A Superpower in Decline

Pack66Dad

Pack66Dad

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Aug 26, 2010
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Very insightful six part article.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,726447,00.html
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My favorite quote from the article is: "Rage is everywhere in the US and rational political debate has become a rarity."
It fits our little forum here to a T!
 
What do you expect when you elect a former community organizer with absolutely no experience in running anything at all.

I think we got what we deserved; now we can hope to see some real change...
 
carterchapman said:
What do you expect when you elect a former community organizer with absolutely no experience in running anything at all.

I think we got what we deserved; now we can hope to see some real change...
Click to expand...

"Present?!"
 
Gentlemen: I respectfully submit that you are missing the point. Heck. . . .you guys are actually NOT READING THE GRAPH. The job trends did not "go negative" in 2010 or even 2008. They go "the wrong way" all the way back in 2000. Cry all you want. . you can't blame the current President for a current 10 year trend.


I draw a different conclusion from the trends:

The conclusion that I draw is that manufacturing is leaving the U.S., completely independent of the current economic situation.

In my view, this is being driven by free trade principles and capitalism as practiced by both political parties and particularly championed by. . certain individuals who don't use teleprompters.

In other words: If labor is cheaper THERE than HERE. . then manufacturing will be THERE not HERE. This is not a Union vs non Union thing. Labor in China is cheaper than non-union labor in the US. Heck. . ENGINEERING is cheaper in China than the U.S. . . .and in the petrochemical industry I can certainly tell you that for every Engineering job reduction (layoff, retirement, or quit) in the US, companies are hiring 2 in China and 1 in India.

The only thing I see working to reverse that trend is that wages are rising so fast in China and India that some long term thinking organizations are thinking those countries are becoming too expensive relative to say. . . . . Vietnam and Thailand.
 
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We are going through the same "change" we did back when the industrial age came to the US in the 19th century and replaced the independent neighborhood worker. The "industrial age" has seen its heyday here in the US. We will hopefully soon see the Unions that were so important back at the start of the industrial age to wither away with the last retirees dieing off. The unions as well as long term employment with the same companies is gone. No longer do Americans work for one company a full career and then maybe move on to another one after 20+ years. Todays' American does not save for his/her future and relies/depends on social security and their own investments in wall street stocks and mutual funds... Social security will not be around in the present form by 2020... We can't afford it.

As far as China goes, they are a month from complete breakdown. Yes, they have money due to the cheap labor they produce but they only dig out of the ground enough coal for up to one month past their present needs. They will fall and fall down hard when they run into two or more unproductive coal months. They are killing themselves with the present prices they subsidize gas so their workers can go to work. You will see China flip over on its back in the next couple of years due to their lack of infrastructure in roads, electricity and power. You have seen it in Venezuela recently and other South American Countries..
 
comsnark said:
Gentlemen: I respectfully submit that you are missing the point. Heck. . . .you guys are actually NOT READING THE GRAPH. The job trends did not "go negative" in 2010 or even 2008. They go "the wrong way" all the way back in 2000. Cry all you want. . you can't blame the current President for a current 10 year trend.


I draw a different conclusion from the trends:

The conclusion that I draw is that manufacturing is leaving the U.S., completely independent of the current economic situation.

In my view, this is being driven by free trade principles and capitalism as practiced by both political parties and particularly championed by. . certain individuals who don't use teleprompters.

In other words: If labor is cheaper THERE than HERE. . then manufacturing will be THERE not HERE. This is not a Union vs non Union thing. Labor in China is cheaper than non-union labor in the US. Heck. . ENGINEERING is cheaper in China than the U.S. . . .and in the petrochemical industry I can certainly tell you that for every Engineering job reduction (layoff, retirement, or quit) in the US, companies are hiring 2 in China and 1 in India.

The only thing I see working to reverse that trend is that wages are rising so fast in China and India that some long term thinking organizations are thinking those countries are becoming too expensive relative to say. . . . . Vietnam and Thailand.
Click to expand...



We have progressed past the industrial age to the information age. The only way to have retained those lost jobs is to impose tariffs. Tariffs have been tried so many times throughout history and NEVER benefit the country. Governments and politicians use tariffs to gain power and favor not to benefit all of us.

Take our steel protectionism of the past, politicians who did this will brag about jobs saved, while thousands of jobs are lost by industries that are no longer able to competitively export their products to the world because of higher steel costs. This makes them unable to compete with foreign companies with cheaper steel costs. These are also manufacturing jobs with good wages that are lost indirectly while saving a few jobs directly.

The same happened with sugar when the sugar lobby got protectionism. We lost almost all of our candy exports. A category we once were a leader in. This is also why government subsidized corn syrup sweetens your food and drinks instead of competitively priced sugar.

These tariffs do not function in a vacuum by themselves they are more like a rock thrown in a lake. They create ripples throughout.

This is not all bad, what is bad is our failure to educate our children to compete in the information age future and saddling them with mountains of debt that further hinders their competitiveness. In the near future Asia will have more math honors students than we have students. We must prepare, as countries are no longer isolated entities but competitive/dependent neighbors sharing the same globe in space.

The premise of this thread would be similar to the thoughts of the farmers at the turn of the previous century. At that time nearly 90% of the country worked on farms. Their families didn’t like the fact that many children left the farm for those city industrial jobs that now are moving to cheaper labor markets. These are cycles that cannot be stopped and when we try we just hurt others.

The job market is tough, but it is even tougher for those that don’t have education, marketable skills, and a solid work ethic.

MM
 
We Americans often fail to put our recent history in proper context. At the conclusion of WWII the world was a disaster zone. Europe was in shambles from constant bombing raids, Japan was decimated by two atomic bombs, and very little manufacturing capacity remained in the world outside of our US. It was an unprecedented situation in history that a country would have no structural or infrastructure damage at the end of winning an otherwise devastating war.

This event left us with no competition for manufactured goods in the world. It was a manufacturing orgy here as our incomes grew along with exports. The declines shown in the graph represent the inevitable balance that had to occur. These other countries were not going to sit by and buy our exports forever. They were going to compete.

What did we do wrong? We thought this anomaly was our birthright. Business thought they could do no wrong. Unions thought they were milking a golden goose and business didn’t care as there was no meaningful competition. We stopped teaching the three R’s and changed to self-esteem/condom management.

We are headed for an even more dramatic fall if we can’t teach our future generations to compete in the global economy.

MM
 
I meant to read Deming and thanks for the reminder. I'll be more up to speed next week.

Golly gee, by the way. With the total collapse of industrial workers, as illustrated by Der Spiegel (and Pack) our industrial production as a nation must be declining at a ferocious rate! (It isn't...we aren't doing great, but we are clipping along at about two tenths of a percent per year in growth...not decline. So with effectively 30% less industrial workers, and approaching 15% unemployment, we are producing slightly more output every year. How could that be? Technology perhaps? Adam Smith's invisible shifting hand? Nope...its the fault of capitalist pigs in general (and Fox News in particular)-all of whom should be rounded up and shot so union thugs can distribute jobs fairly among those wanting a job. Glad that's solved.

Econ is beyond you Pack...let's talk about the great year Colin Kaepernick had. How do you rate him against Andrew Luck?
 
mwph said:
His work with Japan got all the press. Its really just the tip of the iceberg though.
Click to expand...
We studied his work back in the '80's when I was in manufacturing (Digital Equipment Corp, building Vaxen and associated options). We used it along with a few other tools(Kepnor-Tregoe, etc) for setting up quality control systems, troubleshooting manufacturing process issues and JIT mfg.
 
I was doing some of the same things when I was in the manufacturing sector. Food to be exact. I had the pleasure of meeting him twice. On one of the ocasions, during a break in his lecture, he spent 3 or 4 minutes answering a question I had on implimenting "The Transformation". Clearly one of his favorite subjects.
 
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