Posted on 11/27/2008 6:51:36 PM PST by kellynla
Unions themselves might be scum, but the people who work in them know how to use tools and understand manufacturing. How many of us took wood-shop classes in middle or high school, for example? Today, these classes don't exist. Schools don't want to be held liable by parents, the money is re-allocated to other BS courses, or kids just aren't interested in doing these things and can't wait to play their Wii when they get home. I'm not saying the taxes, bad trade policies, regulations, and the unions don't play a part in our erosion of manufacturing, because they do, but this generation of kids just aren't risk-takers and thinkers like the previous generations.
We STILL like to make stuff. It's just that our AMERICAN friends and neighbors like to buy cheaper stuff from China.
Developing countries (Such as the US at the time of its founding) may need protecting but not the world’s only superpower.
Something is very wrong when our best math students look like idiots compared to the rest of the world. Tariffs merely hide our fundamental weaknesses, but not for very long.
I hold a doctorate in statistics from one of the top three departments in the world. My thesis was written under the supervision of a former chair of the University of Chicago department of statistics. I have hobnobbed with nobel laureates and assorted historical persons, some who are knighted MBE.
The reason I say all this is not to boast but to get you to believe that I have done my homework thoroughly to understand the solution to the topic of this thread is written into H.R. 25, the FairTax legislation (http://www.fairtax.org).
If you are really truly interested in the topic of this thread, then:
1. Study the link I gave above, especially the FAQ.
2. Study the history of taxation in American beginning with the Founder’s rationale and basis for taxation.
3. Study the rise of the Income tax beginning in the Civil War, its development and culmination in the 16th Amendment including key judicial rulings before 1913.
4. Study the five major tax reforms since 1913 and why they have each failed.
5. Understand as completely as possible the existence of federal embedded taxes in the prices of retail products and services.
6. Study the historical flaw of the regressive excise taxes used to fund America before 1913. Understand how this led to class warfare and Marxist populism.
7. Understand how the ‘Rebate’ of H.R. 25 corrects the flaw in item 6 above and why it was not possible to implement in 1913 or thereafter until only recently.
If you study and begin to understand the items above, you will be on your way to answering how the American manufacturing base can experience a great revival by an immediate 20+% drop in the price of American goods and services exported abroad, making it hugely competitive on a global scale. All of this is possible and practically done through real true tax reform in H.R. 25.
True, but without the poison. I don't like the unions as what they have turned into and who they support. My comment was more to the point of Chinese made products and their danger.
Maybe that’s the point of the article? “We need to make stuff, not turn out more English literature majors.”
Where do I start with this “regular guy” macro-economic analysis?
The populist suspicion of “middle men” and “bankers” is redolent in this article. There is nothing inherently bad or wrong in creating global value chains as American business has been compelled to do by an extremely hostile regulatory and legal environment. In most cases American businesses have out sourced in order to avoid the high expense and uncertainty of doing business domestically.
I would ask the author of this article to direct his attention to the environmental lobby, the trail lawyers and bureaucrats in the EPA who have made manufacturing and energy production an unknowable gamble in this country.
There are obvious problems with the unions but the anti union rhetoric and fantasy around here is starting to exceed the hysteria we hear from the left over global warming.
I don’t dispute the cost of union labor but I do dispute who is at fault. A lot of that cost is insurance and is the fault of the insurers. As far as retirement funds are concerned, I want to see how they compare to white collar workers with those same companies.
My neighbor was a low level exec with Chrysler when he retired before 50 years old. When he was working he picked up a nice 6 figure salary for smacking golf balls on the driving range while he was “working”. Add his 4 and a half months of paid vacation every year to the monster bonus and perpetual medical covereage he got upon retirement and it’s a chunk. He estimated his own costs at several times what it cost to employ a lineworker. He was one of dozens like him at the proving ground.
The biggest union and the only ones growing today are government unions.
They don’t know how to make anything.
Many non-government union members don’t know how to make anything. Longshoremen may know how to rig certain gear, that’s not making anything.
Part of the thrust of the modern educational system is that pretty much *everyone* goes through a college-prep curriculum in high school. This is just insanity.
If you look at the Germans, for example, they still have a very strong vocational training system that starts in those years. Not everyone needs a college-prep education, and the country would be much better off if more kids got vo-tech training instead of many of the junk college degrees being handed out these days in semi-useless majors like Sociology or Womyn’s Studies.
do a google search for made in USA clothing and you will see lots of sites, the cost in not to bad and I have had good luck with the quailty. some are union some are non union so give it a try.
Please...our college grads today with dream of Obama “Hope” in their heads and their sense of entitlement to our tax money to support them, I highly doubt we’ll return to our hard working manufacturing prowess. Short of another American Revolution to return government to the people based on the principles found in the United States Constitution, we are screwed.
>> It is much easier to replace poor-quality non-union workers than it is to replace poor-quality union workers.
Poor-quality corporate directors are perhaps a greater threat to Capitalism.
Scratch that #18. I meant #37 which points the finger at the corporate directors.
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