US Firms moving abroad, US has the highest corporate taxes in the developed world.
72 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Conscript;37497713]Since the people who I compete for jobs with are other nationals trying to work in domestic workplaces producing goods for (usually) other nationals, I and other workers are certainly a part of 'the nation's' labor force. We are all nationals and laborers confined to a national labor market.[/quote]
circular argument. the reason that is so is precisely because of things like anti-immigration laws and protectionism. I live in the united kingdom, and it's true that most of my competitors are british nationals, but that's just a banal fact of geography. a significant portion of the competitors are also from elsewhere in the EU, and if I so chose I could move to say, germany, and compete there.
[quote]I don't even know why you dispute it since capitalism already reflects this and only reinforces the existence of these interests.[/quote]
it evidently does not, if there's a profit to be made overseas then someone will capitalize on it.
[quote]How isn't it? I'm not talking from the perspective of an investor who only wants to accumulate more capital at a greater rate from anyone, anywhere.[/quote]
Investors generally don't just hoard money, they tend to [I]invest[/I] in things using the profit of things that they have invested in previously.
[quote]I'm talking from perspective of the of the producers who build and reside in communities and make capitalist production possible, and whose livelihood is entirely derived from the (in today's case, national) labor market and its wages.
Who benefits from the slashed cost of labor? Is it supposed to be 'the consumers'? If these consumers are the same men and women that made the product, what is gained?[/quote]
When the cost of labor is cut, the business saves money. Right there is your benefit, but the business can additionally do some other things with this money. It can choose to keep the price of the good the same and expand production with the money saved. This will lead to more people being employed by the business, and also now more people can buy the product, making them happier. It could keep production at the same level and reduce the price of the good, which leads to people being able to buy the good at a lower price. They'll have that much more money to spend on everything else they might want, which will increase their general happiness as well as the happiness of the seller of whatever else is bought. Or the business can keep both production and the price of the good constant, and use the money to invest in something else, perhaps a promising new startup. Or the business owner can simply spend it on whatever they choose, which on the face of it looks like sheer greed, but consider that money has to go somewhere, namely into the pockets of the producer of whatever luxury good or service they buy, who then has more money to pay for whatever [I]they[/I] want.
[quote]A loss in wages but a cheapening of product? An expansion of production that replicates the same conditions elsewhere?[/quote]
you are not considering the fact that if the company values someone's work at $10 per hour, they are not going to hire anyone who can only do $9/hour's worth of work. if you artificially inflate the cost of labor to say, $15/hour, then companies will simply fire anyone who is below that mark, and ditto for hiring. you have substituted a low wage for unemployment.
[quote]If companies are too sour to employ because the projected profit margin isn't the % they like, their problem. Nationalize their local assets and resume production with wages that near the cost of production and product with little mark-up, and we will create the closest we'll ever be (in these conditions) to economic equilibrium, which liberal capitalism utterly fails to ever inch towards.[/quote]
Getting rid of the product incentive reduces the incentive to do things efficiently, and since the government isn't risking its own money (it's risking the taxpayer's), there's little incentive to be wise.
[quote]Also it is not the cost of labor that determines employment, it is labor's productivity.[/quote]
Labor productivity [I]is[/I] labor cost, they're just two ways of looking at it.
[quote]If the minimum wage for a sector of the market was indeed 30 dollars an hour, but capital extracts that much in less than 30 minutes of work, big fucking deal. If the margin exists but it's not wide enough, that's not anyone's problem but the dude that just wants to accumulate more. The fact the margin exists signals the production is sustainable.[/quote]
can you clarify this I don't get what you're saying
[quote]But then, of course, you'll say he is our employer, the source of our livelihood. Any less burden on him will translate to less on the laborers. But this is only by virtue of the fact he is an owner of private property, and subsequently an appropriator of the value produced. We produce because it is a social necessity, we live off of the fruits of each others labor, we would otherwise die. Capital is simply a middle man.[/quote]
again I don't really get what you're saying. what is wrong with middlemen?
[quote]I don't see how this follows, it's just a moral. Capital is the fruit of work and if we don't see its reinvestment or enough of it the capitalist loses his right to the fruit of our work.[/quote]
the capitalist paid for it.
[quote]Unfortunately this can't be enforced as workers would starve if they didn't accept every little wage slash, hour slash, or whatever the employer throws at them. That is where the state comes in.[/quote]
no, it is where unions come in.
[quote]Again with morals. Of course someone who would otherwise die if he didn't sell his labor would take a wage.[/quote]
I don't see where morality comes into this.
[quote]This is arbitrary[/quote]
It's not arbitrary at all. When I buy an apple from someone, the transaction is finished, the person I bought it from has no claim on the apple.
[quote]and I will be the same way and say the capitalist owes everything to us, including his existence. At least this is grounded in reality, as he would be nothing without labor.[/quote]
Yes, he would be nothing without the labor [B]he paid for[/B]. (also stop using masculine pronouns, there are women capitalists too)
[quote]Have you ever heard the phrase 'labor precedes capital, and deserves much higher consideration'?[/QUOTE]
yes and it's bunkum
[QUOTE=Chickens!;37496242]I love how Ireland's is far below the agreed EU standard and the EU doesn't do shit about it.
[editline]1st September 2012[/editline]
Not sarcasm, I actually love it.[/QUOTE]
And Ireland has gone to hell, economically speaking.
[editline]1st September 2012[/editline]
I have mixed feelings about this. The country did heavy investments for workers, mainly education. This was one of the main reasons people in the GDR party were happy about the German wall. Many people would get a really good, free education in the GDR and then move to the BRD for higher pay without having the debt you'd have to take in the more free markets to get good education.
I guess with a crisis caused by mindless speculation like in 2008 that makes people want more governmental control over stuff like that also comes the call for protectionism. If that is really gonna DO something, I don't know.
Australia has a minimum wage. It pretty much changed nothing for anyone living in Australia, wages rose, prices rose, it just made buying stuff in Australia damn expensive for foreigners, a friend told me.
Germany right now is the anti-example.
The Euro-Crisis made the € weak and suddenly half of the world craves for German engineering like mad. Our main problem right now is that our educational system can't fill in the demand for specialized workers, especially in engineering and our Government did pretty much nothing to attract foreigners, something where Canada for example SHINES in. If you have a good education, go to Canada.
This is somewhat different to my first example because Canada and Germany both have the same economical system.
[QUOTE=The Kakistocrat;37499316]what? are these companies bank robbers now?[/QUOTE]
Well the wall street ones are
[QUOTE=The Kakistocrat;37499071]With a minimum wage of $30 an hour, many companies wouldn't be able to make ANY profit. How can the local deli owner pay his cashier $30 an hour, if the total revenue for that hour is only $20? That high of a minimum wage would KILL small retail businesses. [/quote]
I never said a deli owner should pay his cashier $30 an hour, although I didn't say what I meant to either. I realize now I made a mistake and said 'wages closer to the cost of production', sorry. I meant to say 'wages closer to the value of the product' which would be doing the profit margin narrowing you're talking about.
Regardless I was never advocating paying wages beyond profitability.
Private investors set their own standards, they demand high profit (sometimes 100%) margins even during economic downturns, when they usually try their hardest to restore the previous rate of profit.
[quote]And nationalize their assets? you can't do that, it's called theft.[/quote]
Some would contend property is theft.
[quote]many times the margin is smaller than $30, good job killing small businesses.[/quote]
Keep attacking that strawman.
[quote]And the "capitalist" owns the business, he decides what profit margin he wants to make, no one else deserves ANY say.[/quote]
Why? Because you have a state to say so?
[quote]Only the owner of private property? let me explain something to you: Without capital, our current world would not be possible. Capital is extremely important.[/quote]
I don't know why you keep pretending without capital there's no production.
[quote]What? Capital is the fruit of his work, he is the only one who has a right to it.[/quote]
What work? Capital doesn't do anything productive.
[quote]And capitalists are not these greedy scumbags, constantly cutting wages.[/quote]
I never said they were. I blame the game, not the player.
There's nothing one capitalist or a group of them can do anything about systemic unemployment, for example. Unemployment is simply endemic to capitalism.
[quote]94.8% of workers make more than minimum wage.[/quote]
I would hope so, 94.8% of work is far more productive than 7.25 an hour.
[quote]If capitalists were constantly cutting wages, everyone would be making minimum wage.[/quote]
The nature of labor market causes it to inevitably tend towards the 'cost of production' of labor, what's enough to keep the laborer coming back to work the next day. With more people than jobs and a constant unemployment statistic, there will always be 'wage cutting' as there will always be competition.
[quote]Wrong, capital precedes labor. Without capital, companies would never be started, laborers would never be hired.[/QUOTE]
Wow...just wow.
The earliest capitalists were artisans and wealthy peasants, who used their labor to get capital. The idea that we started production with capital and not labor is fucking ridiculous and you should get your head checked. Do you think nobody worked until somebody came out of nowhere with money and hired them? Do you understand where capital comes from?
[QUOTE=Noble;37499097]It's not so much that I dispute it (though I could) as that I see it as a meaningless statement. We happen to co-exist in the same geographical region and make transactions with each other, I'm not sure exactly how that means we are "confined" to some non existent entity that you call "the nation's labor force", and how that really means anything.[/quote]
Language and culture means nothing? There are no national divides socially and economically? Then tell me why globalization and multiculturalism is only a recent phenomenon.
[quote]It enables more people to be employed and the skilled, dedicated employees to move higher up, rather than having all those people making $0/hour while unemployed.[/quote]
Wage cuts have never signaled a demand for more workers. I don't know what world you're living in, but wage cuts are done because the sheer amount of unemployed (i.e. scarcity of work) leave employers with room to exact 'competition' between laborers.
[quote]"The consumers" is a far larger group beyond just the laborers who produced it.[/quote]
Indeed, it's other laborers who suffer the same scare of scarcity of jobs and unemployment and fund their demand with wages. They're not exactly in a different situation.
[quote]including other producers who can now make better products, and do it more efficiently, and so on.[/quote]
How does this follow?
[quote]First off, those assets aren't anyone else's to take by force and that is an atrocious violation of individual freedoms. [/quote]
Why, because you have a state to keep it that way, by force?
I don't recognize private property as an 'individual right', no use pointing that out. It's more of a privilege, actually.
[quote]Second, if you eliminate the profit motive, you eliminate the heart, the engine of growth that has driven the greatest increases in the standard of living that humanity has ever seen. [/quote]
This is a strawman. I never said anything about eliminating the profit motive in that quote, how could I be when I was still talking about production with mark-up?
Besides, the holy profit motive hasn't exactly done the world justice. Capitalism developed horridly unevenly and its rapid developments (which are still the fruit of labor, don't give yourself too much credit) stayed in a few, advanced countries who became imperialist. Nations learned to combine state and capital to the tremendous benefit of both and we got our modern monopoly capitalism with industrial and financial giants who power (and basically control) our nation-states.
But the profit motive is no longer useful. Now capitalism is restrictive on our economy, it cannot afford jobs to all and cannot afford any semblance of post-scarcity. Instead, it keeps us in state of rivalry between nations, endless economic downturns, and perpetual scarcity of both work and product. Capital would die if we eliminated the need for work and created abundance of products, and wars are a great way to alter the balance of the market by destroying capital and creating debt, and for business to get great contracts with the state.
The profit motive is source of most of our troubles. If you ask me, investors are far too timid with their capital to be useful. We produced it anyway, why not take it back and put it into use?
[quote]Without the profit motive, you can kiss that level of growth goodbye.[/quote]
Unless you're some kind of spiritualist, there's nothing inherently extraordinary about capital and economic growth. It's just production, if you create any system that combines labor and means of production on a massive scale like capitalism does, you will have large amounts of growth. That's why some of the biggest growth numbers in history are coming from formerly agarian societies industrializing, under communists or not.
[quote]So your stance is to get rid of private property, am I correct?[/quote]
Yea, but I'm fine with state property for now.
[quote]How do you draw that conclusion, exactly? The way I see it, you're entitled the wages you agreed to in the labor contract, nothing else was agreed to, nothing else is owed.[/quote]
Well, we're kinda talking morals here. We're talking about 'rights', who 'deserves' what, and what should be and so on. If capital is just the collective fruit of labor yet wields such a grip over our livelihood, I just feel like it's a privilege to own it.
[quote]They can't continue to slash wages below market levels because wage competition puts upward pressure on the cost of labor[/quote]
'Market level' could mean anything, and always will. It could easily mean subsistence wages as it does for most of the world.
Work shortages are rare and the labor market is pretty much always a buyer's market. There are more jobs than people, but for a market to work there has to be. No job competition or solidarity between workers means a less 'flexible' workforce. Good for workers, bad for capital.
[quote]Companies want to attract skilled workers away from their competitors by offering them raises, benefits, better working conditions, etc.[/quote]
That's why it's a common practice to sign a non-disclosure agreement or no competition agreement if the company invests anything in you. They don't just sit around and gawk at these competition issues.
[quote] The capitalist offers them a better alternative to those things and they voluntarily accept it. They have other options, but those options are less attractive.[/quote]
Once again, only by virtue of private property. You keep touting how much of a generous hero the capitalist is for rewarding the workers with a job, but they exist in a society where all means of production are privatized, of course someone who derives their life from the sale of labor has only 'less attractive' options compared to wage-labor. What a shallow example of 'voluntarism'.
[quote]How is it arbitrary? A and B transact. A sells his labor to B, and B provides him something in return (a wage). You're saying that somehow after this transaction, B somehow owes a debt not only to A, but to C,D,E,F,G and the rest of society?[/quote]
B adds no value to the product and derives his existence from the productive capability of others. He just facilitates the exchange of whats there. Labor has a right to the value it produces, and no arbitrary line on a contract can say otherwise. That's why your kind employs states.
I am born in a socialist country and I can tell you that it corrupted people into a mindset where working as less as possible was slowly getting standard. Germany has many many many problems with quite a few of the ex GDR workers and their children as they are and never were fit for a competitive, productive market.
All of the property that "was no property because it belonged to everyone" slowly eroded away in the course of the almost 70 years of socialism. You didn't see the once built biggest refinery in Germany, I did, it was a leaking mess, noone cared for anything.
Most of the pre-soviet buildings that actually required some work, wonderful architecture, went to shit as noone cared for it and the givernment was rather selling the "ressources and means of production that belonged to everyone" to foreign countries because that way they could make more profit for the government and who gets the money? The people working for the government, not your everyday worker.
Everyone who had the chance to get away into the west did, better pay, better life.
People do not work for the greater good.
[QUOTE=Strider*;37492307]You have the evidence that they are leaving because of higher taxes.[/QUOTE]
"Jobs" are leaving because there is a global surplus of labor. It's been continuous regardless of tax rate since we've been capable of studying it.
There just needs to be a mix. Neither of the sides is doable in pure form.
People are greedy. And pure capitalism justifies taking as much as you can just as communism justifies it.
The first say "take because you should, the system evens it out", the second says "take because you want, the system says everything is yours, the one who takes first...takes first".
Just imagine this situation: There is only one dose of vaccine left. You need to get it, the other guy in the room needs to get it.
Neither communist nor capitalist principles can solve the conflict in fair way.
One say "he who has the bigger means may take it" the other says "he who has the bigger needs may take it"
Judging needs is impossible. And the means(money for example) are the ones defined by the system itself and thus make it a devils cycle.
I would love to see the world to find a middle ground.
[QUOTE=Killuah;37501116]I am born in a socialist country and I can tell you that it corrupted people into a mindset where working as less as possible was slowly getting standard. Germany has many many many problems with quite a few of the ex GDR workers and their children as they are and never were fit for a competitive, productive market.
All of the property that "was no property because it belonged to everyone" slowly eroded away in the course of the almost 70 years of socialism. You didn't see the once built biggest refinery in Germany, I did, it was a leaking mess, noone cared for anything.
Most of the pre-soviet buildings that actually required some work, wonderful architecture, went to shit as noone cared for it and the givernment was rather selling the "ressources and means of production that belonged to everyone" to foreign countries because that way they could make more profit for the government and who gets the money? The people working for the government, not your everyday worker.
Everyone who had the chance to get away into the west did, better pay, better life.
People do not work for the greater good.[/QUOTE]
What happens when people with a communist inspired mindset hammered into their heads gets into a socialist inspired society.
Remember kids, theres a [B]BIG[/B] difference between communist and socialist, even though Republicans and other right wingers think and say otherwise.
[QUOTE=Killuah;37501116]
Everyone who had the chance to get away into the west did, better pay, better life.
[/QUOTE]
Ugh really? grass is not always greener on the other side.
[QUOTE=Conscript;37500893]I never said a deli owner should pay his cashier $30 an hour, although I didn't say what I meant to either. I realize now I made a mistake and said 'wages closer to the cost of production', sorry. I meant to say 'wages closer to the value of the product' which would be doing the profit margin narrowing you're talking about.[/QUOTE]
No it wouldn't, wages are already AT the value of product, In fact above (for the employee). Running a cash register isn't worth more than $8 an hour. Would you like me to explain consumer surplus and supplier profits?
[QUOTE]Some would contend property is theft
Keep attacking that strawman.
Why? Because you have a state to say so?[/QUOTE]
Property is theft? sure, go with that. Save your philosophical bullshit for some other time. I have a right to the fruits of my labor, as does everyone else. Sorry for the strawman, I thought you literally said that. Capitalists can choose their profit margins because they OWN the company. It's their property, their choice. Pretty simple stuff.
[QUOTE]I don't know why you keep pretending without capital there's no production.
What work? Capital doesn't do anything productive.[/QUOTE]
There is no production without capital. Try building a car without a factory, or even a screwdriver. And capital doesn't do anything productive? It builds factories. It buys tools and supplies. It's very productive.
[QUOTE]I never said they were. I blame the game, not the player.
There's nothing one capitalist or a group of them can do anything about systemic unemployment, for example. Unemployment is simply endemic to capitalism. I would hope so, 94.8% of work is far more productive than 7.25 an hour[/QUOTE]
Wow. You blame capitalism? do you understand economics at all? Free markets do not force employers to constantly erode away at their employees salaries, as you suggest. And exactly. The Free market pays people what their work is worth. It does not force people to cut wages at random, as my statistic has shown. Your whole theory of "wage slashes" has been disproven. And with that crumbles your whole "capitalism is evil" theory. Wala.
[QUOTE]The nature of labor market causes it to inevitably tend towards the 'cost of production' of labor, what's enough to keep the laborer coming back to work the next day. With more people than jobs and a constant unemployment statistic, there will always be 'wage cutting' as there will always be competition. [/QUOTE]
can you prove me that these wage cuts ever take place? Economics never suggests they would happen. Your whole theory is based on lies and falsities.
[QUOTE]Wow...just wow.
The earliest capitalists were artisans and wealthy peasants, who used their labor to get capital. The idea that we started production with capital and not labor is fucking ridiculous and you should get your head checked. Do you think nobody worked until somebody came out of nowhere with money and hired them? Do you understand where capital comes from?
[/QUOTE]
You misunderstood what I'm saying. I'm saying that, without capital, no company would be able to hire laborers. I'm not talking about how it started, hundreds of years ago, I'm talking about NOW. Capital buys labor, it is king.
P.S. don't respond sentence by sentence like this. It makes it really annoying to respond back.
[quote]Language and culture means nothing? There are no national divides socially and economically? Then tell me why globalization and multiculturalism is only a recent phenomenon.[/quote]
what I don't even
what
you're not making any sense, I can't even work out what fallacy you're committing
globalization is a recent phenomenon because it took a while for people to realize how fucking stupid mercantilism was. adam smith worked it out back in the 18th century for fuck's sake
well really globalisation is old as the hills, but that said i can't understand how people can promote protectionist trade policies given that by both economic theory and practice they're crap
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;37494668]Lmao protectionism.[/QUOTE]
And it was used extremely effectively by most developing countries until the 1970´s and by China today...
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