American vs. Cheap

[Satanpez]

Walmart could be a problem? Are we sure about this?

Many Economists think the best thing IS sending off jobs off shore. If the money is better spent elsewhere for the same product, you just increased productivity.

From what I've read, Walmart has shown a measureable increase in the GDP due to it's lower prices.

A Walmart employee doesn't make a huge salary. But when they can buy their groceries at Walmart cheaper than they can from the grocery store down the street, their dollar has more value.

Yes we "lose" jobs when we send them offshore. Many we don't gain. 95% of this country was based on farming at one time. Most of those farming jobs are LONG gone. But we certainly aren't looking at a 90% unemployment are we? New jobs are created due to increased productivity.

Companies that do NOT outsource simply can't survive. Should government interfere to help companies? Look at the recent Steel fiasco. Bush put tafiffs on foreign steel to protect the US Steel industry. What we ended up with was high priced Steel making common goods more expensive. Decreasing productivity, decreasing the value of the Dollar.

It's an odd thing. And it can be a rather sensative issue. Personally I'm looking for an engineering job. There's nothing here. NOTHING. Very much due to local companies moving their engineering off shore. It's easy to lose your job, not so easy to find a new one. It takes a while for employees to move onto new careers. It's hard when a company lets a few people go, it's much harder when they close a plant.

There have been many industries in the US to have fallen, many jobs "lost". How many cotten pickers do we have here? Telephone Operators? Farmers?


It's a market economy.


And to more directly respond to the first post:

1) CEOs have agendas to meet. They can't operate in the red. Employees aren't their first concern. That being said, many of them are complete idiots. I'm sure many CEOs make incredibly poor decisions because they don't know what's going on in the "trenches"

3) Greed IS good. It's what keeps a roof over your head, food on the table. Maybe not so much your greed, but others. Check out countries that try to remove Greed from their society.

5) A lot of it isn't the skills. Yes, people are willing to learn new skills, but if it's cheaper to find someone with those skills somewhere else, most companies will use them. Companies are out to make a profit. This isn't Soviet Russia.


Who knows if I made any sense... I typed this rather quick.

-Steve in NJ-