60 Minutes

A story tonight about jobs in the U.S.
Obama has assigned the new CEO of GE to be the 'jobs czar'.

He was talking about how GE has been building manufacturing jobs in the US. But when the interviewer
drilled down into the "we're creating jobs here" facade they are presenting, the truth is that the
reason they've created the jobs here is because wages are low enough to be competitive with China, etc.
The middle class has been diminished and now we are on a level playing field with third world wages.
And it was pointed out that we are talking hundreds, not thousands of jobs being created because these
manufacturing plants are much more automated and don't require as many people to run them. Also the truth
is that GE doesn't think of themselves as an American company, but as a global one, like a sovereign nation unto themselves. So no loyalty to the U.S. or responsibility for their effect on their nation hosts.
What of the call for corporations to pay their fair share of taxes? The CEO said our tax structure is antiquated and should be more like Germany's or Japans.

So, in conclusion, nothing has or will change in either their motivations or incentives. It is just business as usual and they answer only to stockholders and partners. The CEO didn't know why U.S. citizens had such a negative response to them and their practices. He said people that work for them are on the team and are rooting for their continued success, so why couldn't our country be the same way? He honestly doesn't seem to understand the source of the grievance. This is the new job czar?

This is why the model needs to change. And don't be fooled that it has changed or will be changed from the top down.

The revolution isn't about jobs, and it isn't looking to corporations to be the changemakers. The whole system is
ass backwards. For them it's all about the planet and its people serving the corporation rather than the other way around.

and a bag of beans. But it was still shocking to hear that shit come out of his mouth on network TV.

It really lessens my respect for Obama to have this douche in charge of our #1 problem.

has got to go!

Fell free to retweet.

I should have known, but the blatant "profit before people" self righteousness of the interview made me sick. We have got to stay strong and together. They claim patriotism, but they don't care about America at all, just money, what they can take.

Economies that make things the less expensive at the highest quality win. You selectively listened to the GE chairman. He correctly pointed out that work is being moved back to the USA because it is less expensive to do that work here, he also pointed out that a lot of the new work is highly automated, so it requires fewer workers. Competing in a global economy means that we as americans must think differently and make different choices. Gone are the days when a person that finished high school could expect to get a factory job and end up middle class with excellent retirement benefits, such a person will resign themselves to poverty with that educational choice. Gone are the days when a person could get any college degree and expect to live well, the brutal truth is that some college degrees are simply worth more than others. People have to make decisions to have smaller families, or not have families at all, or adopt children that do not have families instead of producing biological children. As americans, we no longer have an enormous economic advantage over the rest of the world, our standard of living will either decrease, or we will have to make different life choices than what our parents made.

"Globalism" is a trendy notion without much future, based on a unique historical moment of abundant fossil fuel that makes shipping costs negligible.

And "have to compete?" Actually, we don't. No one ever has to be competitive, especially if they prefer to be cooperative. Much as our corporate masters want us to believe it's a jungle out there, it really isn't.

Sorry, I for one don't buy it.

I mean, what the fuck? Its a global world, right? We gotta compete, right? We'll be more competitive with fewer people, right?

get to realize the luxury of time.

Your post is propaganda that serves to deny that their is a better world possible.

Question is, are the fucking "USA..USA... WE'RE #1... WE'RE #1" people ready for that.

You see, if we cut back on the Empire now and retool for a lower standard of living and get out of the International World Power Policeman business, and the World Controlling Economic Power business, we can have pretty decent lives. All of us.

But I think the Powers That Be aren't ready to tell us we need to do that kind of thing, because lots of us don't want to hear it, and the PTB lack the balls to say it anyway. Besides, they like being Big Fucking Wheels.

(sorry for all the Capitalized titles, but Big, Important countries like the USA require lots of Capitals)

"Oh, you simple people - don't you know the new pragmatic reality is that CEOs must make $37 million a year and another $15 million in bonuses with a %5 effective tax rate, with $0 corporate taxes and millions in rebates for outsourcing the jobs to Asia? It's the new global economy."

1. Asia has unregulated labor markets. You get sick, you get fired. Many factory workers live in shitty dormitories. Sexual abuse, brutality and corruption and indentured slavery are rampant.

2. EVERY fucking penny a CEO saves by going to unregulated markets in Asia end's up in pockets of a small percentage of executive staff - stock grants at ridiculously low prices, direct cash payments, laundering in form of vacation homes, jets, the list goes on and on.

3. About half the people in India and China live in horrible pollution, poverty, without clean water, electricity and they shit in a hole in the ground. Do you think these people are smarter than we are? Do you think their education system is better? Of course not. Their countries are a mess. They work for $5 a day. The quality is poor. No, it's worse than that. It sucks. But they make up for it in volume.

4. You want us to live like these people in China or India? Really? HOW ABOUT YOU GO TO INDIA AND WORK. It's that simple. Practice what you preach. If you think drinking filthy water and shitting in a hole in the ground, or in a river is the 3rd way - then go live in Bangalore, strangled with unskilled labor, sweat shops and poverty.

5. The reality is that CEOs do not have a right to strip mine workers in any country to support their decadent lifestyles. Colleges do not have a right to strip-mine students and saddle them with debt just to line the pockets of a few executives. The reality is that worthless MBAs are being cranked out - literal idiots who cannot do a damn thing without hiring some slave to do it for them. We have lost a generation of good minds to business school "revolution". They can't do a goddman thing to improve GDP.

6. Plunging the nation into poverty is a choice, a natural consequence of the criminal behavior of wall street CEOs. It is not a natural consequence of a "global" economy. It is a choice that Democratic and Republican leadership has made by not investigating and prosecuting Wall Street criminals, while passing "deregulation" that legalizes stealing. The new American innovation is figuring out how to rip off an old lady's tiny retirement account. These sons of bitches should be thrown in jail.

7. Wall Street built the slave economies of Asia by selling the US intellectual property developed by US WORKERS to Asia for pennies on the dollar. The Obama Admin has 3 wars to support. China finances our debt, in return we send them our jobs.

Spend 35 years watching Wall Street rip up every innovation from US workers and hand it over, almost for free, to Asian sweatshops, then come back and tell us all about how US WORKERS NEED TO BE MORE LIVE INDIANS AND CHINESE WORKERS!!! It's like the plantation owner telling us that the slaves need to get used to the new reality.

We are seeing the beginning of a new era of revolution. These CEO con-artists and their MBA chambermaids will be shut down. Right wing talking points such as the bullshit posted here will one day be ridiculed like the old soviet style propaganda during cold war. Not a shred of truth.

My dad worked for GE. Wanna hear a string of Swearese that'll burn your little earlobes?

Ask my dad how GE treated their workers......

:toast: :kick:

:thumbsup:

:applause:

It is cheaper to make things here because the Corporatioins are not paying the full cost of production. When they dump their waste into the creeks rather than suffer the expense of cleaning up it is part of the cause of cheaper production. When they do not have to pay for the roads the use, or the civil protections offered them by a legal system and policing force, when they do not have to pay for the education of the next generation of workers, these are the things that allow them to come back to America. When they can take full advantage of the things that let production take place without being taxed for them then their cost of production is artificially low. But the bad news for us who do pay the taxes to keep these things up and operating is that the Corporations will wear our systems out and then move on to the next community they can eat up and spit out - all in the name of continued and improved profit.

And you don't see a bit of it. Shortsightedness, nothing but.

"Gone are the days when a person that finished high school could expect to get a factory job and end up middle class with excellent retirement benefits, such a person will resign themselves to poverty with that educational choice. Gone are the days when a person could get any college degree and expect to live well, the brutal truth is that some college degrees are simply worth more than others."

Why is none of this true about Germany?

"It's far from an ideal situation, but we have to cut corners somewhere," Byatt added as a second waiter arrived with a $110 bottle of Château Figeac from the wine cellar. "That's just a reality of our business model."

http://www.theonion.com/articles/layoffs-are-necessary-if-we-want-to-keep-the-light,26250/

I was hollering at the tv. I cannot believe he was chosen for this position.

I am old enough to remember when everyone's wages and benefits were patterned after union workers.

Lot of very stupid people didn't like that system for one reason or another though, so here we are.

Fun, isn't it?

And for the record President Obama was just a kid when this actually began happening. Now he has to try and deal with a decline that started 30 years ago.

Don