- Yes, big business is about profit. I am also managing an international team within a large company.But to be honest I am not 100% sure that it is really about security for the individual. Look, we to have to make certain profit numbers otherwise the stockmarket would punish my company. Every Year it has to be more, the expectation is rising faster and faster.
But what happens when we find out that the wages in Country X are higher as in Country Y ?
The wages in Country X might not be very high compared with the overall cost for food, housing etc.
But nevertheless, if there is any chance to increase profit we have to go to country Y , this is the expectation of the stockmarket.This kind of Freedom will secure the profit of my company and may be also the security of jobs of managers (like me, but OK I am not a "big" manager, just someone within the Hierachy) but does it really secure the security of employees ? I have my doubts.In Germany we have strict labour laws and strong unions, they cannot take away this uncertainty but at least help to provide some job security.
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- Tom,Germany would have some economic issues if the EU collapsed IMO - you all sell high quality high prices goods. If the trading partners placed any duties on you product would you not be priced out of the market?
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- Yes, this would defenitly be a big issue, Germany is very dependent on Export.Some people say we should treat the EU only as a free-market and do everything else alone, but as I have said bevore, I think germanycis to small for the world of tomorrow.
I see China and India rising every day, they have over one Billion People, what whould we do against them, we are small....
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- Tom D,First of all, Welcome! You ask a great number of complicated questions, I will try to answer as many of them as I can, but it may take several posts. I will start with your first question, why do we defend the rich. I cant speak for others, but I don't defend the rich, what I do defend is the individual right to freedom, as well as the principle that if you as a individual earn a dollar you should keep that dollar, not pay half that dollar to support those who are not willing to earn. What I and others believe is that a individual can succeed or fail based on the merits of their own work. As you will find out if you stick around is that we do not necessarily support the "Wall Street Millionaires", we support freedom and liberty, and those principles do not, and can not, apply only to some and not to others. There is plenty of corruption on Wall Street, but the left wing romanticized "Robin Hood" approach is not correct. The reason why is because if you trample the rights of one group of people, while protecting that "trampled right" for another group of people, societal class divisions grow not shrink and inevitably class warfare will ensue.
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- thank you very much for the warm welcome. Reading through this forum I have already noticed how much smart and really thoughtfull people are part of your movement, people who seem not only care for themself but seem to care for their country. I really like this kind of attitute.However I do not come from your country so my way of looking at different political aspects my be different then yours, which is hopefully not a problem but a motivation to exchange ideas and thoughts.You wrote "if you as a individual earn a dollar you should keep that dollar", in principle I would agree to this statement to 100%. But I have probably a slighty different interpretation of the Term "earn".We are not "Robinson Crusoes" living on our own islands just working on our own. No, we are all just part of a very, very big machine of international devision of work.When you look at the computer (or what ever device ever) in front of you, you should think about who has made the software, who took the raw material out of the earth, who created the machines to do this, who created the hardware, who transported it, who build the truck to transport this, who sold this, who advertised it, who mixed the chemistry which was needed to paint it, who build the power system to run it etc. etc. etc. .You will find out that in the end Billions of people, all around the earth, are part of this giant supply chain.The big questions is, did they all "earn" the right portion of this, did they get a fair stake when you buy this computer ?
Do they really get the dollar they "earn" ?
In theory YES, because free markets should allocate this perfectly.
But when we look at the real world ? Is it really the "fair share" e.g. that some Wall-Street Investment Bankers earn Millions but the poeple who assembled the things, engineered them or transported them get lower and lower wages ?
I have my doubts...
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- Tom D,You raise a common argument, and unfortunately fall into the same one dimensional thinking that most people do, so lets take a look at the real world. We see the division between the "business owner" AKA, "the rich" and the working class grow, and in a one dimensional perspective this occurs because the "evil rich" are taking more. In the real world though, this is not the case, in actuality the "working class" does not make any less money, nor does the rich make any more. At this point you say how can that be if the working people have less money to spend and the rich are still rich, now you add the dimension of government into the equation. Government taxes the people, rich and working class to cover its costs, ie; roads, emergency services, etc. Now if you add into that equation entitlement programs for a increasing portion of the population that does not produce, or "earn" if you will, the burden of that cost falls on government, and in turn on the taxpayer. Consequently, when government increases taxes, both the working class and the rich, for example; pay $4.00 instead of $2.00 for a gallon of milk, but the rich are able to absorb that addition cost without financial detriment, while that cost spread over a multitude of products and expenditures spells disaster for the finances of the lower income individuals. I for example make roughly the same amount of money now that I did 20 years ago, but due to government taxation, not the rich, I have less of that money to spend and invest.
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- Tom,Let me pose a new direction to view the issue of wealth creation and of improvement in the standard of living for all nations - even the third world.Many years ago there were no phones and along came Bell which needed new inventions to improve the ideas of telephones in every house. So, the company funded Bell Labs which in turn invented the transistor and that led to the semiconductor era. Xerox had a special research group at Stanford University where they invented the Personal computer, the computer net work, the Apple Icon on the screen to assign tasks.The board of directors at Xerox said there will never be a need for computers in homes and therefor no need for networks. Well - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were working for National Semiconductor helping to get customers to use the companies products - they saw the Xerox project and asked if they could use the ideas - sure was the answer there were no patents and thus was born Apple.At the same time others were making PC type product for games and bulletin board connections. This was the start of the World Wide Web idea. IBM then decided that the PC was interesting as a new HARDWARE PRODUCT as IBM did not do soft ware for any of their mainframe computers. So, they needed an operating system and suddenly Microsoft became the employer of hundreds of thousands of employees around the world.From one single enterprise operating as a capitalist company created more jobs and more human advancement than all of the governments on earth have since the beginning of time.Free enterprise Capitalism is the single best system to provide wealth to the poor and to raise their standard of living - it is not government - in fact government issues rules and regulations that slow down the need changes so Industries can adapt to the rapidly changing global market place.
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- Mangus,I absolutly agree that private Capitalism is the most efficient way to organize a economy.
We had a socialistic experience of Government-based economy in East-Germany and this failed completly, socialism messed up everything in east-germany it was a full desaster.Yes you are right.We we might have different opinions is the question how far the government should realocate the wealth and the income within a capitalistic system.
West-Germany has a sucessfull capitalistic system with a lot of sucessfull international capitalistic companies (BMW, Mercedes, BASF, SAP, Siemens etc.)But on the same time Germany has Taxrates up to 45% + mandatory payroll-deductions for healthcare, rent and other things. (This could easily sum-up to over 70%)Of course the details can be discussed, every system has the potential to improve and our is really not perfect at all, but in principle I am fine with it.Yes, It takes away some money from me, but it gives me also the security that I will have everything I need in the case I would need social help.
It also takes away (at least a bit) the motivation of people to steal or rob me because you do not need this, the government gives you ennough money to survive.
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- Tom,the problem is Germany is dependent on Manufacturing and that mean it consumes energy and natural resources both of which you have in ever decreasing amounts -with your high tax rates and low birth rates how does your nation survive in a ever more competitive manufacturing environment.When Germany reaches the limits of it's ability to sell goods and generate enough profits for the shareholders to not force the relocation of the businesses so they can survive. Lower numbers of workers and lower numbers of good jobs - how does the government then return the money required to keep it's social promises?This is Greece and even to some extent the USA if we can not change our waste of capital paying people to do nothing.
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- Mangus,the most important ressource of germany are highly educated engineers and scientists because german products are often high tech, high cost products. So the value does not come from the manufacturing (this is often outsourced to china) but from the planning, the design and in general terms from the intellectual property which has been created in Germany.Therefore free education is so important for the german society, its our most important ressource, the origin of our wealth.
Once you have received a good education, of course then you have higher salary and therefore you have to pay higher taxes, which is the way how we finance the next generation...
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- The education gap is closing each minute - China - India - Pakistan - Malaysia and others now have top notch engineers and scientists - they are educated in the USA, the UK and Europe - so that will not be an advantage as they return home to become Professors duplicating themselves by the millions.No the information double rate [all knowledge available is now only 18 months] so if a nation is doing what was done two years ago they are falling behind the knowledge curve. NO that will not save America or Germany much longer.America can save herself as she has abundant natural resources and raw materials - if we decide to build 1,000 nuclear power plants wee can control the global food, metal, steel, and other items manufactured using automated [no labor factories] which we have already in the tile manufacturing human hands do not touch the product from raw clay to pallets loaded on trucks - It is fully automated working 24/7/365 - talk about productivity.Most do not know but America is still number one in Manufacturing in the entire World even after we gave away the greatest industrial capability in history to third world nations.Only use of our raw materials in value added manufacturing will allow the USA to pay off it's debt and increase the Standard of living.
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- Mangus,you are right. The education gap is closing very fast, esspecially China with its Billions of Talents is running very, very fast.But unfortunatly Germany has no ressources. This is the reason why we have started to exploid natural energy ressources like sun or wind, even if we do not have that much sun in our country. But there is no other chance...There is also a huge discussion in germany to increase the amount of money we spent for education, because a recent study show that we are falling behind. Esspecially the Group of turkish immigrants, could be a huge source of additional talents, but unfortunatly their have not been educated very good in the past.
Germany will target this group now with additional education spending to increase our capabilities in the international competition.Well, of course we will have no chanced against china in the long term, we are to small, we all know, but at least we try...
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