to stop looking in the past for how things were done and recognize that there'll keep being new ways to do things that the past can't even have imagined that are infinitely better than how we used to do things. Drone technology is a perfect example, as are driverless cars. The possibilities that open up when you think about just those two things are endless, and they don't involve repaving the nation's interstate system every year.
What we need to do, and I've said before, is to keep innovating. We're never going to succeed if we adopt the European philosophy that we're at the finish line, there's no more things to create or explore, and we can just sit back on our laurels, enjoy the benefits of the work of those who came before us, and the status quo will continue forever. If we do that, we'll be just as doomed as they are, doomed to be passed by by nations and peoples that are still striving, still moving forward, looking to improve their lives. We need to do the things we do that we do better than anyone else in the world - make new things, exploit new technologies, and do things that other people can't copy or replicate easily. We can't bemoan when manufacturers of t-shirts leave the US and make them somewhere where it's cheaper, because we want to buy those t-shirts (cheaply of course, no one wants to overpay) with the money that we've earned by developing the next technological marvel (VR for instance, or fully automated mfg plants, or the elimination of cancer, or whatever else we can do). It does mean that we have to keep working hard, that we can't move to 3 day work weeks with 12 weeks vacation, but that shouldn't be seen as a negative. There's value in working, there's value in developing new products and new technologies and new ways of doing things.
We're not doomed as a country, that's just silly talk. But we are doomed if we think that things should just be handed to us because we're the US or because our parents had it good or any other reason we can think of that doesn't involve working hard and working with purpose. Spending 40 hours a week at a McDonald's for 15-30 years is not how to do it, unless you move from being the fry guy/girl/gender neutral pronoun person to the person who owns a franchise and runs the place. Use that time to go learn a trade, be a plumber, a carpenter, a data/IT guy, whatever, but keep moving up. There's no magical pot of gold that's going to fall from the sky, there's no magical panacea that government can create that will be the Robin Hood equivalent of taking from the rich and giving to the poor. The only real answer is to work. Work hard. Make things that have value. Do things that other countries and peoples just can't do. Might have to sweat from time to time.
I was talking about Obama.
