Posted on 10/15/2017 7:40:23 AM PDT by Theoria
The man from Mexico followed a manager through the factory floor, past whirring exhaust fans, beeping forklifts, and drilling machines that whined against steel. Workers in safety glasses looked up and stared. Others looked away. Shannon Mulcahy felt her stomach lurch.
It was December 2016. The Rexnord Corporation’s factory still churned out bearings as it always had. Trucks still dropped off steel pipes at the loading dock. Bill Stinnett, a die-hard Indiana Pacers fan, still cut them into pieces. The pieces still went to the “turning” department, where they were honed into rings as small as a bracelet or as big as a basketball. Then to “heat treat,” where Shannon — who loves heavy metal music and abandoned dogs — hardened them with fire. Then to “grinding,” where Shannon’s cousin Lorry Mannix smoothed out any imperfections. And then to “assembly,” where Mark Elliott, a former Marine, joined two rings together, one inside the other, with a wheel of spinning rollers in between. The whole contraption was encased in a cast-iron housing machined by John Feltner, a father of three who’d just recovered from bankruptcy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
> They [us corporations] need to be helped into doing the right thing by slapping a huge import tariff on imports. <
As I’m sure you’ll agree, a carrot and stick approach is needed here. The stick: tariffs. The carrot: less regulations, less government interference in the workplace, lower taxes.
Trump needs to get this done, and sooner rather than later. I want a wall, and I want heavy industry back. If Trump fails to deliver on either, he risks losing my vote in 2020.
No, they protect some American jobs, at the expense of every other American. It is only the politically connected who benefit from tariffs. As for raising revenue, no, I don't support that. I'm for smaller government.
If you want socialism then keep closing factories and decimating red state America.
If you want socialism, keep proposing government programs.
Believe me I get it. Corporations want to sell products in the first world market at first world prices, duty free no less, that are produced in the 3rd world but at the same time don't want to pay for first world labor rates. They are greedy Free Traitors™. Ok fine. They need to be helped into doing the right thing by slapping a huge import tariff on imports.
How does it benefit ordinary Americans to price things beyond their ability to buy? Our standard of living has gone straight up since the deregulation and low tariff policies of the Regan years. Even the Democrats recognized this and haven't tampered with it much.
Any government at any level (local, state, federal) that isn't unionized? Consider that before you say this is a non-union nation.
That is classic globalist propaganda. What happens when a manufacturer offshores production they get reduced labor rates. That's it, the only benefit. The other costs of production stay the same i.e. first world engineering, marketing, corporate salaries and everything else like stock dividends. So what they(Corps) are doing is increasing the profit margins. The reduction at retail is sucked up by middle men. The US consumer sees no benefit at all. The real loser is the tax payer and local communities who secondary economy dies when the factory closes and welfare explodes.
Your point about Democrats is well taken, the uni-party is for open borders and zero tariffs. This cannot continue and America keep it's hard fought freedoms. We will go full blown Euro socialist if the offshoring(raping) doesn't stop. That is why Trunp and Bannon are so popular, they are fighting back against the globalists.
US workers and heavily regulated US companies competing against heavily subsidized foreign companies. The foreign competitors employ labor at substantially lower rates, enjoy special tax preferences for exports, often have access to zero interest funding for capital, and benefit from significant non-tariff barriers to keep foreign (i.e. US) companies from competing in their domestic markets. The foreign companies employ child labor and aren’t bound by high US minimum wages, overtime laws, worker safety protections, social security taxes, and payments into unemployment and workman’s comp funds. Health care expenses are significantly lower for foreign companies, many of which do not provide health insurance benefits to workers. Foreign companies also don’t deal with rapacious tort lawyers and aren’t bound by restrictive environmental protection regulations. To be fair, foreign CEO’s and upper management salaries are much lower than their US counterparts enjoy. Finally many foreign companies steal with impunity the intellectual property of US companies and are shielded in doing so by their governments, international trade organizations dominated by anti-US globalist, and the US State Department unwilling to take aggressive action to protect US interests.
With respect to trade policy the US has two options. The first is to continue the “free trade” policies of the past 35 years and see further loss of manufacturing and middle class jobs. The end game here is the complete destruction of the middle class and slow migration to a third world subsistence economy.
The second option is to employ trade policy crafted to encourage the rebuilding of the US industrial base, national economic self sufficiency, and preservation of a strong middle class. To do so the US should return to the trade and tariff policies it employed successfully from 1865 to 1900 when our nation transitioned from the economic devastation and ruin of a bitter civil war to become the world’s greatest industrial power. During those 35 years the US employed the highest tariff’s in its history and enjoyed the highest economic growth rate in its history. A protectionist trade policy should be combined with tax policies encouraging investment in the domestic economy, reform of the tort system, and redirection of government education spending to provide real job skills for an expanding economy. Let the private sector and individuals fund education in liberal arts and social sciences fields that don’t contribute to economic prosperity.
In addition the government welfare system must be overhauled to fund a safety net for the truly disabled. Able body unemployed, who cannot find jobs in the private sector, should have the choice of starving or joining public works employment projects which provide job skills training while working on improvements to public infrastructure (depression era WPA and CCC type projects). The perpetuation of successive generations of welfare dependency can only be ended by reinstating the economic incentive to work.
We have experimented with globalism and one sided open markets for 35 years and the scorecard is in. The greatest industrial infrastructure in the world has been gutted and exported to nations hostile to our country. The middle class has seen two decades of stagnant income for the first time in our history. Our national debt is at obscene levels as the tax base has dwindled and government has borrowed to fund the growing unemployed and underemployed population. We have over 90 million working age Americans unemployed today. We also have the greatest wealth disparity in our nation’s history.
Increasing tariffs will impose a cost on US consumers. Tariffs are a tax. Better a tax on imported goods, which will encourage domenstic production, than higher taxes on income which discourage investment or even worse higher government borrowing which acts as a drag on economic activity today and in the future.
Do you prefer the economic and trade policies that resulted in the highest level of economic growth in our history from 1865 to 1900 or do you prefer the destructive economic and trade policies employed from the 1980’s to today? There is a cost to both. One offers the potential for economic independence and long term economic growth. The other has been proving to result in concentration of wealth, income disparity, export of domestic manufacturing, higher national debt, high levels of unemployment, and a declining standard of living for the vast majority of the population.
Rather than make Mexicans abandon their friends and families to make the dangerous and illegal journey to El Norte to steal the jobs of American workers, wouldn’t it be kinder and more humane simply to ship American jobs to Mexico?
If only the Democrats could figure out how to register Mexicans to vote in US elections without importing them to the US!
Environmental regulations, NAFTA, outrageous taxes, and yes sometimes greedy unions, all of them combined kill American industries.
No it isn't. We all benefit from lower prices and the higher standard of living lower prices make possible.
The reduction at retail is sucked up by middle men. The US consumer sees no benefit at all.
Nonsense. No one would buy from Walmart if they weren't cheaper. The ones "sucking up" the reduction in price are the consumers. It's a big win for living standards.
The real loser is the tax payer and local communities who secondary economy dies when the factory closes and welfare explodes.
I don't see how taxpayers lose. I definitely do see how tax-eaters lose, but I don't care about them. As for the loss of jobs and the loss of the secondary economy, it's worth noting that if the American workers would accept fair market wage prices instead of insisting of everything they just have to have then their jobs wouldn't get off-shored in the first place. That is of course, putting aside for the moment the question of unions, tort law, regulation, etc. There are many other areas in which we could improve our competitiveness. And remember we don't have to float our domestic products across an ocean, so it's not like we don't have any advantages ourselves.
In fact, I think Mexico ranks a close second to California when it comes to places California state employees go to live out their retirement years.
Government worker union membership is 34% but I am sure that includes the military in the “not union” bin. The percentage if you exclude the military from the calculation is surely significantly higher.
There is still much to be done for our job situation. Still too many engineers and scientists out of work in the oil industry in Houston.
“I see some union women and other tokens at construction sites now; there is a line of them waving traffic flags while men do the actual work. In the past this position would be rotated between guys taking a break from the real work...”
The flag waver’s job is locked up by Black Lesbians which covers three fake affirmative action categories at once.
Patriotism is so yesteryear. American companies should grab all they can. Nothing is owed to this country or its workers. But don’t forget to stand for the National Anthem today.
Back around 2004 my company built a stamping plant in Juarez Mexico. Our plant production manager was sent there to work along with other employees from the company. They had to live in a guarded, gated compound and were provided with armed security whenever they traveled to and from work........
CEO’s and executives that only stare at the bottom line are the one’s who try to maximize profits by moving jobs offshore. IBM did that at the end of 2016 by laying off it’s global practice that specialized in business resiliency. They moved the “center of excellence” to India and tried to replace individuals with decades of experience with fresh out of college India graduates. And they have been loosing deals over and over again.
In 2013 IBM’s stock price was North of $200. Now it is south of $150. A loss of 25% in about 4 years.
“I don’t look down on anybody who uses food stamps,” she said. “But I want to work for a living.”
To be blunt, this woman and her cohorts are consistently treated as an alien species by the bicoastal urban elite that has assumed the mantle of authority in the Democrat party. Hillary infamously declared herself very happy that coal miners were out of work. Some weeks later somebody picked up on the fact that this was a rather undiplomatic sort of thing to say and she responded with an assurance that her administration would offer welfare and job retraining, etc. See the above quote for why that didn't help.
The Dems now look to Bernie Sanders to re-establish that link with the working class - that would be the Bernie who was not, and is not now, actually a member of the party. It's gone that far. Past Bernie, their current slate contains racial agitators, big-government apparatchiks, and a contrived simulacrum named Hillary whose personal charm and authenticity make a cardboard cutout seem warm and approachable and who has been chauffeured for the last thirty years. Best of luck with that. Their best bet is to attempt to convince the working class that they are victims, because that's what Democrats do best, victims of The Bosses after the model of Bernie and Karl Marx. That's going to be a bit of a reach, because the only guy looking out for that class is the Ultimate Boss now in office. The Dems are so far out of touch they let a billionaire real estate developer assume the role of friend of the working class and it's actually not a pose, it's the truth.
Oh, I see black guys and white women doing it all the time.
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