Take away the tax loopholes incentives on doing business overseas (Puerto Rico is a good tax haven example with a faulty design that is being abused ), and in a few years a lot of jobs will return to the US. Look at Brazil, for example... The tariffs associated with importing goods are so high, that basically the only way to do business there is manufacturing and distributing in-house. Corporate America would fight this one with all their resources, as they are making so much money nowadays, but that's the real solution to the problem. We need to step back from the Global economy concept, and start focusing more on the overall National economy. This is not about racism or anything even close to that. It's about the reality that we have been living for years and years in the US, and will only get much worse if no real action is taken. It's time to take America back, and make it great again. I might not agree with Trump on a lot of things, but if he truly focus on putting more controls in place to stop the incentives of sending jobs abroad, he will have my vote. As someone said in this forum some time ago... This IS a political and policy issue. Companies like HPE laying off people is about greed, and not about business economy conditions.
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The Indian currency [rupee] is artificially very low against the US dollar (~50%), but no one is doing anything about that...
I saw in the news that Puerto Rico is going through an alarming increasing number of Zika cases. Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not planning on vacationing in the Caribbean any time soon. Used to love cruising on those waters, but now I do either Alaska, or Europe (when $$ possible). I recall excellent, friendly people there, although I've heard that crime has skyrocketed.
Any new "vacancies"on my team by default go to Puerto Rico. I think HPE will reevaluate soon their strategy there - and will start looking at other "low cost" alternatives in other Countries. Puerto Rico is such a big mess right now from an economy, politics and social perspectives. It's simply too risky doing business there. Their tax benefits are always being challenged, and they have made the news a lot recently, and not for good things. It won't be long 'til they start feeling the ax as well in a big way. Longer term, if Cuba opens, I don't give them more than 10 years before they become the new Venezuela. I feel sorry for those guys... I like vacationing there, but it has become extremely expensive when compared to other places. Meg should become the Island governor... She would be a perfect fit there!
Puerto Rico is part of the US. Salaries are actually higher there than Houston ~10-15%, so it is about the tax base. Otherwise, the Houston Campus that once housed 25K Compaq employees, would still house 25K HP employees and not be sold off to other companies and have multiple buildings demolished. There's a reason mark Hurd slashed and dashed and sent everyone home to WFH.
I don't believe taxes have much to do with moving jobs out of the US. It's still all about hourly wages. At least in my organization. When there is a 50 - 70% reduction in labor costs, it's hard to deny the attraction for both HP and their clients. The billing rate for my group for US employees is $173 an hour verses $33.56 per hour for India resources. And there is no penalty for switching the work. Other than the fact that many India resources cannot truly do the work.
My role moved to Puerto Rico as well in 2014 for the same reason. I was part of AMS EG, and was also located in Houston. Great, talented people working there, but if it wasn't for the tax loophole, I really doubt my job would have gone there. Agree with @ItlqKfl. This is about Corporate greed at its worse - exploiting faulty tax laws and disposing employees as trash -, and has nothing to do with Company survival or their claim of being "competitive". At least Trump is the only one openly talking about bringing jobs back to the US.
And you really brlieve Trump will change that? He IS Corporate America. I haven't seen any specific plan/platform to "bring the jobs back and make America great again". It's just marketing to get elected, but he won't do anything to touch those loopholes. He currently benefits from all of that, and I haven't seen him bringing those jobs among his Companies back to America. I hope the American people knows better than simply falling for a lame marketing campaign. Trump is not the solution. Probably Clinton neither, but don't refer to this guy as the ultimate savior. This guy scares the hell out of me. He will create an International mess so bad that... Well, I prefer not to even think about it...
I was laid off in 2015, and my role transferred to Puerto Rico. I don't know how the "tax haven strategy" works, but I know that they just need to have a few roles there managing operations overseas, and they get huge tax benefits. I was working for the EG servers GBU, and my role was transferred there to strengthen the number of people working on what they call the "Control Tower" in order to be better positioned to fight back tax model challenges. I have nothing against the people there, which are really great. My issue is/was with HPE and the reason behind why I lost my job. And it's not only the US... A lot of the jobs that were moved there came from Germany and Scotland because of the same reason. They weren't able to do it with Asia Pacific because the return didn't justify it. I guess that's the point of the person that wrote the original post... If the incentives and loopholes are not there, the jobs won't be transferred. It's not difficult to understand. I was a Democrat in the past. Not anymore, especially considering who will be the candidate for this election.