Changes are coming

CHANGES ARE COMING ----
Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them.
But, ready or not, here they come...
1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.
2. The Check. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.
3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.
4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes
6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."
7. Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.
8. The "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.
In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.
9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.
All we will have that can't be changed are Memories.
19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America That Will Blow Your Mind
The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing. It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution. It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes. It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.
But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America . Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period. The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little. Do you know what our biggest export is today? Waste paper. Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us. The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was. Once upon a time America could literally out produce the rest of the world combined. Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world. If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?
Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things. So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation? We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable. Every single month America goes into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.
So what happens when the debt bubble pops?
The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country. But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.
For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them. Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.
The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind....
#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation.
#2 Dell Inc., one of America ’s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.
#3 Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem , North Carolina in November. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.
#4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States ? Zero.
#5 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
#6 As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
#7 The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000.
#8 According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.
#9 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.
#10 Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul , Minnesota . Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford's new "global" manufacturing strategy.
#11 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
#12 In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.
#13 The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#14 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.
#15 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products. Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.
#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States .
#18 One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
#19 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.
So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?
How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?
How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?
How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?
The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis. It needs to be treated like one.
We need to proactively get the America Government to change course.....

Pretty thought provoking stuff........I guess I will invest in FedEx

sfergson727 said:

Not FedEx, invest in UPS.....please, for the love of pete.

Click to expand...

I like UPS, But i really wish they would deliver on saturdays:smt089

I think that all the hand wringing about "America's Decline" is overstated. We now simply just have to compete with the rest of the world on more or less even terms for the first time in many decades. And the US facilitated that process more than any other country in the world!

First, let's understand why we rose to the position we have occupied since WW II:

1. The world's industrial production capacity was decimated by the war, except for ours. Every industrialized society was devastated and it took decades for it to recover. We simply had no competition of any real size. It's easy to be the "600 lb gorilla" when there's no competition. We helped rebuild some of this with the Marshall Plan. We became fat, complacent and inefficient. Recall the GM and Ford of the '70s?

2. China was an insular, closed society for hundreds of years. Their population and its potential as an industrial society was sealed off by Communism and Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. Other smaller countries were similarly closed off by Communism and/or control by Communist countries. Nixon's visit to China cracked the door open and the realization that capitalism is superior to communism took the door off the hinges.

3. Other than the telephone and telegraph companies, there was no way to get data electronically from one point on the globe to another quickly and cost-effectively. Satellite communications and the Internet removed this barrier.

4. Getting physical goods from one point to another was more expensive, and less predictable. Other than the airlines and the Flying Tiger Line, there weren't any alternatives of any size for getting goods across the oceans quickly and easily. The invention of container ships and services like FedEx lowered this barrier.

5. Technology has made it easier to transfer knowledge, resulting in the instantaneous transfer of information with the resulting impact on education. Intel, Microsoft, Apple and others blew this barrier out of the way.

6. The creation of the WTO leveled the playing field substantially in the '90s, making it harder (although not impossible) to engage in protectionism. The US was a prime mover of that organization so that our companies would have more open access to other more populous countries.

There are other macro trends that fed into this as well, but I think you get my point. We simply have to compete now and we don't like it.

There are a couple of things that have to happen:

1. Quit thinking that it's the government's responsibility to deal with this. It's not. The innovation that made us a great nation did not come from our federal government. It came from innovative private individuals. As long as the citizenry thinks the "answer" will come from Washington DC, the longer we will lag in competitiveness. We need to get the government out of our businesses and rebuild a sense of individual responsibility and freedom. Waiting on the government to solve our problems is going to be "Waiting on Godot". It won't happen.

2. It's time to rethink manufacturing. We can (and in some cases already are) taking back manufacturing by utilizing the latest technology to automate plants and production. We still have the best engineering brains in the world and the best engineering schools in the world. We need to re-imagine doing things like making Levis jeans in the country, and doing it faster and cheaper than China can. Many people say it's impossible...has anyone tried?

3. China's population is demanding a middle-class lifestyle more and more. Wages are going up and that will make them less competitive. The same forces that made us less competitive will also work against them. Economic forces work without prejudice as to country and economic system.

4. The costs of logistics between countries are increasing, due to oil prices. This makes long distance transportation less attractive and by converse will make a locally produced alternative more attractive. This is a mega-trend that will not reverse.

Bottom line is that we need to quit feeling sorry for ourselves and quit waiting on the government to "fix it". It's up to us.

I also agree the demise of America has been overstated. I'd add a couple more comments. As some of you know much of my work is in the maritime trade area. The material below on the end of low cost Chinese goods was sent to me last week by a colleague in Hong Kong. This appeared in one of his local publications. The interesting back story to this is that earlier in the year I wrote a research paper on the coming shortage of cargo containers. Part of the reason there is a shortage of containers is that Chinese container manufacturers are having a hard time filling production job openings. It seems Chinese workers would rather work making consumer goods than work on an industrial shop floor.

Chinese manufacturers
The end of cheap goods?
Some are predicting the end of the cheap "China price"; others are more
sanguine
Jun 9th 2011 | HONG KONG AND TAIPEI | from the print edition
"IT IS the end of cheap goods," says Bruce Rockowitz. He is the chief
executive of Li & Fung, a company that sources more clothes and common
household products from Asia than perhaps any other. In the low-tech areas
in which Li & Fung specialises, the firm handles an estimated 4% of China's
exports to America and a sizeable chunk of its exports to Europe, too. It
has operations in several East Asian countries, where it diligently searches
for cheap, reliable suppliers of everything from handbags to bar stools. So
when Mr Rockowitz says the era of low-cost Asian production is drawing to a
close, people listen.
He argues that Asian manufacturing has gone through a number of phases, each
lasting about 30 years. When China was isolated under Mao Zedong, companies
in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea grew expert at making things. When
China reopened in the late 1970s, after Mao's death, these experienced Asian
operators converged on southern China. With almost free access to land and
labour, plus an efficient port and logistics hub in nearby Hong Kong, they
started to make things ever more cheaply and sell them to the whole world.
For the next 30 years manufacturers in China helped to keep global inflation
in check. But that era is now over, says Mr Rockowitz. Chinese wages are
rising fast. A wave of new demand, especially from China itself, is feeding
a surge in commodity prices. Manufacturers can find some relief by moving
production to new areas, such as western China, Vietnam, Bangladesh,
Malaysia, India and Indonesia. But none of these new places will curb
inflation the way southern China once did, he predicts. All rely on the same
increasingly expensive pool of commodities. Many have rising wages or poor
logistics. None can provide the scale and efficiency that was created when
manufacturers converged on southern China.
Nothing can replace the Chinese miracle. "There is no next," says Mr
Rockowitz. Prices will now start to rise by 5% or more each year, with no
end in sight. And that may be optimistic. So far this year, Mr Rockowitz
says, Li & Fung's sourcing operation has seen price increases of 15% on
average. Other sourcers of Asian toys, clothes and basic household products
tell similarly ominous tales.
Yet manufacturers in some other fields see things differently. On May 31st,
the day Mr Rockowitz spoke in Hong Kong, the annual Computex fair opened an
hour's flight away in Taipei. Hotels were packed, even at inflated prices.
The world's hottest technology companies, such as Apple and even Taiwan's
HTC, were absent. But nearly 2,000 vendors showed up to hawk cheap and
innovative gizmos.
Mainland Chinese firms arrived in force: more than 500 hired booths, up from
200 last year. Many are from the same parts of China that were once noted
for cheap textiles and toys. With government encouragement, the belt that
stretches from Shenzhen to Guangzhou has been shifting to more sophisticated
products, such as electronics.
Some of the more striking offerings at the fair were ultra-cheap versions of
global hits. A company named BananaU advertised tablet computers with
Google's Android operating system for $100. Another pushed Windows-based
thin computers looking much like MacBooks for under $250. E-Readers were
everywhere and available for a song.
Whether these products can be produced or sold in developed markets is
unclear. The quality may be "B" for Banana rather than "A" for Apple. The
intellectual property embedded in some devices may not, ahem, have been paid
for. But still, the booths were packed. Buyers goggled and haggled over
motherboards, memory chips, solid-state drives, servers, graphics cards,
non-tangling cables, connectors, monitors and so on.

In 2009 the prices of these electronic goods jumped suddenly, as buyers
emerged from the financial crisis and started ordering more equipment from
manufacturers which had slashed capacity. But data collected in Taiwan
suggest that prices are now falling sharply again (see chart). If the
vendors at Computex had a common slogan, it would be "more for less".
Among the products that generated the most heat were those that saved
energy. These included alternating- and direct-current converters, and
sensors that could moderate the power consumption of streetlamps, fridges
and air conditioners. Such devices were initially marketed for their "green
potential", but what buyers liked was their ability to enhance productivity.
Japanese firms, which have had to make do with less power since the
earthquake, were particularly eager.
Chinese firms were curious about any product that lowered costs or made it
easier to automate. When labour was cheap, Chinese firms used it
inefficiently. Now they are learning how to get more from fewer hands. Li &
Fung may be sounding the closing bell on one era of production, but the
Taipei computer fair suggests that another is emerging.

Henry

This is all very thought provoking................and well,,,Confusing! This is why I never did well in economics classes. This seems similar to the global warming debate or the chicken and the egg theory.
Are we really witnessing the demise of our once great nation or are we just evolving in another direction? After reading all the above comments it seems really tough to tell.

I agree completely with 1-5, but I do love my hardcover books, and I like reading the newspaper. I hate people who write checks in the checkout line. We no longer have a landline to our house for telephone. But Music (#6) is not going away. Please. Just a different method of distributing it. After then reading the next few, I gave up on the list...

I can tell you this...As long as we keep handing money and cell phones out to folks who have no desire to work or be educated and allowing the flow of illegals into our country at the pace we are at, we will not be able to compete.

Let's talk red tape. I (my company) have purchased 10.3 acres and trying to build a rather large service center/campground/indoor storage facility. At first the county and state were really pushing for us to get started so they could start receiving revenue. All that came to a screeching halt!!! First was a gopher turtle hole, not the turtle....the HOLE!!!! That stopped everything DEAD!! I could go on and on but I think you the picture! Now we are almost finished with the battle of the Army Corp of engineers and arguing how much more we have to spend to use our own land by purchasing land from a "land bank" and "mitigating"...TALKING ABOUT A CROCK!!! Now let's get to the EPA...which I don't think China has to deal with (kinda like mandating we have to use a light bulb with mercury in it and it is only made in China...wtf!!) I firmly believe we need to protect the environment but come on! We have to survive as well as compete.

We are getting to be so upside down with the goobment trying to pay off lazy non working voters on the backs of us that do! I......I better just quit now as my blood pressure is starting to come up! Rant over!

Gunn said:

I agree completely with 1-5, but I do love my hardcover books, and I like reading the newspaper. I hate people who write checks in the checkout line. We no longer have a landline to our house for telephone. But Music (#6) is not going away. Please. Just a different method of distributing it. After then reading the next few, I gave up on the list...

Click to expand...

Go back and read the most important part of that list....the lower half of the list is the most disturbing and looks pretty accurate to me

billnpat said:

#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products. Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.

Click to expand...

I can speak to this one personally. I work at North America's largest PCB manufacturer. While Asia may be producing 84% of PCB's, they are of low quality, fewer layer's and in general not very good. Most of they're boards go into the cheap crap they sell to Walmart. The boards we make right here in Wisconsin go into high end communication, information technology, manufacturing, areospace and defense applications. They have nothing on our capabilities and won't have for a very long time.

I buy my raw material from China because it isn't available elsewhere, so I watch what's happening over there carefully. I just had my prime supplier attempt to raise prices on one of my pieces because a magnet in the lid of the gift box was now more expensive. China is attempting to corner the market on rare earth materials like lanthanum (used in rare earth magnets) and the costs are going through the roof. Fortunately, I was able to convince him to maintain his current price for the rest of the year, but you can see the trend. We have abandoned mines in this country for rare earth materials, but it's not economical to mine them because of government regulation. More than anything and any other time, we need to get the federal bureaucrats out of our lives and out of our businesses. I am totally mystified as to why Obama thinks that he can rejuvenate this economy with some sort of centralized planning and regulatory authority. It won't work!

I wish I had the time to replicate the list from the perspective of the agrarian society when the industrial society took over. I’m sure it was gloom and doom for them: “In 1935, the number of farms in the UnitedStates peaked at 6.8 million” “there are just over 2.1 million farms in the United States” and the number of people declined as well. They probably said similar things. MM

http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html

A few comments

1: hate to break it to you: the "check" died 10 years ago. Take a look at your
Bank statement. Mine has loads of ACH transactions. You "write a check". They process an electronic fund transfer out of my account. (this is why you no longer get returned checks)

2: internet: the US is Internet dinosaurs. This week I was using a 3G aircard for my computer. I was in Europe. I was getting consistent 3mbit speeds for several days. During peak business hours. In the states I rarely see more than 0.5mbit

3: china: Don't count the US out yet. Costs in China ARE rising. Chinese engineering costs are marching up to the point that many companies are actually looking for cheaper alternatives. Chinese quality for goods is abysmal. OK, apple succeeds with massive handholding. But for non-mass produced items - especially with the decline of the dollar- and where poor quality is a safety issue ( I.e. It blows up with a bang)- I am seeing some items now being sourced from the US instead.

MY biggest concern about America is its people and their complacency to the degradation of our national competitiveness, standard of living and personal standards. It seems we are too much like the frog placed in a pot of water and the heats turned up. Except in this case the heat is increasing government red tape and dependence on government transfer payment for ones income.

To many Americans are native born and have no drive that will propel this nation to a greater tomorrow. First generation immigrants who take great risk and sacrifice too get here have greater drive and grit to move this nation forward. If all one has too do is jump the fence or hop a rail car, well not sure they will achieve much. Some small percent will. Our government should be focused on accepting the best and rejecting the rest.

People that run this country, politicians are experts at posturing, trend surfing, bloviating and bullying. A minority are good people but they are too few.

CROSE said:

I can speak to this one personally. I work at North America's largest PCB manufacturer. While Asia may be producing 84% of PCB's, they are of low quality, fewer layer's and in general not very good. Most of they're boards go into the cheap crap they sell to Walmart. The boards we make right here in Wisconsin go into high end communication, information technology, manufacturing, areospace and defense applications. They have nothing on our capabilities and won't have for a very long time.

Click to expand...

Is there a brand name on those WI boards ???

We have a customer base of about 700. Many of them are household names. It would be inappropriate to divulge our client's names but here's a link to our web site.

www.ttmtech.com

Watched an interesting episode of Dan Rather Reports the other day on the outsourcing of American Jobs.

[video=youtube;I2hR4WDIXdA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2hR4WDIXdA&feature=related[/video]

CROSE said:

We have a customer base of about 700. Many of them are household names. It would be inappropriate to divulge our client's names but here's a link to our web site.

www.ttmtech.com

I watched an interesting episode of Dan Rather Reports the other day on the outsourcing of American Jobs.

http://www.hd.net/blogs/2011/06/coming-up-on-tuesday-june-14-2011/

Click to expand...

Great....Thanks for the link......

I changed the url for the Dan Rather episode. The YouTube one shows more and you can click the link at the end of the playback to go to the next segment.

MonacoMike said:

I wish I had the time to replicate the list from the perspective of the agrarian society when the industrial society took over. I’m sure it was gloom and doom for them: “In 1935, the number of farms in the UnitedStates peaked at 6.8 million” “there are just over 2.1 million farms in the United States” and the number of people declined as well. They probably said similar things. MM[/URL]

Click to expand...

The difference then was that free markets and capitalism were the prime movers in the reshaping of an economy (that whole "Adam Smith's invisible hand thing). The issue now is that social engineers are trying to manage an economy through collectivism. HUGE difference in fundamental philosophy and likely outcome. Effectively nationalizing the banking, automobile, insurance and medical components of our economy isn't the same thing as allowing a free market to adjust to changing conditions and correct for technology.

JediJD said:

The difference then was that free markets and capitalism were the prime movers in the reshaping of an economy (that whole "Adam Smith's invisible hand thing). The issue now is that social engineers are trying to manage an economy through collectivism. HUGE difference in fundamental philosophy and likely outcome. Effectively nationalizing the banking, automobile, insurance and medical components of our economy isn't the same thing as allowing a free market to adjust to changing conditions and correct for technology.

Click to expand...

Ding Ding Ding...we have a winner! Many people are over looking the "community organizers" and lawyers in charge who are blocking our path :smt013