[thinking furiously] "Must . . . find . . . way to . . . demagogue . . . this issue."
Posted on 08/09/2007 1:24:33 PM PDT by Toddsterpatriot
It's been a quarter-century since author John Naisbitt blithely described manufacturing as a "declining sport" that Americans could easily offshore to Asia. Since then obituaries for U.S. manufacturing, both mournful and enraged, have been written many times...Snip...
Manufacturing's role in promoting job and income growth is often understated. Although overall industrial jobs have diminished by almost five million since the late 1970s, the loss has been concentrated largely in lower-skilled positions. The number of higher-skilled positions, with a median hourly wage of $24, jumped by more than 36% between 1983 and 2002 to nearly 4.5 million, according to a 2006 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Ping!
But . . . but . . . [sound of skulls imploding].
Ditto for Tancredo and Hunter.
The screw America for a buck crowd will say whatever it takes but I don’t thing real Americans are mesmerized by them any more.
Manufacturing jobs, as a whole, have been decreasing worldwide.
High wage low skill jobs of the 1960’s disappeared in the US a long time ago. Some were outsourced overseas but far more were absorbed by automation.
The switch to automation produced a group of high wage high skill jobs that are still growing... but you have to train yourself to do something productive. Its not like falling off a log.
Ah. So because of something you came across with some nuke equipment, you're now telling us that there's absolutely no dollar amount of manufacturing sales, no headcount of manufacturing employees, and no amount of new factories being built that could possibly change your mind. Ever.
That's ok, everyone needs some kind of religion.
Much like the Big Government crowd won’t stop. And they’re winning. And you’re the one mezmerized.
Step 1: build them here.
With the way China and others are F...ing up, manufacturing jobs might return to the US in a big way.
What percentage of the worlds Machine Tools do we make still?
Wish they would be some more here in Cali!
It’s good to see someone advocating freedom to the Buchananites. Good work.
This has been the left’s plan for the US for decades. It’s all a part of the new world order and in some parts of the country, we are all most there.
In WA State, the left has succeeded in killing most of the traditional industries and they are making in roads into control of family owned farms. The government is now the largest employer in my county, with big oil being the only remaining producers, other than the dairy farms.
They require algebra to get into the tech school to learn to be a cook or a mechanic because there just aren’t enough jobs for educated people, so they are training the average students to work in semi skilled labor jobs. In some counties, they are trying to limit the size of the homes that you can build.
We’re thinking of moving, but we don’t know where to go.
As you well know, I went after Willie’s ‘the sky is falling’ nonsense. The ecomomy is strong, but that does not mean that our vital manufacturing capabilities can be allowed to continue to erode. The Machine manufacturers are very supportive of Ducnan Hunter.
Willie was a buchanite protecitionist. That is bad news. But what is not bad news is negotiating trade deals that give incentive, rather than dis-incentive to manufacturers to stay on our shores. And currently, the WTO has the power to tell the US what kind of tax rebates we can give to manufacturers of exports.
Hunter wants to zero out taxes on manufacturers. His bill is a call for the President to renogotiate GATT/WTO to allow this to happen.
Here is one article you might find interesting.
http://www.americanmachinist.com/304/Issue/Article/False/12780/Issue
You need at least 3 steps.
2) ?????
3) PROFIT
^_^
"Bad opinion" maybe.
And are Rockwell and Paul on the same page as Buchanan on trade? I don't think so.
I’ll take a look at your link a bit later. I’m not just assuming that the domestic machine tool industry is healthy. I understand that it’s vital to our national security. I don’t mind Duncan Hunter pointing it out . . . as long as he understands that slapping a tariff on ping-pong balls won’t help.
I’ve worked in plastics and electronics manufacturing. We found that if you outsourced manufacturing to China, you had a modest chance of the product design being kept by the company - and used to make a competing generic product.
If you outsource manufacturing of your product to China, you may be creating your competitor.
If you outsourced to a specialized manufacturer in the US, you could sue them to oblivion for the same thing. If you want to keep your intellectual product, you have to keep the manufacturing here in the US.
The smart companies know that. The stupid ones . . . .
Just curious, what type of manufacturing jobs pay $48,000 a year? A local manufacturer paid $12 p/hr (assembling snow plow blades) but he left for greener pastures in Tennessee.
Jobs that can pay 48K a year in manufacturing include:
Book binders - up to 30/hr
Industrial equipment mechanics - up to 25/hr
Elevator Installers and Repairers $25-30/hr
And from another site: http://hr.blr.com/news.aspx?id=76650
Power Plant Operators $25.56
Petroleum Pump System Operators, Refinery Operators, and Gaugers - 25/hour
The people were dirt poor, finally started doing something productive and raised their standard of living. As their standard of living increased so did their demands, such as not poisoning everything in the neighborhood so they could live long enough to enjoy some of the fruits of the labor, higher wages and more freedom in general. As it runs it course they become less competitive but more modernized and more integrated with the rest of the world. And as the peoples clout grows, it will overrun the government that is trying to heavily restrict their political freedoms (among other freedoms).
So in my opinion it is time to get all we can get out of China while it lasts... Other than food, drugs, tires, and anything else where safety is an issue... It isn’t going to last all that much longer in my opinion. But what do I know...
When they say industry we think manufacturing: steel plants, car plants, smokestacks. But they don’t mean that anymore. One list included mining in industry. It’s getting murky out there in econ land.
And when I say “less competitive” I mean in low skill jobs. Obviously they will eventially become more competitive in high skill jobs as their wealth grows.
I would suggest that the situation is not murky, rather it is contrived such that what cannot be supported by the data is suddenly supported by the redefined data. You know like the data that shows the US government solvent or that the “core inflation rate” is the real inflation rate. Redefinition is necessary because there simply isn’t that much heavy industry anymore. So in order to prove that there is, we simply added non manufacturing industry to the list and suddenly, the numbers we desire appear.
Yeah, we don't build any new reactors for 25 years and it's shocking that we lose the manufacturing capabilities.
- Government controls, not the lack thereof, create a weak "girly-man" economy. Minimum wage, for instance, has been disastrous for several reasons and has contributed to our competitive problems. Experience as well as basic economics, has proved wage and price controls to be utter folly.
- Why should we limit imports of products superior in price, quality, or both, whether they be machine parts or other things? We, the consumer, always win when we are "free to choose" what we buy. The resulting economic pressures should eventually cause American producers to innovate and improve and increase pressure on government to roll back stupid, self-defeating economic controls like minimum wage. This is the road to economic strength, not more government coercion.
The voice of demagoguery will alway have a louder sound than the voice of sound wisdom. Maybe ears need to be "retooled" along with manufacturing plants.
Jim, Jim. Milton Friedman’s corpse was still warm and ostensible conservatives (here) were telling me that he was an intellectual dwarf (and in favor of illegal immigration to boot—LOL). Some of us simply fear freedom, and look to Washington, D.C. to comfort, clothe, and pacify us.
So machine tools, yes. Rakes and other lawn tools? No.
Who the hell is talking about minimum wage? I’m talking about our tax system that gives incentives for producers to move off shore. That’s suicide.
And it’s particularly suicide if it benefits the chinese communists. They can enjoy that huge influx of trade surplus money by spending it on nuclear proliferation to rouge countries, bribing oil producing 3rd world nations to align with them, shipping millions of dollars worth of weaponry to Iraqi isurgents, paying off their thousands of corporate and government spies in this country, building up their military, buying Russian state of the art technology, paying bureaucrats to run interference when we protest their pirating of intellectual property such as software, firmware, music, etc costing our economy many billions of trade dollars, sending armaments to Hugo Chavez at discount prices, bribing other nations to vote against the US in the the UN, etc etc.
Right. I'd like to understand him better along those lines (exceptions to the general principle).
Minimum wage is one of the reasons we have to export jobs and import goods.
It has alot more to do with tax structure and trade policy.
I think what he meant to express was the fact that, since we can't build'em here, I wouldn't expect to find them being manufactured here. If I was gonna build a nuke plant, I'd buy my stuff from France, not China. They've got the most experience.
That said, and knowing the French, If I was gonna be building about 30 plants in the next ten years, I'd expect some bright boys in a company here to start buying tools and hiring talent, 'cause you can be absolutely sure we'll be able to do it better and cheaper pretty damn quick.
(Jeez, competing with the French; almost better than fighting Arabs! Fish, Barrel, you get it...)
Sure America still has lots of industry. But not enough apparently because we are importing goods from China at a breakneck pace, running up a huge trade deficit with them. So huge that China now makes threats about liquidating US Dollar holdings if we don’t prop up our dollar.
Oil, natural gas, other energy imports are a huge part of our trade deficit. This deficit is tanking confidence in the USD. Without enough foreign lenders our credit markets are drying up. SubPrimes and other factors at play too
In all the voluminous literature of the past several centuries on free trade and protectionism, only three arguments have ever been advanced in favor of tariffs that even in principle may have some validity. --Milton and Rose Friedman, The Case for Free Trade, [FR thread from 2003]Some choice comments there calling Friedman a fraud and a Marxist, or something along those lines.
All three oppose NAFTA, CAFTA and the WTO.
But the point here is America's alleged "deindustrialization" - and they are on the same page there as well.
What we have now is a situation in transition. Unfortunately for planners, we not only lack a good picture of what we have now, we have no idea where we are headed. There is nothing in history to compare with this so anybody's guess is as good as anybody else's.
Yeah, I miss all the low margin manufacturing that they do in China. Where are all the good American sweatshops that used to make clothing and gym shoes? Bring those jobs back, for the children.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.