End Of an ERA.

[Marvel]

Well, look at the bright side. Now most of the workers won't have so far to travel to work.

(commuting from Mexico to Northridge and back) (its a joke) (ha ha ha)

Well, it made me laugh out loud!

I thought my comment back on P. 1 was pretty funny. Just want everyone to have a chance to see it...

That was a funny post, too. [] You kow there is a company that makes speakers for guitar amps, and the cone material is hemp. There's all kinds of possibilities with that one.

Bruce

[ZAKO]

END of an ERA,,,, Well look at the brite side,,when i started this thread,,, You will be able to buy your JBL and Klipsch speakers at WalMart,,and Amy will check you out at the cash register,, Cash,check,or creditcard.

[DrWho]

Doc, you are a young kid just out of college, so we can cut you some slack. As you grow older, you will realize there are a finite amount of production jobs in the world. The worldview you pick up in college, when you are playing games and chasing after beautiful girls, is often radically different than the world when you switch over to changing diapers and chasing paychecks.

At some point you will realize that every job at your Shure plant/R&D facility, EVERY JOB, can be done better and cheaper somewhere else. As your life responsibilities grow, and your job permanence becomes liquid, and our government actively supports foreign industrial job growth, you also may begin to realize your nascent beliefs need refinement.

Oh, so now we have to play the age card? Brilliant! [Y]

Your sentiments above remind me a lot of the sentiments of the kings during the Medieval Ages. You could care less about the peasants provided you can maintain your lifestyle....which ironically, is an empty lifestyle totally devoid of meaning. I'm actually quite astonished that you speak as if changing that lifestyle is a sacrifice. I would expect far more from someone trying to play the "age/wisdom" card.

[fini]

That was a funny post, too. You kow there is a company that makes speakers for guitar amps, and the cone material is hemp. There's all kinds of possibilities with that one.

Bruce

I know! That joint is just a little down the hiway from me...

[DrWho]

Grasshopper,

My
main problem is that these companies are doing this for the almighty
dollar, not for some higher calling of helping those less fortunate. It
is also true, that while you are very smart, if we could wave a magic
wand and everything was done where it could be done the best and the
cheapest, I am sure you would have dificulty finding a job, and your
own means of living would be drastically reduced. If your parents did
unskilled labor, then you never would have made it to colledge in the
first place.

Having said the above, I will flip the script
and challenge the rest of you here that unless you can raise your hand
and state for a fact that you and your family have NEVER, ever bought
anything from Walmart, you are just as guilty of the sin of helping
these companies in undermining American jobs and have absolutely no
buiseness picking up a stone to throw at the greedy SOBs that are
moving these jobs in the firstplace let alone throwing a stone at
Grasshopper for his views, myself included.

Roger

Hey
Roger, I totally agree that most companies outsource labor with greedy
motives, trying to take advantage of lower quality of life standards. I also think most of that greed begins with the everyday
consumers that are chasing the lifestyle of kings and don't want to pay
for it. I definitely don't agree with either.

The issue I have is that some want to make a moral
argument that it is 'always' better to employ Americans than it is to employ
peoples of other nations. I think it's a lot like the age old "kings vs peasants"
arguments, except in this case it is "Americans vs the poor nations of
the world".

I definitely can't deny the many blessings I've enjoyed
in this life, but would life really have less meaning without all the
fancy cars, nice house, fat food, internet, tv, cell phone, etc... ?
I've spent some time with some extremely poor people and they
demonstrate a happiness that most Americans are incapable of
comprehending. Why would I want to trade true happiness for the empty
American lifestyle? The fact that losing my job (which I certainly
don't deserve) would bring so much agony into my life is testament to
how broken our culture is...

Yes I know...incredibly idealistic, but then nothing ever changes if you just accept the status quo...

[Tarheel]

I know! That joint is just a little down the hiway from me...

You're on a roll fini[] Did I just say roll?

[shinerman]

One word that has killed Made in America.....................Unions

[twistedcrankcammer]

One word that has killed Made in America.....................Unions

Unions are a small part of the equasion, the United States tax structure is an even larger part of the problem by far.

Roger / Gadfly

[dollar bill]

I will attempt to curb my rantish tendencies(fail) and say that we have done this to ourselves and Mal-Wart is not the only one to blame.

While part of what is going on is certainly consumer driven, there is another another thing going on in my opinion.

The internet has ushered in a abundance of short term vision, uneducated, unrealistic, greedy, day traders.

People "playing" the stock market like it was in a casino, making it impossible for publicly traded companies to have long term plans.

Companies live and die or have to create a lie to survive one fiscal quarter to the next now.

If they do not exceed(meeting is not good enough), their projections, one keystroke is all it takes to dump 'em and back another company.

The pressure to reduce costs and increase profit every three months, NO MATTER WHAT goes far beyond the average consumers desire to buy more for less.

When is the last time you heard about a company's plan for the next 10 years?

And yet people are still being asked "Where do you see yourself 5 years from now", at their Wal-Mart interview?

Where do you see me 5 years from now?LOL

Who's to blame for the Enron's of the world, factories moving and quality being a lost art?

Who makes long term investments, not only in companies, but the products we buy and most importantly our own futures?

The internet/tech boom gave people the false idea that all stocks could and should double in a 6 month period as opposed to up and down over a ten, or twenty year period, for in most cases a modest return.

The stock market is supposed to be something to invest in, to help growth and progress, not to play the long odds on hitting the jackpot.

[JJkizak]

In 1973 one of my best (cerebral) friends and I working overseas had a conversation which started out about the strings theory. I said what the hell is that? He said that matter vibrates at a certain frequency which could be explained as "TV channels multiplexed" on a common carrier wave. I said I never heard of it but it sounds neat. Today it's the big deal. Amother part of the conversation was about the middle class in America. He said there are international entities planning to eliminate the middle class world wide. I said your loony. As it turns out I was the loony one. This conversation remember was in 1973.

JJK

[oldenough]

I will attempt to curb my rantish tendencies(fail) and say that we have done this to ourselves and Mal-Wart is not the only one to blame.

While part of what is going on is certainly consumer driven, there is another another thing going on in my opinion.

The internet has ushered in a abundance of short term vision, uneducated, unrealistic, greedy, day traders.

People "playing" the stock market like it was in a casino, making it impossible for publicly traded companies to have long term plans.

Companies live and die or have to create a lie to survive one fiscal quarter to the next now.

If they do not exceed(meeting is not good enough), their projections, one keystroke is all it takes to dump 'em and back another company.

The pressure to reduce costs and increase profit every three months, NO MATTER WHAT goes far beyond the average consumers desire to buy more for less.

When is the last time you heard about a company's plan for the next 10 years?

And yet people are still being asked "Where do you see yourself 5 years from now", at their Wal-Mart interview?

Where do you see me 5 years from now?LOL

Who's to blame for the Enron's of the world, factories moving and quality being a lost art?

Who makes long term investments, not only in companies, but the products we buy and most importantly our own futures?

The internet/tech boom gave people the false idea that all stocks could and should double in a 6 month period as opposed to up and down over a ten, or twenty year period, for in most cases a modest return.

The stock market is supposed to be something to invest in, to help growth and progress, not to play the long odds on hitting the jackpot.

I believe you have a point there, and I tend to agree with it.

[sheltie dave]

One viewpoint...

By Richard A. Levins

Richard A. Levins, Professor Emeritus of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota

The
middle class is fading fast. Stagnant wages, rising costs for life’s
essentials and massive debt are taking their toll. What can we do to
reverse this trend before it is too late? We must recognize that cheap
labor can build cars and appliances, but only organized labor can build
a middle class.

While
the middle class struggles, the country’s wealthiest people are riding
the stock market gravy train. Much of my economic work in the past
several years has been with farming. Farmers have a better word for
those who make money because of what they own instead of what they do.
They are called landlords. Landlords, like corporate shareholders,
simply sit back and take part of what others have earned.

What many politicians hail as the “ownership society” is really a landlord society. It
is one in which money that could be used to reward labor gets skimmed
off by a fortunate few. This repackaging of our old friend,
trickle-down economics, is downright dangerous.

All strategies that trade good jobs for cheap toasters eventually erode the market for the goods and services being provided. A
society composed of a handful of hyper-wealthy individuals and millions
of people living on the economic edge is not the sound, stable market
needed for growth. Only a middle class with a widely distributed buying power can provide that. What
economists call the “income distribution” in this country is, from a
middle-class perspective, as bad as it has been since the years leading
up to the Great Depression.

The ideology of ownership would have us believe that the rich getting richer is just how things work in our economic system. The less we tamper with the way profits are distributed among owners and workers, the better off we all will be. The
problem is, of course, that the rich and powerful monkey with the
system all the time, and always to their benefit at the expense of the
middle class.

Corporations are now strong enough to call for, and get, substantial tax reductions. They can call for, and get, substantial wage concessions. They can call for, and get, weakened public oversight of their activities. These
changes, which have permitted and fostered the growth of corporations
and globalization, are not the result of clever ideas and theories. They result from the exercise of power.

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Once
corporations pay all their expenses, anything left over must be
distributed between labor and owners. When labor has power, wages grow,
and with them, the middle class. When owners have power, we move toward
a society of rich and poor without much in the middle.

A
farmer I have worked with over the years put it this way: When you sit
down to dinner with a group of hungry people, it’s not only the size of
the pie that matters. The size of your fork is just as important.

Because
of its generous share of natural resources, and centuries of public
action to build roads, schools and the like, the United States is a
wealthy nation. During the mid-twentieth century, there were two
principal methods for making sure this wealth was distributed such that
it would do the most to maintain and build the nation’s wealth.

First, the very wealthy were heavily taxed, either directly or through their corporations. This provided for maintenance of existing social investments and creation of new ones. Our system of public education and research, for example, was well supported by tax dollars.

Second,
labor unions became strong enough to shift corporate profits from very
wealthy owners to the middle class, in the form of better wages and
benefits. Money stayed in the hands of those most likely to spend it in
ways that would further stimulate the national economy and provide
essential public services.

In a few short decades, globalization has raised the specter of moving all of this wealth into the hands of a very few. In
so doing, it will destroy the very process that created and maintained
our wealth in the first place. Rebuilding the middle class, therefore,
will not be a search for new economic ideas. It will instead be a
process of changing the balance of power in ways that favor those of us
who are not corporate landlords.

Politicians
can, and should, put the middle class front and center in their
economic thinking. But that alone won’t do the job. The job of building
and maintaining the middle class is, like always, a union job.

Richard A. Levins is Professor Emeritus of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. His most recent book, Middle Class * Union Made, is available from Itasca Books at 800-901-3480.

[sheltie dave]

And Miss E. with some more data...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-warren/america-without-a-middle_b_377829.html

[Hifi jim]

One word that has killed Made in America.....................Unions

I have to disagree there, read the next post.

[Hifi jim]

Second,

labor unions became strong enough to shift corporate profits from very

wealthy owners to the middle class, in the form of better wages and

benefits. Money stayed in the hands of those most likely to spend it in

ways that would further stimulate the national economy and provide

essential public services.

Politicians

can, and should, put the middle class front and center in their

economic thinking. But that alone wont do the job. The job of building

and maintaining the middle class is, like always, a union job.

[IndyKlipschFan]

Doc,

It's been fun watching you grow up!

You have come out of school with a great education, hopefully a great paying job, and a world of understanding of both sides.. (well maybe not a big full of themselves union side to your heart) but a better understanding of where jobs and manufacturiing go. And why?

And for some reason were too ashamed in America to state that the reason your in business, IS to make a profit.

Without it, you die as a company. Some things are just made better in some places, take power tools... Germany kicks our arse too.

And we need to get over this mentality that becuase it moves to a lesser wage contry that the quality falls off.. That is not always the case at all! (And something they refuse to teach in our schools and educate the public too.) Oh well, just good to see your still here, alive n kicking too!

[germerikan]

!!!Attention a Rant is in process!!!

What it comes down to is greed!!!! And greed has no borders!!!

When there was an east and west Germany those were the "fat" years in Germany. Then the wall came down which for the people was great but for the economy of Germany as a whole was bad. The large companies opened new factories in east Germany because they were getting huge sums of support for doing so and the workforce was willing to work for less because that is all that they have had before. In the years from 1995 to 2004 the real wages, or buying power, had been recuced (Í´ll repeat that) had been reduced -0,9% from before 1995. As reference the USA as had if my sources are correct 19,6% increase and Sweden was at the top of the list with around 25%. The companies then of course started to move their entire companies from west to east Germany because that was the "rational" thing to do, production costs and all. That made a large hole in the formarly healthy west German companies who have yet fully recovered from this.

Fast forward some, the eastern block countries and China are now open huraah! Guess what happened??? Yep several large companies opened "branches" in some of the other countries, heck the work force works for peanuts and a warm shack. This I may add at the same quality as "made in Germany". So after some false starts these people are producing the same quality, we have installed the machies and taught them how, for 1/4 the money. Once again the shift ripped holes in production but now to east Germany as well as west.

Continental tires come from Germany where I live. It used to be the place to get a job, everyone needs tires right? 2002 a very large part of the production has been moved to Tschechien. And this can be reflected througout almost all major companies like Semens, AEG, VW etc.

It is the owners and share holders who only want to see profit at all costs, it does not matter where the companie produces as long as I get my big fat check at the end of the quarter. The middle class is almost gone here as well, I am still in it but do not know how much longer because the shift is coming fast. At one point in time when I first arrived here the Germans would ask me how can this or how could that happen in America? Blöde Amis (stupid Americans) but instead of learing from our mistakes they make the exact same ones and are more stupid for not learing. Take HSH Nordbank in Hamburg, they wanted to play poker like the big boys and lost more than 500 million € (500,000,000 €), this is a state owned bank not privat, who has to step up to pay the toll? The taxpayer!!!

We have become a world where hard work is rewarded with only more hard work. The easy money is the way to go! Go to collage and be white colar, that is where the money is!!! But who is left to build and assemble products? Who is left to do tedious manual labor? The unions have lost power because the people are not willing to fight anymore. A strike used to be that EVERYONE droped what they were doing and really put the thumbscrews on the employer to get what they wanted. Now a days the strikes here are planned and limited to "warn" not to hurt the employer.

I myself have no solutions because no government and no one people will be able to change anything on this world anymore, fact. Everything is to tied together today. Everyone is dependent on someone else or they are shutting themselves off from the rest of the world and stirring their own soup, which I believe is the corect way to do it. Clean your own house before you offer to help someone else. Globalizierung is here and has been for quite a while, no one wants to believe it though.

Profit is what everyone wants, but can we put it above everything else and at all costs??

my 0,02€ (0.027$)

[JJkizak]

German tools use Chinese bearings. The best tools were the old Rockwell Delta and Milwaukee built like a brick outhouse. Now they are all plastic/glass filled garbage with a continuous supply of new batteries and Chinese bearings.

JJK

[germerikan]

German tools use Chinese bearings. The best tools were the old Rockwell Delta and Milwaukee built like a brick outhouse. Now they are all plastic/glass filled garbage with a continuous supply of new batteries and Chinese bearings.

JJK

Depends on which ones you buy, but then you are paying up to 6 times more, those are the ones I buy. I would rather pay once and be done with it.

[fini]

The best tools were the old Rockwell Delta and Milwaukee built like a brick outhouse.

Mmm... yeah! I've got a superb ol' Unisaw, an even older Delta Jointer, and a vintage Delta drillpress. Yep, nothin' like 'em. I think I'll go fire up the tablesaw just to hear her rip...