[Doc]

Originally Posted by DenverTaco07

I would agree that a tax break for those that do would do that would be fantastic, instead of handing out massive tax breaks to all corporations (which BTW, does what exactly? If they have demand for their products, they wait for a tax break to meet that demand? or they just add it to the coffers and sit on it? I personally wouldn't hire someone to sit around and do nothing just because i received a tax cut, and i wouldn't wait for government hand out to go and hire someone to meet demand for my widgets). How about tying tax breaks to the hiring of full-time, well-paying jobs in America?

Part of the issue is with our tax codes is they are so convoluted that large corporations can use the thousands of loopholes to pay next to nothing in taxes, which seems wrong to the regular middle class folks paying 15% to 20% or more in effective tax rates on their personal income.

As I stated in my previous post, it's about attitudes and behaviors. Attitudes and behaviors have to change otherwise nothing else will.

American management's mentality is "Profit, profit, profit". That justifies doing anything to gain that, which spawns some pretty vile practices, including terminating employees JUST before they reach retirement so you don't have to pay them their retirement. Got an entire loyal crew at one location that are getting close to retirement? Close that location, let them all go and let your legal department craft a carefully worded statement to help you avoid being sued. There's a lot of slime being generated by American management and they've been doing that for decades, which is what brought about the unions and government regulations in the first place. Then decades later, the unions and government became the very thing they were supposed to prevent. Now it's a joint effort. (You can interpret that any way you like).

A very large part of the problem is our government's approach to taxation in the first place. I personally believe much of our problems could be greatly relieved by getting rid of all taxes in the first place, and replacing them with a simple, single federal sales tax. You only pay tax when you buy something. That's fair, it applies to everyone no matter what you buy, and there aren't any loopholes. No need for filing taxes or hiring an army of lawyers and accountants to deal with it. Everyone gets what they earn and gets to use it first, before government gets their hands on it. For business, the expenses of dealing with taxes goes away, which means they can use that money for their business. For employees, can you imagine what would happen to the economy if the "withholding" being taken out of your paycheck is suddenly not taken out? What would people do with that money? They'd spend it. That would rev up the economy quite nicely, and since they're buying things, the government would get their share from the sales tax. Everybody wins.

Our 'representatives' don't like that idea because they want the freedom to be able to take as much as they can, as fast as they can, and spend as much as they want without limitation. That's why we're trillions in debt without anything to really show for it. Our country is actually still in great shape overall, we just need people with the right attitude and behavior to be in charge of things. The entire collective group we have now, are not those people.

Originally Posted by fastball

My point EXACTLY!!!!!

They had to BEG our government for funds to simply keep the lights on. WTF is that? Why should I respect or listen to anyone who contributes to that mess????? Tell me!! I want you to explain why someone - ANYONE - involved with a company that goes bankrupt should be listened to. Do you have any good goddamned reason?

ANYONE who has been with GM for a long time should be on the unemployment line.

I really felt at that time that Congress and President Bush should have given GM the big middle finger. They made their bed, they can sleep in it. You want to be bailed out? Everyone working there right now is gone. Fired. No severance, no golden parachutes, not even a coffee cup. You're all fired and we will rebuild the company from the ground up with new, fresh minds and ideas that don't have the stench of 40 years of complete failure.

Well it's easy to be cavalier about tens of thousands of people's lives being thrown under the bus when you're not one of them, but the situation is a bit more involved than that. It's not only GM, but it's all those industries (and employees) that support what they do who are also affected. That's a LOT of people; people in a lot of states who don't want to lose their jobs.

When a large corporation goes down, that effects a lot of people. When a very large corporation goes down, that ripples throughout the economy. Politicians from all the states that are affected, don't want to just sit there and watch it happen. They want to try and do something, but it's that "something" that's critical. Do they know what to do? Do they know why the situation exists as it does now? What's the plan to fix it so it doesn't happen again? Our politicians are the worst money managers in the history of the planet, which is why their 'solutions' don't solve the causes that produced the effect. Their solution to their money problems is to take more or make more; raise taxes, print more money, raise the "debt ceiling". Only government can do that; businesses don't have that option. Throwing money at it is NOT the solution. You need to look at the practices; the attitudes and behaviors from all sectors that brought about the problem in the first place. Change that first, or they'll just do the same thing they've been doing and be back in the same position when they run out of the money you threw at them.

What we really need is an Employment Bill of Rights that outlines what can and can't be done with regards to management and workers. It needs to be aligned and fit within the existing Constitution and Bill of Rights, and needs very careful consideration as to what it's putting forth, why, and what the results are expected to be as a consequence. We don't want to become a dictatorship or a communist/socialist system. The track record for those systems is disastrous.

The thing is, the problems are multi-layered across all segments of our society, so there's no magic bullet. There's no single, quick-fix. Fixing it requires a comprehensive examination, understanding and balancing of multi-layers in order to get the overall machine running smoothly again. It's a lot like a car engine. The performance of the engine isn't based on one component; it's based on all of them together, and how the driver uses it. That's our country and society in a nutshell.