Thanks, Dean, and farewell, if that be the future.
You can find annoyance and maybe some amusement at my personal site, http://www.plusaf.com , if you wish, too.
Cheers!

You make much good sense, but you miss my main point.
The web is overflowing with such.

Having passed 100 points now, I just made "contact" to gripe about profiles which are available only to "Producers". That doesn't work for me, so unless I receive a positive response, I'm outta here, sorry.

My work is done at http://no-ruler.net so see me there if you like.

<blush>

Clap clap clap clap!!! Standing O!

You'd shirk from 'work'?! :)
I actually agree with you, Dean, and what I flippantly call 'voter stupidity' is what I believe to be just what you describe: average folks who've drunk the Kool-Aid supplied by parents, teachers and government agencies and representatives (and movie stars) who've never learned the benefits of real Critical Thinking ... for whatever reason.

I do believe, though, that, while it easily appears that Government is the 'root cause,' my style of Critical Thinking (or what some folks call the Socratic Method, I think...) encourages me to keep asking "Well, WHY is THAT the case?!"

I don't think Government IS THE root cause! I think it's evolved into a Prime Mover and Power Center for the evils we discuss here, but I also think that THAT Happened for Reasons which should be examined and peeled back, layer by layer, like a huge onion. Tears and all.

Funny thing about America no longer being The Producer Of/For The World, too... Other countries have held that mantle and handed it on to others. A decade or two ago I had a similar image appear for me in the world of software and computer Operating Systems. Back when Linux first voiced its birth cries in the huge shadow of Mainframe Systems.

People thought Linux and its offspring would never amount to anything. I disagreed, drawing a diagram with Linux in the lower left, Mainframe OS's in the upper right, and several other flavors of operating systems 'on the line' connecting those two.

What I realized was that, as each of the operating systems and environments added features and functionality to compete with mainframes, their 'position' would move vertically upward, where the vertical scale was exactly that... features and functions... until, some years in the future, they'd be on an almost horizontal line of features/functions.

Some time after that, I had the epiphany that industrialization of countries seemed to follow a similar trend... Manufacturers migrated to any country where the workers had sufficient education and skills to be productive and less expensive than whatever/wherever preceded them!

I watched as US manufacturing migrated to China, China 'offshored' their manufacturing to places like Vietnam, Cambodia and others, and the image came to mind that this was exactly like a line of dominoes tipping against each other and falling in order....

And the Last Domino would be somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa.

And that's EXACTLY what developed over the past several decades, exactly as I predicted.

But the Final Situation is interesting... if all Operating Systems have similar functions, features, resilience, etc., how do you choose one over the others?

Similarly, as decades pass and the Manufacturing dominoes keep falling, what happens when ALL of the dominoes are lying flat and just about every country that could have been tapped for cheap labor has an educated workforce demanding higher pay, cars, houses, TVs and a big refrigerator (and fast internet service)?

They all become more homogeneous and they ALL lose their cost-advantages over their previous 'competitors.'

Companies (and programmers) will have to adapt their business plans to that kind of new environment, and I don't think ANYONE is thinking that far ahead at this time. When 'that time comes,' only the ones who've thought ahead will survive, in pure Darwinian, Capitalistic Competitive fashion.

Long after I'm dead and gone, probably, but inevitably, as I see it.

One of the things that I find hilarious is that O, our "Fearless Leader" and all of the Brain Trust in Congress and around DC can't seem to understand that, not only do Companies compete for market share, COUNTRIES are also in a Competitive Market, and them with more corporate-friendly environments will ALSO beat the ones that are more 'user-hostile' to companies than they are. Witness the current flap in DC about corporations migrating out of the US 'to save on taxes.'

The DC "intelligentsia" can not comprehend that this 'market,' too, is competitive and any efforts on their part to regulate or control it (as a monopoly for their own country's benefit) will, in the end, fail miserably.

I think the Loss of Critical Thinking (if there ever was any much of it in my lifetime) is Root Cause of most of these problems, but I'll be damned if I know how to effectively reverse the tide.

Cheers, and good luck. Live Long, Prosper, Shrug, Survive.

I would limit the ability of government entities to make legally binding promises of future benefits, such as pensions. Allow them to bind the state only to the extent of funds to be raised during the five year (or shorter) period of the contract. Future generations are entitled to give or withhold their own consent once they're in power.

Indeed. Anyone who hasn't had to meet a payroll should try it before they talk about imposing new burdens on the people who do it.

You're really gonna make me work here, eh?

Governments are the Root Cause. always. Voters are born with the same "intelligence" as anyone else, thus they are not "stupid", but become brainwashed into what is, in effect, forgoing their very Right to Life by the GOVERNment's "educational" system, now totally directed toward the BS of "sacrifice" for the "greater good" Seems to me that it's impossible to read Ayn Rand and not get that message!

Without having and using the Force of Government, Collectivism in any form could not exist, now could it?

As to GM, it's management bent over to union demands and thus went bankrupt. So then GOVERNment bailed it out, with monies stolen from WE taxpayers, claiming that somehow it was "too big to fail", and screwing it's stockholders in the process. Chrysler almost the same, partnering up first with Mercedes and now Fiat. I don't know all about Ford, but it has moved much of it's manufacturing to Mexico and Canada. I really don't much care if companies move -- their first order of business is profits and thus survival, but again it's GOVERNment which is again the root cause, which has turned America down from the greatest producer in this world to something like #27 in the world. We are now left with the spoils, the burger GNP.

I understand that, J, but pushing back and demanding to know Exactly What their Definitions Are is one way of calling them on their BS and giving them some feedback... even if it's falling on deaf ears. For me, it may be futile, but just 'walking away' pretty much makes change impossible for them... And I like to at least give it a try...
:)

I choose not to accept their definitions or their premises. The definitions were made to trick people into thinking that A is not A.

THAT I certainly agree with!
When I search for 'root cause,' though, I keep coming up with VOTERS being essentially 'stupid enough to vote those folks into office,' and not those 'guys in office' alone!

They're being measured and encouraged to behave the (stupid, counterproductive) way they do by the voters who elect them and the MONEY that helps them get elected by convincing stupid voters to vote for them (Whatever The Source Of The Money Is!).

Btw, I recommend Hazlitt's book very often!

About the Cadillacs in China thing... If GM can make them cheaper IN China FOR the growing market of affluent people IN China who might have different preferences for options IN their cars IN China... I'm sure as hell not going to fault GM management for moving manufacturing or marketing FOR China TO China... :) That, from a corporate governance point of view, would seem downright silly!

One could make the obvious comparison to any 'foreign manufacturer' making product for US markets which inflict similar shipping delays and cultural disconnects that work the other way around on Them!

No argument, J! My engineering background and thinking processes (no, that's not oxymoronic... :) ) drive me to always look at those kinds of graphs (whether unemployment numbers, GDP or whatever) and ask all kinds of definitional questions, much as I harp on definitions in discussions here..

Unemployment has lots of slices, but most 'numbers' take just one kind of slice and assume that everyone understands the characteristics and limits of that slice. Sure...

GDP can, I trust, have multiple 'definitions' too, and that cuts both ways on this discussion, also.
Here's one such 'definition' from Wikipedia, and it doesn't, at least at the top, seem to include debt... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domes... .
If you include debt, I'd love to see a chart, or better, a graph of how it's changed over the decades.

Same for "unemployment," as nowadays people try or want to include "searching for work, 'underemployed,' and other kinds of 'unemployed people' " in the numbers, but those numbers rarely seem to be broken out separately, but just rolled into the total (or NOT rolled in,) depending on the point they're trying to make.

And I hate that. I think we need to 'call them on it' when folks put forth "data" like that without including definitions or assumptions, even briefly.

Thanks!

"... which the government has given..." - that's the name of the game!
People who use Force are prosecuted, but only Government is allowed.

Nothing to be sorry about. You are correct that this is essentially a definitional argument. Here there is no agreement on the definition of "job." In fact, we both offered definitions. However, I cannot force agreement, only point out the absurd consequences of one definition and let readers decide.

So...you know a bunch of "them" too. Like Jesus and the demons, they are legion. My female cousin is a nurse, my male cousin is a PhD. Seemingly intelligent folks. And yet, when it comes to the important issues -- dumb as a box of rocks.

"If you own the company, you can certainly control how many jobs it offers."
I agree with this, but be careful how looters see this. Jobs are very hard to create. I have occassionally talked to people who act as if getting capital, finding customers, setting up a system, finding talent, motivating people are easy, and the owner can just push a button and, poof, more jobs appear. It's only reasonable to hire people if they make more money than they cost, so business owners want to create as many jobs as possible.

"Every market participant is somewhat "sovereign", but is answerable to those with whom he wants to trade. "
That sums up a lot in once sentence.

True enough, but I never forget that both the minimum wage and monopolistic labor practices result from "laws" made by our Rulers in GOVERNment, such having distorted the competetive edge of American industry to such extent that our GNP has fallen into the pits. Henry Hazlitt made the case on minimum wage (and much other) in Ch XIX of his "Economics in One Lesson" ©1946-1979.

The ringer in those "laws" was the "binding arbitration" crap. The result of all that has virtually destroyed American auto & machinery industries and more. Had the CEO's of such industries played some Atlas Shrugged things would have been different. Look at GM, broke but bailed out (by the taxpayers and investors, go figger!) and now building it's Cadillacs in China. Ditto Chrysler and Caterpillar.

My main point was/is that ALWAYS 'tis GOVERNment lying at the root of such problems. Corporate entities need to learn to say NO and mean it!

You can believe the GDP fiction if you want.
I suppose you believe that the unemployment rate is also under 6%?!

Those GDP numbers do not account for the massive increase in debt, or the inflationary effect of creating $1 trillion per year in fiat money. If you want to reference that to GDP, OK, fine, that means that you create a 6 to 7% inflation via the printing press to get a 2+% apparent increase in GDP. That sounds like we lost 4 or 5% to me. It is for precisely this reason why Galt's Gulch had a gold standard in AS.

Great comment, Herb. The same as I've been citing for several years. Supposedly "intelligent" humans are brainwashed into surrendering their rational Right to Life while cheering for, and voting for, some nebulous "greater good".

Thanks for the pile of thumbs up. I'll save them for when I deal with my east coast relatives. Actually, if they weren't cousins and otherwise really nice people I wouldn't bother with them, but I kinda like being the gadfly of the family.

And as for you two, LetsShrug and Herb7734....

http://www.plusaf.com/linkedin/linked-in...

:) Exactly what I've been thinking and saying for years! In a few bright glimmers, it almost seems like those ideas are starting to gain traction in the mass media... :)

How about, 'they (the unions) are pushing to retain membership, dues, money and power in the face of dwindling reasons for their own existence'?

Look at percentage or numbers of union memberships over the past five or ten decades. Notice any trends?

Back in the 70's, UAW was striking for 25$+/hour wages for what I called 'lug nut tighteners' on GM's production lines when I was dragging down a basic salary barely into double digits per hour with a BSEE.
Fast-forward a few decades and look at the degree of automation that replaced tons more UAW employees than outsourcing did even after that! They cut their own throats with their demands! And now we should all feel guilt or sympathy for the beleaguered Unions?

Meh!

jb, go to http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-s... , plug in 1995 and 2015 or so, and select "column" format.

Or for the past 8 years, 2007, 2015 (or whatever else), and column format.

"About Zero%"?! Information or Data Source, please?!

DeanStriker, how can you claim that when legislation of minimum wage laws and unions' monopolistic labor practices have *forever* put limits on corporations' 'ability to set their own pay scales'?!

I suggest that the 'job flight' is/was caused by free-market opportunities created by competition from Other Countries to offer 'good enough labor and quality' at lower prices than were being demanded and struck for in the US.

I put forth the idea that Obama's and Congress' ire about corporations' relocating their HQs to other countries is just another, similar version of "competition," and Obama and unions HATE competition where they might lose power.

Hm?

And as I perennially interject into such 'discussions,' since y'all didn't AGREE on the DEFINITION of "a Job" in the beginning of the thread, you've wasted a lot of your arguments' energies trying to prove that Your Definition is Right and Their Definition is Wrong.

First, DEFINE "JOB", get Agreement, and go from there in some logical fashion. Neither of you have done that, yet.

Sorry.