No, but what I am saying is that some guy who operates a crane at $20 an hour shouldn't be complaining that he's not making $40 an hour. Let me ask you this, is he happier making $20 an hour, or making nothing at all when costs cause the employer to take business offshore?
The problem isn't just one of cost, but one of quality. If you buy a Ford that breaks down every other week or a Toyota that is reliable, which are you going to buy? My wife's American-built car is just over
2 years old. It's been recalled by Ford twice, has had the transmission completely fail, the A/C compressor has failed, it's had nothing but trouble. Her family owned a 1987 Toyota that ran for over 250k miles, never once had a problem and is probably still running out there somewhere.If American manufacturers produce crap at inflated prices, they don't deserve the business. My money goes where the quality and best value for the dollar is and more often than not, that's not to an American company. Even going off-shore for manufacturing won't solve basic design and planned obsolescence issues.
As long as there are idiots with more dollars than sense who will keep going to these games, player salaries will continue to rise. That doesn't make it right, it just means there are a lot of damn stupid people in the world.
And what I'm saying is the only one who seems to be complaining is you. The people who actually have jobs aren't whining about being mistreated. They're THANKFUL! So who the hell are you to tell these people who are HAPPY to be making enough money to put food on the table that somehow they're wrong?
But that "someone" is only willing to pay that amount because they receive multiple millions in subsidies from the state and local governments. In Pittsburgh we recently blew up Three Rivers Stadium which was only 30 years old (and for which the outstanding bonds we taxpayers are on the hook for still exceed the original cost to build the thing). We then built 2 stadiums and gave one to the Pirates and one to the Steelers. Not only did we pay to build them, we let the teams sell the naming rights and pocket the millions from it. We don't even get any money when the stadiums are used for concerts and truck pulls - the team owners get all the revenues. That my friend is indeed Socialism. More appropriately it is good old Roman "bread and Circuses" (emphasis on the Circuses). Hell, we even held a referendum and voted against it and the politicians pushed them through another way. So now we are paying for several hundred millions in new bonds (about $400 million if I remember correctly) and still on the hook for $35 million or so in bonds outstanding for Three Rivers Stadium. Clearly, without all of that largess, the Steelers and especially the Pirates could not pay their players like they do to play childrens' games.
Dave Hall
Sound like Seattle. "> But that "someone" is only willing to pay that amount because they receive
outstanding for
Not just sports, though...what I do like about all this is the emphasis by the pols on keeping costs "within reason." Must relate to hundred buck upper tier tickets.
Businesses of all kinds get the same kinds of deals on the premise, and often on their promise, that it will bring jobs to the area. They guarantee to do such and thus, and the city/county/state combine to provide acreage, an immense high tech building, specific water delivery and sewage removal, abatement of taxes for a decade and much else. The company comes, opens, brings half as many jobs as promised and moves elsewhere as soon as the tax abatements run out.
It is not socialism, though. It's basically theft, and it's also business as usual.
Charlie Self
"Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things." Dan Quayle, 11/30/88
Well, crane operators can't exactly move offshore, can they?
tt
Well, he could learn a new skill that someone is willing to pay him to deploy. When did we decide society owes everyone a big salary doing whatever they want to do?
Cheers, Abe
Considering I own the company, absolutely. ;)
So long as costs here are offset by the much higher costs of shipping and maintaining a long-distance business, they'll stay here. When costs here become too high to rationally maintain business and make a profit, they'll move.
Simple economics. Most people who have made it through high school should know this. The problem is that far too many workers act like the money spigot is never ending, that they can keep getting raises and demanding more and more benefits, regardless of the economy, simply because they deserve it. If the company is undergoing hard economic times, the employees, as part of the company, should do the same. That's life. Instead, you have unions demanding "I don't care if you lost $500 million this quarter, we all want raises!"
Money doesn't grow on trees.
No, but they need to realize that they are a PART of the company and therefore need to be just as concerned about the company's wellbeing as their own. If the company is losing money and the union workers are striking because they don't get that 15% raise this year, what is the company supposed to do?
Yup... go offshore where they can afford to do business. Had the workers understood that the company wasn't capable of paying them their 15% raise and simply lived with it (or went to work elsewhere), the company wouldn't have been forced to leave.
That works only if the company is prepared to open the books to prove that they can't afford the 15% raise. Not too many companies are prepared to do that. While the money spigot isn't as big as it used to be, it certainly hasn't dried up, it's just been redirected to fewer and fewer people as time goes on.
Don't know about the US, but up here in Canada, all the big banks have been posting profits of 40% increase over previous quarters. I can't remember a time when profits ever went down for them. It's sickening it's so bad. I'm ok with capitalism, as long as the general level of everybody goes up a notch when the big guys profit, but it's not even close to working out that way. The gulf between those that have and those that don't is widening exponentially.
Strange how a large number of these companies seem to post a loss and then reward the management by giving them million dollar bonuses (firing a few workers to pay for it of course). Apparently, some managers don't have to go to high school.
In article , snipped-for-privacy@rogers.com says... ...
You're forgetting that (1) public companies DO have open books, at least to a substantial extent, and (2) businesses don't exist to make money for employees: the exist to make money for their stockholders. Why would the stockholders be interested in maximizing employee income? We don't have indentured servitude in this country anymore. As an employee, you can always vote with your feet. Besides, unions do provide employees with a substantial amount of bargaining leverage. I think Brian's point was that, indeed, in some cases the "money spigot" HAS dried up, and employees are simply going to have to adapt or they will go down with the ship. They may go down with the ship anyway, if the business simply isn't viable any more.
If I work hard, and smart, and make more money this year than last, why should *your* standard of living automatically rise?
cheers, abe
Productivity? We already have the most productive workers in the world, and that continues, year after year, even in those years the Japanese and Germans got credit that wasn't due them.
Yup. Move to Malaysia, India, et al.
Tell me about all these wonderful, hardworking CEOs who do worse, year after year, but get ever increasing bonuses.
Charlie Self
"Old age is fifteen years older than I am." Oliver Wendell Holmes
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