philbymon wrote:I may be thinking with an average mind, but it doesn't look like rocket science to me.
That's because you aren't seeing the whole picture (and I don't mean that in a personal-attack kind of way; I like you Philby)
As a musician, your hands are often your lifeblood. So take a moment and look at your hand. Looks pretty simple, doesn't it?
But anyone with a degree in medical science or a wide knowledge of anatomy will tell you there's more to it than meets the eye. How does it work? Not so simply. A complex interaction between your brain (a seemingly unrelated body part), electrical signals, your muscles, nerves, bones, skin, blood and ligaments make it work.
But any 5-year-old can you draw you a simple picture of a hand.
philbymon wrote:If you have a problem with jobs being out-sourced, make it too expensive to do so.
And how does that solve the problem? Think it through. Completely. Beginning to end.
Capitalism can't survive without profit. What happens when you make it "expensive" to outsource jobs? When companies see their profits threatened, they don't just move jobs overseas, they move the whole company overseas.
The world is a capitalistic one. If America were to become a socialist society overnight, we'd lose millions of jobs as companies pulled up stakes and went elsewhere. Entrepreneurs will just move to Singapore instead (which, incidentally, is what happened to all the good stem cell researchers when the Bush administration banned government funded research)
You can't "punish" a company in a capitalistic society for making a profit. You can tax them, but even then, if you tax too much they'll go elsewhere. Punishment runs contrary to how capitalism works.
You have to think the problem through.
philbymon wrote:If you have a problem with illegal aliens taking jobs from your ppl, make the ppl who hire them into criminals, & punish them roughly enough that others won't follow in their footsteps.
This is what I'm talking about - not seeing the whole picture. You're ignoring all of the factors that make illegal immigrants relevant.
Ask yourself, why do immigrants come across the border to take these jobs? And what jobs are they? And why aren't American workers taking these jobs? Do you really think there are people who are hiring immigrants over an equally qualified American? Dream on. All things equal, an employer will hire an American because there's no risk involved.
Immigrants come over to take these jobs because Americans won't do them.
For instance, whose going to pick crops when you outlaw illegal immigrants? Farmers can't get regular Americans to do those jobs at the wages they pay. And most farmers can't afford to pay the kinds of wages that entitled Americans believe they deserve. Its' a catch-22.
So your solution is to "punish" the farmers? Brilliant, because now you've just put an entire farm into foreclosure. The farmer goes to jail, the immigrants go out of work, and the unemployed Americans still have nothing.
Nobody wins.
philbymon wrote:If you have ppl stealing from other ppl, punish them, & force them to pay back that which they stole.
Theft is already a crime. Of course, if you dissolve the government, good luck prosecuting the criminals and getting your money back.
philbymon wrote:The more complex you make these problems, the more loopholes ppl will find & use against other ppl, to the detriment of us all. That's why we're in this mess.
We're in this mess for a lot of different reasons. Simplifying things doesn't solve the problems. And short term, short-sighted solutions only make things worse.
You have to have a larger perspective on this stuff, and you have to be willing to think long term to get to actual, real solutions. You also have to have some patience, because these problems are complex enough and big enough that no solution is going to happen overnight. There are no magic bullets here.
The world is a rapidly changing place. It is also, like it or not, a capitalistic one. Money is its lifeblood. You have to be willing to deal with it in those terms. You have to accept the ever-changing nature of the world, and the capitalistic nature of it, and work within those bounds to get what you want.
The best thing we can do, as Americans, is learn from the mistakes of others (and this really works for anyone). The lending markets made a huge mistake. The buyers overextended themselves and reached for more than they were capable of handling. The government didn't regulate the lenders. The lenders were driven to loan money to risky buyers. Everyone - EVERYONE - had a part in this. You can't just simply blame one quadrant and call it good.
What we have to do is learn from this mistake and take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Same thing happend with Enron. They were allowed to utilize questionable accounting practices to artificially inflate their stock prices. We now have Sarbanes-Oxley regulations to guard against that.
Railing against job losses won't solve problems.