Can An Airline Guy Steer An Auto Company?

It's called automation. But near slave wages in china and even slave labor in some cases is much cheaper/

To drive down wages.

Yet, there's lots of crappy jobs US citizens do every day.

No, it's about breaking the back of the developed countries and riding the world of that pesky middle class.

They aren't emulating us.

They can want, but they'll never get it under most of those governments. (S. Korea and india maybe being the exceptions) We won't have it here in the US for much longer either the way things are going.

I try to buy as little as possible of what is made in china. I have worked in product development for stuff made in china. It tought me to avoid anything made in china if possible or unless it was really really cheap. A mustang made in china would have to sell for the price the mustang was introduced in 1964 for (but in current dollars) to get me to consider it.

I really don't have a problem sourcing most everything I need from nations with proper labor and environmental protections.

I suggest you learn how that value is calculated. It might surprise you.

If you're willing to wage compete with illegal aliens in many cases.

Civil engineers require education and PE license.

While true for some people, it's only a matter of time before product development jobs are all gone to china. Currently most engineers in product development face spending a lot of time in China. Soon companies are going to burn out engineers on travel, they are already needing to pay more to get people to put up with it. That is those who's jobs they haven't moved to china for greatly reduced pay.

And sooner or later, many a company in the USA will be outright owned by chinese companies looking to do something with their dollars. That is if they just don't decide to sell on their own once having learned everything from the US company they did contract manufacturing for and drive it out of buisness.

Unions became more like thugs and beating up on the automakers. They are very responsible for the mess as are others.

So is the cost of living for these people. They aren't making slave wages by their standards. Besides, look at this country's history. Remember the children working in the textile mills for almost nothing? Lower wage jobs turning into higher wage jobs is a right of passage when moving into an industrialized society.

Not in the construction industry here in the Washington, DC area. If it weren't for illegal immigrants hardly anything would get built and forget about getting that Whopper at the drive through. They are here because the jobs are here and they pay better than anything they could find in Mexico. The only thing driving down wages in this country is workers that refuse to educate themselves or seek retraining for the good paying jobs that are available.

I watch "Dirty Jobs" too. The only reason for US citizens to keep doing these crappy jobs is they won't educate themselves to qualify for the better jobs. IMO, I would rather work to educate myself than feed slop to pigs for a living (unless I owned the pig farm).

Just how are they breaking our backs? I don't feel it at all. The workers in developing countries want what we have, nothing more and nothing less. Why do people see wealth as something that can't be created? Do you really think if they improve their standard of living ours has to decline as a result? Countries like India, China, Korea etc. are creating their middle class right now. Anyone in this country that wants to be in the middle class can do it easily. Educate themselves and go get one of the middle class jobs that need to be filled. There are plenty of them. Don't believe me? Look at the want ads in any major newspaper. BTW, when I say educate I don't necessarily mean a college degree. It can mean OTJ training, a few courses at a community college or just some research at the local library.

Look at our history from an economic perspective and look at their's and you will see quite a few similarities.

They are getting it in China as I type this response. The same goes for India, South America and Indonesia. Look at the recent history of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong etc. If they can bring themselves from utter ruin to what they are today then why can't these other undeveloped countries? Besides, China can't move to free political society very quickly because of their huge population. Look at what Russia went through. It was ugly and they have maybe 1/5 the population of China. Can you imagine 1.5 BILLION starving people running wild with nuclear weapons at their disposal. Actually, I think the Chinese have done a pretty decent job under the circumstances. Political change will follow the economic change but it will take a long time to evolve and I think that is a good thing.

Ninety nine percent of the time I don't give a second thought about where something I buy is made. I look at the quality and the price to decide whether I purchase an item. I suspect most people are the same way.

That is a hard thing to track. I don't see how we can expect these developing countries to do any different than we did in the past. If anything they are probably doing a better job overall than we did at the same stage of economic development.

It is an indicator. I know there are PLENTY of very good paying jobs in the Washington, DC area. This is an indisputable fact. Many of these people that have exhausted unemployment benefits refuse to remold themselves to be viable in the current job market. They are the proverbial buggy whip makers that refuse to develop another trade.

Anyone looking to compete against illegal immigrants for jobs needs to elevate their aspirations. They don't have to compete with them.

I would estimate that more than 50%-60% of people working in civil engineering firms have no college degree. They can be surveyors, CAD operators, administrative or even designers working under the supervision of a professional engineer. Some of the best site designers I have worked with had nothing but a high school diploma. What they did was work hard and educate themselves through OTJ training. Many of these "self-made engineers" have salaries now approaching $100k and some far beyond.

There is one area of great concern I have for this country. The school system is failing miserably in getting kids to go into science and engineering. If anything brings this country to its knees this will be what does it. I see these man-on-the-street interviews that ask the simplest of questions and the young people don't have a clue about the correct answer. It is downright scary to watch. IMO, in today's world, developing innovative technologies is the real engine that drives this country and not manufacturing. If this ever leaves us then we are doomed.

I agree.

so it's ok that they live in company run dorms and hovels in cities so polluted you cut the air with a knife?

Problem is, there are no human rights in china, there is no bill of rights, there is no such thing as conflict of interest. The military general, the high government offical, the ranking party member, and the company CEO can and many times are the same person.

I suggest you actually research about how wages in many jobs have been flat for years and some are paying less in numerical dollars now than they used to. That's what flooding the labor market does.

Here's some news for you, some people just don't have the abilities. And the school system in the USA isn't exactly doing a bang up job either.

High taxes, flooding the job market with labor to drive down wages. Outsourcing to other countries.

Engineering wages in my field have been more or less flat since shrub took office.

And under their governments they aren't about to get it. Which is why I don't want their systems brought here.

Strawman.

Strawman.

China, the koreas, and india have population and resources to develop it without outsourced jobs from the USA.

Until the population is increased by a 100 million legal immigrants plus millions more illegal as per the bills in congress. Flood the labor market, increase taxes to pay for the huge cost increases of social services. Not only that but the diseases, etc. Not to mention that people are told they don't have to assimulate any more, which acts to divide the people and allow those ruling to pit groups against each other. Not to mention the labor practices of a century plus ago that did that.

Newspapers are pretty slim on jobs. Newspapers are practically obsolete for job searches for anyone with education or experience. Now I know for a fact that you haven't been out there looking in the last 6 years.

The entire population can't be doing HVAC repair and the like.

I see a tyranny that surpresses people so that wealthy, connected, corrupt elite can rule and become wealthier.

Japan was an industrialized nation in the 1930s. Fully modern. It was bombed flat, that's it. It recovered. It is not in any way comparable to china. US corporations never in mass closed up shop to move jobs to japan. South Korea is also a more or less free nation, US companies are not in any large way outsourcing jobs to South Korea. South Korea built itself up. Taiwan, also a more or less free nation, a fair amount of outsourcing, not comparable to China. Hong Kong, now part of China but it's development was under UK rule. Much like Taiwan.

It's comparing apples and oranges.

See above.

Free political societies are bad for business. People might not like living in a polluted cesspool and start complaining, etc and so forth. They will not be able to free themselves as the state will grow more powerful faster than the people. The people will not catch up. In fact, if anything they'll become more scared because they'll have a little to lose.

There is no reason to suspect political change will follow. None. I find that in reality the opposite of no change or change for the worse is more likely. The kind of technologies being employed by the US and UK governments right now could be employed in China if they aren't already and there will be little the people could to do to bring about political change.

Should I start telling you stories of 'made in china' quality? Here's a clue, you can't tell by visual inspection that the plastic has been overheated in the molding process to up the cycle time resulting in a part that will be inferior and will easily crack in service. Yet, that's just one practice of vendors in China I've run into. Manufacturing processes are crap, material substitutions occur a lot.

They can easily achieve their goals without shipping massive quantities of goods to the USA and having US companies manufacture there in mass.

Not everyone has universal talents. All the other job markets may not have enough growth to absorb people from others. Maybe companies are set in what they want. Companies can be extremely picky on trivial details.

Last time I had to look for a job I had gotten through the HR phone interview with one company, but the hiring manager didn't want to interview me because I hadn't worked with the latest version of ProE. It might take me at most a couple hours to get used to the changes. Nope, automatically disqualified. It's sort of like online dating and being a month too old or a inch too short or tall.... Few years back I know I was the best person on the market for a job. I was interviewed by the place and they didn't like that I was a bit rusty with one aspect of part modeling in ProE. I had a half dozen recruiters call me for that job in the next 6 months. I don't know if they ever found anyone, but I know that if they had offered me the job, I would have been up to speed long before they found whomever they ended up hiring.

The illegal immigrants up their level as time goes on bringing more and more once viable jobs down the wage scale.

But what you also neglect is that people have talents and things they like to do. Are you suggesting that once the product design and development jobs are all overseas I go to law school and be a lawyer? I don't have any natural talent for it like I do engineering, I would hate it. Sure, it pays well... but I'd rather remain in engineering.

That's quite a different thing than what your previous wording indicated. But so what? Not everyone can be absorbed into those fields. You don't seem to understand that while some specific fields have demand, they cannot absorb the large numbers of people displaced elsewhere. And as the displacement wave moves through up the ranks of job quality, there's more people competing for the remaining jobs.

Let's say the product design jobs are all gone and go to china... Guess what? Where are all the engineers in product design going to go? They are going to try to disperse into other engineering areas. There are only so many jobs managing chinese outsourcing available. The rest will spill out... they'll start taking those jobs in civil engineering. What's your no degree cad guy going to do when your firm can hire a guy who might have a PE license already or could get one quickly, has cad skills far and above the firm's needs is used to doing all his own cad work, and has the ability to do much of the civil engineer's work right out of the box? After all, a mechanical engineer is at least half way to a civil degree and vice-versa. Are your no degree guys (especially those without a decade plus experience) going to be able to compete in a job market like that?

Don't you know, science and engineering is something poor developing nations have their kids go into. The US is beyond that.... Yes I am being sarcastic, but that is the attitude out there. Engineering is for those kids in china and india, not americans. It's for those looking to build a middle class.

It's been a systematic dumbing down. An educated, free society is too difficult to control. Dumbing down the US population appears to have been a consistant goal.

The problem is, they aren't free and won't be as the technology to keep the tyrannies in place grows.

Of course it isn't. I doubt that is anywhere close to the norm in these countries. As the demand for labor increases in the third world treatment of the labor force will improve. Look at our history. It isn't pretty either.

I'm not going to presume I can tell China's government how to handle 1.5 BILLION people. I can't imagine the logistical and societal issues in supporting that size of a population.

I have talked with many business people that like the way the Chinese do business. They say there is far less bold faced lying than there is in many developed countries. Plus they get things done on time and on budget. Look at our politicians and tell me they don't have their hands in the honey pot up to their arm pits. Not much difference IMO.

They haven't been flat in this area of the country. Engineer's salaries have doubled in the last 5-10 years. Fast food jobs here pay $7-$8 per hour to start. The immigrants are taking jobs no one else wants. They work harder than most people I know. People that are content to run a cash register at Wal-Mart can't expect their salary to raise beyond the CIP index every year. Like i said, there are plenty of good paying jobs that go unfilled year after year.

They don't have the ability? Or is it the desire? I went to a high school consisting of 400 students in grades 9-12 in a high school that was built in 1904. We had no swimming pool, indoor track etc. I graduated and went to one of the top undergraduate engineering schools in the country. The teacher unions are destroying the school system in this country. Add to this parents that don't care and students with no discipline or respect for the faculty and the outlook is bleak.

This all goes back to my mantra.... educate yourself if you want a well paying job.

I agree with taxes being too high. I attribute it in this coutry to politicians that can't stop spending money that is not their's to spend. I can't blame China for this mess.

Civil engineers have been underpaid for a long time. Maybe we are just catching up. I attribute the flat wages in the electronics fields to the dot com bust. there are planty of jobs in this area. Maybe some of these people should relocate.

I don't see why their systems would be brought here. Economics is the great equalizer. As these countries develop the population will demand better treatment. Economic well being promotes political empowerment.

Is wealth created or not?

Does it?

Outsourced jobs in India are a minute portion of their job growth. They could loose every outsourced job and it would barely register on their economic indicators. Outsourcing of jobs isn't a problem for this country. It is very small compared to the rest of our economy and overall job growth. Besides, all the jobs companies like Toyota creates offsets these losses.

Now you're being silly. You do know that immigration built this country? Is it OK for all the Europeans to flood across the Atlantic but the Hispanics aren't good enough? The Hispanics I see here illegally work extremely hard. My only gripe is they will pack 10 families into a single house. Anyone that runs the gauntlet they do to get here just to work seven days a week in a back breaking job I wouldn't think of doing has my respect. They have a work ethic that many people here can't touch.

I've been looking for people to hire. They don't exist here. There are approximately 25,000 hi-tech jobs unfilled in the Washington, DC area alone. The national unemployment rate is low too. Most anybody that needs a job can find one.

You're thinking one dimensionally. There are a multitude of good paying jobs available. They just require some education and ambition from the employee.

I'm sure it happened somewhere. Almost all the wealthy people I know personally, worked their asses off for what they have. They suppressed no one, had no connections and are far from corrupt. In fact, they gave many decent jobs to many decent hard working people in the process of becoming rich.

My point was if these countries could build themselves up then why can't the rest of them?

After the devastation of WWII I would say Japan was for from industrialized. They worked hard to get to where they are today. As did Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. Just as China, Indonesia and India are doing now.

You really are a "the glass is half empty" kind of guy, aren't you? ;)

There is also no reason to believe political change won't happen. It happened economically so I see no reason it won't eventually happen politically.

If the quality/price ratio isn't there then I just don't buy it. Depending on the item I might not care that much about quality. If I am buying a product your company produces it is your job to insure the quality of foreign parts, not mine. If you can't get the quality from China then go to India or have it made here. Maybe I, as the consumer, am willing to live with slightly lower quality for a price break. The bottom line is it is your job to figure all this out and not mine. If your company can't do it and another one can then you may see your job evaporate or you company go belly up.

I was referring to labor issues not exporting goods.

The unemployment rate here is around 2%. We can absorb a lot of people. Anyone in your area that needs a job should come here. I guarantee they will find one.

If you wanted the job bad enough could you have polished up our skills in that area and then went back to them and marketed yourself as a new and improved hiring prospect?

So the immigrants can adapt and get the good jobs but the people born and raised here can't? What's up with that?

As I have told the youngsters in our family, not everyone has a job they love. If a person loves a job that doesn't pay squat then they shouldn't complain about the pay. My guess is you will always have a job in engineering. I don't find much fun in engineering these days. it is boring and tedious to me. That is why I am in the process of changing to doing land development. I have had to educate myself on many different things to make the switch and take a lot of risks.

The civil engineering firms can't solve employment problems of the country but it is one example of the opportunities that exist. My wife works for a company that supplies electronics equipement to the Federal government and there are numerous jobs to had in her area. People just need to educate themselves a little to get their foot in the door. Once in the pay is good and the jobs are secure with great benefits. Believe me, the jobs are out there if people look hard enough and are willing to be flexible.

I don't agree with your doom and gloom scenario. I know there aren't enough engineers across the board in this country. There are plenty of places for them to land. If anything we will run out of engineers.

It is a problem here and now in this country. What I hear from kids today is that getting an engineering degree is too hard. They don't want to work that hard.

Most of the young people today are like water. They always take the path of least resistance. I fully believe that the kids that are getting technical degrees today will be the upper economic class of tomorrow.

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Brent P) wrote in news:FIGdnWSd48FHF2LZnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

The Aussie cars in general seem to be a lot more desirable than what's offered here in the states. It's interesting that both Ford and GM have vehicles down under that some of us would kill to have here.

The big difference with DC's adopting MB stuff is that MB is already very familiar (in a good way) to Americans. Not so with the Aussie vehicles.

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to see some of those hipo Aussie things ripping up the streets here in the states. But IMO it all gets down to marketing, which the American makers are horrible at.

Joe Calypso Green '93 5.0 LX AOD hatch with a few goodies Black '03 Dakota 5.9 R/T CC

Companies in china often have the workers living in company owned dorm like housing.

Exactly how is that going to happen with billions of people and no human rights? Remember, the people in the USA could be armed and had protections of their rights. They could also always work elsewhere. These very important things do not exist in China.

So tyranny is just fine for you then....

I've done business with chinese companies.

BULLSHIT. They lie about their capabilities and the part quality consistantly.

BULLSHIT. The resulting parts are crap and it takes many rounds of tooling changes process changes before they are just barely acceptable.

It's clear you simply don't have the first hand experience required for this discussion.

Is it 5 or 10? Or are you talking about someone who was fresh out 10 years ago, who now with 10 years experience makes double?

Same old cheerleading... the jobs americans won't do.... yadda yadda... it's that people can do other jobs that are better for the money if they can't get filled. Which means they need to pay more or realize it's the

Do you really think the USA can absorb another 100,000,000 people and it not have a negative effect on everyone's life?

I've known a number of engineers who didn't have the ability to be such. They were good at school. My former employer would make them managers where they could do more damage with their inability to design their way out of a wet paper bag.

On a more serious note, yes ability. Not everyone is capable of the same things.

See my references in the previous post.

And while I agree with that, you don't seem to understand that even skilled professions are being flooded labor wise. Also that the jobs that require education are being shipped overseas.

Yes, the politicians owned by corporations allowing illegals to flood the labor market and have access to all the services tax payers pay for.

Have you not paid attention ? CA,NM,AZ,TX, etc are being claimed as part of mexico.

There is no basis for them to get it. In China they will simply throw the leaders in prison or shoot them dead. Corporations never had that sort of power in the USA. (although they'll probably have it shortly) Mexico uses the USA as a relief valve so it's ruling elite is never brought to task.

No, they don't. They offset some. And you think it's a little problem because you don't pay attention to where things are made. Pay attention, the loss of manufacturing hasn't been 'little'.

Old whine.

Race card.

That's the last straw. I could put up with the lack of experience on the manufacturing side and the third hand stories, but that's just one strawman too many.

Except those cars are good old american cars in concept. The only US market things they might have trouble with is crap like cupholders.

I think we will have to agree to disagree. Maybe I'm wrong but you seem to see this country as circling the drain and I don't think we are even close. There is always a group of people who want things to remain the same. I'm not one of them. I see the influx of Hispanics as just another page in our history books. People thought the Chinese, Irish, Italian immigrants at the turn of the century were less than worthless. These people were proved wrong. My gut tells me that anyone that works as hard as the Hispanics do are no a drag on our economy. I don't see China, India, Indonesia etc. as an economic threat either and the best way to keep them from being military threat is to embrace them economically. We need their developing markets to send our exports to as much as they need ours.

The world is changing very quickly. Either the USA can be a leader of this change or sit back and try and keep the status quo. If we don't lead then we will be left behind. The history of this country shows our greatest strength is our ability to promote and react to change. If you look at a snap shot of the work force in this country at 50 year intervals for the last 250 years you will see wholesale changes in the jobs people hold. As new industries develop old ones die. It is the way of things and it is what has made, and will continue to make, the USA a world leader and not a follower.

Arguments I didn't make. I didn't say mexicans were worthless, I didn't make any reference to where or what the people where. They could be purple for all I care.

If there weren't any social services, social security, the need for roads, emergency medical treatment, and whole host of other costs, if they were entirely on their own like it was in 1900 then it wouldn't bother me as much. However it's not 1900.

An influx of 100,000,000 people means a great deal of cost, a flooding of the labor market, a straining of water supplies, a crowding of the roads, cities, etc. This is a scale that is simply huge. It's not an empty country anymore either.

Add to this the desire of many of those to take over several states and make those part of their nation of origin.

I can't spend any more time dealing with this habbit of yours of making up arguments for me. You clearly want to cast me as someone who is a racist and affraid of change. Of course that's par for the course with discourse in this nation now.

You have failed to present how flooding the labor supply is a good thing, how we are going to pay for all the costs of these people. Congress doesn't consider that either. They just moan like you that we need cheap labor and then take cheap shots at any critic by saying they are jobs americans won't do and imply or outright claim racism.

Take a look at the numbers, you'd be surprised. A large number know how to work the social services, how to use emergency rooms, etc and so forth. Remember, all these taxpayer supplied services didn't exist in 1900.

Anyone who owe a lot of money to is an economic threat. Anyone who holds large amounts of your currency is an enconomic threat. See what China has of each.

US isn't making very much these days. I know you want to cast me as someone affraid of change, sorry. There is change for the better and change for the worse. Short term thinking that is guiding this present change is a change for the worse long term.

think of me as you will. Im tired of going in circles.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you thought the current crop of illegal immigrants were worthless.

Most of the illegal immigrants pay taxes on the wages they earn. They are as financially (don't confuse this with legally) entitled to services as any other tax payer, IMO.

There aren't 100 million people living in Mexico. The number you are throwing around is absurd. If too many of them come here then there won't be enough jobs for them and they will leave. It is a supply and demand thing. Don't suggest they will start taking the higher profile jobs because the people qualified for them are staying in Mexico.

Now you're paranoia is getting the better of you. ;)

Sorry, but I take someone that wants to buck market forces and keep jobs here as a person that is against change. Maybe I'm wrong.

You're "flood" is really a demand and supply issue. We need the cheap labor the illegals bring to us. Our unemployment rate is 4.6% and it really doesn't get much lower than this, ever. Assume we can wave a magic wand and all the illegal immigrants are sent back to where they came from. Where exactly are we going to find the additional 10 million workers to to fill their jobs? Import them back in from Mexico?

There is a racist component to how many see the illegal immigration issue. Like it or not that is the way things are. It happened to the Irish, Chinese etc. and it is happening to the Hispanics. There will always be a group of people that see the poor, uneducated newcomers as a threat to their way of life. I'm not in that group and I don't know if you are or not. I don't speak for you, just for me. I see how hard these people work and we have all benefited either directly or indirectly from the cheap labor they have provided. They are an integral part of our economy now and getting rid of them is not an option. Why do you think we haven't booted them out? We could run damn near all of them out in a matter of months if we wanted to do it.

These people pay taxes and never get a refund check. If they are employed by a business then they pay taxes. Why do you feel they deserve less than the able bodied U.S. citizen sitting next to them in the emergency room that is collecting a welfare check or that is paying the same amount of income tax as them.

You see economic threat where I see economic competition. Our debt service as a percentage of GNP is lower than nearly all the advanced countries. Our number looks big because our economy is huge in comparison.

That comes with transitioning to a service economy. Japan is making the same transition now that we made in the 1970s and 1980s. Just as it was painful for us it is painful for them. If we manufactured much of what we consume then we couldn't afford it. I really don't care if my underwear is made in Guatemala and I really don't want to pay twice the price to have it made in South Carolina. This goes for darn near everything I consume.

If this is true then I have confidence that our free market system will correct it. If you want to see what protectionism can do to a country then look at France. When it comes to corrective economic measures, I trust free market forces to do the right thing far more than the government.

I never meant to attack you personally. I apologize if you felt I have. I just love a good, vigorous debate.