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    LongSnakeHamilton Nolan
    2/11/16 3:50pm

    Just to speak for the other side of free trade: its allowed families around the entire developing world pull themselves out of squalor and in many cases, send the next generation to school, healthcare and university for the first time EVER.

    Yes, it sucks here to lose those jobs but we will never truly have those jobs here again unless we are willing to pay Americans pennies or are willing to accept a higher cost of product, in many cases much much higher. We clearly need to overhaul our education system to provide more specialized and technical training freely and without barriers.

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      Fleet Admiral JoshLongSnake
      2/11/16 3:53pm

      OK, so what jobs can we do here that they can’t do cheaper there? That is a legitimate question. If you support outsourcing, and justify outsourcing because it’s cheaper and helps the nations being outsourced to, you still have to have a solution for what jobs replaces those that are being outsourced, which can’t, themselves, be outsourced in the same way.

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      Hamilton NolanLongSnake
      2/11/16 3:54pm

      Yeah, in the long term global free trade is inevitable. In the shorter term, we need to build in protections for workers like these who are victims of huge macroeconomic shifts.

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    ThrumbolioHamilton Nolan
    2/11/16 3:44pm

    Outsourcing is, and always has been, fucking ridiculous to me.

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      SuperSquishyThrumbolio
      2/11/16 3:47pm

      If it were not for outsourcing, whatever piece of electronics you used to write that would have cost you between 3 and 10 times as much as it did.

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      Governor McCheeseThrumbolio
      2/11/16 3:49pm

      Because brown foreign people don’t need the jobs as much as the ‘murcans?

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    OMG!PONIES!Hamilton Nolan
    2/11/16 3:50pm

    Things not to do when firing 1,300 people:

    Talk about the workers using “we.”

    Ask that people be polite.

    Remind people that firing everyone was a cold calculated business decision.

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      LindaOMG!PONIES!
      2/11/16 3:53pm

      I started laughing when he said “there won’t be any layoffs til mid 2017.”

      Hope Carrier enjoys being fucked with for the next 18 months by its employees. I really wish our governor had spent more time here in Indiana trying to keep Carrier from laying off 2,000 people, instead of all his trips to Israel and Japan, under the pretense of them being trade visits to get employers to relocate here.

      Assholes.

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      ArturoOMG!PONIES!
      2/11/16 3:54pm

      Right? I’m watching this thinking “This isn’t how you talk to employees that you’re firing. This is a press release statement. Why would you not write two different speeches for this?”

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    Sean BrodyHamilton Nolan
    2/11/16 3:46pm

    Serious question, Hamilton. Aren’t these the jobs that we’re constantly being told America needs workers for?
    Hasn’t there been a push to get more people to do 2-year courses in Community Colleges?
    To fill the urgent need for technical manufacturing jobs like these?

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      ╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and BokeSean Brody
      2/11/16 3:49pm

      Well, one way to solve that urgent need is by getting rid of the jobs.

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      Hamilton NolanSean Brody
      2/11/16 3:51pm

      I don’t believe so, no.

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    nov15-22Hamilton Nolan
    2/11/16 3:49pm

    But how do you fix this? By that I mean if LG can make an airconditioner cheaper in Asia and then import it into the US for $2000 (or whatever), and it costs Carrier $2200 to make the same thing in the US, how would not outsouring those jobs do anything but drive Carrier out of business? Unless you are proposing to block imports of air conditinors, is there a fix to this solution?

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      Fleet Admiral Joshnov15-22
      2/11/16 3:50pm

      they’re called tarrifs. used to have a lot of them

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      fefunov15-22
      2/11/16 3:57pm

      But if no one has a job, who is going to buy the air conditioners?

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    facwHamilton Nolan
    2/11/16 3:48pm

    I’m generally pro free trade, but I do think we should protect workers from unfair competition. If foreign labor is only cheaper because of weaker pollution controls, or because workers are not provided basic health or retirement benefits, then I don’t see why we’d want our workers to have to compete against that.

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      JohannesClimacusfacw
      2/11/16 3:54pm

      What if it is simply the fact that certain countries have billions of people, most of whom live in poverty?

      I’m for growing the pie so to speak, but making sure the workers whose jobs are displaces share in that growing pie. Eother dir3ectly or indirectly through fiscal policy and generous public benefits

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      ARP2facw
      2/11/16 3:55pm

      You could set up a tariff systems based on a few metrics: Environment, human rights, subsidization, and workers rights. Those countries that are have parity with the US in these areas have little to no tariffs, those don’t have any protections, should have higher tariffs.

      The problem is that China dangles a carrot to US companies about selling our stuff there, so we simply ignore everything they do.

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    Justice Rains From My ButtHamilton Nolan
    2/11/16 3:47pm

    But this is the state that elected Mike Pence, tea partier and friend of business! It’s almost as if small government politicians are bad at creating jobs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-chec…

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      KumichoJustice Rains From My Butt
      2/11/16 3:58pm

      Well, yeah, but it’s all Obama’s fault...

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      3w4tgijeghy9okaedh9kedrgh9o jearbrhedbnhjJustice Rains From My Butt
      2/11/16 4:11pm

      Guess it has nothing to do with unions pushing wages up to $22 /hr!

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    Masshole JamesHamilton Nolan
    2/11/16 3:48pm

    Free trade, let’s say between the U.S. and Mexico, helps the poorer country a little and makes the standard of living in the richer country much worse. Poor Mexicans will have their standard of living raised a little directly at the expense of working class Americans. And the more unemployed/underemployed people are in the job pool in the U.S. the more companies can hold wages down for everyone. Yes, it absolutely is a zero-sum game and this is how the working class gets decimated.

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      LongSnakeMasshole James
      2/11/16 3:52pm

      Found the guy who has never lived in a developing nation. It must be hard for you to understand true poverty.

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      BDCBMasshole James
      2/11/16 3:55pm

      I would say it's more like it raises the standard of living a decent amount for certain Mexicans, a little amount for many Americans, and decreases it a lot for certain working class Americans. And this is assuming the industrial workers in Mexico aren't getting hosed for lack of regulation (e.g. collapsed roofs in Bangladeshi factories).

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    PunditGuyHamilton Nolan
    2/11/16 4:09pm

    I don’t understand why the C-suite isn’t subject to the same salary pressure.

    If I remember correctly, the guy in charge of China’s largest bank earned a salary of about $250,000 in 2013. Seems to me that Chinese and Indian CEOs could do the jobs of their American counterparts for pennies on the dollar. Shareholders are getting screwed out of a lot of value.

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      screenbittentwiceshyPunditGuy
      2/11/16 4:29pm

      I am pretty sure that’s a lowball for the Chinese CEO

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      PunditGuyscreenbittentwiceshy
      2/11/16 4:38pm

      Not by much. This has the 2012 salary at about 1.79 million yuan, which would have been about $270k or so in USD at the time.

      http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

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    WideStanceHamilton Nolan
    2/11/16 3:47pm

    UTC Building and Industrial Systems, the corporate conglomeration of which Carrier is a part of, made 5.4 billion in profits (2014). That’s net, after about 30 billion gross.

    http://2014ar.utc.com/

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      SktroopWideStance
      2/11/16 3:50pm

      Those profit numbers will go up by a fractional percentage point after the relocation. Totally worth it! Of course there’s all sorts of available tax write-offs to be had by closing the plant as well.

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      Low Information BoaterSktroop
      2/11/16 4:03pm

      Gotta meet the market's expectation for endless growth somehow.

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