Obama's plan for student loans

YF:

HP has the right to produce their products wherever they want. But if they're going to put Americans out of work in order to do it, then they shouldn't expect tax breaks and other goodies from Uncle Sam. Why should they get tax breaks for helping destroy the tax base?

 

Thing is, we should be insisting that if companies want to do business in the U.S., then they should pay U.S. wages.

If they want to sell in Singapore, then by all means, they can pay their workers $3 per day. If they want to sell in the U.S., the minimum wage is $7-plus an hour.

What's happening now is, the company is still making the same profits that they were making before, only they're paying slave wages to people in India.

Computers would cost more in the U.S. But wages would go up, and there would be more jobs in this country.

 

Everything would cost more.

 

Does this have anything to do with "obama's plan for student loans?" No? Than shaddup!!!!!!

 

First, there aren't nearly enough people in the U.S. to fill all those jobs.
Second, the cost of living would go up significantly for everyone. Wages wouldn't go up for journalists, for example. And you guys think it's hard scraping by on lower-middle class wages now? This would require major lifestyle adjustments downward for 90% of Americans.
Third, other countries would institute protectionist policies against us, costing us more money and jobs than we gain from this policy.

Americans have a heightened lifestyle because it's good for the global economy for us to do so. We start jerking other countries around, we lose all that.

This is one of those proposals that makes sense only on an emotional level. Any rational, objective analysis says it would be a horrific mistake.

 

Unfortunately, the American middle class has been sacrificed on the altar of "free trade." We've gotten nice cheap stuff, but at what cost?

 

The American middle class was largely unsustainable. Free trade prolonged the lifestyle for another decade or two, but it was all going to collapse eventually no matter what.

 

How did free trade do that exactly?

 

Flooded the American market with cheap goods, letting the middle class buy a lot more stuff for their dollar than they could have otherwise.

The rise of the American middle class came about when America became the world's dominant manufacturer by default because the other candidates destroyed themselves with World Wars and communism. Once those other candidates recovered, the success wasn't going to be able to continue no matter what.

 

The stuff already was cheap. The difference is, companies moved their work overseas for lower wages, kept the same prices and pocketed the difference.

And the only reason Americans can afford to buy anything today is because of credit cards. Until the Great Recession hit, Americans had a negative saving rate.

The only people who have benefited from this global economy has been the richest 1 percent. Everyone else's wages have barely kept up with the cost of inflation.