So we have high school dropout who's job is basically being a fetch it man making enough money to buy a brand new car while people who provide a genuine service are unrecognized or shown up as rubes.
I get that we want fairness and opportunity, but how does paying some one more than the value of their job help anyone (other than the guy being overpaid)? It just means the cost for the service is higher than it needs to be, so unless the consumer is also being overpaid for their job, they are being squeezed to subsidize someone else's lifestyle. How is this good?
I'm also sad about the decline in middle class opportunity, but I'm not willing to just pay people more if there is no additional value. We've become very used to luxury. We live in a world that is barely recognizable to our previous generations. The giant capitalist engine simply responds to what we want. We demand more and cheaper and it finds a way to produce it. That we ground up the middle class opportunity to feed the beast is our own problem.
I think you missed the crux of the article. We can't make money if we do not manufacture goods to sell to other countries. So what I think the guy was saying is, we went from a General Motors economy to a wahl mart economy. I agree that we want more for our hard earned dollars and underdeveloped countries are more that glad to see big corperations open up factories and hire people. But part of the problem is ther is no OSHA, no child labor laws, working hours, job security. and the list goes on and on. So if people would only start buying American products we would all be better off. And honistly if you think an apprentice electrician just hands light bulbs to a journeyman, well I'll sell you a bridge.
it may be that the middle class isn't dead, it's just been "regulated" and as a result of the additional senseless bureaucratic compliance, they're just suffering the consequences...
Not buying it as the sole reason for the loss of the middle class. This is simply a mantra oft repeated by wall street to install a psychic firewall against regulation. Businesses have overwhelmingly stated its LACK OF DEMAND for this economy.
it may be that the middle class isn't dead, it's just been "regulated" and as a result of the additional senseless bureaucratic compliance, they're just suffering the consequences...
Steve Zelnak is a member of the Job Creators Alliance, a nonprofit committed to the defense of the free enterprise system. He is also the chairman of the Board of Directors and former CEO of Martin Marietta Materials, Inc., and chairman and majority owner of ZP Enterprises.
Since the 1930s, the federal government has seized more authority and imposed masses of new laws, rules, and regulations on all of us. Some of it was much needed. For example, the Environment Protection Agency did a great job of cleaning up our dirty air and contaminated water over a period of 30 years. Then, like all bureaucracies, they just couldn't stop being "helpful."
The result today is increasingly complex rules and regulations that are applied at levels that are well below where they have any value-adding impact. They simply drive up cost: cost to understand the rules (the average person can't understand the rules and regulations because they are written in a special language called bureaucratese—you must hire an expert who is fluent in the language for an explanation), cost to comply, and then added cost to the products or services you are selling.
Storm water regulations are a great example. If you built a house or a small office building, you are ultimately familiar with the requirements that cause you to hire an environmental engineer to assess the property, and then various measures you must take to limit storm water runoff, including detention ponds. I recently lost a sale on a residential lot that I own because the young couple could not afford to build a house and handle the $80,000-plus cost of complying with the storm water regulations on a seven acre lot that was nowhere close to a stream or other waterway.
If it is a large property with significant impermeable surfaces, such as parking lots, the rules probably make sense, but not for a small residential lot. That is one home not built that would create business for carpenters, plumbers, material suppliers, lawyers, and many more. There is no question that the impact of excessive regulation is that it stifles job creation. The real strength of America is its middle class, many of whom are small business owners or self employed and who are most impacted by these regulations.
Our government is killing off their opportunities with inappropriate regulation that penalizes these important people with high cost and high stress. Big business may complain, but generally they like heavy regulation because it drives out smaller competitors. Smaller competitors tend to be more aggressive and therefore help drive prices down. The upshot is prices for the average consumer go up, small businesses are hurt, and only big corporations reap any benefit.
It is time to help the bureaucrats and the politicians understand we have had enough.
That's the best article I have read in a long time. UNION YES, BUY AMERICAN !
Interesting, but it just describes a situation that is pretty clearly unsustainable:
From the article:
“I had this student,” my history teacher once told me, “a real chucklehead. Just refused to study. Dropped out of school, a year or so later, he came back to see me. He pointed out the window at a brand-new Camaro and said, ‘That’s my car.’ Meanwhile, I was driving a beat-up station wagon. I think he was an electrician’s assistant or something. He handed light bulbs to an electrician.”
So we have high school dropout who's job is basically being a fetch it man making enough money to buy a brand new car while people who provide a genuine service are unrecognized or shown up as rubes.
I get that we want fairness and opportunity, but how does paying some one more than the value of their job help anyone (other than the guy being overpaid)? It just means the cost for the service is higher than it needs to be, so unless the consumer is also being overpaid for their job, they are being squeezed to subsidize someone else's lifestyle. How is this good?
I'm also sad about the decline in middle class opportunity, but I'm not willing to just pay people more if there is no additional value. We've become very used to luxury. We live in a world that is barely recognizable to our previous generations. The giant capitalist engine simply responds to what we want. We demand more and cheaper and it finds a way to produce it. That we ground up the middle class opportunity to feed the beast is our own problem.
Take a small, loving family... starve them for a few years then deny them health insurance at any cost. then smash the people, separate them. Oh, and make sure you pick a disabled family that can't navigate the raging waters of bureaucracy so then never receive any kind of benefits. Smash the people and smash the small business that earned them nearly enough to eat and keep a roof over their head but nothing more. Smash it. Find a time when they're weakest, when their whole clan is dying then evict them from their home - the same tactic separate and smah. You're not done until you have 2 disabled individuals who have lost each other and everything thing they own, wandering around on the streets. Then and only then have you achieved
Right on! The BS of the so-called "American Dream" died in the 1950s, if it every truly existed at all. An entire generation has been duped into this garbage and is struggling to make ends meet.
Yeah, those idyllic 1950s, when non-whites were considered sub-human, women were supposed to stay pregnant in the kitchen, gays did not exist, etc.
It's no wonder old straight white men want to take us back there, it was a great time for THEM. Everybody else, not so much.
The American Nightmare dawns during the early 21st century, MB. The words 'Upward Mobility' have been added to the tombstone, along with Citizens United and the Volcker rule.
Greed, as in the past, will bring on 'The Fall of Rome II'
Right on! The BS of the so-called "American Dream" died in the 1950s, if it every truly existed at all. An entire generation has been duped into this garbage and is struggling to make ends meet.
Take a small, loving family... starve them for a few years then deny them health insurance at any cost. then smash the people, separate them. Oh, and make sure you pick a disabled family that can't navigate the raging waters of bureaucracy so then never receive any kind of benefits. Smash the people and smash the small business that earned them nearly enough to eat and keep a roof over their head but nothing more. Smash it. Find a time when they're weakest, when their whole clan is dying then evict them from their home - the same tactic separate and smah. You're not done until you have 2 disabled individuals who have lost each other and everything thing they own, wandering around on the streets. Then and only then have you achieved
The American Nightmare dawns during the early 21st century, MB. The words 'Upward Mobility' have been added to the tombstone, along with Citizens United and the Volcker rule.
Greed, as in the past, will bring on 'The Fall of Rome II'
Take a small, loving family... starve them for a few years then deny them health insurance at any cost. then smash the people, separate them. Oh, and make sure you pick a disabled family that can't navigate the raging waters of bureaucracy so then never receive any kind of benefits. Smash the people and smash the small business that earned them nearly enough to eat and keep a roof over their head but nothing more. Smash it. Find a time when they're weakest, when their whole clan is dying then evict them from their home - the same tactic separate and smah. You're not done until you have 2 disabled individuals who have lost each other and everything thing they own, wandering around on the streets. Then and only then have you achieved
Right on! The BS of the so-called "American Dream" died in the 1950s, if it every truly existed at all. 
