How do we protect jobs in the USA and raise wages?????

Here is the scenario....
1) We withdraw from NAFTA, WTO etc.
2) We pass laws to insure high paid jobs stay here
3) We raise corporate tax rates
4) We take corporate money out of politics
5) We raise the minimum wage to 15 $/hr
6) All workers are unionized by law

What is to stop the corporations from picking up moving out of the USA with the jobs in tow?

If we pass a law stating you can't sell goods here if you do this, then the companies will just make the products sell them to a series of shell countries and get around that.

I guess the question is "how do you un-ring a bell" without the bell falling on our heads?

:dilemma:

sounds nice..but come on it's socialist. You don't want to be a commie socialist pig from France do you??:sarcasm:

would go a long way. Tax imports so that foriegn companies have to compete fairly with goods made by union workers in this country.

You know before we had the income tax.....
The government made due on tariffs and excise taxes. HMMMMMMMMMMM...

Thx, didn't think of that.

corporate american would have a huge weight lifted from them (the ones who currently pay for health care).. There would ne NO excuse why they could not raise wages..

Once employees were "free to move about the cabin", they would be accep
Companies would have to step up wages in order to acquire good employees..

It;s a win win..

make for profit healthcare completely illegal. Repeal Taft-Hartley (slave labor fascist law). 57 million Americans say if they could they would unionize. Even if just 10 million more Americans unionized it would drive up wages for everyone. Renegotiate trade deals.Use government money to invest in a huge renewable energy campaign. This would create thousands of new jobs, and empower our battered farmers.

the unions need to update their thinking. I was at a major unionized Auto Manufacturer and was bringing a box into the office. I was stopped at the door and told by the union door man that I could not carry a box into the building. I said why, do to OSHA regulations, safety???? No he said, because we have union employees at the dock who must accept the box, another union employee who must then deliver the box to your desk. I said I was perfectly capable of carrying the box myself. He said that would take their job away from them. So I took the box to the dock and 2 days later my box shows up at my desk. It was all of a 500 foot walk from the dock to my desk.

That is when Unions piss me off....No job should be safe just to protect a job if it is inefficient and doesn't provide some value to somebody somewhere.

Needless to say that the Auto manufacturer is nearing bankruptcy as we speak.

I'm not saying unions suck, what I am saying is unions should protect workers, fight for better wages and benefits, but need to drop the inefficiencies and allow flexibility for the needs of business. No the man shouldn't have lost his job since it wasn't needed, but he should have been reassigned to a value added job. Retrained and redeployed.

American's will flock to Unions when they clean-up stupid work rules like these and get better governance in the leadership positions.

Actually a better idea would be for the unions to be the employer of all workers and have them hire out employees to businesses. Then all wages would be controlled by the union and no business could step on the worker. WOuldn't that be great....Mr Wal-Mart would you like cashiers....then we will provide excelllent cashiers at the rate of $30/hr. Don;t like the rate, well then you can;t sell anything as all cashiers and Human resources work for the Union Inc. so you are out of business.

Hmmmmmmm.....

with the workers not allowed to do the job another should do. I worked in an office where it didn't matter if one of your cosorkers had a lot to do and you didn't. You weren't allowed to help! I had to read a book!!!!! That's just nuts!

My husband worked in several union shops, and they had a certain number of pieces to do in a work day. He worked 3/11 shift. They always got their "quota" done by 6:00PM, and they all went to some corner to sleep!!!!!

Sonething is very wrong with that! It was the steel industry in Pgh, and we all know what happened to THAT industry now, don't we?

I don't agree that unions should have control over all workers and lease them out to employers, that would be wrong too.

I think the best answer to outsourcing is duties on imports, and that means everything that is brought into the US. If you bought the raw materials and had them assembled elsewhere, then you owe the import duty.

Employers are always going to try to find the cheapest way to produce their product. If it becoms more expensive to re-import that item you had assembled overseas, then you won't do it!

YEah going back to tariffs and excise taxes would put a stop to a lot of the outsourcing. In this day and age we would also need to consider that services (call centers, Engineering, etc.) that is beign handled overseas would also need to pay a tax also. Don't know how to apply that one, but I am sure it can be done.

....sigh and Supreme Court....

and clean house....any one (that includes dems) found to have been involved in any corruption gets prosecuted.....

Hey, they are doing that NOW. Every damn day.

Maybe we should revoke the laws and loopholes that let them
do that BEFORE we worry about reversing the process.

Let's stop the bleeding and get the patient STABLE before we
start debating the finer points of Major Surgery, ok?

I am a consultant and have done work for companies from #1 on the Fortune 500 down to businesses that do less than 10 million a year. They are all about more work for less money. It is a race to the bottom out there. The funny thing is the larger the company the more dysfunctional they are.:banghead:

all the jobs are being outsourced or given to illegal immigrants anyway, the companies are declaring bankruptcy to get out of pension obligations anyway, there is really no downside any more to taking the actions you list because the companies are cutting jobs ANYWAY and at least the people who DO have jobs can maybe spend a little and put it back in the usa economy

the time when we had to pander to capitalists to keep the jobs is gone, because the companies will take the jobs away ANYWAY, so they can't really hold that over our heads, now can they?

it is a problem within capitalism itself....Doesn't capitalism need a cheap source of labor and resources to remain afloat??isn't that the source of our and other nations imperialism? So perhaps we need to radically change our economy and look to incorporate other economic means into our capitalistic societies..when the Soviet Union was around, the West set up huge welfare states and paid their workers more to offset revolution. Now that they are gone what stops Western powers from exploiting us and everyone else? :popcorn:

That would do it. All Human Resources in the USA join Union Inc. a non-profit owned and run by the employees company.

1) Stop subsidizing companies to move money off-shore. (Either via moving jobs off-shore, tax breaks for moving their corporate headquarters off shore, or better incentives for retooling here).
2) Leverage the buying power of the Federal government to support companies which are citizen friendly (no foreign call-centers, etc., no off-shore sweatshops, etc.)
3) National healthcare
4) Fairer tax laws to support the smaller/mid-size business.
5) Increased funds/tax credits for education credits (to people seeking to be retooled, maintain their skillsets or seek their original degrees)
6) Increased funding and support of the US Grade school system.
7) Money out of politics
8) Keep religion out of science.
9) Government sponsored consortiums for research.
10) Link the CEO and other top salaries to no more than 20x the rate of the lowest paid worker. If the lowest paid worker only makes $10/hr or $20,000/year, then the CEO can only make $400,000/year.
11) Stop H1B's and other scams which allow companies to bring in foreign workers for long term employment engagements; there are plenty of available US employees.

Since you want to clamp down on H1-B's which I totally agree with.

If someone wants to be a citizen, then I've no problem with them working in the US. The only people who I'm against entering the process are those who were anti-social (criminal) at home.

L-

We should seek to enter treaties, promote international law that would protect foreign workers from exploitation.

I happen to believe that until workers in other countries are able to earn higher wages, jobs will, one way or another, tend to migrate to those countries, and I have a hard time saying no to that when so many people elsewhere are so desperately poor.

But it's one thing if other countries citizens are willing to work for a wage lower than we'd get here but that's still much higher than they could otherwise earn there; and it's another thing if those people are unnecessarily, cruelly exploited because authorities there somehow profit by allowing it.

It's not the total solution, but some of this mess is our own fault.

Most people don;t like to see what's happening, but we don't look beyond our noses.

We buy the shit that's made overseas. We demand that all stocks are like winning lottery tickets, which puts additional pressure for corporations to act like bastards. We have adopted shitty values that reward and praise bastardly behavior. We allow mega-mergers that consolidate the economy, which makes the remaining players more ruthless.

So, one step topwards restoring some kind of actual economy would be to look at out own habits and do what we can to vote with our wallets. Also have public campaigns and pressure groups to educate and encourage people to look at how it is in their self-interest to support better values and policies, and start practing what peopel preach about patriotism in the economic sense.

The hard part is buying all Made in the USA products. So many parts come from overseas that even if it is assembled in the US it still could be all foreign parts. Don't bet on traceabilty as their are ways around that. It kills me what people will do for a dollar.

It's true that it's hard to totally "Buy American" these days.

But if something prompts people to at least look and ask for American products at their retailers, it'd be a start. The first step to not taking things for granted.

I have been lurking here for a year and finally decided it was time to "I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" attitiude and outrage that we all need to have in this country.

Peace

ohhh god, does this mean burgers will be flipped only in Mexico if all workers are unionized?

if the middle-class is not paid higher wages how will companies make more profits? We can have fewer companies, less competition, and fewer consumers..or we can have more individuals with the capital needed to start companies, more competition, and more consumers with the money available to increase profits.

People need the incentive to work and take risks in capitalism. Higher wages and better benefits will provide this incentive, but lower wages and climbing debts will not! Immigration and world trade should be used as chances to improve our standard of living and not as another source for foreign aid!