U.S. Firms Add Jobs, but Mostly Overseas

According to an analysis by the WSJ Thirty-five big U.S.-based multinational companies added jobs much faster than other U.S. employers in the past two years, but nearly three-fourths of those jobs were overseas, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

The point of the article hits on two issues.

1. Companies are going where the growth is which has mainly be in Asia.  You can't export everything so you eventually have to set up show there and hire people in order to take advantage of that growth
2. Productivity a topic that we have discussed here in detail over the past year is a reason why companies continue to hire here in the US.  Along with a weaker dollar, companies are producing goods more efficient here in the states and with that weaker dollar it makes our good produced here less expensive overseas.

Full WSJ article here

• The companies included in the analysis were the largest of those that disclose their U.S. and non-U.S. employment in annual securities filings. All of them have at least 50,000 employees. Collectively, they employed roughly 6.4 million workers world-wide last year, up 7.7% from two years earlier. Over the same period, the total number of U.S. jobs increased 3.1%, according to the Labor Department.
• Economists who study global labor patterns say companies are creating jobs outside the U.S. mostly to pursue sales there, and not to cut costs by shifting work previously performed in the U.S., as has sometimes been the case.
• "If you want to capture market share in China, you're going to have to hire lots of locals," says Arie Lewin, a professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business who has studied outsourcing and offshoring. "You just can't export that stuff."
• The Journal's results are consistent with more extensive surveys by the U.S. Commerce Department, which found that U.S.-based multinational companies added jobs in the U.S. between 2004 and 2010, but added far more jobs overseas. That partly reversed the trend between 1999 and 2004, when the department said U.S.-based multinationals cut jobs in the U.S. while adding them overseas.

• Historically, economists say, overseas hiring supported U.S. jobs in areas like sales, engineering and management. When Wal-Mart hires employees for new stores in China, it also needs more human-resources personnel at its headquarters in Arkansas, says Matthew Slaughter, associate dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a former economic adviser to President George W. Bush.
• Publicly traded companies are required to disclose their total number of employees in their annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC doesn't require them to disclose how many of the jobs are in the U.S. An SEC spokesman says the rule probably dates from 1970s. The spokesman says he knows of no discussions about requiring disclosure of U.S.-based jobs.
• UPS reorganized its U.S. operations to eliminate some management jobs and revise its route map. It also installed keyless remote entry systems on all its U.S. trucks. UPS says the keyless systems save drivers three seconds at every stop, the equivalent of six minutes per driver per day, or $70 million a year. As a result, it can handle more U.S. shipments "without adding as many people as we might overseas," says spokesman Norman Black.

The Ilusion of Choice

This is a great look at how the big corporations control and own so many of the brands that we use everyday.



Source: http://i.imgur.com/k0pv0.jpg

The Magic Trick to Be Happy Right Now!

There isn't really much to add to this recent James Altucher post so I will just re-post below in it's entirety

HOW TO STAY HAPPY

Roman D. ‏ @roman_druzyagin: how can I be happy, when the future holds little promise, and you fear you haven’t lived the kind of life you can be content with?

ANSWER:

In June, 2003, I Googled what would happen if I put three unlit cigarettes in a cup of water overnight. Then drank the water in the morning. The idea is that nicotine is a lethal poison. When you smoke it you burn most of the poison away. But if it drains into the water…The theory was I’d be dead of a heart attack in sixty seconds. My fear was that I would I have brain damage instead.  

I’ve known people with brain damage. That would be no good.

It was three in the morning. I knew I was going to go broke. My office had papers and dead computers and dead books and the cards of dead friends everywhere. The IRS letter was next to my computer. I had an incomparable loneliness in all of my relationships. All the work and hours I had put in had added up to this dirty office and no money.

Or maybe there was the other time. My whole life added up to being escorted by police to a hotel room to spend the night. “To calm down.” Or the time I was thrown out of graduate school. Or the time I was asked by my boss, “don’t you think it’s important to show pride in your work?” Or the times I was cheated on.

If I really want to be honest I could say I threw a burning iron at someone and that’s when the police came. But perhaps that would seem too much. If I wanted to truly be correct, I could look back at the past and say I did everything they told me to do, all the secret agents that wanted to destroy me: friends, parents, colleagues, bosses, lovers, and here I am – look where I ended up? And where did they all go? Back to their safe houses, in the James Protection Program so I never see them again.

I could sit here all night until daybreak talking about the past, which is gone forever. And the future, which will never exist and yet seems so real. Maybe the economy will end us. Or global warming. Or Greece. or war. Or we lose our jobs. You and me. We can be scared all night together. And who will survive when the world turns Mad Max and rogue skinheads will kill us for our gasoline?

(Apocalyptic desert scene from Mad Max)

The future just a bleak desert, mirages of water only lasting a few seconds before I realize my thirst won’t be quenched. May never be quenched again.

One thing you forgot to mention in your question, my friend, is the present. Right now. The only thing we know exists. The most important thing of all and we left it out. I was googling cigarettes in water when I could’ve been looking in on my sleeping one year old. I could’ve kissed her forehead. I could’ve been grateful to be given such a magical moment. Then I could’ve called my father one month before his fatal stroke and told him I loved him. Instead I never spoke to him again.

I gave up that magical moment forever because of worries about the future and because of something I did in the past.

The magical moments only exist right now. They will never exist again.

(the magic existed only right then)

The way we miss them is when we focus on the past. Or we try to drink from the mirage in the distant future. Flying unicorns could be all around us but our eyes are glazed over with cataracts of the dismal future and bleaker past.

I would say, “if only this company sells, I’ll be happy.” And then I was never more miserable. And then later I would say, “I blew it so bad I ruined everyone’s life and not just my own.” And then I was never more miserable.

If only I had left out both those statements out I never would’ve been more happy.

Abundance doesn’t exist only “after X, Y, Z happens”. Happiness doesn’t exist because “I already did A, B, and C”.

Magic and Abundance only can exist right now exactly because the past and the future simply don’t.

This doesn’t mean live only for the moment. We all have responsibilities. But DO them. And then be grateful. Find the five things you are grateful for. There’s always five or more. List them. That’s abundance. And it compounds into more abundance if you always bring yourself back to it when your mind wanders like a time machine. Everytime your mind wanders, bring it back, list what you are grateful for.

I’ll tell you a story. I asked Kathryn Schulz what the inspiration of her book, “Being Wrong” was. She said she was talking to a friend of hers and the friend was describing in great detail the funeral of her father. The snow coming down in large flakes that covered the ground, the tears, the intense sadness that brought the memory to life. “But,” Kathryn asked her, “I thought your dad died in July?” So there couldn’t have been snow.

The past lies. The future won’t come true. The abundance and magic are only here and now.

The Magic Trick

If you always bring yourself back to that present moment, the future will more than take care of itself. The abundance will grow every time you bring yourself back to the present moment and count the things you are grateful for.

That’s it. That’s the only trick to get great abundance in your life.

We start off with that helpless destined feeling. That we will die with our handcuffs on. And the hopes we had would be put a stop to. We would be found guilty in our worst nightmares. We would be silenced by our fears.

But right now I’m happy I’m talking to you. I’m abundant because you are listening. I’m grateful because I can feel my breath. Maybe one day I’ll decay and die. Maybe one day all around me will be the mirage and the desperate heat. Maybe one day my past will seem too much for me. But right here and now you and I are both alive. We’re both breathing. Knock knock.

The Great California Exodus

Just as I've seen a mass exodus of people in my home state of Michigan mainly drive by the great recession or in Michigan's case a full blown depression.  California faces a similar issue but for different reasons.  The same reasons why people are moving to Texas and the southeast for better job opportunities and lower costs of living.  Are the reasons why people are leaving California according to Joel Kotkin, demographer and professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.


Full Article here via WSJ

• Mr. Kotkin, one of the nation's premier demographers, left his native New York City in 1971 to enroll at the University of California, Berkeley. The state was a far-out paradise for hipsters who had grown up listening to the Mamas & the Papas' iconic "California Dreamin'" and the Beach Boys' "California Girls." But it also attracted young, ambitious people "who had a lot of dreams, wanted to build big companies." Think Intel, Apple and Hewlett-Packard.
• Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.
• "Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak," says Mr. Kotkin.
• Housing is merely one front of what he calls the "progressive war on the middle class." Another is the cap-and-trade law AB32, which will raise the cost of energy and drive out manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global carbon emissions. Then there are the renewable portfolio standards, which mandate that a third of the state's energy come from renewable sources like wind and the sun by 2020. California's electricity prices are already 50% higher than the national average.
• Mr. Kotkin describes himself as an old-fashioned Truman Democrat. In fact, he voted for Mr. Brown—who previously served as governor, secretary of state and attorney general—because he believed Mr. Brown "was interesting and thought outside the box."
• But "Jerry's been a big disappointment," Mr. Kotkin says. "I've known Jerry for 35 years, and he's smart, but he just can't seem to be a paradigm breaker. And of course, it's because he really believes in this green stuff."

• Meanwhile, taxes are harming the private economy. According to the Tax Foundation, California has the 48th-worst business tax climate. Its income tax is steeply progressive. Millionaires pay a top rate of 10.3%, the third-highest in the country. But middle-class workers—those who earn more than $48,000—pay a top rate of 9.3%, which is higher than what millionaires pay in 47 states.
• A worker in Wichita might not consider those earning $250,000 a year middle class, but "if you're a guy working for a Silicon Valley company and you're married and you're thinking about having your first kid, and your family makes 250-k a year, you can't buy a closet in the Bay Area," Mr. Kotkin says. "But for 250-k a year, you can live pretty damn well in Salt Lake City. And you might be able to send your kids to public schools and own a three-bedroom, four-bath house."
• According to Mr. Kotkin, these upwardly mobile families are fleeing in droves. As a result, California is turning into a two-and-a-half-class society. On top are the "entrenched incumbents" who inherited their wealth or came to California early and made their money. Then there's a shrunken middle class of public employees and, miles below, a permanent welfare class. As it stands today, about 40% of Californians don't pay any income tax and a quarter are on Medicaid. 
• California used to be more like Texas—a jobs magnet. What happened? For one, says the demographer, Californians are now voting more based on social issues and less on fiscal ones than they did when Ronald Reagan was governor 40 years ago. Environmentalists are also more powerful than they used to be. And Mr. Brown facilitated the public-union takeover of the statehouse by allowing state workers to collectively bargain during his first stint as governor in 1977.
• Mr. Kotkin also notes that demographic changes are playing a role. As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California's politics become even more left-wing. It's a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, "the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees."
• Mr. Kotkin lists four "growth corridors": the Gulf Coast, the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, and the Southeast. All of these regions have lower costs of living, lower taxes, relatively relaxed regulatory environments, and critical natural resources such as oil and natural gas.
• What about the Midwest and the Rust Belt? Can they recover from their manufacturing losses?  "What those areas have is they've got a good work ethic," Mr. Kotkin says. "There's an established skill base for industry. They're very affordable, and they've got some nice places to live. Indianapolis has become a very nice city." He concedes that such places will have a hard time eclipsing California or Texas because they're not as well endowed by nature. But as the Golden State is proving, natural endowments do not guarantee permanent prosperity.