Four years ago, a low-slung factory on the fringes of town here was stagnating and shedding workers. Then Siemens, the German industrial giant, bought the plant and folded it into a global enterprise. Today, the factory is shipping wastewater treatment equipment to Asia and the Middle East and employing twice as many workers.
“Globalization has been good for Holland,” said David J. Spyker, once the plant manager and now vice president of a Siemens unit with operations around the world.
About 60 miles to the northeast, such talk provokes contemptuous snickers. Two years have passed since a Swedish multinational shut down what had been the largest refrigerator factory in the country, a sprawling complex along the Flat River in Greenville.
The company, Electrolux, sent production to Mexico, eliminating 2,700 jobs from a town of 8,000 people.
“Everybody talks about Electrolux around here the way the rest of the country talks about Katrina,” said Becky Gebhart, manager of a nonprofit medical clinic that opened last November in Greenville, 30 miles northeast of Grand Rapids, that serves people with little or no health insurance.
As foreign buyers descend upon the United States, capturing widening swaths of the industrial landscape and putting millions of Americans to work for new owners, these two cities offer sharply competing narratives for a nation still uneasy about being on the selling end of the global economy.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but put this together with the mortgage foreclosure crisis and terrible personal and governmental debt, and I get scared!
Yep, with more and more foreign companies taking over previously American-owned companies; Hillary and Barak talking about raising the corporate taxes and socialist economic policies; more free trade agreements with Latin American countries; severe limits on oil exploration in the US; taxes on everything and anything to reduce ‘carbon footprints’ — there is a lot to be scared about.
The socialistis are speaking: They want us all to be poor!
No, my friend, it’s those at the top of the food chain (i.e., those who have spare money to ‘invest’ and are taxed on the resulting profits at much lower rates than those who work for a living) who are laughing at us ‘wage slaves’ all the way to the bank. The ‘investor class’ has done extremely well in the past 35 years or so, as the middle and working class have sunk or barely been able to tread water.
Oh, and by the way, the children and grandchildren of the investor class will also do very well: the current regressive tax system assures that they will inherit lots of cash and real estate with very few or no taxes.
And yes, I’m in a position where I’ve witnessed it. The working and middle class people of the US seem at last to be waking up a little bit; I hope it’s not too late to save the American Dream for the ‘little guy’.
Hopefully you’ll be in a position soon to take some classes, Cabbages, because you clearly lack any understanding whatsoever of economics, finance, or simple arithmetic. Put down “Socialism for Dummies” and look at the real world. For one thing, US tax rates start and 10% and end at 35%. This is probably a stretch for you, but 35 is a bigger number than 10. That makes it a progressive system. Now, I’m going to be kind and assume that you know how to count, but are being willfully ignorant about this. You’re probably going to make that argument that because capital gains are taxed at less than the top bracket, the system is regressive. The technical term for this is “idiocy.” The best possible argument you can make is that the curve of tax rates is a somewhat lopsided bell, rather than an upward sloping line. This still isn’t regressive, much the way a square isn’t a circle, but it isn’t a triangle either. I hope you understand this, but are pretending to be woefully ignorant in order to conceal your true aim, which is to indulge your envy by taking away from those with more than you and giving it to yourself, or simply punishing success so that we can permanently cripple the economy and bring about the equality of misery so beloved of dimwitted leftists everywhere.
[i]The working and middle class people of the US seem at last to be waking up a little bit; I hope it’s not too late to save the American Dream for the ‘little guy’.
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But then, Cabbages, when the little guy realizes his American Dream, and becomes a millionaire with enough capital to invest in other incoming and job producing ventures, Socialists like Hillary and Barak scheme of ways to punish him so that he doesn’t get to keep his hard-earned capital.
And by the way, did you know that the ‘death tax’ recently was around 65% of all estate/inheritance over $200,000? That is why Warren Buffet was able to build his empire — buying out businesses that went bankrupt after the founder died and the children realized they couldn’t pay the taxes AND keep the business as well.
Knew my post would draw sarcastic and inaccurate comments, and it happened again! It’s become quite dependable on T19, sadly. It’s never reaasonable discourse, it always starts the same: “You’re a SOCIALIST!!! Anyone with your ideas is A SOCIALIST and worst of all, probably support Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton!” Horrors! Here are just a few corrections to your sarcastic posts:
Any discussion of tax burden on the middle and lower income people should always include the enormous FICA tax (your figures don’t) which is capped for the upper-income (it should have been tied to the inflation rate years ago, but wasn’t). Since it is not levied on incomes above something like $90,000, it is inherently regressive: taking a larger percentage of income from working people than the investor classes. Plus, if you are a small business owner, you are ‘self-employed’ and get to pay BOTH sides of it (just ask TEC clergy how much fun THAT is). One should also add in sales taxes to the burden of working people. Sales taxes are also inherently regressive, in that a larger proportion of a $20,000 annual income will be paid out in sales tax than that of a $250,000 annual income.
You obviously believe in the bankrupted ‘trickle-down’ economic theories. Unfortunately, that ‘theory’ doesn’t work in the real world; it didn’t in Reagan’s day (he covered by running the largest deficits in history) and it doesn’t now. GW Bush/Cheney’s incredible run up of the US deficit is a disaster (but it won’t really take hold until well after January 2009, so they’re not worried). Our dollar abroad is shrinking, and our economy is going from bad to worse for the vast majority of Americans.
The inheritance tax on estates valued at more than $200,000 is a traditional red herring tossed out by those who want even further tax breaks for the wealthiest 20%. Here are only a few standard answers: 1) It is very easily escaped, with minimal estate planning. People execute family and/or corporate trusts, give assets away while living to a favorite charity, and receive the income, etc., etc. 2) A very, very tiny percentage of estates ever pay one cent of inheritance tax. (Note: Those who want even MORE tax breaks for those in the top 10-20% income-bracket like to call it a ‘death tax’ because it’s supposed to kick in when one dies). I have personally known at least 35 people who inherited much, much more than $200,000 in cash and other assets — and they didn’t pay a penny in inheritance tax. I’ll bet you know people like that, too.
BTW, inheritance taxes are in the philosophical tradition of Thomas Jefferson, who did NOT want inherited wealth to rule in the US. Good ol’ Tom. (Funny, political conservatives seem to overlook this strain of his thinking and writing).
No getting around it, middle-class America is learning the hard way that ‘a rising tide lifts all yachts’. Bush/Cheney and the neocons followed the path forged by Reagan: Cut taxes for the wealthiest citizens and corporations while going on a spending spree, borrowing so that the deficit balloons. Cut regulators powers and staffs, and let the ‘market’ take over. Result: Mortgage companies and investment bankers bilking people, dreaming up ‘new products’ to trade among themselves for paper profits (and by the way, enormous salaries, perks and bonuses for themselves. Then the taxpayers get to bail them out?!? We took over $31 billion in the worst ‘products’ Behr Stearns had?!
Funny how so many on the top end of the scale worship ‘the market’ until the piper had to be paid!
Unfortunately, the working people of America, and lower-income disabled people and seniors on fixed incomes are paying the price. The American Dream of homeownership, a steady job, and a dependable pension is simply a dream for of our citizens. Our economy is sinking due to the drain of the Iraq War and Occupation, plus the neocon policy of running up by far the largest deficit in our history. The dollar is now so weak on world markets that more and more of our assets are being held by the likes of Red China and Dubai. Good grief, what happened to Barry Goldwater’s ‘we’re the party of fiscal responsibility’?
The working people, their children (and the next President) will be forced to waste much national time and treasure to somehow address our economy’s slide down the tubes of history.
[i] Deleted by elf. Personal comment toward another commenter. [/i]
When this story first ran on the front page of the New York Times, the headline referred to problems when “foreigners ‘by’ factories.” It took me a few reads to figure out what the headline was supposed to mean. Pretty soon the newspaper business will have to move overseas in order to find competent editors at affordable prices
Was it an article about German tourists standing next to a Ford plant? That is a pretty serious editorial lapse.