Our culture fails live and breathe in an attitude of truth. An example. Business does not ever pay tax. They ALWAYS pass the cost of doing business on to those that pay for their services. Always. Its time to end the taxation on business. It is a graduated tax AGAINST the poor.

The Federal Income tax is CLEARLY way outside the spirit of the constitution. Who are all the idiots that swallowed this CRAP. Taxes should be payed to our state governments and then HOPEFULLY they will fight hard to keep that money in MY FREAKING STATE. Any conservative who does not begin speaking out loud against this crime against free enterprise is an idiot. Lets agree to get rid of this terrible evil against our selves and our children. Why do liberals think that GW should know how much money you earn and how you spend your working hours?

WHY?

And lets get rid of fiat money. It is SO clearly evil and unfair. Oh.. right.. no changes there.. we will just let unelected fed employees print away.

ANd the next time a politician says things like “health care is a right” or “spread the wealth around” lets vote that bastrd OUT.

Oops.. right .. half the country thinks its okay for a politician to even be able to let these freaking phrases slip from their lips.

Obama.. is proof that we have lost the battle on the education front for Free Markets… that is FREEDOM.

VOTE IN THE UNCLE TOM and put African Americans back another 50 years.

Also, Tom said nothing about Porter’s stance on education. Porter knows nothing about education, but then he is proposing models. As an educator myself, I’m greatly offended that someone who has no background in teaching and learning is telling me how schools should be modeled.

Oh, wait, he has taught–at Harvard. Yes, that institution is so representative of the whole country: A one class per semester load for full professors such as himself and dozens of graduate students to help you with whatever you need. Gee-whiz, Beaver, talk about someone who has been in the trenches!

Letting someone like Michael Porter form educational policy is like letting someone who has played war-themed video games form our military strategy in Iraq! Nonsense.

What strikes me is that all of them obviously come from people with experience out here in the “real America” (what’s left of it) after 28 years of Reagan Voodoo economics. I just hope it’s not too late.

Great job folks! Good luck to all, we’re going to need it.

Jerry Bowers

Worse, his faux even-handed criticism of victims and perpetrators alike appeared designed to distract attention from the obvious question raised by the increase in American productivity he acknowledged had occurred: So where did the fruits of that increased productivity go? Could it have gone to . . . the “top dogs?”

As many of the posters above have pointed out, that term hardly includes engineers and inventors – their jobs have been cheap-sourced along with everyone else’s, with H1Bs obtained by fraudulent corporate certifications that no Americans could be found to do the jobs.

The proper epithet for your guest was not “super guru” but “apologist.” Congratulations, you just wasted an hour of your air on advice to the incoming progressive administration from an apologist for the faction that was resoundingly rejected in the election. And, no, we’re not a “center-right” country! Only those who look at surface labels and ignore the answers given to policy questions in surveys make that assertion.

The show was an insult to your listeners’ intelligence.

Above comment is very true, also I like to stress that even parents are not very educated, but if they are able to realize how important education is to their kids future, they should put that emphasis on their kids.

I came from another country, we don’t have state of the art of facilities, and programs. But the emphasis on education is enough to get kids wanting to do good at school. The education is the peer pressure instead of being more cool or more popular in pop cultures like here in this country.

I’m not saying which education system is better than the other, but to achieve a goal, we need to take examples and reform our existing system.

Think about it, schools here have rich resources, just not enough students taking full advantage of them.

As long as the parents recognize the importance of education, even if not so educated parents can still produce very educated elites. They can do so by encouraging their kids to make friends who has same interest to achieve, so they can do homework together.

There are so many ways to reform our education system, we need to start from “changing the culture” of viewing the value of education.

So far he’s said that (1) We need to reduce the costs of doing business (taxes, regulations, litigation) and (2) we need better education.

That might sound good until you dig deeper. Just what does reducing business taxes, regulations, and litigation mean? It means that federal and state governments need to either cut back on public welfare services or get the money from some other source (individuals). It means having fewer environmental protections and civil rights protections. Basically, it means having a lower quality of life in this country and transforming our business environment into what the third world has–few environmental protections, etc.

Then he advocates having more and better education (for what–non-existent job positions that were outsourced to India and China?) when we already have a large oversupply of qualified Americans in a great many knowledge-based fields, including technical fields and fields that require advanced degrees such as Ph.D. scientists, lawyers, MBAs, and even patent lawyers (requires two degrees–science/engineering and law–OMG–an oversupply–how is that possible for something that requires so much education?).

Any way you slice it, it’s very difficult if not impossible to compete against people in other countries who are willing to work for far lower wages and a far lower standard of living than what Americans are accustomed to in addition to their not having environmental protections, civil rights protections, and personal injury protections, etc.

Is there something we can do? Yes. Put up barriers against the economic force of global labor arbitrage and dramatically reduce immigration to pre-1965 levels to combat population explosion at home.

The solution to our “competitiveness” problem is not to join the other billions of people in the world living in third world poverty but rather, we need…

TARIFFS

That dirty, filthy word–tariffs and trade protectionism.

To this date, no politician, economist, journalist, or pundit has been able to refute the argument that Global Labor Arbitrage will decrease Americans’ standard of living. When the supply of labor increases dramatically relative to capital the price point, wages and standard of living, must decrease; it’s just that simple. (If they could refute it, they’d be shouting the persuasive logic from rooftops.)

Instead of acknowledging our nation’s real economic problems, our politicians and intellectuals are selling Americans on education and the sheeple have gobbled it up like an opiate of the masses. It makes you wonder what fraction of the populace is even aware of the concept of tariffs or not having immigration or the concepts of supply and demand for that matter.

One comment from Mr. Porter particularly rankled me — paraphrasing, “The public education system isn’t preparing enough students to provide the skills needed by the business community.” I think that what they want is to make schools into factories that prepare automatons that kowtow to the the demands of these business “leaders.” Students who don’t fit into their mold are somehow defective, or the schools are failures because they can’t fit all students into their molds.

Let’s be clear, the current business leadership that we have has led us to the edge of ruin with the motto that bigger is better, that greed is good! I am not anti-business; but, I am anti-big business. The bigger the business is, the more it expects us to serve it, instead of serving us.

Bob Agle
Flint, MI

They are outsourced. I work w/ more H!B workers than nationals and have for about 2 years.

Education as an answer is nothing but crap. Hes telling me that the 1 billion people worldwide are less educated or capable? They arent – and corp usa knows it.
What he has forgotten , as well as obama or clinton or Bush is that demand is – and wont be up for many years to come .
Sounds like the 1920’s all over again?

Laws of supply and demand apply to labor and always have. Wait until hes replaced w/ someone willing to come here and do his job for 5 figures instaed of six.

This man has the ear of DC. So does Paul Rubin and other Clintonites( Im not going to mention Bush because we all know its patriotic for us to give those wages to a non resident.)

Nothing will change. Nothing will get better as far as the economy for years out. We need a different way of thinking. Globalization isnt it. Tort reform isnt it.
This man needs to lose his job. After 2 years of looking for work and telling his kids they aint going to college – his perceptive will change.

Cmon Tom – get someone w/ a bit of real sense and imagination on and stop wasting my time.

Thanks Tom for your many informative shows especially this one with Michael Porter.

However, I never cease to be amazed that even Harvard professors perpetuate the “US corporate taxes are among the highest in the world” myth.

While it is true that the “nominal rate” is high (US (39.3%) ranks second to Japan (39.5%) among the 30 OECD countries*, that is not the crucial issue.

There are so many loopholes and allowable deductions that the US corporate share of gross domestic product (GDP) (1.8%) ranks 28th among the 30 nations (source: Table 2.1 from http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6902/11-28-CorporateTax.pdf). Only Germany 1.0% and Iceland 1.1% pay less. Of the larger OECD nations, France and the UK pay 2.8%, Japan pays 3.1%, Italy 3.2%, and Australia 5.3%.

Furthermore, in 2003, the total US tax was about 25.6% versus 33.9% for the other G7 members. Of this 25.6% only 2.1% was paid by US coporations versus 2.7% by the other G7 corporations. So US corporations contribute less than 10% of our total tax revenues. Whom to bailout the 10% or the 90%? (Source: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/1000976_Tax_Fact_05-08-06.pdf)

I hope you will put this in your info database for future shows when some corporate advocate tries to pull the wool over your eyes once again.

Peace,
Peter Spang Goodrich

* Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.

Yes, We need to do more then bail out the banks and the car companies. Yes, we need a new STRATEGY to rebuild our country, rather then just bailing out all the companies, and rewarding (all) the bad (and stupid) behaviors of the past.

(written before hearing the show…)
Yes, here’s a concrete idea, YES, bail out the Car companies, WITH a CATCH.

Instead of rewarding GM for targeting individual autos,
we, the people and government paying for the buyout
need to “push” GM, into a new business, that will work with the new infrastructure we are attempting to build

To save the Car companies, we need to change them FROM car companies INTO transportation companies. They need to be refocused from selling individual cars to mass transit solutions.

See my blog for a suggested reading.
Essentially, we can SAVE the car companies by changing them to provide public transportation to help save energy and rebuild our infrastructure.

Yes, it IS imposing our will on the company, however the nearly 1 million indirect jobs in the auto (and parts and associated) industries are WAY too important to throw away, and we ABSOLUTELY need to rebuild the country’s infrastructure anyway.
See my blog entry here: http://sos-newdeal.blogspot.com/2008/11/next-prediction-save-car-companies.html

There are a great deal of pro’s and cons. however, I think that saving this plethora of jobs, as well as changing our economic base AWAY from OIL based industries.

It takes a VILLAGE to raise a child, it takes a COUNTRY to redefine it’s industries.
mark brown in NJ

PS: It would also be interesting to make GM PAY for destroying the previously existing Mass transit system before the bus. (streetcars and trolleys…)
see my post..