I don't know if this link will work and it seems to be a video of a TV broadcast so the quality is not there but, in just over a minute Roseanne Barr explains (as Roseanne Conner) how politics and business work. Here it is, just the same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElSZPcQjjtk
When I worked in the south, I used to read the business section of the newspaper to see what the outlook for work might be in the future. Just being a Nosey Nate, I wanted to see what my company's clients might be up to as far as expansion. I also was curious as to whom else might be coming to town.
The incentive to come to Memphis- or any city- has always been first and foremost a favorable tax package for the corporation. They don't care about the weather or quality of the workforce. It could be Siberia with Taliban jihadists for all they care. It's not like the CEO is gonna live there. As long as the taxes are low, there they will go. And they will stay there until the next great deal comes along.
Whoever bottles Pabst Blue ribbon beer signed a deal to bottle in Woodridge Illinois a couple years ago. If memory serves, it was a 10 year deal and it meant a few dozen local jobs. They didn't make it ten years because (I believe) San Antonio Texas offered them a better deal and they basically told Illinois they were leaving and, if you don't like it, you can lump it. This is not legal but, is it worth suing over? I don't know what's gonna happen with that. Corporations do a lot of odd things that seem stupidly expensive but, they just have to raise their prices to pay for these things and- likely- it's a tax write-off anyways. I really think it's about a Charlie Sheen "winning" thing more than fiscal responsibility. {Incidently, what's that motherfucker up to lately?} The corporations, methinks, just want to get their way. They are going to make money, of course, but, there's just something about power....
So, cities have long cut deals with companies to entice them to enjoy their low tax rates. This is great because it provides jobs for the citzens. My company would remodel the buildings that other people would occupy as employees. It's the way things worked.
Well, it's the way things worked.... The gloves are off these days. You can blame it on NAFTA if you want but, jobs went overseas not because of high taxes here but because of no taxes over there. And no labor unions. And no EPA or OSHA....
Some of the stupidest people you'd never want to meet exist as teapublicans on Topix. There you hear all this shit about how "high" taxes are here compared to there (regardless of what 3rd world cesspool there is). You rarely hear though, how taxes are the lowest they've been since the 70's- since before Reagan. The thinking is supposed to be that those jobs lost overseas and across the border to Mexico will return once we get a teapublican president- one that doesn't fucking hate business and America like Obama! And we have to end this free ride of entitlements by the elitist teachers, construction workers and government workers like cops and fireman with their hoity-toity unions! All we have to do, while we're at it, is end unions and their communist *collective bargaining* and the *job-killing* minimum wage. I garaunfuckingtee we will have near 100% employment in America if we do that! Who could NOT want that!??
Well, US. We the people. That's who! Because, if you do all these things, we the people (the bulk of us) will be working alongside our children for a few dollars a day....just like the bulk of us did in the 19th and into the early 20th century....with no protection. No representation. No security. No freedom.
Don't think so? You take away unions and all the protections they bled for....and you take away ALL THE PROTECTIONS THEY BLED FOR.... Protections that you enjoy even if you are not Union. You can believe that companies will continue to offer these things to be "competetive" or because "dammit- they're AMERICANS!!!" If you want, you can also believe that Sarah Palin poops ice cream. Have a taste and see, Any American company operating in Bangladesh, is NOT going out of their way to accomodate the children working in their sweatshops. Know why? Because they don't fucking have to! And it costs MONEY! Remember slavery? Remember what we had to do to end that? Paying blacks a living wage wasn't even on the table then. And Vicksburg Mississippi was the wealthiest city in the country- more millionaires than New York! Guess why?
Now, we're not heading towards slavery. Well, not that I know of... (what have you heard???) But, we are heading back to the future of the gilded age of robber barons, sweat shops and oweing one's soul to the company store. And we're supposed to see this as our *patriotic duty*?
How fucking ironic that teapublicans love the 2nd amendment so! Well, for now they do.....
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