Mr. Pebble
10-20-2005, 09:34 AM
CNBC this moring, October 20, 2005 had people talk about how American manufacturers were getting killed in international markets because we are the only country that lacks national health care. This is just small part of a big issue. I sent them the following email. After you read it, go to the thread on 12,000 jobs and look at thing in a different perspective on that issue as well. Amazing what happens when you view things with an open mind.
Mrpebble
Re: You item on health care -
You have it all wrong. Health care is not the problem with American industry. Look at it this way - we can have nationalized, employer paid or deposit account health care. With deposit account, favored by the Republicans, you pay your own and millions die. With nationalized, favored by the Democrats, the government pays and you have substandard health care which is why so many people in other countries have gone private. With employer paid, there is (or should be) a strong oversight into health care costs.
Now, does this affect a manufacturers competitiveness in international markets? Not at all. In a world unencumbered by political trickery, the costs are high, imports come in, the dollar is devalued and our products become competitive in world markets again. No problem.
Let's look at the real picture - we don't save squat in this country and therefore, with no saving to invest, the interest rate is higher here. Foreigners sell their products in the U.S., bringing prices down. Logically, they would take something that we make back home, balancing trade. That would raise prices here in those items but the principles of Comparative and Absolute advantage would benefit both countries with lower prices and a higher standard of living.
Does it work? Not at all. When foreigners sell something here, they can earn a lot more money with it here because the interest rate is higher. They buy our debt, buy our industries and finance our national debt. This makes for lower prices on the items we would export and creates the illusion of prosperity but, in fact, is borrowing against the future and covers up an insidious inflation that must be paid for later on. Also, everyone is propping up the dollar, especially Japan because they prefer jobs to wealth. They have the jobs, we have the goodies and there are people here who would want to reverse that. Strange!!
The consequences? Actually, at some point in the future, these countries will want their money back and the dollar will be so devaluated that they will only get ten cents to the dollar and essentially, we will get everything almost for free. The down side is that the world will cut us off from credit, they will own us, inflation will rise to hyperinflation and we will be bankrupt. Can Soylent green be far behind?
Now, look at the real problem, our educational system. As we got wealthy after WW II, we started to buy off our children rather than educate them. To keep college students out of Vietnam, everyone got passing grades for no work. Right now, we are turning out PhD's who are barely literate and we are in our third generation of brain dead education not only infiltrating corporations all the way to the top but they have become our school teachers who entertain students and send them to my college class, unable to subtract 9 from 15 without a calculator.
So, the problem is not our manufacturing jobs going to Mexico and China, it is our intellectual jobs going to India because our country can not educationally function. I have always said that any terrorist could bring this country to its knees by disabling the mechanism that tells cashiers how much change to give after a sale.
Let's do the reality check. If going overseas is so good for the nearly bankrupt GM, how come the Japanese come here and prosper? If we could solidly educate our children and yong adults, they would have a greater capacity to add value to resources and we could pay for healthcare and prosper without doing it through debt creation. It's all education and productivity, not the cost of health care. We need to stop curing the symptoms and cure the disease. Our economy has been in decline since 1974 when the interest on our national debt exceeded our growth in productivity and it has been getting much worse every year.
Had enough? Too bad. If you want more consider a complaint at www.autoindustryforum.com where one complained about GM paying so many workers for doing nothing. Go there and read the answer to that by Mrpebble, that's me. It doesn't look so bad when you look at the big picture.
The arrogance of both labor and management has to end. Right now they are two groups with fat heads and fat asses who are too lazy to put down their remote controls and go to work and would be continuously shooting themselves in the foot but they were too lazy to go to practice and can't aim that well or they would be walking on stumps.
Mrpebble
Re: You item on health care -
You have it all wrong. Health care is not the problem with American industry. Look at it this way - we can have nationalized, employer paid or deposit account health care. With deposit account, favored by the Republicans, you pay your own and millions die. With nationalized, favored by the Democrats, the government pays and you have substandard health care which is why so many people in other countries have gone private. With employer paid, there is (or should be) a strong oversight into health care costs.
Now, does this affect a manufacturers competitiveness in international markets? Not at all. In a world unencumbered by political trickery, the costs are high, imports come in, the dollar is devalued and our products become competitive in world markets again. No problem.
Let's look at the real picture - we don't save squat in this country and therefore, with no saving to invest, the interest rate is higher here. Foreigners sell their products in the U.S., bringing prices down. Logically, they would take something that we make back home, balancing trade. That would raise prices here in those items but the principles of Comparative and Absolute advantage would benefit both countries with lower prices and a higher standard of living.
Does it work? Not at all. When foreigners sell something here, they can earn a lot more money with it here because the interest rate is higher. They buy our debt, buy our industries and finance our national debt. This makes for lower prices on the items we would export and creates the illusion of prosperity but, in fact, is borrowing against the future and covers up an insidious inflation that must be paid for later on. Also, everyone is propping up the dollar, especially Japan because they prefer jobs to wealth. They have the jobs, we have the goodies and there are people here who would want to reverse that. Strange!!
The consequences? Actually, at some point in the future, these countries will want their money back and the dollar will be so devaluated that they will only get ten cents to the dollar and essentially, we will get everything almost for free. The down side is that the world will cut us off from credit, they will own us, inflation will rise to hyperinflation and we will be bankrupt. Can Soylent green be far behind?
Now, look at the real problem, our educational system. As we got wealthy after WW II, we started to buy off our children rather than educate them. To keep college students out of Vietnam, everyone got passing grades for no work. Right now, we are turning out PhD's who are barely literate and we are in our third generation of brain dead education not only infiltrating corporations all the way to the top but they have become our school teachers who entertain students and send them to my college class, unable to subtract 9 from 15 without a calculator.
So, the problem is not our manufacturing jobs going to Mexico and China, it is our intellectual jobs going to India because our country can not educationally function. I have always said that any terrorist could bring this country to its knees by disabling the mechanism that tells cashiers how much change to give after a sale.
Let's do the reality check. If going overseas is so good for the nearly bankrupt GM, how come the Japanese come here and prosper? If we could solidly educate our children and yong adults, they would have a greater capacity to add value to resources and we could pay for healthcare and prosper without doing it through debt creation. It's all education and productivity, not the cost of health care. We need to stop curing the symptoms and cure the disease. Our economy has been in decline since 1974 when the interest on our national debt exceeded our growth in productivity and it has been getting much worse every year.
Had enough? Too bad. If you want more consider a complaint at www.autoindustryforum.com where one complained about GM paying so many workers for doing nothing. Go there and read the answer to that by Mrpebble, that's me. It doesn't look so bad when you look at the big picture.
The arrogance of both labor and management has to end. Right now they are two groups with fat heads and fat asses who are too lazy to put down their remote controls and go to work and would be continuously shooting themselves in the foot but they were too lazy to go to practice and can't aim that well or they would be walking on stumps.