Right, absolutely. In fact isn't there a campaign law about lies?

"All you hard-working taxpayers that still have jobs, go look in the mirror and ask yourselves why the government's policies have caused four out of five of you to have to lower your standard of living. Ask yourselves why your government sent two million jobs to Asia alone, manufacturing jobs, in the 1980s." Ross Perot, 1992 debates. (link)

This is 2012. The situation is even worse. Perot was right.

In the debates we heard that the problem with out trade agreements was that there was a race to the bottom, that why these trade agreements were interesting to backers on both sides of the aisle was that corporate interests could drive prices lower not by building products in the US but in other countries where labor costs were much lower, no health care costs to pay, no environmental laws to obey.

These point were made not by a marixist, but a strong believer in capitalism- a believer in free enterprise. It was made by Ross Perot in 1992.

Perot said this: "In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt wrote a beautiful simple statement. And, basically, he said something very similar to what Congress Gephardt recently said. He said, 'Under no circumstances can we lower the standard of living of the working American.' Therefore, any trade agreement we enter into must require a social tariff, I would say, that makes it an even playing field, then gives Mexico an incentive to raise the standard of living with those people, which it does not have now."

What Gore did was paint Perot's economic populism as protectionism, suggesting that what Perot wanted to do was raise trade barriers to protect American workers.

Clinton made the same point in these debates that Romney and Obama made. That the only problem with the trade agreements were that there was no enforcement when bad players took advantage of the rules.

On the contrary, as 2008 proved, neo liberal economic fundamentalism is wrong. The problem is that the bad players are not just Chinese plutocrats- they are US plutocrats. It is in the economic interests of both the US and Chinese corporate interests to game the US trade agreements and trade enforcement mechanisms.

well said, my old friend...

I am proposing something different, but the problem is not that there has been too much capitalism, it has been that there has been too little. The US has a vast resource that our consumer economy depends on. It is a national resource like water or game, and businesses must not extract too much or there will be nothing in following years. This resource is national property, and it is owned by businesses that generate middle class jobs.

The problem is, we do not measure it- although it is a possession of a company, it is not a property that a small business regards as a cost that must be minimized.

So it does what the game says- minimize the things that reduce your points.

Now picture if employment were measured and bankable. When you paid your payroll, the IRS reported to the Federal Reserve what your revenue to payroll ration was, and issued Employment credits to the firm's bank account. Bank accounts are denominated not just in dollars, but employment credits and carbon credits.

This is an expansion of capitalism, not contraction or direct government intervention as a player in the economic dynamic. It recognizes additional property that businesses have. If there is a measureable value to them that is exchangable with currency, then capitalism will work to maximize that value.

Capitalism is good because it assigns values to everything, and market dynamics drive maximization of those values. Neoliberal economic theory is simply insufficient because it does not assign values to things that are socially valuable. Perot thought in terms of negative terms- "social tarriffs", imposing costs on negative behaviors. These sorts of mechanisms have not been effective. Instead, we need to think in positive evaluation of unrecognized valuable property that businesses own, and measuring them correctly.

This is not a trade proposition, such employment credits, like carbon credits would be internationally tradable. Companies and countries that extract maximum wealth from the consumer workers do so at the cost of minimizing their employment credits. When a component is sold to another company, the employment credit that measures the employment property embodied in that product is sold to the other country. If the component provider had low payrolls in proportion to their profit margin, then the IRS calculated employment credit in that component would be very low.

So why would US companies care about this "funny money" of carbon and employment credits?

Because they are taxed these employment credits. If they do not have enough in their bank account for the year, they must go out and buy them from owners who have excess employment credits. This means that labor intensive companies like the Post office have an asset, a property that has market value.

The market is used to maximize middle class employment.

----- Notes -----

In abstract economic terms, the failure of neoliberal theory is the failure of correct market valuation of property. The 2008 fiasco centered around opacity in understanding the real values of instruments like credit default swaps. The value could be distored because they were utterly opaque to those who traded them. In the same way, market forces are cannibalizing the purchasing power of the middle class and will ultimately cause contraction of the consumer economy, becuase there is in inaccurate valuation placed on that crucial property of the US economy. Our consumer purchasing power is our national treasure, and we are frittering it away, because it is not direcly measured or valued by the system. Employment credits makes that property bankable.

Lack of information about the property that people owned caused wildly distorted valuations of that property.

Today, plutocrats honestly believe that besides their wealth, one of the "properties" of their activity is that they generate employment. Without them, the job creators, there would be no society, no economy. The problem is, there is no bank account they can point to that keeps track of those points. If there is no tokExactly how many employment credits t

We failed with union driven trade protectionism.

We failed with "third way" free trade market mechanisms in the 90s.

Those mechanisms were tried. We need to move on to new experiments until we hit on something that works.

The survival of the US middle class depends on it.

• For further elaboraion on the idea, I mentioned it earlier in this note.
• It applies not just to the forces that award outsourcing, but the forces that reward excessive automation.
• In international trade, note that employment credits awarded by the Chinese government would be treated as a foreign currency that the markets would determine the true value of in comparison to US empl

To simplify John M.: First off they are not "job creators"...they are "job profiteers" as they employee no person if it does not profit them...that would be charity.

Then we have figured out that we can make it more expensive to off shore goods and services and allow them to be brought back and provided to citizens here...than it would be to just provide the goods and services right here at home through taxes and tarriffs. That would bring manufacturing jobs back home immediately. Also included would be a tax on Wall Street financial transactions plus I agree with Thom Hartmann's suggestion of a $ Billionaire's tax of 100% on every dollar over a Billion. $999,999,999 is enough for anyone to live on. This is simple to do once the 1% get out of the way. It would save our economy, preserve our democracy and ensure our survival on the planet by controlling pollution and climate change.

Thanks for bothering to read through my elaboration on how assigning property value to job creation might work. The number of typos is really severe, but I did not want to invest time in something I felt few would read.

I agree that parasitic activity is going on, but the key point is that even if that parasitic activity were absent, businesses big and small have strong economic disincentives for hiring US workers. Obama wants to address this but only in a very modest way, by some tweaks to tax code to incentivize some types of job creation.

Consider Apple. They bosted just 15 years ago that their products were almost exclusively US built. Now the opposite is true. The reasons why are not the cost of US labor, but flexibility in manufacturing that best suited the turn on a dime responsiveness that would maximize fast realization of Jobs's design insights. 700,000 jobs went to China not due to lower labor costs but because of a much more rapid time to market. (nytimes article)

There were not incentives to retain manufacturing in the US, and the typical solution of tariffs would have severely injured Apple's capacity to penetrate global markets.

My proposal addresses that by using applying the concept of "Funny money" to assign explicit economic value to giving fair wages to workers. This number would be high for US workers, and low for poorly paid Chinese workers. Market forces will then maximize that value making dynamic evaluations of cost benefit. For example, in a decision whether to automate a factory, excessive automation would destroy a valuable possession of theirs: their high US employment numbers.

Obama says some of these jobs are not coming back. He has simply been in an echo chamber that sees any alternative to neoliberal trade policy as protectionism. Well it is not so stupid that there are only two flavors of economic thinking.

There's only one small problem with your argument. It's absolute BS.

The government doesn't ship jobs overseas, greedy people do. Don't get me wrong, greedy people have gamed it so that they get extra stuff from the government for being greedy. But the government isn't holding a gun to these people's head and saying, "Ship those jobs to China!"

The prime example in the public attention right now is Sensata. The company is making around 500 million dollars net profit a quarter. Shipping those jobs over seas isn't a break the rules thing. They think they can just make more money over there. And however much you like or don't like them doing it, it's the right of the company to ship jobs where ever it pleases.

The only way the government can stop it is if it places artificial barriers that keeps a property owner from doing as that owner wishes with their property. If they don't want to run the factory here they don't have to. What you are advocating is undemocratic, unconstitiutional, protectionist, government 'seizing' of private property to force the owner to keep operating a plant here in the US against their will. That's just as wrong morally as moving those jobs overseas because of greed.

You may hate what they are doing, but if we want to be a free society, you have to support their right to do it, however distasteful it is. It's a lot like free speech. That being said, nothing says you can or should by from them. And there is no reason at all to find it acceptable behavior however legal. We should rightly protest it. We just can't make it illegal.

Wow, John M, so many words to say so little. You have not presented anything that has any basis in fact. I applaud you for giong on, and on, and on, and on, as if more words lends credence to your weak analysis of the situation. If you think that companies are moving jobs to China for any other reason than lower labor cost & greed, you are dilusional. Rapid time to market, sounds good but the american markets are flooded with cheap chinese products made in horrible working conditions by low paid workers. They do get to the market fast though. What price will you pay for this expanded capitalism. Who will you offer up? What will you sacrifice for this fringe theory. What do we know? Corporations are sitting billions of dollars siting uncertainty in the economy. They have been incentivized for the last twelve years with huge tax breaks and did that keep jobs here in the US? We know that more incentives. We also know technology is moving forward so automation is coming sooner rather than later. So, the only long term solution is to make sure that we are prepared & trained wth skills for the 21st century. Those low skilled jobs are not coming back as the President says. What are the responsibilities of these poorly incentivized corporations to a country and it's economy that made them so successful? When you break down your argument it's just more of the same redistribution of wealth to the top at the expense of the american economy and it's weaker, poorer & vulnerable citizens. You totally leave out how this plan benefits anyone but CEOs. Just more of the same blah blah blah..........

I think you need to understand the dynamic that caused Apple to outsource those 700K jobs building your iPads and iPhones. You think it was low pay. That is part of it, but that article is saying Steve Jobs would have moved the jobs even if the pay were the same. So I think you are missing some additional information. Do you think Steve Jobs was just lying when he said it wasn't the reasoning? Maybe the NYTimes is as delusional as I am because they bought Steve Jobs' reasoning. So if my words mean nothing to you, maybe read those. (NYTimes article, click here)

The truth is that Apple's manufacturing jobs formerly were in the US and were performed by people paid middle class wages. Look at the reasons the article provides that Apple selected Chinese manufacturing. Ask yourself if it was really necessary that Jobs be able to get a one week turnaround to change a major detail of a product. Does it really deliver competitive advantage to him? No.

“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”

What if there were a cost for Apple paying US workers a tiny percentage of its profit margin. That was the essence of my proposal you seem to have entirely missed. My proposal alters the calculus so that it would in the interest of Steve Jobs to either keep the manufacturing in the US, or cause his Chinese suppliers to do as Henry Ford did- pay the workers enough to be able to afford the products they were working on.

It does it without protectionism, and without tariffs. The basic idea is to turn the attribute you are trying to incentivize into a form of currency that follows components through the supply chain. Trade agreements are justified in the US with the neoliberal argument that a middle class consumer economy is being built in the foreign country when there is no barriers to outsourcing. This is in the long run good for the US economy because there is a much larger market for its products. Unlike neoliberal trade structures like Nafta, this is a practical way of assuring that this outcome is actually occurring rather than simply delivering to the global 1% free access to armies of non union laborers paid poverty level wages.

Remember the employment credits are based on what proportion the payroll is to the company's profit margin. If they pay their workers nothing, the employment credit is practically nothing, and so when the component is purchased by Apple, there are very small employment credits in the Chinese manufactured iPhone.

The WTO cannot object that the requirement is protectionist, because the Chinese factories can avoid this by simply paying their workers more fairly. Note that when they do so, they create the liberalizing effect on Chinese society that is the often promised but seldom seen outcome that neoliberal trade policy justifies itself with.

Note also that this approach is far simpler than that used for making domestic content determinations, but perhaps this detail of discussion is outside the scope of this note. To summarize this, the basic idea is that for all the thousands of components in the supply change, these companies all know what their payroll is, and are already tracking what their labor costs are for each product. They also know what their profit margin is on that item. The more generous the supplier is in sharing the profit, the larger the employment credit. This number is easily auditable using standard accounting techniques and does not require regulators or custom officials to understand anything about manufacturing techniques, or particulars about what constitutes trivial value added for a domestic content determination.

These are much more involved topics for discussion.

You know what is also disappearing is our desire to go out and buy their cancer producing, child ignoring distraction. I don't know about you but, Americans are starting to look pretty stupid walking around staring at a little box all day. Some of them ar even talking out loud to them. They drive with them, they ignore the life that is growing all around them, even their own families and children because of them. Do we really want to be remembered as the generation of the cell phone zombies. I don't like mine it's been thrown in the dishwater several times. It smells like cancer.

Could work. Heck, Hopey changey worked 4 years ago.

Tracy's Comments, it's another sign of Bush policies resurrection. All those foreign policy advisors from Bush's PNAC "New World Order" rings a bell.

http://www.thenation.com/article/167683/mitt-romneys-neocon-war-cabinet#

Scared people voted for Bush second term and Rmoney wants to scare people at their jobs to pry them to vote for him.

Scared, yes. I'm scared IF he wins. Col. Wilkerson, a Repub is scared that they will whip up more wars. If they do that, we will spend even more on wars, not less to bring the jobs and infrastructure back here.

Romney has character, Lots of them

Unfortunately for him they are Poor, inconsistent, incompetent and sycophantic

His character depends on the audience. He's a chameleon.

Romney is a bullshhitter, as the President noted yesterday in the Rolling Stone interview. A liar knows the truth and chooses to state otherwise. A bullshhitter doesn't care what the truth is.

yeah you come up with a lot of articles saying they are, by all right wing conservative sites, the non-partisan sites and fact checkers are telling it like it is, they're shifting models to China to build for the China market and will continue to produce here in America with possibly adding another 1,400 workers

And another idiot steps forth to do his patriotic duty and show us just how ignorant ignorance has to be to be as ignorant as your usual WhackoWorld inhabitant.

Go back to WhackoWorld, fool, and listen to Faux Snooze tell you the "truth" that will make you a slave. Pee on the fire hydrants there and see how long you get away with it.

Romney picks up incorrect story about Jeep production moving to China

• By David Shepardson
• Detroit News Washington Bureau
• 58 Comments

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20121026/POLITICS01/210260402#ixzz2AQMPZRKp

So, let me get this straight... You'll take Romney at his word, but you won't take Chrysler, who was quoted in the article... /facepalm

Yes, it was a weak diss, especially considering Fiat owns 55% (if memory serves correctly, with the UAW or pension fund owning the rest).

I'm on my 7th Jeep vehicle, so yes, Go Jeep! I do wish they got better mileage though.

Exactly! Vote against failed policies that are dragging our economy down and destrying any incentive that a person has to try to succeed economically. What better reason to vote against Obama? And by the way, they don't hate Obama, just his failed policies and left winged agenda that is changing this once great country into a socialist state going the way of Greece.

Thanks Jes, for the Daily Ignoramus Demonstration.

Jes, everything you just said is the opposite of verifiable truth.

Did you consider the Republican Party of the 1990's to be left-wing and Socialist?

Well since the policy ideas of the current repugnicon candidate are the same as the last repgnicon President, then we are voting against failed policies that dragged our economy down.

I will vote for the guy who got Osama, reduced the deficit, and oversaw 13 straight quarters of positive job growth. As I see it you can vote for the one who did those things--President Obama--or you can vote for some third party candidate. The one who has the same policies and advisers that helped exacerbate the mess is also running but I've yet to hear someone make an honest positive argument for voting for him--perhaps because there is none.

His policies have not failed despite the obstructionist GOP Congress. You know, the ones who vote against everything he proposes so he doesn't look good.

The only thing that has dragged our economy down was the 8 years of failed policies we suffered under Bush. You know, the ones Romney wants to return to.

Increasing taxes to what they were the last time our economy was in good shape does not destroy any incentive for a person to succeed economically. I bet not one single entrepreneur or small business owner ever thought to himself "I better not make any more money with this company or I'll be in a higher tax bracket." I know you people don't like math, but here's some for you: would you rather get to keep 61.5% of the additional income it would take to put you in the proposed 38.5% tax bracket (the tax rate under Clinton) or 100% of zero in additional income (because you have no incentive now to succeed)?

We are no more socialist now than at any other point since WWII. You may like to say it but that doesn't make it true. If you are basing in on the number of welfare or food stamp recipients, it isn't because of changes to make more people eligible, it is because more people qualify.

Austerity would be going the way of Greece, which is what Ryan's budget will put us on.

jes33, a couple things, ignorant racists, don't realize they are ignorant racists. I keep hearing about failed policies, but no one can ever name one.

@June Day .......You took the #%^&#%^&#& words right out of my mouth! I am amazed daily at how good folks can be duped by this liar. I just saw the Romney for Mourdock commercial. Obviously if it is still running than Romney is backing that scumbag too! Disgusting POS!

@Duckhazard -- that gets me, too. Romney is constantly running around bellowing about how he'll stand up to this-one-and-that-one, but he can't even say "boo" to his fellow Republicans that are completely off the rails. His running away from reporters when they brought up Mourdock -- what a profile in courage - not. There is no "there" there with Romney. And what is it with this almost "pro-rape" stance of so many of these Republican male candidates? This has got to have been one of the creepiest GOP election seasons I can remember.

Bain / Huawei and 3Com hasn't gone through yet, Sure on paper Robme might not be with Bain, But ties and Personal connection's still exist. And why is it that Wherever the word PONZI Scheme comes up Romney isnt to far behind?? Or going into buisness with People that are associated with PONZI Schemes.

So when Bush led us into an illegal war , refused to pay for it , lied to the american people , you were right there calling him out , you didn't vote for him in his second term , right?

You know what else has an impact on business? When people are laid off to make the company more profitable , and that somehow those profits are going to be allowed by these companies to trickle down to the lower classes , well except the people don't have jobs and have no way to stand under that proverbial "golden shower"

You can sit here and preach vague generalities but at least apply them evenly across the board.

I hope for your sake that you really are as drunk as you sound.

What everyone is failing to realize is that Obama intends on cutting corporate tax rates therefore making Obamacare at least revenue neutral. Get a grip. Also, Obamacare as it is now is a "beginning", not an end-game. It also is far, far from "government run healthcare"; If you have money to play in the stock market, I strongly suggest investing in United Healthcare, Blue Cross, Aetna, etc.

The law you are saying the administration is breaking only says that a company must give a minimum of 60-days notice before a layoff. You think that any sequestration is going to force any government contractor to lay off workers immediately? Really?

Google Ann Romney's blind trust, READ the Vanity Fair link, Google Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme, And WHO Mitt invested 10 mil with along with who his kid went into buisness with. I think Mitt should change his name to Ponzi. Or maybe he should boast of his connection with Robert Gay.

Wow Jes, for someone who hates liars so much, how can you possibly justify voting for Romney?

I don't think you believe a single thing you said. I think it just makes you feel better.

je33 - Your comments and arguments are extremely flawed. You either make fallacious arguments, employ Sophism or simply allow your obviously extreme bias to do the talking.

1) 'Workers have right to know how election will affect jobs' - if that is an argument for Notices to Employees, it is dead wrong. Every American has that right and the way we have been figuring it all out for over 225 years is by paying attention. Thus we determine for ourselves how the election will affect our jobs, lives, health, etc. We think for ourselves; others should never think for us or tell us 'how election will affect X, Y or Z' because they all have a self-serving agenda. This is so fundamental I'm surprised someone of your intelligence falls for it (extreme bias clouds intelligence and judgment, I reckon).

2) Sequestration argument is pure partisan propaganda (like the alliteration?). Responsibility for that pending issue belongs to Congress and White House alike and because GOP in Congress have employed non-democratic means (obstruction, 'hurt Obama', more filibusters than previous 20 years combined, etc.) many independent analysts give them lion's share of responsibility. It's hard to argue otherwise with a straight face. Obama does share responsibility, but it's not remotely as much as you make out (which sounds like 100% unless I misunderstand your argument - that is just silly). Notices? We all know that sequestration will not occur, but don't know what form any temporary or permanent solution will take. So those lay off notices are illusory and provide false information of an event that will not occur. You support that? Yes, abide by laws is good argument, but the rest is out the window.

3) Your other comment, above, is simple hyperbole. You would make an effective argument if you used no adjectives, did not over-exagerate and did not characterize things in such superlative extremes that no one will take you seriously except someone who already agrees with you - and why bother with them? If your goal is to persuade or out-debate, then your extreme language ruins your credibility; your lack of specifics or even solid support for the extreme blanket assertions is likewise a disaster of Rhetoric. Statements like 'destroying any incentive that a person has to try to succeed economically' are so ridiculous on their face they defeat themselves rhetorically. Americans are the hardest workers on the planet; America is a solid, viable powerhouse that is going through challenging times (we are sick of being told how America is in decline, heading for disaster and socialism). It is tantamount to someone who has never actually ever SEEN poverty holding self out as expert on the subject.

As is most often true, reality is somewhere in the middle. The world economy is weak and Europe speaks for itself; to expect America to be completely fine in this world crisis is completely unrealistic; to blame America's problems 100% on one man is likewise ludicrous (even without world problems, one man has THAT MUCH power? Has such IMMEDIATE influence, when nearly every Nobel laureate economist agrees that American Economy, like an aircraft carrier, takes a lot of time to adjust course, turn around, etc. etc.

Sure, certain policies have not been successful (haven't "failed" either), but how do you measure? IF you MUST cherry-pick in order to support your argument, then you must admit a biased partisan presentation that is not entirely honest; and you DO have to cherry pick because plenty of Economic Indicators that conservatives have always relied on for supporting arguments are Trending in clear positive direction. I'm sure you have heard all talking points laying all this out. Further proof of this is the fact that conservatives have so badly run out of steam and arguments that they are arguing with a straight face that Jobs Numbers must have been manipulated - when you have to rely on conspiracy theory to explain plethora of those 'highly inconvenient facts', then you have already lost.

US Economy is slowly improving. I cannot see specifically and exactly how anyone would have been able to have done better AND I have not heard anyone making a specific and exact argument regarding what SHOULD have been done that would have been successful. When all conservatives have to argue is that Obama's Policies have failed, but not once make the argument how they would have been successful (in specific detail, policy by policy; not silly blanket assertions) - then the argument is weak on it's face, makes only 1/2 of a 'Case' and like horse shoes, that is not nearly adequate.

Finally, throughout your comments there is a hidden assumption most conservatives seem to make: that THEIR reality is the only one possible, that anyone disagreeing with that reality must be not just wrong, but dead wrong and probably a socialist and, most of all, the assumption that YOU must be the one to do the thinking for the rest of us; that you must characterize reality for us, must be the one who authors The Story of How it REALLY is, EVEN THOUGH the rest of American have access to the same information that you do and have the ability to think for themselves and come to their own conclusions. Conservatives cannot abide that for some reason and that makes them believers in a 'Less Than Equal' view of America, a belief that they are inherently SUPERIOR (as thinkers, as Americans, as Economists, as Social Engineers, etc.) - THAT is contrary to fundamental American values of Equality and Liberty. That thinking is not in line with Constitution and Dec of Independence (and most Federalist Papers).

CAPICHE'?

jes33 - 'Workers have right to know how election will affect jobs' ?

NOT by "notices", by simply by paying attention and deciding for selves, as with ANY OTHER ISSUE the election will affect. No one can TELL me how the election will affect my job - that is not their place and all they will do is promote self-serving agenda with partisan messaging! Come on.

if that is an argument for Notices to Employees, it is dead wrong. Every American has that right and the way we have been figuring it all out for over 225 years is by paying attention. Thus we determine for ourselves how the election will affect our jobs, lives, health, etc. We think for ourselves; others should never think for us or tell us 'how election will affect X, Y or Z' because they all have a self-serving agenda. This is so fundamental I'm surprised someone of your intelligence falls for it (extreme bias clouds intelligence and judgment, I reckon).

Who moved my cheese?

Actually, the Mormon Church owned newspaper in Salt Lake City endorsed Obama over integrity.

I'd be surprised if it was the biggest lie he told yesterday. I think it's noteworthy mostly because it's new, not one of the multitude of lies he's already told over and over and over again...

Get Enraged and Engaged:
Mooch the Vote 2012!

;-)