November 25, 2009

Chasing Corporations Out Of The U.S.

This was a disturbing read for me.

"But it is not just taxation that is chasing corporations out of America. Another top consideration is access to talent. The U.S. now spends more per capita on public education than any other OECD country, but its students test in the bottom decile."

"A culture that turns a blind eye to government failure, but is quick and unrelenting to blame society's ills on business, will naturally and subliminally embrace socialist solutions. The problem is that when one intervention fails, the government attempts to fix its errors with yet more intervention"

As taxes become more punitive for the rich, those who can will relocate to a more hospitable local. A liberal blogger I know, when confronted with this stated that "The rich will not leave the US, they never had it so good."

This is not the world of the 1950's and 1960's. Well educated workforce's are luring businesses to their locations in a siren song of business friendly government. Our administration seems content with pressing forward with the idea that business needs to earn less and pay more to the government and workforce.

Everything has a price. Every choice has repercussions.

In a large group meeting, at a previous employer of mine. One of management was asking the crowd "What is it you want?" in my typical clownish style shouted anonymously "More Pay for less work." Which got a laugh and the management response of "Me too!"

Talk about human nature in action. If you took a paper and pencil out right now and started a list of things that you should be doing around your home. I am pretty sure that list would grow a life of its own as each item conjured up another. If you were to do the same exercise three months later, I bet you will list many of the same things.

As a thought experiment, what if you were to assign some compensation to the top five items on the list, a reward, if you will...

Human nature.

1 comment:

flyingvan said...

Fear not, Lee. Also read 'Freakonomics' and 'The Bell Curve'....There are still lots of very bright kids making it through very good schools. It looks bad because EVERYBODY goes to school, is mainstreamed, and affects lots of the score matrix. We employ folks with Downs Syndrome and other disabilities that in other countries would be cast aside. I'm pretty impressed with the way our little school challenges the top kids, and gets the most out of the low testing ones. Yeah, I'm bothered by the biased agenda and all the attached 'programs', but the kids that work hard are rewarded.