This was actually a thoughtful and concerned post. I hope more of the extremes on the left and right get to the point where they realize there is a crisis and we need to put aside the nonsense and get to work as individuals in forming some kind of consensus irrespective of the politicians to start forward progress.

Wow, that was a mouthful and I hoped to be short and concise on this post. I want to take some time to construct a thoughtful answer and I will, it may take a bit though as I am very busy.

I’ll ignore the comment on the anti union stuff about cutting the crap. I’m sure you got me confused with some other person you are communicating with since I am and always have been against union mentality and as I have repeatedly said I have never wasted a dime on that collective group think mentality.

No need to respond to this post. I will give your whole response consideration and respond in a cohesive way to all your points.

Regards,
Roger

“How can we compete when we bake in the exorbitant costs of healthcare in our products when the rest of the world does not? Secondly, how do we compete when the rest of the world is educating their young gifted people in the best Universities in the world (ours)? and we don’t even care about basic educational needs of our children?”

We can compete by removing other ingredients from the recipe, including some of the healthcare costs (or all for that matter.)Roger, I certainly don’t believe companies should be forced to provide health insurance for their employees, I view it as a fringe benefit to be used to attract the best employees. I believe that we need jobs and our employers need to make a profit. I don’t believe my employer is in business to serve me or any other employee.

I am not an ideallist that believes things will ever be as they should, but her is how I believe it should work. Cut health insurance costs by allowing competition and most importantly putting a stop to the predatory ambulance chasers. I don’t know how many (it was a lot) doctors left the litigation Hell that is Madison County, IL because they could no longer afford the outrageous malpractice insurance premiums. Cut the costs imposed by oppressive environmental, OSHA, and whatever other regulatory/compliance boondoggle is put in place to discourage business. Cut the ridiculous union contract crap (you can’t bullshit me on this one, Roger! I worked for Olin Corporation and I suffered first hand as a salaried employee due to the ridiculous union contract.)

Did you get your basic educational needs met? How about your children? What is wrong with the education my children are receiving, other than the fact that I pay tuition for the homeschool curricula and books in addition to the taxes for public education? What is wrong with getting a college degree the way I did? (Working full time and paying for it until I got a job that offered tuition reimbursement.) Damn it, why take the garbage that has been dumped upon the working people and their employers and make it worse?

If you want to know my position on Free Trade, read the Right Turn section at the following site:
http://www.riverbender.com/politics/index2008_0103.cfm

What has driven jobs out of the country are tax incentives and the cost of manufacturing and software development here, vs. the rest of the world. We should be giving tax breaks to companies who hire people domestically, and imposing tariffs on exporting labor to other countries.

Every time a person is hired in large engineering and manufacturing companies about 10K to 15K is spent on equipping that person. That money spent in this country would jump start manufacturing. Also having another tax payer in place would be positive.

That is how we can balance the books without imposing restrictions on free trade. Call it socialistic if your want, call it protectionist if you want, I call it tit for tat.

Roger

I appretiate you conceern, but I am capable of taking care of myself.

The “Me” generation is exactly the opposite of what I am talking about. The “me” is the Reagan era which I endorsed and plunged into wholly.

You are talking to someone who has taken capitalism and productivity to the extreme and now has some questions about my contribution to the state of affairs in this country.

I think that responsibility for our actions is indisputable for any kind of moral platform. I am just being honest. It seems that we have built our own coffin. You speak about our “manufacturing businesses” and at that level the “Joe Six Pack” life and efforts are indeed nobel. I respect the people who do the work. I was talking about the people who own and run the manufacturing business. I am talking about what goes on behind those doors that you don’t get to see. Call me a “whistle blower”. You guys are the troops. You march where you are told to march and you are indeed not the problem.

Don’t be so naive as to think your company cares as much about you as you care about your company.

Basic rules of engagement are needed in the corporate world. I know. You respond to what you want, but not to my central theme. The whole idea of deregulation has gone too far and the lack of a social conscious in recent years has made us less competitive.

Here is what I want your insight on. This is what I want you to explain to me.

How can we compete when we bake in the exorbitant costs of healthcare in our products when the rest of the world does not? Secondly, how do we compete when the rest of the world is educating their young gifted people in the best Universities in the world (ours)? and we don’t even care about basic educational needs of our children?

You avoid the real questions and the dialog at a level that would have meaningful impact on our mutual understanding in favor of GOP rhetoric. I am looking for one person, anyone who wants to put that s_it away and talk about what is really happening.

Roger

Your personal tragedies are indeed tragic, and I am truly sorry for the suffering of your family and your attempts in coping with it. This is not intended to be offensive, but it seems you are displaying a symptom of a “me” generation. It seems that you believe the government should spread your misery among the remainder of the population. How do you propose medical costs be controlled by government? Barack Obama is claiming that he will lower cost without sacrificing quality, which anyone can see will not be allowed in the world of parasitic malpractice attorneys. Ever hear of John Edwards and his 28,000 square foot home?

How will our education system be improved by pumping more money to the coffers of the “condom on a banana, celebrate artificial diversity, any lifestyle is normal unless it is Christian” so-called educators? The focus of the modern school has the reverse affect of one that would strengthen this nation.

Our manufacturing businesses don’t need further regulation. They don’t need further government imposed harm. The regulations you seem to adore have driven jobs out of this country! Ridiculous regulation creates jobs… how? Common sense laws are necessary, what we have today is oppressive. What we will have in andObamanation will be catastrophic!

I hope I didn’t come off too strong and kill your interest in this discussion. I have been enjoying it immensely. Real life experiences often leave people speechless.

I know that was a lot to digest. It gets more complex the deeper we go. I hope you haven’t lost interest though. We’re getting personal, at least I am and some people find that difficult. Don’t let me down here, I’m hoping to find some kind of mutual understanding that we can take forward, each in our own march for a better tomorrow.

The “experience” of an old(er) successful capitalist who has been taught a few life lessons along the way, and the the exuberant young idealist (like the younger me) that still idealistically hangs on to the influence of people who have no interest in our well being is much like the internal battle I have.

I actually hope you can restore my faith in the “me” generations rhetoric. I’m hoping I am a one-off anomaly of the faithful, and I will wake up to a new bull market and “go for it” environment.

If not maybe we can explore what kind of government can forget ideals, and agree on a new form of capitalism that will not fail in the way all the past theories of the left and right have. If there is a hope for the US in terms of world leadership, it would be this kind of future.

Otherwise we (the US us) will be left behind as an interesting place for the new controlling empire (China?, India?, EC?, Russia?) to visit and see where the last great empire was. I recently went to Rome and was amazed by all the magnificent relics of a past empire.

Hope we will not soon be one of those tourist destinations to study history. We need to get our shi_t together as a nation. Reality is not your father’s world view anymore.

Roger

Don’t I know it. I spent 5 years in another industry other than medical equipment as a VP of Technology. The semiconductor industry to be specific and I worked on the chip making equipment side. You want to see change! That is where 6 months is a long life cycle.

I was and am still now brought in to a company whether as a consultant to use technology to create breakthroughs in service delivery fot capital equipment. In the earlier days of my career ti was more about assuring that the equipment was producing the best quality results consistently to reduce the diagnostic inaccuracies in patient care. It was a good thing. It also had the effect of greatly decreasing the number of engineers required to maintain equipment. I mean drastic reductions. Over a few years after introducing the automated testing new methods and introducing remote and even automated systems for interpreting the testing results the contract margins increased from 15-20 percent to 80 percent. Hundreds of people were displaced and the contract pricing was not reduced, it was even increased. Great business! These new methods were proprietary, so if the customer tried to self serve or find and alternate provider, the old manual methods were the only thing made available.

Then another multinational hired me to do this and I did, with similar results. I would integrate technology when it existed, design and spec global systems, and invent when it was something new. That is where most of my patents came from.

I started writing for magazines and journals and became highly sought after in the industry. I worked my way to the Director level and then eventually I stated a company, and then another where we became the modern equivalent of the old “efficiency experts” only using technology. I analyze processes, evaluate the support technology used, the existing applications and infrastructure and the entire service delivery system. That lead to benchmarking, Gap analysis and then the gap closure and the development and transition plan. These were all multinationals.

At that point a company’s founder, again a multinational brought me in at the VP level with absolute backing from the top people, probably my biggest success both career wise and monetarily.

Over the years I had access to all the strategic planning and even made recommendations regarding staffing and personnel. I guess I am responsible for hundreds of thousands of job losses indirectly or directly.

Then some things happened in my personal life that made me consider the real impact I had had. Today I wonder if all this productivity and the march to eliminate the American worker has been good for the country.

My initial desire to make the equipment used in diagnosing illnesses better was the result of the death of a young son. But the catastrophic ongoing illness of my surviving son in his late twenties and watching him loose his sight, then his insurance, being denied for government help so he could save try to his eye sight while being told he would qualify if he were an illegal alien has greatly impacted my thinking. Yes I should be set, “have mine” but we refinanced his home to pull out money so his surgeries could continue. The market there dropped and he didn’t get better, couldn’t go back to work. The neighborhood the beautiful house was in had a 40 percent vacancy rate do to foreclosures and after trying to rent it for a year, we let it go. I went through my savings, took out personal loans and tapped my IRA.

Let me warn you with 5 young daughters and weddings and collage coming up you have a lot in front of you. But if one of them gets seriously ill as an adult, looses their ability to work, is rejected by the insurance companies and then has to spend years fighting for the Medicare that he paid into and I certainly have, while the situation demands there is no time to wait for the surgeries needed to save what we can of his vision, you will spend everything. Think about 200K to 300K gone, can you afford it?

Meanwhile we are spending trillions to make a democracy in a country within a region where no-one will ever know peace, and rebuilding their infrastructure while destroying our economy. Well what else can I say. You don’t think it can happen to you until it does. And it does every day.

Advanced medical and preventative medical care for people who can’t afford it costs all of us, not just as individuals, far more than if we took care of peoples health issues before they became out of control.

If the government should be doing anything to help us compete in the world and increase our productivity, it would be spending on healthcare and education. I’m sure you know how much of the cost of making a vehicle in the US is attributed to health insurance and lost time during illnesses. One of the big reasons our products suffer in quality is because we need to cheapen the vehicle to compete in the world market, where they don’t pay these costs. You can get a better car or truck that is foreign made for the same money, there is no doubt about it.

You being in the auto industry should be painfully aware of this. What could be more important that the education and health of our nation. If you want to find the quickest path to irrelevancy in the world, ignore these issues, then see how long we can afford the massive military spending we have today.

Roger

It is my responsibility to increase efficiency and downtime as well… by researching, creating specs for, and purchasing (or having built) new assembly equipment (or refurbished assembly equipment with modifications,) not to maintain existing equipment. You see, the equipment must change with the product cycle, as automotive headlamps and tail lights change with model changes.

Your opinion seems to be “I’ve created my wealth and comfortable life… now I think its time for government to level the playing field to ensure equal outcomes, not opportunity, for those who haven’t. I can afford to pay more for everything as efficiency cannot be improved (in keeping with Karl Marx) for the sake of the proles maintaining their current positions.”

I will agree that there should be reasonable laws and regulations, however I believe that productivity should not be artificially sacrificed for forced social purposes.

For what it’s worth.