General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMany TPP'ers argue manufacturing must be outsourced due to costs. Why stop there? Wall Street would
be cheaper to operate in Vietnam. Why not offshore all our jobs?
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Human101948
(3,457 posts)The average hedge fund has produced a worse investment performance in the first half of this year than a portfolio consisting of a savings account at your local bank and a random collection of stocks picked by a blindfolded monkey.
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http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-hedge-fund-geniuses-got-beaten-by-monkeys-again-2015-06-25
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)They pitted an investment-banker, a B-list celebrity with a habit for gambling and a monkey against each other. Investments in stocks were made according to their decisions over a period of time.
IIRC they all faired approximately equally good.
I had a statistics professor who repeatedly told us that the stock-market cannot be predicted with statistical means: It's purely driven by the emotions panic and greed.
ToxMarz
(2,169 posts)That's where the money is and the house always wins.
Thespian2
(2,741 posts)had a buyer choosing stocks by throwing darts at chart of NYSE stocks...the dart thrower won over the Wall Street experts...
I suggest a savings account in a community bank or credit union...avoid the banksters who gamble with your money...
Travis_0004
(5,417 posts)THe S&P 500 averages 10%. If you diversify and invest wisely, anybody can do better than a savings account long term.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)For me, the idea of work has always been closely linked with improvement, not the opposite.
For others, the idea of work is only about money. If one is being paid, it is good work. The more the pay, the better the work. No matter if it is drilling teeth or dropping uranium.
Nothing wrong with being successful, just depends on ones concept of success I suppose.
onethatcares
(16,215 posts)coming up with ways to screw the rest of us out of our hard earned money. I feel no pity for them
djean111
(14,255 posts)and housing startups. I wonder what they will do when the 1% have all the stuff they want, and the rest of us can only buy what we need for subsistence.
frylock
(34,825 posts)AngryAmish
(25,704 posts)Exchanges are just servers nowadays.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)moving their income and taxation to a fake HQ in a foreign tax haven
But the invisible hand will ultimately move on to squeezing profits out of commissions of their employees, and when that happens they will of course move operations to places where those rates will be lower.
merrily
(45,251 posts)There is a difference between outsourcing, which can be from say, GE to an American independent contractor or an American subcontractor, and offshoring, which means the jobs left America. It's confusing to me when the terms are used as synonyms; and most people do that. Even the TV comedy about sending American jobs to India, along with a single American manager to supervise the Indian workers, was entitled Outsourced.
BTW, that was cancelled after one season, maybe less. I guess Americans didn't find it very funny.
Ed Suspicious
(8,879 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)Bernie 2016
(90 posts)and to this day, H1-B's has pretty much taken over IT, and I am seriously thinking of retraining while I'm still young... (under 40)
City Lights
(25,171 posts)erronis
(15,485 posts)Better, let's pink-slip them all and use the team of monkeys to write the bills, and a dart board to replace the supremes.
merrily
(45,251 posts)the overlords of our plutocracy pay the lobbyists.
I kid.
Maybe
pampango
(24,692 posts)If we 'rich' (in global terms) folks don't create a 'gated community' for ourselves, the poor people and 'others' will take what we have.
Actually, Swedes and Germans don't seem to feel that way about poor foreigners and their way of life is better than ours.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)do that here. That's why they've maintained their manufacturing base.
Or, we could offshore all our jobs... Why not?
pampango
(24,692 posts)nearly as good.
German manufacturing workers are paid more than American and yet "they've maintained their manufacturing base" in the face of poor Vietnamese and others. Apparently basing policy on "fear of ..." is not necessary or advisable.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)ucrdem
(15,512 posts)Is this something you heard an "expert" on CNN say? Because TPP is really not about outsourcing to China which is not a signatory. It's about a) creating a comprehensive regulatory framework for trade, and b) creating export jobs in the US.
Have you ever so much as glanced at the TPP outline? A real one, not a bogus Libertarian one? Click the link in my sig if you haven't. You'll be pleasantly surprised to learn what it's really all about.
p.s. here's a pretty good rundown of what it actually covers in those 29 chapters we keep hearing about:
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-issue-issue-negotiating-objectives
Recursion
(56,582 posts)A lot of those HFT servers are run out of India.
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)Outsourcing doesn't need TPP as the policies that facilitate it have been on the books for some time. TPP is about exporting stuff that isn't easily offshored but also isn't always easily exported, like agricultural products, which run into f local tariffs, and intellectual property, which is easily ripped off and bootlegged, hence the IP chapter that has fanned so much feverish FUD.
Sancho
(9,072 posts)You're right. Big corps stash cash and put their "mailing address" headquarters all over the world now because it's cheaper. Some "wall streeters" have houses or fly back and forth from offices in the Islands, Ireland, etc. - whatever the "shelter du jour" happens to be convenient.
I know a kid who turned out to be a "Harvard grad, commodities trader, Wall Streeter" who originally lived in Connecticut and mostly worked in NYC 15 years ago. The family still has a house, but he's often overseas (far East) or running to places with banks (Bermuda) or whatever. The kids don't see him.
From what I hear, the money may be very good (most of us don't feel sorry for 'em), but investor/bankers are getting stressed with the international connections too. If they don't go, some local hot shot in a foreign country will do the job for less.
Don't be surprised if Wall Street doesn't suffer the same fate as American factories.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)The important people are the ones doing the offshoring, they get to keep their jobs and likely get a raise for eliminating your earnings.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)KansDem
(28,498 posts)The next time Wall Street fraud and malfeasance wrecks the economy, would we bail out the bankers and brokers in dollars or dongs? And don't forget the bonuses!
Or would we leave that up to the bankers and brokers to decide.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)Outsourcing the livelihood of members of the 'family' would be the height of disloyalty, almost certainly leading to a damaging civil war.
ieoeja
(9,748 posts)Overseas IT was rather poor and had to be brought up to speed. On the other hand, basic accounting hasn't changed in centuries. So we could more easily off-shore accounting.
You would have thought I dropped a live hand grenade in the room. Excuses why that would not be possible flew faster than a pyroclastic flow.
kacekwl
(7,028 posts)our goal to be like other countries. Are we not exceptional. We certainly used to be. What happened here ?
Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)seems that the Treaty will not be finally voted until after the election in 2016.... better get to work electing people that will vote the right way!