I'm here to tell you its a problem now, and it extends well past motorcycles. If minimum wage was all employers were willing to pay, Do you think YOU could continue living the kind of life you do now? Who would buy those $15k cars? or that $20k Harley? What kind of mortgage payment will $10 an hour make? Our country was thrown under the bus with sweetheart deals and we said thank you. Want to see your future, go shopping at walmart. Nothing in the store is made in our country,if china was to disappear overnight, that company would go bankrupt overnight. In the never ending search for cheaply made crap, I bet the walmart shoppers that are out of work, never think that the store they love to shop at, is part the reason they aren't working.So if you don't mind a few toxic chemicals in your cheaply made crap, hey china has to get rid of that stuff somewhere, continue sending you hard to earn/find money to them. If i wanted to live in some third world country where you have to work 20 hrs a day to barely get by, I would have been there by now. I spend my money where I make it.,,

 

Protectionism hasn't worked in the past and certainly won't work in a global economy as interwoven as it is today. Folks need to wake and elect leaders that will dramatically reduce corporate and individual taxes, to at least try and make the US competitive once again. We need to give up on all the naieve thinking that says we have a "right" to health care, we have a "right" to high salaries, we have a "right" to high pensions.

None of these are rights, they are all earned in the marketplace and currently we aren't earning them, we simply stealing from our kids so we can have them for ourselves by borrowing far beyound our ability to pay.

We can whine about it or do something about it. Whining will get you as much as it did the GM union workers, or Enron workers or past textile workers, or past appliance workers...in other words it'll get you nothing.

If you want to do something about it, elect leaders prepared to slash the benefits and services provided by government and then follow those dramatic gov. cuts with slashes to corporate and individual taxes.

Ultimately we WILL end up with leaders that make these dramatic cuts whether we like it or not. Simple economics. The question is how much pain we will all have to realize before the average voter "gets it". My bet is we have alot more pain to experience because too many Americans still think the solution is more spending, higher taxes or somehow protecting our shores from products made overseas.

Most of these folks won't "get it" till it's their own job that's been shipped overseas.

 

We are nowhere near electing leaders that will 'cut' benefits. There are too many suckers than think we deserve a free hand including health care. We are going to have to go through a lot more pain. What Greece is experiencing is a foreshadowing of things to come here. Yes we are robbing from our kids and their kids to prop up a lifestyle we can't afford. THIS KILLS JOBS, COMPANIES and ultimately the entire ECONOMY. I hate to be pessimistic but I give us 5-7 more years before the next recession makes the current one look good.

Are you all ready to have your entire savings and 401k taken by the government? Get ready....when we are forced to go on a new currency to finance this debt and you are given 10 cents on the dollar.

 

Not if you have some of your retirement invested in gold (I do).

 

Its simple math any company in order to stay in business has to take in more $ than it puts out for expenses.
The last thing any business owner wants to do is downsize and let workers go.
All those union workers need to remember next election what this administration has not been able to do for them.
Stop drinking the Cool Aid
Nothing against union workers.
You are being lied to by the union management

 

If protectionism doesn't work why are the multi- national corp's so protected?Keep giving business the right to hold meetings and price fix,outsource and basically ruin our middle class.But don't let you and I the working people get together to fight the disintegration of our standard of living.

Every business has membership in lobbying groups or pays money to someone to get what they want from this country but let you and I do it and we are union devils.To me it is insane that working folk still eat that crap about the big bad unions.Why was it that this country was the wealthiest,strongest nation in the world when union membership was at it's highest?

The idea that if we let business outsource, deregulate and hire illegals and lower wages at will we will be better off as working people is more of a lie than any Russian,Korean, or Chinese gubbment ever told its people.

What you are waking up to today,oil mess, banks robbing us,lousy gubbment etc.is just the result of the working middle class being lied to and told not to organize and never work with each other is just damn laughable.Plus having the working stiff believe it is hilarious.

 

sad to see Harley outsourcing even more parts

 

If AMF had not bought out Harley in the 70's there would be no Harley Davidson motor company today. That's a fact. Noname

 

Sad to say, what happens to Harley-Davidson is the least of our coming problems. The key will be to watch the midterm elections this November. If the voting public reelects all the same weasels who got us into this mess, then we deserve all the pain that is sure to come. As someone else said on this thread, how many Harleys are you going to buy if you're earning minimum wage, or working part-time, or on unemployment?

 

part of the problem is that a lot of the people who 'have a clue' are just too damn lazy to go to the polls and vote. while a lot of the poor and uneducated are hand carried to the polls and believe whatever lies are told to them and vote the way they are led to believe will give them the most $ for the least amount of work.

then those that don't vote bitch about it.

if you don't vote, you don't have the right to bitch. you are a big part of the problem and deserve what you get.