Moral claims about American content/R&D vs. Non

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Originally Posted By: lovcom
The MASSIVE flaw in your thinking is this: When American Jobs go way, American buying power goes away. When American buying power goes away, American standard of living plummets down the abyss. THIS IS HAPPENING NOW....HELLO!?!...

In other words, moving jobs off shore is bad for our economy.

There is no flaw in my thinking. I am addressing what IS, not what you wish it might be.

In the real world, free trade is good. In the real world, free trade raises the standard of living of each country that participates in it.

But if a country adopts policies designed to destroy incentives, punish business, and discourage job creation, then free trade by itself cannot offset those harmful policies.

Government at the federal, state, and local levels are doing their [censored] to punish business. When the states do it, companies can move to other states -- that's why so many of them left the Rust Belt in the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s. And why so many have been leaving California, especially in the last ten years. Recently Mayor Bloomberg reportedly said that he did not want to raise taxes in NYC because he knew it would drive away business and drive away the wealthiest people who pay a disproportionate share of the city's taxes. But when push came to shove, both NY State and NYC have raised taxes, and you know what will happen next. The same thing has happened in New Jersey, in Ohio, in Michigan, and is happening in other states.

When the federal government raises taxes, increases regulatory burdens, imposes higher costs for health care and pollution controls and fighting the imaginary threat of global warming, what is a company to do? I know what I would do -- I'd get the [censored] out of Dodge. Hello Mexico! Hello Singapore! Hello Israel or Jordan or Brazil or Colombia or India or China or Taiwan.

When the government changes the rules for bankruptcies, so that the people who lend money to companies for expanding plants and equipment get ripped off if a company fails... what person in his right mind would lend a cent to a company in that jurisdiction? I know what I would do, I'd yank my money out of that country ASAP.

When a government starts printing currency without any controls, so that eventually the inflation rate might reach triple-digit annual rates or even higher, then the only thing I'd buy in that country would be hard assets: land, gold, maybe diamonds or other collectibles.

There are many reasons for companies to flee from the United States, taking their jobs with them. Can you think of any reasons for them to stay?
 
Originally Posted By: opus1

I'll have to look at Honda (with its plants in Ohio and Indiana), Toyota (Indiana, Kentucky, Texas), Nissan (Tennessee) or Mitsubishi (Illinois).



So its OK with you that those foreign makes use Americans as laborers to slap their cars together, rather than doing actual honest-to-goodness creative design, engineering, and R&D here? And and awful lot of those plants were built with huge tax abatements, meaning that the misguided politicians put the cost of building the plant on ordinary citizens of the surrounding area, rather than on Honda, Toyota, etc.

I think the focus on ASSEMBLY location is a red herring. The real importance is the majority ownership location and the design/development/research/engineering location.

Don't get me wrong, I PREFER everything from R&D to final assembly to be done here, but if any one part is done elsewhere, my preference is that it be the assembly. Better still if its at least done in North America.
 
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And and awful lot of those plants were built with huge tax abatements, meaning that the misguided politicians put the cost of building the plant on ordinary citizens of the surrounding area, rather than on Honda, Toyota, etc.

Reduced taxes are VERY different from the government directly funding the building of facilities. Would it be better that they build the factory in a different country entirely?
 
And what does everyone think about GM, with all the billions it has already received in government stimulus, asking $200,000,000 from the state of Tennessee to reopen the Springhill plant, which formerly made Saturns? They are playing three plants in three states against one another, looking for the highest bidder.
 
I don't think much about GM..
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I was a happy GM owner but will NEVER buy a new one after what they have done.

I MAY buy a used one but they are DEAD to me..

After talking to others, there are MANY who think the same.

The $200 million will be given to GM since I'm sure the "one" will make the states give GM the $$ or something that the Feds was going to give the state will get "cut off".
 
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