Posted on 12/05/2004 8:22:14 PM PST by ninenot
Not just an "economy" issue...
I read it this afternoon. There wasn't anything in there about Wisconsin's anti-business climate including our recent judicial toss of a multi-year energy plan.
Milwaukee has a lesson for us all.
Beautiful city. Very scary after dark in certain areas if you're white. Great place to invest, IMHO. Beautiful homes and architecture, for a song.
Re: Very scary after dark
LOL! I know what you mean, but you can't get robbed in the daytime?
Like it or not, I will say this about the illegals from Mexico. Most come here and take any work or job they can find, from stoop labor field hand to dish washer, they will take it. But they do not stay in that position, they remain upperly mobile. I see it in the building trades, restaurants, contracting and other businesses here in Arizona where Hispanics are not only working, but many now own their own business, where just a few years ago, they too were on the bottom rungs.
The inner city types have to go where the work is, they have to take the low pay, start at those bottom rungs to get their feet in the doors to prove themselves responsible and capable for the better positions and pay.
If one has the want, they will get the how. But no matter how often you drive a horse to water, you can't make him drink if he don't want to.
I know from experience that only 10 percent of resources are often spent on the self evident success side of many a venture, while 90% of those resources are relegated to the problem areas which are doomed to failure from the start, which in turn wrecks the entire project.
If a certain few do not want to partake of a free public education and those opportunities offered to all, then it is time to write them off early to free up wasted resources and concentrate on what does work for the benefit of the many who do want to work for a chance at that brass ring.
Sure you can. I did. My wallet was stolen on the afternoon of Christmas Eve in 1993 in the Grand Avenue Shopping Mall in downtown Milwaukee. And yes, the thieves were black. And now liberals wonder why the Grand Avenue failed. Boo hoo.
I don't see anything exceptional in this story except that it focused on people with black skin. The same is happening to other racial groups in other cities with similar skills. The unskilled/low skilled blue collar jobs in manufacturing are leaving for less expensive digs in Asia. The low skilled computer and "boiler room" call centers are headed to India. Radiologists in India are interpreting X-rays taken at U.S. hospitals, scanned and electronically transmitted to India. The diagnosis is passed back to a U.S. medical doctor for prognosis/diagnosis/treatment.
The work dynamic has changed in the world. The evaporation of even skilled jobs to lower cost offshore competitors leave the low skilled people competing for low skilled jobs with unemployed college grads. It's a recipe for disaster.
I am often intrigued by remarks such as this. For starters, since the inception of this nation, this has always been the case as new industries destroy and replace old ones.
What is often lost in the discussion of massive job losses in the manufacturing and technology industries today is that much of it is the result of one sided trading relationships with Mercantilist nations that target American industries for destruction because they want to be in those industries. These nations, mostly Asian, have little interest in buying American goods for trade but are always very interested in acquiring the know how, capital and factors of production that was created, built and pioneered in America.
We often hear about the new economy jobs but what and where are they? When America loses the very industries that support the disciplines of engineering and science exactly where is this new innovation going to come from? Just walking through any Best Buy store today should be a wake up call. America does not make TVs, HDTVs, Plasma Screens, Monitors, DVD players, Radio equipment, pagers, cell phones, heck even most of the parts in a PC are made overseas. But all of these industries were once the fronts of innovation in America and the bedrock of technological advancement.
The new economy sadly looks more like American's pre-industrial economy. Those who believe America can be a service sector driven economy, and remain the world’s most prosperous and militarily strong country have a rude awakening in store for them.
cooo, tell me why no other group complains? Asians and Hispanics come over here and work hard and rise to the top -- I think the Indians are the richest community in the US
The problem with American business is that it has been regulated into a straight-jacket. There is no way that large American manufacturing businesses can compete in the world market. To compete you have to be small, smart, innovative, nimble and able to react instantly to any situation. Politics, and bureaucrats have to go. You have to be lean and mean, period. Traditions have to go. My wife, son, daughter, and myself started a very small manufacturing business in our garage with no money, or connections, just a small piece of railroad track for an anvil, a 3 pound hammer, an habachi, and an old electrolux tank type vaccum cleaner for an air supply to make a forge. For fuel my family and I walked the railroad tracks that went into the steel mill and picked up coke that had fallen off rail cars. I worked 1 factory job full time and my wife never worked. She stayed home and raised our three chrildren. For awhile we were so broke my family and I had to go through dumpsters every night to collect 4 to 6 dollars worth of cardboard to buy gasoline so I could get to work. Now it's 20 years later. I still work a factory job and the habachi and railroad track has turned into 2 lathes, 2 milling machines, 1 radial arm drill, 5 drill presses, 3 mig welders, 1 tig welder, 3 arc welders, 1 forge, 1 300 pound anvil, 1 100 pound trip hammer, 1 250 pound trip hammer, 90 pairs of tongs, 1 25,000 pound hydraulic press, 1 mechanical trip press, 2 sets of sheet metal rolls, 1 band saw, 3 air compressors, plus assorted air and electric hand tools and 1 8000 pound fork lift. I manage the business, my eldest son runs the shop, my wife is now the accountant (she's a country girl from the hills of Tennessee with a 10th grade education) and we have 3 A-1 employees. With this operation, we beat the pants off of our number one competitor, the Chinese. They hate us, however our American competitors hate us worse, because they can't even get close. This was all done in California, a state not known to be industry friendly. Needless to say I don't have much sympathy for people that just complain and not do anything about it. Granted, it's a bad situation in Wisconsin, but it is not going to get any better until the effected individuals decide to get going and do somthing for themselves. For openers they can do like they do in Hong Kong and start manufacturing small items in their apartments, they can manufacture clothes in an apartment, they make bakery goods in an apartment and start a small bakery route ect, ect, If they try and work hard they can rise above this, but it will never happen if they just sit around and obsess at what has happened to them. I wish them well.
What do you make?
I wonder if this hurts more than being hit by a local train?
blah blah freaking blah.
We don't have a product line, we're a job shop. We make all kinds of things from parts for the space shuttle to pry bars for the railroads, ground support equipment for the airlines, concentrating tables for the mining industry, lunett forgings (towbars for stealth fighters) ect. ect.. We'll make anything we can make a profit on and are capable of manufacturing. We look at everything that our prospective customers send us. Nothing is turned down out of hand.
The J-S could have, as usual, saved several barrels of soy-based ink and numerous rolls of recycled newsprint: what killed Milwaukee and its economy are the labor unions and environmental regulations, neither of which, left unchecked, are conducive to prosperity for those who either claim to protect.
I just had a lenghty conversation with a production manager/ME manager who has worked in 5 different manufacturing plants in the Mke area.
FOUR of the five plants had outstanding labor relations with unions--no problems whatsoever.
Painting with a broad brush is not real smart.
Allis-Chalmers closed because an ex-GE executive who became the A-C CEO was a spendthrift and put the Company's future into "coal gasification"---didn't work. Bankruptcy followed.
AO Smith had a union problem, but (in case you didn't notice) automobile-frame production is now approximately zero. Only trucks have frames, and the cap-cost of a plant meant to produce 750K units/year didn't hold up well against a realistic 375K/year projection. The union problem paled in significance to the reduction in orders from the Big Three. And, BTW, single-plant source about 6 hours (or more) from your customers is not ideal, either.
Enviro? Yeah, Wisconsin has more reg burden than some states.
OTOH, we could compare Red China, with zero wage/hour, zero safety, zero enviro, zero retirement. Ideal place to make stuff, as most of the Fortune 500 has found.
I would think that Carly Fiorina would want to move there instead of mooching off US regulatory protection for HER and her family while she figuratively takes a dump in some Chinaman's kitchen.
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