Not made in the USA

NY Post ^ | December 12, 2010 | MAUREEN CALLAHAN

[Scanian]

Among the number of plant closings announced in the United States this week: A printing plant in Greenburg, Ind., costing 220 jobs; a tomato processing plant in Westover, Md., with 103 people fired; an office-supply facility in Mattoon, Ill., with 129 jobs lost.

[MalPearce]

I don’t blame Thatcher or Reagan for turning the economy round or breaking the unions - I supported that, and still do.

I’m just saying, in some cases Thatcher didn’t stop at selling workable mines off and THAT was a mistake (benefit of hindsight).

I live in one of the former mine managers’ houses in the same street as retired pit bosses and they tell me that the mine was economically viable (in excess of forty million tonnes remain to be excavated).

I’m not a specialist in coal mining but even I can figure out the economics of reopening the pit would still stack up, if the government of the day had simply shut shop and capped the shafts.

But the road links, rail links and buildings were all razed to the ground after the pit closed; hundreds of tonnes of concrete were poured in effectively blocking the tunnels below ground; and many of the tunnels will be flooded by now. To get the pit fully operational would cost tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds and take a couple of years.

So in that sense only, preventing the mine from being reopened even in private hands, was a mistake that twenty years’ worth of hindsight might have informed her. It’s effectively put a vital national resource, beyond use.

[Beagle8U]

I still have an incinerator, but it is outside. Made it out of a 1000 gal steel tank. I burn everything but glass jars in it. Even tin cans, once burned, will turn to rust-dust within a year.

[mo]

We should start an electronic cemetery for companies regulated and taxed to oblivion...and track the jobs lost..

[dennisw]

What these “Free Traders” don’t understand is that it is real hard to fight a war without an industrial base.

They could care less about fighting wars. Commerce and that "free trade" bullcrap is more important. International trade is great but we have to put up tariffs when we are running annual trade deficits of 500-700 billion per year
But one must remember that even if we brought back all steel production to America (just as an example) these industries run much leaner these days due to automation and computerization. Meaning we only need 25% the number of workers we would have 30 years back. You have roughly the same number across all real industries I would think

Notice the money grubbing slave mentality of the "free traitor" crowd. This crowd that professes to understand capitalism. They think a Japanese automobile factory on US soil is just fine because it employs Americans. They turn numbnutz when I interrogate them on who the profits go to. Which is to the Japanese of course. In want more US industry where profits are kept here and spent here...or invested here

I am in favor of---

1. tariffs on oil/energy and Asian imports
2. taking these tariff revenues and using them to give tax incentives to US citizens to set up production and industry on US soil
3. increasing agricultural exports

 

[RipSawyer]

“we’re making pharmaceuticals, software, high-tech cars.”
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Here within ten miles of my home a pharmaceutical plant that is only fifteen years old, construction having begun in 1995, is up for sale. This is a very modern plant with a VERY recent expansion in place. What was that line again?

I don’t know why it is up for sale, many seem to think that it is a direct result of the passage of the “health care reform” law. It is strange to me that such a recently built plant that has just been expanded for the production of Tamiflu within the past two years at a cost of sixty million dollars would be up for sale. This is the company that bought Genentech for forty seven billion dollars. It will be interesting to see whether a deal is struck to sell the plant, I have a sneaking suspicion it won’t be really soon.

I instinctively don’t like the idea of our whole economy being based on a few high tech products. It sounds too much like Saudi Arabia, maybe they are doing well one day but what happens the next when another source of energy is found? I would much prefer the broad based approach.

[RipSawyer]

“The cotton gin destroyed the south and it never recovered.”
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Don’t think I’ve heard that before, how did the gin destroy the South?

[Mears]

I wasn’t talking about washing machines with ringers either.

[Mears]

Oops,”wringers”.

Of course the TV’s are different now,that wasn’t my point.

You referred to 12” black and white TV’s and that is what my response was about.

[Mears]

Not only do they want several bathrooms these days,but one of them has to be a “master bath”.

[1rudeboy]

They think a Japanese automobile factory on US soil is just fine because it employs Americans. They turn numbnutz when I interrogate them on who the profits go to.

You just admitted that building an American plant in a foreign country is a good thing.

[1rudeboy]

What these “Free Traders” don’t understand is that it is real hard to fight a war without an industrial base.

You've demonstrated on this thread that you favor steel mills, which is good for national security. But you've also demonstrated that you do not favor companies that use steel, which is bad for national security. Some industrial base you're building, there.

[Toddsterpatriot]

They think a Japanese automobile factory on US soil is just fine because it employs Americans.

Employing Americans is a fine thing.

They turn numbnutz when I interrogate them on who the profits go to.

I don't know who "they" are, but I can tell you the profits go to the owners of the company.

In want more US industry where profits are kept here and spent here...or invested here

Wow, I want the same thing.

taking these tariff revenues and using them to give tax incentives to US citizens to set up production and industry on US soil

If you mean you want to cut corporate tax rates in the US, I agree again.

[dennisw]

You dinosaurs need to wise up. We are in the age of sovereign debt defaults caused by the dumbass ideas you guys have been aimlessly brainlessly pimping for years

Snap out of it!

[Toddsterpatriot]

We are in the age of sovereign debt defaults

Sovereign debt is when government spends too much. You know, budget deficits.

caused by the dumbass ideas you guys have been aimlessly brainlessly pimping for years

My ideas are lower taxes, much lower spending and secure borders.

Snap out of it!

Get a clue.

[prophetic]

But according to the liberals its far more beneficial to give unemployment checks to people rather than have them gainfully employed and self-supporting.

They even claimed that with the govt checks the economy gets $1.60 benefit for each dollar spent!!

What a bunch of lying crooks!!

So I guess that they want something like 30+ % unemployment since it'll really boost the economy then!! These lying despicable democrats are such loathsome creatures.

[Leisler]

Um, it didn’t. I was sort of agreeing with post 12, that invention, imports, technology, trade are disruptive, even destroying of old orders, and economies.

The gin did destroy, for the most part, black cotton picking. But, they went on, or were released to do other things, and especially after the Civil War, rebuild the destroyed South.

For example, the Erie canal, was dug by hand. It gave work to ten’s of thousands for years. The steam shovel, burning wood and later coal, put those guys out of work.

I once worked in a automated golf ball making plant. Only a handful had anything to do with making a million near always perfect golf balls. With in memory of a few older workers were memories of a hundred women working in cold rooms winding rubber around cores, that were then covered with the skin.

Japan has what they call dark factories. They are dark because no one is in them. They are 100 percent automated, unless something breaks, then they turn the lights on.

This is what technologhy does.

I could imagine some day, no one working on wheat farms. All the machines being controlled from a desk in New York or Tokyo.

[Ditto]

The gin did destroy, for the most part, black cotton picking.

Just the opposite is true. The Cotton Gin made cotton, and slavery the most profitable business on earth.

The Cotton Gin didn't pick cotton. It just removed the seeds from cotton balls after they were picked by hand.

[expat_panama]

"...think a Japanese automobile factory on US soil is just fine because it employs Americans. They turn numbnutz when I interrogate them on who the profits go to."

Foreign companies who profit from US labor are bad for America, and US companies who profit from foreign labor and ship jobs overseas is also bad for America.   That's going to be a hard sell to virtually all Americans because we like jobs and profits, and we're not about to give up coffee, rubber, chocolate, Swiss army knives, and bananas.

[dennisw]

1. what you say is always discounted because you don't even live in America
2. You are so far gone you don't even know what rooting for the home team means anymore
3. your home team is used to be America
4. but living outside America your brain has gone soft
5. ----
6. I live here so I still root for the home team and its players who are my fellow Americans
7. therefore I have no problem with US colonialism where we build and profit from our farms and factories abroad that sell into Europe or the third world
8. but I do have a problem with foreigners colonizing the USA and setting up major factories and taking those profits home ..... By this I mean Japanese automobile factories and others 
9. In America we are fully capable of making automobiles.
10. We don't need foreigners here doing this
11. But a poor third world nation does not have this ability and is entirely legitimate to ask foreigners (could be us or Japan or Korea etc etc)  to set up an automobile or refrigerator factory.
12. Uganda could do the above and profit mightily (as far as jobs and allied economic activity) as Toyota automobiles are built there are exported all across Africa
13. hope this helps but I know it won't because you are like a donkey. Set in its ways

[RipSawyer]

“The gin did destroy, for the most part, black cotton picking.”
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Wrong! Do you really know what a gin is? I go back to WWII, I was born in ‘44, I have crawled the rows with a cotton sack while being stung by the green caterpillars and driven mad by gnats in the hot sun.

The gin CREATED the demand for slaves to pick cotton. The cotton PICKER ended the demand for people to pick cotton and it didn’t end totally until I was in high school. When I entered first grade in 1950 we had a full classroom but two or three years later I noticed that many of my classmates who were now just big enough to pick cotton would miss the first six weeks of school. These were WHITE children of course. Many farmers in those days refused to use the mechanical picker because it left so much cotton unpicked, yields were much lower then and sometimes the whole crop was little more than what a mechanical picker leaves unpicked today but cotton is much cheaper because of the picker and the gin and the multi row tractor so no human can pick enough by hand to be worth trying. If cotton were not so cheap you would have seen people in the fields picking what the mechanical picker left on the stalk.