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Originally Posted by bob
So here's my problem with this kind of thinking given this era of globalization (btw, I certainly don't like the idea of offshoring jobs):
What's an American firm? A company with headquarters in the US? A company that makes products entirely in the US? How do you define that. Start taxing the hell out of firms and they will "move" entirely outside of the US.
People can't have it both ways - you can't bitch and moan about companies going overseas because of cost cutting ways and then buy stuff made overseas at Walmart b/c that's the cheapest price available. And if you are restricted from competing by moving jobs overseas b/c of punitive taxes, American firms will be at a huge cost disadvantage in the global marketplace and will all go belly up.
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There needs to be common sense logic built into this. Obviously if you are a store that is opening a branch in another country you are going to be employing people from that country.
I'll use my company as an example. Our "leadership" has funneled development jobs off to India though we are a US based company. We cannot sell our product in India as casino gaming is outlawed in the country and there is not anything close to being in the works to change that.
The excuse is that we can hire X number more developers per US resource but the turnover rate is so great that we are not gaining anything from this as the rate of development and quality of the product has dropped severely.
Any of the developers that are good enough to keep end up being brought to the US to work with visas (at US salaries which kind of ruins the whole "we are saving money in salaries" idea).
Over the past two years we have lost in the area of 1000 years of casino experience and that has been replaces with Indian resources with 0 casino experience, and worse yet most are fresh out of school and have no real world development experience. The IT field is seen as the "easy money" field in India and because of tht there are people graduating with degrees because they can memorize some terms but do not have the mindset to apply these terms in practice.
I guess the big picture problem still goes back to the people running the corporations not being held accountable for their decisions. They make decisions based on how they can sell the idea to the share holders even if the idea is not ultimately in the best interest of the company. Then when things go wrong and the company has to cut costs it's the people who need their jobs the most who get screwed while the CEO's sit back and collect their obscenely inflated checks. How does the CEO get "punished" for running the corporation poorly? Millions in stock options and a contract buyout. That'll teach 'em...
Sorry for the rant, just getting a little fed up with the business as usual crap going on and seeing good people lose their jobs because they are being replaced over seas.
I just hope those that are supporting the idea of change and improving the country also know they have to get off their butts to make this happen and don't think that Obama is just going to wave a magic wand and make it happen so they don't have to do anything.
Also, it's not our responsibility to make sure the other countries of the world are employed. We need to look after ourselves first before we look outside our borders. If your own family is starving THAT is your priority, not the family across the street.