Selling off America's Manufacturing Might, A Factory At A Time »
Posted By dissent 10 months ago in NewsYou can now watch the liquidation of the American Dream in real time.
Any given week, the guts of a whole factory are auctioned off. Its contents are sold piece by piece and taken away for scrap or antiques or resale to foreign companies. Men with blowtorches and trucks haul off tool-and-die machines, aluminum siding, hoists, drinking fountains, salt and pepper shakers, anything that might be of some value. It is the removal of the country's mechanical heart right before your eyes. It is breathtaking.
"Everyone in our generation from the Midwest ought to see this," said Cooper Suter, a 44-year-old unemployed carpenter from Toledo who has turned to scrapping factories to make ends meet. "It kind of sums up life in the Rust Belt."
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dissent
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engineer10 months ago
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This is why we will be a banana republic. The unregulated outsourcing of every type of job possible for unregulated corporate greed. If you will 'corporate foreign aid' on a grand scale. Shipping all the jobs and money out of the country has py the US in peril. This has got to stop NOW
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Endoscopy10 months ago
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And why is this? That is something you ignore by calling it greed. A catch all for liberals who love the class warfare. You people do not understand that corporations NEVER PAY TAXES. Who pays the taxes? Their customers. Ireland figured that one out. They have a very low tax base and a lot of companies are moving there. Boom times for them.
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Liberals love to tax the rich and corporations and NEVER EVER think about the RESULT of that.
Why is that? As an engineer if you are one you should understand that actions cause results. -
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hyperbola10 months ago
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Basically this is the result of transferring all of the wealth of Americans to the super-rich (started by Reagan and continued ever since). Despite the promises that the super-rich would be wise and invest in American productivity (moving us up market), in fact we now see that our fat,lazy, corrupt "elite" has bankrupted the country.
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This will not change until we put much more of our wealth into the hands of "average" Americans who can invest it productively.
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warrior-custom-golfComment removed: Hard Banned5 Replies
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rimbaud10 months ago
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Ah, let the friggin' Asians with their hunger for wealth have their industrial revolution... let our cities go back to green forests... If we invest in their enterprises, the profits will come home... It's a natural progression for a wealthy people: we will be the gentleman Masters of the Universe, lounging in our verdant estates. For those tasks that require local labor, like agriculture, or the building and maintenance of our estates, we will hire cheap immigrant labor. The USA will experience global cooling when all the belch and stench of industry is finally eradicated from our lands! From our homes, we can design new products to be manufactured elsewhere, and new ad campaigns to keep those fools wanting more...
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http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/03/dirt-fil... -
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coolslow10 months ago
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Its a sad story, I agree. The populist explanation is that greed and capitalism is somehow the cause of the problem and that the US is paying companies to move overseas, The opposite is true. Companies are moving overseas because the US has one of the highest tax rates on business, and 2) labor costs are high. To retain business, the environment has to be more attractive here than elsewhere.
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Tangent00110 months ago
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"Companies are moving overseas because the US has one of the highest tax rates on business, and 2) labor costs are high. To retain business, the environment has to be more attractive here than elsewhere."
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BZZZZZT!
Wrong!
Corporate taxes were far higher before Reagan slashed them, and yet the big push to outsource has only been relatively recent. Labor costs have steadily decreased over the past few decades relative to the economy in general (wages have largely been stagnant, but productivity has increased).
In point of fact, the US was simply blind-sided by the emerging economies of India and China. Removing trade tariffs and granting favored-nation trade status to China made outsourcing extremely attractive in an economic climate that constantly requires growth.
So, do we race to the bottom with the rest of the world and allow sweat shops and environmental devastation in order to 'attract business'? I don't think so. I think if a company wants to sell a product in the United States, that product should either conform to our labor and environmental standards or the company should pay a compensatory fee, even if it is an 'American' company that has their products manufactured overseas.
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Klarissa10 months ago
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A question for the commenters above:
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When you shop for food, clothing. electronics, or whatever, do you pay any attention to the price? How do you decide what to buy?
What ever you do personally can be your guideline to what a manufacturing company would do under similar circumstances.-
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engineer10 months ago
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I look at labels and do without unless its American made and I will pay a higher price for that product. Only things where there is no American product like computers do I buy an import. I do this in all circumstances. Just look hard and you will be able to find from food to clothing, etc.
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beavith110 months ago
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the tax environment in the Rust belt is extremely unattractive.
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engineer. you and i come from the same place (more or less :-) )
except my background is chemistry and i, too hold an MBA. i can understand populism from an emotional viewpoint, but i don't understand it from an economic viewpoint.
with your MBA, how can you rail against wealth? you must realize that the economy is truly an ecology with big fish feeding on small fish and small fish and bacteria feeding on the big fish.
you must also realize that our industrial base has become crazily efficient. one CNC turning center does the work of 10 machinists cranking Bridgeports. that means that 9 machinists are out of work and the one remaining is crazy busy. you must also realize that when the US started, 90% of lived on farms to feed the 10% in cities. now 95% of us live in cities (exurbia and suburbia, too) and are fed by the last 5% on the farms. well, industry is going through that change too.
industries liquidate all the time. the plating industry used to be everywhere. now, thanks to environmental rules, the only people that plate are the ones that must. secondary copper smelting? gone from the US. that's why all our electronic scrap goes to China for recovery, while it poisons them. i sold my old junky brass melting furnace to the Indians.
as Walt Disney said, its the circle of life.-
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engineer10 months ago
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The reason is because I care about the United States and my children and their children and you and your families. I just don't live for myself. I look ahead and care a lot. That is why. Money for industry is one thing. There is also conscience.
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A good example would be Maidenform. They had 6 plants with 350 Americans working for them at each plant or 2100 Americans. it cost them a little less than a dollar to make a bra. they closed all these plants and outsourced them only for a greater profit at the expense of 2100 American families. Remember the retail price DID NOT go down.
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birdsabound10 months ago
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At this point, probably the most USEFUL thing ANYBODY could do would be to get busy and ACTUALLY BUILD AND PRODUCE the OLD "new" innovative technological initiative exemplified by GM’s Chevy VOLT --- and now also its European equivalent, which is being jovially dubbed the AMPERE. (The latter is, by the way, now AHEAD in the "development derby", having recently been "unveiled" at a major European auto show --- and also in that GM may very well soon "go belly up" (and so who knows how long THAT may FURTHER delay real progress?!). And Lord ALSO only knows what OTHER “entries” into the “race” are sure to soon be coming from Asia and India.
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For those who may not yet have "caught on" to what that whole initiative is really "all about", the VOLT is an ELECTRIC / I.C.E. "CHIMERA". Mostly, it is an ELECTRIC car, with a battery that will carry it FORTY miles. Once that battery runs down, a (petroleum-powered) internal-combustion engine kicks in (automatically) --- so that you will NOT be stranded off in Limbo. But when that engine DOES run, it is NOT coupled directly to the wheels in the manner to which we have so long been inured. Rather, it drives a GENERATOR that powers the ELECTRIC motors that actually propel the wheels (all of which, incidentally, happens to be IN ITSELF intrinsically somewhat more efficient than the automotive architecture to which we are all generally accustomed).
Now statistics show that FULLY THREE-FOURTHS of all auto usage "FITS" within a forty mile power budget! You go to the store, the doctor, the bank, and you come home and plug the car back into the wall --- THE GASOLINE ENGINE NEVER RUNS! So NO gasoline derived from expensive IMPORTED oil, or EQUALLY expensive oil extracted from the 30% of “our OWN” declining Providential Endowment of the stuff that still remains (confined now to low-capacity “stripper” wells, or under water, or north of the Arctic Circle, or WAY deep) is consumed --- PERIOD, EXCLAMATION POINT! Now THERE is, perforce, ABOUT 75% OF FOREIGN (and also other!) GASOLINE-OIL INDEPENDENCE FOR YOU! And when REGENERATIVE BRAKING comes to eventually ALSO be “layered into” the architecture, that gasoline-elimination fraction could rise to UP TO FULLY SEVEN-EIGHTHS (as presaged by the energy recovery fraction generally achieved in the Toyota Prius)! -
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birdsabound10 months ago
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Sadly, such a concept probably comes across to most people as some kind of "new, alien, exotic" technological notion --- a fact which ITSELF testifies to the tremendous technological IGNORANCE of many, many people. For BOTH the drive "paradigms" incorporated into the “chimera” ARE NOT NEW AT ALL! Battery powered cars have been around since the EARLIEST days of the automobile --- and the speed record for ELECTRIC cars out at the Bonneville Salt Flats is now IN EXCESS OF 400 MILES AN HOUR (so now how is THAT for speed and power!)? And the I.C.E. “fallback” component has been around FOR ABOUT SIXTY YEARS NOW ALREADY, on the RAILROADS and also in the LARGEST SHIPS on the HIGH SEAS. Anybody ever hear of the DIESEL-ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE?!
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Moreover, the concept also SIMPLY ELIMINATES the whole elaborate, expensive, troublesome TRANSMISSION and DRIVE TRAIN! There just ISN'T ONE on a Diesel-Electric Locomotive! "We" couldn't BEGIN to engineer a sufficiently heavy-duty CLUTCH for such loads. Indeed, THAT is why the ELECTRIC-drive paradigm was developed (LONG AGO now already!) for really HEAVY lifting. Notwithstanding the idea that seems to have been generally “sold” to consumers of automobiles, BIG-MUSCLE machines rely on relatively simple, UNbreakable MAGNETIC-FORCE drive elements rather than on more complex, fallible mechanical ones!
The mean, nasty, ugly, God's-Honest truth, folks (however unthinkable and HATEFUL anybody may find it to be) is that there really is no TECHNOLOGICAL reason on God's Blue-Green Earth why this sort of alternative, which really involves very OLD technology, could not and should not have been introduced YEARS AGO already! There is only the spectacle of "our" MISguided (or maybe more like MISBEGOTTEN!) MIS"management" ("political", “economic”, and/or otherwise) endeavoring to CLING TO “our OWN” little FINANCIAL "oil empire" for as long a possible! And the DEPREDATIONS of THAT bunch are, after all, precisely what has now ENGENDERED the murderous vengeance of an "al-Qaida" in the FIRST place, and which actually long SPONSORED and BANKROLLED a Saddam and his ilk --- through "us" BUYING so much of that which he had to sell! -
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birdsabound10 months ago
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Now HOW MANY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF IRAQI LIVES, and also a substantial number of AMERICAN ones as well, would have been SAVED if our past MIS"leadership" had actually LIVED UP TO ITS RESPONSIBILITIES to "our OWN" society and its membership, and had instead done the RIGHT thing --- optimizing the NATURE AND QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT rather than merely maximizing the MONEY?!!
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I submit that THAT is the sordid truth about which people now should REALLY be DEEPLY ANGRY --- rather than allowing their wrath and ire be "harmlessly" diverted off to and dissipated on SURROGATE "issues" like the obscene "bonuses" being paid to a few score “executives” at financial institutions like AIG --- which, as outrageous as it may sound, are an “issue” that is really MINUSCULE by comparison!-
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TheRealizer10 months ago
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Birdsabound....You are proposing replacing several MILLION barrels of crude oil by plugging several MILLION electric cars into an already overstressed-50 year old electrical grid?
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Also let us know exactly how the mag-lev train will deliver food to your local supermarket..
I have to run some errands (in my petroleum powered diesel pickup) so I will be back to check on the solution.....
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simonsez10 months ago
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There is very seldom a mention of computers and robotics, combined with the environmentalists on the loss of manufacturing jobs in this country. It used to take a lot more people to create something than it does today. It also took more layers of management to deal with the data required to manage.
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Add to that the common sense approach of manufacturing close to your market and avoiding currency fluctuations as much as possible and you have a reduction in available jobs.-
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hyperbola10 months ago
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So you think the slack can be picked up by "service" industries? The only job categories that have grown in the US since the beginning of the Bush administration have been domestic service jobs like waitresses and bartenders. How much of that can we sell to the world to earn our way? Or perhaps you imagine that we can sell insurance (and derivatives) to Egyptians cheaper than they can do it themselves?
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What is then your solution for the majority of Americans who are not part of the super-rich?
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coolslow10 months ago
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As yo all pointed out, industries change and become more efficient or extinct. Technological and productivity advances are enormous. Both of which leads to a dynamic business enviornment which is going to continue to change at a faster rate.
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Since the 50's there has been the discussion that robots/technology/computers are going to decrease the workforce, but look how many entirely new job categories were created with the advent of computer technology.
These rapid industrial technological changes require a couple of things. One is a workforce that continually builds its own human capital to develop new skills when and preferably, before they are needed. The second is a dynamic private sector within an environment that allows it to be agile and creative enough to adapt to change. Planning the economy, picking the winners and loosers, and allocating the resources is impossible, a waste of manpower and resources.-
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hyperbola10 months ago
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Well you are certainly right that we under invest in human capital. Our penultimate Nobel prize winner in Economics (Edmund Phelps) has bee particularly scathing about the under investment in human capital ever since Reagan transferred most of our wealth to the super-rich. Exactly how do you suppose that the remaining serfs of our super-rich are going to invest in human capital?
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