Cheap products for all, less jobs here

  1. 1,125 Posts.
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    I did wonder many years ago where we were really headed...
    When
    Tariffs were dropped - we were told to make us more efficient and compete globally.
    See link for just one example of how that has worked for Australians (extrapolate across several industries)
    http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/techn...e/news-story/0428dc235d1b44639459959f5a3bbf9b

    Working visa classes were introduced in new categories to allow employment of cheap foreign workers because we had skill shortage here?? - usually after onshore workers had been made redundant some weeks or months earlier (not skill just $$$ related).
    http://www.selfemployedaustralia.com.au/latest-news/foreign-worker-457-visas-rorted-in-it

    Companies in Australia offshoring Hundreds of thousands of jobs - read Banks, telco's, IT, Manufacturing of any sort.
    But for every offshored job the ATO loses all of the TAX from that day forward for each and every employee made redundant and if they remain unemployed then pay all of those people affected unemployment benefits -
    Double Whammy we all pay for but the owners of the company keep the profit made on the exercise.
    I have heard that a large Telco recently announced that apart from the jobs already offshored that their vision 2020 is to offshore the "Mundane" work and only keep the real value add and analytics - that is of course till they can find somebody offshore who can do those jobs too.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-14/telstra-confirms-1400-jobs-axed-in-australia/8617074

    So with more people than ever immigrating into Australia (see Dick Smiths comments) and less jobs to go around as the jobs that are here are offshored, we are increasingly like crabs in a bucket fighting for what is left.
    Articles have experts picking apart Dick Smiths ideas saying that we still have a skills shortage and need to keep the 200,000 immigrant arrivals per year , not the 70,000 a year as it was - but don't mention how the 457's are rorted.
    Well - guess what, if you do your best to dismantle TAFE and privatise it we are speeding up that shortage,
    but from personal experience the work visas used (not immigration) to import skilled staff are used as a way for companies to make more money and displace more expensive skilled staff - ask any SAP professionals for example.

    We need to grow and manufacture here and buy locally - if we do not support our own industries and have no tarif barriers to cheap imported products then we may just deserve to be eating tainted berries and wear $5 T-shirts.

    If a company offshores a job - everybody accepts it, but if the company based here offshores a job then the TAX we lose as a nation and the unemployment benefits that follow should be paid by that company making the extra profit at least until that person finds a similar paying job. Keeping in mind though that similar paying job would have been performed by another unemployed worker - who is then kept on unemployment benefits.

    The offshoring exercise is akin to the multinationals saying they are based in another nation so pay no or little tax for what is sold here, the result is less or no tax paid here.

    Automation is the same - everybody accepts it, but if the company based here automates a job then the TAX we lose as a nation and the unemployment benefits that follow should be paid by that company making the extra profit at least until that person finds a similar paying job. Keeping in mind though that similar paying job would have been performed by another unemployed worker - who is then kept on unemployment benefits because the person displaced by automation now has that job.

    To say those people displaced by automation and offshoring go and be retrained into a service industry competing with the influx of 457's (to name but one visa type) and historically high immigration absolutely flies in the face of logic and reason.

    The successive Governments argument/answer to these issues is to become a smart nation - without providing a plan or details of how we get there, is a hollow call - unlikely to be fulfilled by 2 party politics that is bipartisan 100% of the time that a pay rise for politicians is granted, but at almost no other time.

    A think tank outside of politics that is made up of independent experts in their relevant fields that can decide the direction and policies for Australia - rather than politicians flitting between portfolio's with no or little understanding of the ramifications of their decisions - both in the short but particularly the long term.

    It is time for people to take a stand on these issues.
 
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