>>Rant ON
>>...ok so let me get this right...I'm supposed to tell my 400,000+ highly
>>skilled, well educated friends not to worry that some dude in India is
>>doing his job for $3 an hour and that he/she is gonna be ok...cause we're
>>gonna give them a break and send them to community college! Arrrrgh! I
>>say lets fry these corps with some taxes that make such actions
>>impractial!
>
>The task that no politician wants to take on is to delve into what caused these businesses to do this. First, it is dang near impossible to compete with countries whose standard of living is way below ours. Second, we have to look at what kind of climate our legislators and Congress created to force business expenses to skyrocket. Presidents are mainly just figureheads [only Lt Govs and VPs are lower on the power rungs]. The real power is in Congress and the State legislators. They have so badly screwed up our economy with their petty class-warfare, scare tactics, over regulation, unwieldy tax policies, outlandish lawsuits, no tort reform [they are all mostly lawyers so go figure], ad nauseum.
>
>It's fairly easy to levy tarrifs on imports, but how do you go about levying tarrifs on phone services? Wire taps? I don't think so. Before you blast Bush to heavily, just remember Kerry's wife's company is a major foreign country outsourcer as well, so his ox ain't going to get gored. So you are fooling yourself if you think Kerry can/will do anything about this either. Changing Congress and legislatures is the key. Quit voting for freaking lawyers and accountants.

Hi Mark,
I'd say you're over-simplifying the situation but agree that politicians *do* have the power to set things back on course.
It's easy to blame over-regulation, unweildy tax policies and outlandish law suits, and such but I think things run a little deeper...
OVER REGULATION
Much (probably most) regulation has to do with workplace safety and/or public safety. It's true, of course, that this all adds costs. BUT how is it moral for corporations to go somewhere where there are no/few regulations protecting workers or the public just to save a few bucks????
Yours (and ours) tax policies are unweildy and do have serious impacts on the costs of things, mainly to consumers but sometimes to corporations too. I heard a few month back that U.S. tax policy on sugar (to protect beet sugar producers there) got high enough that a major candy maker moved to Canada just because of that! I expect they'll be off to China soon.
I see outlandish law suits as a tough one. I heard some time ago, for instance, that HMOs there are not suable, aimed specifically to protect their cost structure. Yet their costs have risen way beyond inflation regardless. Why??? I believe you'll find similar in other fields or related fields.
When all regulation is gone and all unions are gone and all jobs are McJobs, what then??? Welcome to the third world, that's what.

cheers