is really in trouble because people aren't dieing by 65. when that age was picked. life expectancy was 50?.

is really in trouble because people aren't dieing by 65. when that age was picked. life expectancy was 50?.

comon daniel .... is the reason important? if it is in trouble ..... it is in trouble .... so why make it worse? or if you want to dismantle it .... then say so..... no spin ...ok?

Show me where it was a cause and effect. But please be honest enough not to eliminate things like lower wages over seas, lower tax burdens (outside of tax credits - we are talking the foreign taxes) when doing your "proof".

I am telling you what i participated in Doc. It is not a matter of true or false here. I relocated plants to China, Philipines and Saudia Arabia.

I didnt want to make this a lesson in project management and execution Doc. But you force me to. Ok , here are the details:

The Reagan tax policies introduced TWO factors:

1- Cost of dismantling old plants could be capitalized .... not expensed as it used to be
2- 20% of New Capital expenses (regardless of where they are) could be claimed as tax credits.

Old plants n the US at the time that needed upgrade became suddenly uneconomical to fix and upgrade because:
a- the cost of upgrade is not capitalized
b-the cost of dismantling is capitalized
c-the cost of both dismantling and of the new plant are qualified for the 20% tax credit.

Now what kind of stupid CEO will not take advantage of that?

and since location is not a creterion for the tax credit .... then why not go to where they can easily hide the profits.

as for the lower labor cost .... i have news for you

in the 3 locations i mentioned above the fact was that any job that would be done here by one person needed 3 or 4 people to do it in the same time .... not only that .... it is done at a lower quality.

by adding the cost of extra labor and the low yield of QC approved products .... it comes out very close to the labor cost in the US. these were hard nosed numbers .... but the capital costs and the lower taxes (because of locations) made it almost impossible to stay in the US.

One plant cost was $1 Billion. add to that about 100 million to dismantle/clean-up existing facility and you have $1.1B.

You know how much TAX CREDIT that means? it is $220 million TAX savings.

This has been going on fro the last 25 years ..... that how the manufacturing base disappeared from the USA. what a loss???

Doc, for your information every single program I am defending is really against my own immediate personal interest . and most of the programs i am against are actually would be in my immediate personal interests. Do you really think I would falsify data to do that? you think I am crazy or something?

But seeing plants close and go overseas is painful ..... and destructive to our country's National security. Do you knw where do we get the steel for manufacturing our military equipment nowadays? Japan, Korea, and Europe ...etc.

and where do we get the dirty basic chemicals? India and Philippines ...etc.

is that really good for our national security? we spend billions on military efforts to guard the traffic of these basic materials ....

and why is that? because it makes more money for the companies?????? is that a good reason?

these are the facts Doc. I am not just talking out of bias ... it is facts i knew first hand.

you can believe it or not ... but these are the facts as i participated in making them materialize.

right what happened in new Orleans and they had a week to prepare and get out. bush told them 3 days to get everyone out. but they didn't do that. they left the poor and the crooks bottled up in a football doom with no police to protect the poor.

come on it was the major and governers jobs to get those people out.

the major refused to use the 1000 buses that he had available. he also refused Amtrak's offer to pull trains down there and get everyone out. you democrats have got to stop blaming bush. when it was the democrat major and the democrat Governor who didn't do their jobs.

ok Daniel .... it is not his job. I am sorry i thought it was since he is the president. I guess i am wrong. sorry daniel. but if it wasnt his job, why did he give orders?

never mind. he was just joking ... i know.

ThinkAloud:

very funny Ted. That is ok. But please tell me what misinformation did i use?

I already did.

As far as the VA though, I've had the misfortune of being a "patient" at 3 major VA hospitals and I worked at a VA clinic for awhile.

In the new employee orientation they told us that their goal is to make the veterans the #1 lobby group for the VA healthcare system.  The reality doesn't meet the stated goal.  I am 100% for dumping the entire VA hospital system in favor of using the money to cover us going to local facilities.

Have you ever had to drive 4 hours to get your wrists X-Rayed?  I have.  In another situation, I got kidney stones.  The VA said they would cover my ER visit, but all follow up care would have to be done at the Salt Lake City VA Hospital (3 hours away).  The thing was though, kidney stones aren't an inpatient situation.  So I had to either take the 6 hour drive every few days, or find a place to stay around Salt Lake.  Fortunately, I'm from that area, so i have plenty of family to stay with.  Since it took me three weeks to pass the little sucker, it also cost me an entire year of school.  It would have just cost me that semester, but the Paramedic program only runs specific classes every semester, so I had to wait until the next year and join the next class tdo finish.

Do you want to know what my VA rep said about that?  Well, we're covering the costs, so you shouldn't worry about that.

The VA medical system sucks and should NEVER be used as a model for any medical system to follow.

TA,

We are not a dictatorship. The President does not have ultimate authority, nor should he. The responsibility for mobilizing an evacuation rested chiefly in the hands of Mayor Nagin. If Nagin needed extra assistance, he should have gone up the chain...first to the mayor, then the President.

I GUARANTEE you that if the US had mobilized National Guardsmen to NO and evacuated at gunpoint, you and everyone else left of center would be shouting about the "police state"...and if, God forbid, one minority had been shot in the process, no matter the cause, you'd be crying race war!

New Orleans was a mess all the way around. I will put culpability on Bush for his lack of response, but I will not blame him for the failure to evacuate. Bush told citizens to evacuate, as did Blanco and Nagin. That they didn't attempt to respond is hardly the government's fault.

Ok, now you present facts. Thank you. But you did not prove your point, only that your opinion is based upon more than talking points. But the truth is that the act of capitlization of expensing a move is not going to send jobs overseas. Expensing versus capitalization only means when the cost can be claimed, not that the cost can be claimed. If you have to spend a million dollars to upgrade a plant in one location versus half that in another, you would be a fool to not move it. So the bad boy here is not the tax law you claim, but the fact that the CEOs would be fools to pay a million dollars (and probably liable due to our litigious society) when they could pay half that.

And guess what? Many did not move over seas. States are always bidding on new plants by offering incentives for the company to relocate. And suceeding. The cost of cement and steel is pretty much the same in Michigan as it is in Kentucky, so what would entice a company to move?

Money. tax incentives, and lower taxes. Lowering taxes is not going to cause a flight of capital. being arrogant about the fact that companies are not multi-national will cause it however.

As for your 3-1 example, I am sure in some instances that may be true. Hardly in most. That is why there are still over 100 million jobs here in this company. Because some things can be done more efficiently than in other countries due to (wait for it) - the training and education of the local work force. However, when that training and education is offset by greatly lower labor costs (so that you can hire 3 to do the job of 1) it again becomes more economical to move it.

But wait! If all these jobs have gone overseas, why is the investment in some areas increased here in the states? While we have fewer autoplants owned by the big 3, we have a lot more plants in the US than before owned by - shock! - Toyota, Honda, and other foreign companies. Why? It is cheaper to make the stuff here, than to ship it here. Labor costs do not play a big part as they offset for the most part.

Where they do not (making lead based toys comes to mind), the jobs move.

Now, I have given some facts (by no means all or in any way comprehensive) and you have given some, and we have reached 2 different opinions. Are you lying? Am I lying? I think not. And that goes back to your title and original contention. You did not start this out as a discusion of domestic versus foreign (and indeed that is just one plank of your article), but as lies, deceit and more lies. Which they are not.

Or the blame is being placed on the wrong person/administration. Does the administration "tell" us the whole truth? Hardly. Not out of deceit, but out of the fact that most do not understand it, and only listen to a 30 second sound byte. But the facts are out there, for the educated to learn and edcuate themselves on.

Do you want me to explain to you how that sentence of yours got to this site? Or are you merely content that it did when you typed it at the keyboard? Your claim is that I am lying to you when I do not explain all the communication protocols needed to connect your computer to this site, and then explain how the computer translates your input into output. When I am merely choosing not to go into that level of detail - a level that only a handful of people would understand or care about - just to tell you to press the A key on your keyboard to have it appear here.

But on other points, you took the talking points of one side, and having failed to do any research on them whatsoever, swallowed them hook line and sinker and called someone a liar. yet you have danced around the crucial point that could even start a discussion on the issue, never addressing it, just calling those who do not agree with liars. When in fact, as I indicated, all are probably not telling the whole truth, but some are out right lying - and it is not this administration.

Of course the issue is SS, and its reform. Do you have a 401k, or an IRA? Did you just dump money into it and let John P. Broker do with it as he wants with no accountabilty to you? If so, does that money even exist now?

Show me the account where your money is in SS. You cant. It does not exist. It is broken. It was patched in the 80s, but even then everyone at that time said it was just a patch and that eventually it would need more work. Everyone except the ones lying to you now - Hillary, Edwards and Pelosi come to mind in that category.

The first thing before any discussion (or allegations of dishonesty) can be had on the SS issue is to define WHAT SS is. If it is just another government tax, then a tax redirection (ala having YOU decided what to do with YOUR money) is probably going to be bad. not because it will bankrupt the system (the system is doing that all by itself), but because it will lay bare the fact that SS is a ponzi scheme and not your money, but just a failed concept that was bankrupt by congress over the last 50 years. (it did not start out paying all those disability and death benefits - it was just a retirement supplement).

But I am getting to far into an issue that is not germaine to your article yet and can be an article upon itself. I will bring back this lengthy essay to the point by saying that you announced deceit based upon faulty data - or more specifically talking points. You jumped to a conclusion - a conclusion not supported by any facts in the article (see, you did provide some in the comments, but you stated your conclusion in the article with none). And that is what I called you on. If you want to spout the talking points of one side, that is indeed your right. As it is mine to call you on them and tell you that they are bunch of BS.

Dont get your panties in a twist just because not everyone accepts those talking points without thinking. As most did not here. Next time, question those talking points. The talking points are for the lazy who do not want to or have the capabilty to research issues further. They make good campaign rhetoric, but lousy discussion points because they are inherantly flawed - regardless of who makes them.