Jobs moving Overseas

samhill wrote: the politico`s & big business have sold this country it seems like theres a lot of short term memory here.

This country is a hostile environment if you want to do business. I wouldn't blame business, they need to survive and if moving their operations overseas is what they need to do then that's what they are going to do.

I forget the specific conversation and can't find it but a few years back Jerry from Leisure Line posted something along the lines of a Chinese company offered to produce his units for him and ship them here in a box assembled and ready to be sold for less than what he could make them for. That's the reality of what many business are facing. He could have closed up shop, ran the business from a recliner, had a product that cost less and made more profits. To his credit he didn't do it but that doesn't mean Harman or some other company isn't going to do it down the road. Where's that leave Leisure Line when the competition is offering competing product at much less?

There is a variety reasons for this including ridiculous tax rates for business, environmental laws across the board that make running a business very expensive and the guy bolting seats into a car that wants $50 an hour. Looming on the horizon is Cap and Tax and the Health Care bill both of which will significantly increase the cost to business.

Example? here you go:

http://www.chron.com/commons/persona.ht ... 7edf877348

The joke among China hands goes like this. If the Americans and the Chinese start talking about a major project today, in two years the Chinese will be done and the Americans will still be talking and applying for permits. It should not be surprising that ExxonMobil, a premier company in its field like few others in their respective fields, vilified in the green-house-gases-solar-and-wind-obsessed United States will find a lot of work in energy hungry China

"Joke" could not more aptly describe it. The people running this country better get their heads out of their asses and do it quickly. If Exxon proposed this plant here we *might* see it built in 15 or 20 years.

I know the common complaint is about CEO's driving companies into the ground and making off with millions which is certainly a legitimate complaint but the fact is these companies move their business overseas because they have to. It's either do or die, you're not going to survive in this economy making stuff here.

California is on the leading edge of this nonsense, and is hemmoraging businesses to other states and countries at an alarming rate.

coaledsweat wrote:California is on the leading edge of this nonsense, and is hemmoraging businesses to other states and countries at an alarming rate.

It is hemorrhaging some classes of businesses. The vast majority of private venture capital in the US is invested in California companies. In fact when I was raising VC for my current company one of the most common thing we heard from venture capitalists is they would be happy to fund us if we moved the company to Silicon Valley.

Top 3 states for VC funded companies are:

California
New York
Massachusetts

Tech jobs or manufacturing jobs? Products the average person can put their hands on build wealth.

I'm going to make bold prediction about Cap and Trade... Can you say Chinese cement? One thing many people do not realize is this will effect a lot more than just power. Other than power generation the next biggest producer of CO2 is the cement industry which is the very building blocks of our society from the foundations of your house, the sidewalks you walk on and the floors and walls of the highest skyscrapers.

Richard S. wrote:Tech jobs or manufacturing jobs? Products the average person can put their hands on build wealth.

I'm going to make bold prediction about Cap and Trade... Can you say Chinese cement? One thing many people do not realize is this will effect a lot more than just power. Other than power generation the next biggest producer of CO2 is the cement industry which is the very building blocks of our society from the foundations of your house, the sidewalks you walk on and the floors and walls of the highest skyscrapers.

Will I be able to sell my coal ash to the Chinese?

ErikLaurence wrote:Will I be able to sell my coal ash to the Chinese?

They open about two new coal fired plants every week, they are probably swimming in coal ash over there so I doubt they are looking for more.

coaledsweat wrote:

ErikLaurence wrote:Will I be able to sell my coal ash to the Chinese?

They open about two new coal fired plants every week, they are probably swimming in coal ash over there so I doubt they are looking for more.

Good point.

This is one of the biggest reasons I hate environmentalists so much. Not only do they cost me more money, but they force my prospective employers to move overseas in search of cheaper EVERYTHING. Want to stimulate the economy? Back off on some of the unreasonable environmental regulations that are in place - especially in MA!

Yes, it's great that the felters mills don't dump dye in the rivers anymore & we no longer bury our used motor oil next to vernal pools, but we need our country to remain the most powerful country on earth if we want to survive any length of time!! Stop forcing our jobs overseas!!

Smitty, Smitty, Smitty. Don't you realize this is part of the master plan to share our wealth with the 3rd world countries? Even in the Skeptical Environmentalist, a book I much enjoyed, the author championed moving wealth to Africa for instance, to even us out and supposedly stop them from becoming a recruiting ground for terrorist. Or stop the human suffering they always have. And to stop us from having to spend so much trying to keep them alive. And to stop us from sending so much food so the population gets too high and they hack each other to death with machetes. Don't you care about the average African? So what if you have lose your menial job and suffer a little? Don't you see the big picture??

Kevin

I would love to hang around and see the responses to that but I have a ball game to get to.

Well said!

I see the big picture ..... and it's VERY ugly ....

SMITTY wrote:This is one of the biggest reasons I hate environmentalists so much. Not only do they cost me more money, but they force my prospective employers to move overseas in search of cheaper EVERYTHING. Want to stimulate the economy? Back off on some of the unreasonable environmental regulations that are in place - especially in MA!

Yes, it's great that the felters mills don't dump dye in the rivers anymore & we no longer bury our used motor oil next to vernal pools, but we need our country to remain the most powerful country on earth if we want to survive any length of time!! Stop forcing our jobs overseas!!

Sorry, but that's bull. US employees have priced themselves out of most markets. The environmental BS is secondary.

I run a company. Most of my employees are software engineers.

Some of my employees are US based, their average salary is ~$100K.

I also have a significant engineering team working in India. The quality of their work is as good as the US engineers. I pay them on average ~$16K.

This isn't manufacturing mind you, this is skilled engineering talent. I'm a capitalist. If I can cut my expenses by moving work overseas, I will.

Coming from the mouth of a government worker, 50% of people i work with should get off their asses and actually work. Half of the work force would be fired if they had a job outside of here (largest govt. employer in the area). I worked various places in NEPA for 25 years then got hired for the gov. You can't possibly imagine the waste unless you really see it yourself. People's spending attitude here is it isn't coming out of their pocket, yet it is in the form of taxes. They have a suggestion program which if you save the government money, you get a reward, if approved. So if it takes you 40 hours to work and repair this item A, because you have to take the entire unit apart, you devise a new wrench which lets you take the front panel off and repair the unit in 20 hours. The improvised wrench is a filed down wrench, thinner, then put in a vise and bent. The maintenance manual does not say anything about using this special wrench so in reality, you can't use it until the changes are approved. Fill out all the paperwork for the suggestion program saying you and your co-worker got the time down to 38 hours thus saving the government 2 hours per unit which cost $125/hour labor rate blah blah 100 units per quarter blah blah, you hear back in a few months it was approved. You and your friend get a $2000 award each. I have a suggestion in now to reduce the labor hours of a unit from 16 hours down to 2 hours/per. Anybody could do it, all written down step by step. Would save about $35,000 a month, who wants to bet my idea does not get approved? Sad but true, i could give examples of this waste 40 hours a week. There are way too many government, state and local agencies now, and way too many taxes, anybody whom wants to spend more should be fired or voted out. This is coming from someone whom brings home 62% of his check,and i have the cheapest health insurance they offer. Besides the labor and material costs, more and more layers of government rules and regulations make it impossible to run a business here, unless you line the pockets of those who write the rules and those writers are often the biggest waste of tax dollars you can imagine.

" This isn't manufacturing mind you, this is skilled engineering talent. I'm a capitalist. If I can cut my expenses by moving work overseas, I will."
Here is a word that many business owners don't even know. They treat their employees like crap, try to save each and every penny they can on stupid things. Yet drive the 2008 Lexus back to the dealer because they want to trade it in on the new 2010 model. The word is GREED. They don't know the word and will never admit it is what they have become. It is everything behind their drive whether they know it or not. Can't be happy, just have to have more. They set no example to any of their workers.

The kind of jobs we have driven overseas are simple assembly line labor and related support jobs. Because of OSHA, Workers comp, enviro regs, health care, retirement costs, unions, taxes, and cheap overseas labor, the simple assembly line plant doesn't stand a chance in the US anymore. Americans of uneducated backgrounds loved those better paying jobs and have had significant reductions in their standards of living which are propped up only by government wealth transfers.

If you want a bigger paycheck as an entrepreneur, consider your taxes now and then under a truly free market economy. If we could just drop the albatross of government that rides our backs, entrepreneurs would be much richer and American workers would be so much happier and wealthier than now!

Just a reminder.........the off the books debt of the unfunded mandates of the US is nearly 100 trillion dollars....when that debt is called, tell me again, how rich will the rich guys in the US be?

Can you say "wealth tax"? (if you can't pronounce that, perhaps you can say "collapsed dollar")

I also would point out that the failing standard of living for the lower and middle classes, which has been buffered by cheap imported goods and heavier social support from government is funded by HUGE deficit spending on the part of the federal and increasingly, the state governments.

It is an unsustainable model that healthcare "reform" will make worse.

Government regulation is more often the problem and less often the solution.