Jobs Bill

[nathanm]

He needs advisers who's stake in the game are not dependent on power dealing and stimulus funneling in exchange for contributions.

As long as corporations retain the right to spend unlimited sums of money supporting candidates, that will be the destiny of every politician. A broken system makes for broken people.

Edited to add: carltonplace, the government, through some heretofore undiscovered black magic, manages to destroy every penny that passes through it. At least that's what I've been told.

[carltonplace]

My company doesnt hire Americans. All of our new jobs go over seas because its cheaper, not because of new regulations.

Also my company appears to be positive on ObamaCare so far (at least according to the releases we are getting in advance of our 2012 Benefits sign up period).

If the government puts people to work, don't these new employees create demand, or these types of subsidized employees would not be expected to collect into any type of snowball?

[Conan71]

My company doesnt hire Americans. All of our new jobs go over seas because its cheaper, not because of new regulations.

Also my company appears to be positive on ObamaCare so far (at least according to the releases we are getting in advance of our 2012 Benefits sign up period).

If the government puts people to work, don't these new employees create demand, or these types of subsidized employees would not be expected to collect into any type of snowball?

But what are some of the reasons it's more expensive to employ people here, aside from payroll taxes, OSHA and EPA regs, legal tort liability issues- like workplace discimination, disability discrimination versus overseas, and now the government makes it essentially a mandatory benefit to provide health insurance?  Of course we do have a higher standard of living, but look at only a few things I put out there that necessarily make the American worker more expensive to your company beyond his or her net wage.

[carltonplace]

But what are some of the reasons it's more expensive to employ people here, aside from payroll taxes, OSHA and EPA regs, legal tort liability issues- like workplace discimination, disability discrimination versus overseas, and now the government makes it essentially a mandatory benefit to provide health insurance?  Of course we do have a higher standard of living, but look at only a few things I put out there that necessarily make the American worker more expensive to your company beyond his or her net wage.

Its all about net wage. If they could hire highly trained technically savy people at below minimum wage in the US it might be a different story. Bottom line: you can hire three college educated employees in a developing country for the price of one in the US (and you get to skip out on employee taxes and benefits).

[nathanm]

I've come to the conclusion we either need to implement equalization tariffs or stop deferring foreign-source income from taxation. (funny that my foreign source income is taxable even if I don't set foot in the US for a decade)

If you give people incentives to do something harmful, they're probably going to do it. And how can we complain? We told them to do it.

[Conan71]

Its all about net wage. If they could hire highly trained technically savy people at below minimum wage in the US it might be a different story. Bottom line: you can hire three college educated employees in a developing country for the price of one in the US (and you get to skip out on employee taxes and benefits).

Regulations do add to the cost of business as well.

We had an interesting conversation with one of our vendors who was in town yesterday.  They are ramping up new production at their plant in North Carolina which now essentially does structural welding and sheet metal parts for their finished products, but not code pressure-vessel fabrication.  For years, this company has manufactured their pressure vessels in their ASME code plant in Pennsylvania.  They are investing the money in their NC facility to make it an ASME code shop now.  The reason?  Their Pennsylvania operations are union.  North Carolina is not.  He said he did an analysis on wages and attendant costs and said union wages weren't drastically higher than those of non-union workers performing like duties in non-union shops.  He said the real cost is in administrative costs in things like additional personnel to deal with union issues.

I found that quite interesting.  I always assumed it was because the wages were vastly higher than those of non-union workers, doesn't appear to be the case.

Take a look around, American unions are pricing themselves out of business.  Either jobs are moving to right-to-work states or off-shore entirely.

[Conan71]

I've come to the conclusion we either need to implement equalization tariffs or stop deferring foreign-source income from taxation. (funny that my foreign source income is taxable even if I don't set foot in the US for a decade)

If you give people incentives to do something harmful, they're probably going to do it. And how can we complain? We told them to do it.

I pretty much agree on the tariff point. 

[carltonplace]

Regulations do add to the cost of business as well.

We had an interesting conversation with one of our vendors who was in town yesterday.  They are ramping up new production at their plant in North Carolina which now essentially does structural welding and sheet metal parts for their finished products, but not code pressure-vessel fabrication.  For years, this company has manufactured their pressure vessels in their ASME code plant in Pennsylvania.  They are investing the money in their NC facility to make it an ASME code shop now.  The reason?  Their Pennsylvania operations are union.  North Carolina is not.  He said he did an analysis on wages and attendant costs and said union wages weren't drastically higher than those of non-union workers performing like duties in non-union shops.  He said the real cost is in administrative costs in things like additional personnel to deal with union issues.

I found that quite interesting.  I always assumed it was because the wages were vastly higher than those of non-union workers, doesn't appear to be the case.

Take a look around, American unions are pricing themselves out of business.  Either jobs are moving to right-to-work states or off-shore entirely.

I can't disagree that unions are out of touch with business realities.

[Gaspar]

Now that the jobs bill is off the table Democrats in the Senate can move on to more important issues.  U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy says he's planning to introduce legislation to make it a federal crime for people to mislabel products as containing maple syrup.

[Conan71]

Now that the jobs bill is off the table Democrats in the Senate can move on to more important issues.  U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy says he's planning to introduce legislation to make it a federal crime for people to mislabel products as containing maple syrup.

That will create jobs and help the economy I'm sure.

[Gaspar]

The interesting thing is that after Harry Reid refused to bring it up for a vote, and then finally conceded to the president's wishes, he spent the past few days trying to drum up support from republicans and his fellow democrats.  He put his face in front of every camera and demanded that those rascally republicans were holding things up.

Based on the vote record from yesterday's vote, Mr. Reid was among the three Democrats that voted NAY.  After all that, he went ahead and voted against it.  http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=1&vote=00160

It seems he did not want to be on the record for bad legislation any more than his Republican counterparts did.

[we vs us]

The interesting thing is that after Harry Reid refused to bring it up for a vote, and then finally conceded to the president's wishes, he spent the past few days trying to drum up support from republicans and his fellow democrats.  He put his face in front of every camera and demanded that those rascally republicans were holding things up.

Based on the vote record from yesterday's vote, Mr. Reid was among the three Democrats that voted NAY.  After all that, he went ahead and voted against it.  http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=1&vote=00160

It seems he did not want to be on the record for bad legislation any more than his Republican counterparts did.

Voting against it was a procedural tactic.  According to the rules of the Senate, if Reid votes against it, he can then bring it up again for another vote.

There wasn't enough Republican support to invoke cloture (60 vote threshold), so the plan now seems to be to chop up the pieces and put them through one at a time.

[Townsend]

The interesting thing is that after Harry Reid refused to bring it up for a vote, and then finally conceded to the president's wishes, he spent the past few days trying to drum up support from republicans and his fellow democrats.  He put his face in front of every camera and demanded that those rascally republicans were holding things up.

Based on the vote record from yesterday's vote, Mr. Reid was among the three Democrats that voted NAY.  After all that, he went ahead and voted against it.  http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=112&session=1&vote=00160

It seems he did not want to be on the record for bad legislation any more than his Republican counterparts did.

Man, you've got to read below the headlines.

[Gaspar]

Voting against it was a procedural tactic.  According to the rules of the Senate, if Reid votes against it, he can then bring it up again for another vote.

There wasn't enough Republican support to invoke cloture (60 vote threshold), so the plan now seems to be to chop up the pieces and put them through one at a time.

You have it backwards.  You are lecturing the wrong person.

Motion to Invoke Cloture on the motion to proceed (the nuclear option), would allow the Senate to bring the bill up for a vote without debate.  The Cloture vote ends debate on the bill.  Once Cloture is invoked, you can avoid a filibuster which is what the Democrats and the President wanted to happen.

Since that was defeated, the motion to proceed carries and the bill will now be up for debate, which is what the Republicans wanted so that the crap can be scraped away and additional amendments can be added, or the bill can be split up into clean portions.

Reid voted against Cloture because he did not want to be on record for being the one to lead the nuclear option.  He was being sly with his own party.

[Cats Cats Cats]

Man, you've got to read below the headlines.

His kids had to catch the bus