dualdj1 wrote:And Romney is just a crook...
I don't know if he's a crook or not, but he hasn't done a single thing to lead me to believe he is. But I have to admit, I haven't done a serious deep-dive into everything he's done. Although I do believe just because he's rich and successful is not enough for me to dislike him. I don't believe that in order to be rich you have to be greedy. But to dislike someone purely because they are rich IS being envious. Before you can dislike someone else, you often have to take a close look at yourself and determine why you believe the way you do. There may be reaffirmation in that effort. Or you may see something that's hard to admit and will take a long time to come to terms with. I frequently look within myself just to keep myself from being biased and sometimes I find I'm not thinking clearly and instead thinking with emotion. It happens...
dualdj1 wrote:...He may be able to make money, but that does not make him a good businessman or a good American. Reinvest that money in America, don't send it overseas, don't avoid paying taxes because you can, don't sacrifice jobs to save a few $, and you would win an election hands down...
He was not in charge making decisions for Bain Capital when they were outsourcing. But even if he was, that wouldn't upset me. I don't blame rich people for finding ways to pay less taxes or pay less for anything they need. I do the same thing when I take my stuff to H&R Block. I don't want to pay any more taxes than I have to. If I were rich, I wouldn't think any differently...I'd do everything I could to avoid paying any more taxes than I had to particularly as you get richer, you pay more and more in taxes. After all, it's the top 1% that pay 40% of the nation's taxes. And nearly 50% of the nation doesn't pay any federal income tax (i.e. they get all their taxes back at tax return time).
Taxes are an unfortunate necessity. But that doesn't mean that you have to be happy about paying them or that you should be eager to pay more than you must. And anybody that believes that you should buys into the philosophy that the best thing you can do with your money is pay taxes. I don't believe that. If you want to do something charitable for your country/community, I believe your money is far better used in charity organizations or better yet spent on exactly what/how you want and donated in other forms. IMO, the best charity is not a gift of money, but a gift of skill or time as a volunteer.
And from a business standpoint, it's a business's job to find the cheapest way to get a job done. If outsourcing is a way to do that, then that shouldn't be demonized. Instead, we should look within ourselves as a nation and realize maybe we aren't as competitive as other countries and then ask why? Maybe we get demand too much? Anti Union people love to point to how collective bargaining strangles a businesses ability to be competitive. And of course pro Union people are quick to point out the multi-million dollar incomes given to CEOs and top execs. As far as I'm concerned, if paying a CEO a 10 million a year in return for his skill to save a company a billion, then he's worth what he's being paid. What I think is absurd are execs that get bonuses when the company took bailout money. But there's no fixing that problem until we get out of the mentality that things are too big to fail. No organization is too big to fail...the United States included.
But I tend to believe it's because companies have overly restrictive regulations and too many taxes to pay. Think of all the taxes we have. Federal income tax. Social Security. If your state has income tax, you pay again. Corporate income taxes. Environmental taxes. Local/state sales tax. Property tax. Vehicle tax. Gasoline/Diesel tax. FCC fees/taxes on your house & cell phones. FCC fees on internet services. Taxes on your tires (both on the new rubber and on the disposal). Special hidden taxes most people don't know about like sugar taxes, ethanol mandates, paint taxes, refrigeration taxes, electrical energy taxes, the list goes on and on with all the various fees and taxes there are that we don't even keep up with or often know exist that are just buried in the price of what we pay for.
Then figure in added costs due to regulations, which are often just as constricting as taxes, but can't be called taxes. A lot of the restrictions and regulations put in place thanks to the TRUE crooks like the ones at Enron or the Bernie Madoffs caused so much overhead for companies that they have to hire additional people to keep up with all the paperwork and stuff required to meet those regulations. That means more pay, more corporate taxes, more benefits expenditures. While that looks good to gov't to create regulations that "create jobs", it increases the cost of everything we buy which is the exact same thing as higher taxes so jobs created out of restrictive regulations are no more than hidden taxes buried into the cost of the goods and services we pay for. I can speak 1st hand about the absolute WASTE that goes into this as I work for a company that used to be private but got bought out by a publicly traded company. Once we got bought out, the crap they make us go through to buy something as simple as a KVM switch, a hub, or an external HD is ridiculous. It used to be I could run out at lunch, pickup whatever I needed, and turn in an expense report and be reimbursed by the end of the week. But due to regulations on publicly traded companies, those requests have to go through a completely different dept. They require paperwork from my manager which takes even more time. So when I could've had my device by lunch, it TYPICALLY takes 3 months to get simple stuff that I need...ALL because of bureaucracy and regulations created in Washington. If I were the owner of a company, I wouldn't think 2nd about outsourcing if it was doable and cheaper just to avoid the regulations.
All of these taxes added up average about 50-55% of the average American's income which explains why we demand the pay we do. But other countries don't have these same restrictions on their populations and thus have people willing to work for less money. If capitalism is to be embraced, then we have to accept that businesses will go where labor is cheapest. While that may offend people, it is what it is. Businesses do what they do to make money. They aren't Unicef. So if outsourcing or completely picking up and moving to another country is economically better for them, we should not blame them for that any more than somebody could blame you for shopping around for the best deal on a car or anything else you might buy.
So if you asked me which of the two candidates best knows just how badly taxes and regulations hurt job creation and American competitiveness, I'd say that's Romney.
Now, where am I wrong in my thinking? I ask because if you can convince me that I'm not thinking clearly, I want to hear another viewpoint that perhaps I haven't considered. You may not convince me of your side, but at least I'll have an idea of where you are coming from.
