What Industries Do You Admire?

[Bigb23]

Sure, we've invented a ton of great products only to see them improved and produced cheaper overseas- but then again, why don't we leap frog that by being truly inventive and innovative again.

That's all well and good, until the Chinese get hold of the product for reverse engineering and production, thus flaunting international patent and trade laws.

Also, I nominate Medical device manufacturers, hobby[[Folk art) and freeware sources.

[Gannon]

Gnome,

I said I was an admirer, not a supporter...heh.


Cheers

[ccbatson]

Apple/Mac computers and other devices/software is most definitely and industry [[distinct from PC/Windows).

When it comes down to it...best products at the best prices and profits clearly drive this corporation. They act liberal [[green) to curry favor and increase sales amongst that [[very ignorant) segment of the market [[liberals). You don't think for a second that Apple would sacrifice one penny on liberal principles do you?

[mjs]

That's all well and good, until the Chinese get hold of the product for reverse engineering and production, thus flaunting international patent and trade laws.

And sell it to whom? Countries can and do stop and destroy goods at the borders and malisciously violating a US Patent results in 3x the damages caused. US Customs seized $222 million in Chinese goods last year. The US Patent Office is one of the few entities to bring money into the government and European countries use it as a much much larger revenue source. Patents are an enumerated power by the Constitution because our government knows its essential to our country's economic position and quality of life. Counterfeiters might piss of corporations, but its no where near a level that would truelly affect innovation. Our patent laws and their enforcement is a very large part of why we have such an innovative past.

I admire the US Patent and Trademark Office, customs counterfieting seizure units, and the companies that make the most of them.

[Bigb23]

US Customs seized $222 million in Chinese goods last year.

And from a Frontline documentary the other day, that is only a small fraction of the stuff that makes it's way here yearly. Yet we are so able to trade and get into trillions in debt to them. Again, the Chinese tend to look the other way when it comes to money.

[mjs]

Provide the episode name or a link so I can watch it. I'd be interested in seeing it. Frontline is a solid show.

Obama is working on making trade agreements dependant upon the nation's actions. The US's status as the major spender is the most influential weapon we have in international politics. China's policies on patent enforcement, health, safety, and the environment might be coming to bite them in the ass. Everyone talks about how dependant we are on China and ignores that they are more dependant on us.

[Omaha]

As a Colbert Conservative and a Social Darwinist, I admire the health insurance industry the best. As industries go, they are relatively new. I believe it was during WWII when the War Labor Board limited raises to 15% “for the duration� that labor and management really got into negotiating “fringe benefits.� As a result of jointly negotiating employer-supplied health care insurance, regular insurance agencies expanded into a whole new area of coverage.

And while employer-provided health insurance started with unionized industries, soon because of union density, union-like benefits were provided by non-union employers as well.

Anyway back to the industry: the health insurance industry’s job is to take in as much in premiums as possible and to pay out as little as possible. Anything not paid out goes to the stockholders. I mean how cool is it that they can make a profit by denying coverage!?!

Over time the industry was able to conflate “health insurance� with “health care� itself. So the nation believes that if you want improved health care, you MUST have private sector health insurance.

Because the industry prospers only with a sick America, they are about as interested in improving our national health as Xe [[nee Blackwater) is in preventing needless wars. You’ll never find the health insurance industry engaging in massive lobbying to regulate cigarettes, put calorie contents on fast food or much of anything else that liberals think the government should be sticking its nose in!

How neat to have an industry that, with market competition, still has premiums going up in double digits every year? Here’s just some of the tricks of the trade that help keep premiums high while keeping pay-outs low: denying coverage for pre-existing conditions; raising premiums for insuring older people; increasing co-pays; decreasing maximum pay out; increasing stop loss; lack of portability; and letters to covered individuals threatening action if “overuse� continues.

Money buys power and when you combine the health insurance industry with private hospitals, health care systems as well as pharmaceutical and biotech companies you have some serious power to stop any calls for letting the government get into offering a plan or even any serious government regulation of the market.

For all those reasons and more I love the health insurance industry best. It rocks.

[ccbatson]

222 million out of how many hundreds of billions? Using the same criteria, what percentage of US exports would be affected?

[Bigb23]

Money buys power and when you combine the health insurance industry with private hospitals, health care systems as well as pharmaceutical and biotech companies you have some serious power to stop any calls for letting the government get into offering a plan or even any serious government regulation of the market.

What part of your platform don't you understand ? With health care ramping up 7% a year, while most of the public goes without, is a travesty. Message me to find out what a crap system we have now.

[Omaha]

What part of being a proud Colbert Conservative or Social Darwinist don't YOU understand?

Look up Social Darwinism. It is about the survival of the fittest applied to human society. Now historically for most, but not all, Social Darwinists, the most important thing they did was to choose their parents well.

There are some of the elite, who have enjoyed the privilege of having been born with a “silver spoon in their mouth� and all that it entails, who will squander what they were born to. But for the most part, the rich are able to pass along the good life [[boarding school, private college, private club membership, cottages on the water, marriage to those of their class, etc.) to their offspring generation after generation.

And when you tie this all up with a religious overtone, similar to what was sadly lost with the ending of the Divine Right of Kings, you really have something spectacular. Here is a quote that ties this Social Darwinist stuff together for me. I hope you enjoy it as well.

“The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for - not by labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given control of the property interests of the country, and upon the successful management of which so much depends.� George Baer, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad [[one of the largest coal operators) 1902. When asked about the conditions of those working in the coal mines, George Baer replied, “Suffer?!...They don’t suffer! Why, they can’t even speak English!!�

[ccbatson]

The Colbert part is the part that is hard to get. Colbert is the complete opposite of what he portrays. WHen you call yourself that, the only logical thing for the reader to do is reverse the meaning of everything you say [[at very long length)...that is confusing...and I believe disingenuous on your part.

[Omaha]

Cc, I hear the critics of the Great Stephen Colbert calling him disingenuous, childish, sarcastic, ADD-impaired, self-absorbed, ironic, falsely patriotic, world-traveling and “bon vivantish.� That globe-trotting hero has both educated and amused his viewers for nearly half as many days as have elapsed since President Bush joined our boys, girls, women and men in uniform in declaring “Mission Accomplished� in Iraq. But Colbert’s critics don’t really know the true Stephen as I imagine him. In my mind, Stephen would either respond to his critics with the kind of acerbic wit for which he is so famous or by replying "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

That is why I am proud to call myself a Colbert Conservative, just as over 600,000 others are proud to call themselves members of Glenn Beck’s 912 Project. They truly believe that by following Glenn’s 9 principles and 12 values and by educating others to stand up for what is right…they can return this great nation to its founding values and make us as united and self-sacrificing, paranoid, jingoistic, government loving and government fearing, and idealistic as we were on September 12, 2001.

Just like DY, this is a great nation with room for more than just one type of political belief. That is why I take on another and also call myself a Social Darwinist.

[rb336]

The Colbert part is the part that is hard to get. Colbert is the complete opposite of what he portrays. WHen you call yourself that, the only logical thing for the reader to do is reverse the meaning of everything you say [[at very long length)...that is confusing...and I believe disingenuous on your part.

Omaha is not at all disingenuous, and most of us are not confused by Omaha's posts. I find them refreshing and creative

[ccbatson]

If he identifies himself with Colbert, who is purposefully disingenuous, then he is?? Wait, wait, don't tell him, let Rb fill in the blank on this one by himself.

[Omaha]

Finding just one industry to admire or just one of the great capitalists of the American experience is so difficult. There are advocates of the dog-eat-dog, kill or be killed competition that helped the nation’s wealth get funneled to the well-born needs to be told over and over again.

Now squeamish libs may be revolted by the following quotes, but as a Colbert Conservative and Social Darwinist, I am enthralled by their simple clarity. Please let me share some with you so that you can join me in my awful admiration of these great American capitalists and the policies they used to maximize profits.

“It is only greenhorns who enlist. You can learn nothing in the army. . . . Here there is no credit attached to going. All now stay if they can and go if they must. Those who are able to pay for substitutes do so and no discredit attaches. In time you will learn that a man may be a patriot without risking his own life� Judge Thomas Mellon writing to his son James about how to handle the Draft Act passed in 1863 where it was legal to “purchase� for$300 a substitute to enlist for himself. He followed his father’s advice, survived the war and prospered.

“We can’t get enough white labor to build this railroad, and build it we must, so we’re forced to hire them [Chinese labor]. If you can’t get along with them, we have only one alternative. We’ll let you go and hire nobody but them.� Charles Crocker, company superintendent for the Central Pacific Railroad explaining to white workers why he was forced to hire Chinese immigrants [[at a 30 percent savings in labor costs) to build the Western end of the transcontinental railroad. 1865


“The railroads are not run for the benefit of the dear public. That cry is all nonsense. They are built for men who invest their money and expect to get a fair percentage on the same.� William Henry Vanderbilt, self-described richest man on earth, owner of many railroads and son of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1882

“As the Company has gone to the expense and trouble of establishing a store, butcher shop, and saloon for the accommodation and convenience of its employees, all employees will be expected to patronize these places to the exclusion of all other similar establishments.� Work rules of the Northern Pacific Coal Company, on developing the “Company Store,� 1885

I can employ one half of the working class to kill the other half.� Jay Gould, before the 1886 strike on his Southwestern System

“Business is not a philanthropy…I do not care two cents for your ethics. I don’t know enough of them to apply them…As a business proposition it is right to get all out of a business that you possibly can.� Henry Osborne Havemeyer, president of the Sugar Trust 1899

“The low wages at which women will work form the chief reason for employing them at all...A woman's cheapness is, so to speak, her greatest economic asset. She can be used to keep down the cost of production where she is regularly employed. Where she has not been previously employed she can be introduced as a strike breaker to take the place of men seeking higher wages, or the threat of introducing her may be used to avert a strike. But the moment she organizes a union and seeks by organization to secure better wages she diminishes or destroys what is to the employer her chief value.� US Bureau of Labor, Report on Conditions of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, vol. 10, 1911

It appears that finding cheap labor is a tried and true practice in maximizing profits. One of the favorite management strategies for keeping wages low is the “reverse auction.� In this process the capitalist is able to engage in “divide and conquer� behaviors. Men v. Women; adult v. child; white v. black; black v. brown, etc. Good thing that American ingenuity always finds new ways to pit worker against worker so that they bid against one another with the lowest bidders, who can do the job, getting the job.

But as that damn 1911 quote from the U.S. Bureau of Labor stated when workers unite and form unions, employers lose their ability to have them bid against one another. Thank Goodness the world is now a source for cheap labor. They can’t all form unions. And where there labor movements develop in the countries of the world, I know they are not smart enough to understand that international solidarity will turn the tables on those who I so admire…the rich and well-born. .

[jams]

Point well made, Omaha, although certain sped-redders might miss it in their rush to respond.

[ccbatson]

Follow all of the money from any successful corporation and see where it leads to...employees wages, reinvestment, savings/investment, consumption of elective and non elective goods and services in other industries where the same process occurs as a result. THE ENGINE OF AN ECONOMY is its' producers. The anchor of said economy are the second handers [[parasites, moochers, and government).

[reddog289]

I also admire the Bug Extermination industry.

[kathy2trips]

Small businesses of all kinds. Just people blazing a trail. Also, anybody who works with their hands: bricklayers, mechanics, carpenters, farmers, etc.

[Bigb23]

Also, anybody who works with their hands: bricklayers, mechanics, carpenters, farmers, etc.

Used to be that women would look for a guy that worked hard and got a little dirt on them, like their dad. Now it's a paper degree and a Lexus that floats their boat.

[Pam]

The Colbert part is the part that is hard to get. Colbert is the complete opposite of what he portrays. WHen you call yourself that, the only logical thing for the reader to do is reverse the meaning of everything you say [[at very long length)...that is confusing...and I believe disingenuous on your part

Look up the definition of satire and maybe you will be less confused.

[Bigb23]

At least he puts thoughtful content into a post, instead of dropping right wing ideology into every single topic thats on this side of the forum.

ccbatson | Today, 12:09 AM | Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 1,660 Report Post

Omaha | Yesterday, 08:37 PM | Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 53 Report Post

[ndavies]

How can you admire an industry. Industries are like any other group. In any industry there are going to be great companies out to make their business great and there are going to be companies just in it to fleece the living daylights out of their clients.

[rb336]

THE ENGINE OF AN ECONOMY is its' producers. The anchor of said economy are the second handers [[parasites, moochers, and government).

you are quite right. first among the parasites are corporate CEOs and boards that suck all the value that the producers [[the guys and gals who actually produce things -- LABOR) put into the company while constantly cutting their wages and benefits

[lilpup]

1) Mac is not an industry, it is not even a company. It's a product line

2) Apple's liberalism is clear from their actions, and far from a facade.

Designed in the US, built in China - true West Coasters - line your own pockets then put on the liberal, especially greenie, costume