[Constitutional Patriot]

Wow...the article appears to have missed the whole part about unions driving the cost of labor up so that it makes a lot more sense to make your goods in countries where there are no unions.

[A. Pole]

Yeah, blame unions and American workers earning too much.

[servantboy777]

The article also missed the whole part where American corporations are exporting jobs to countries that use slave or forced labor, long long hours, no benefits such as health care, pensions, 401k plans. Positions that pay a meager wages, sometime positions that punish workers for poor performance.

Engineers in the Eastern block make $900 a month. Manufacturing in China employs 3 workers to do the same thing as an American worker, and still not add up to the American wage or standard of living.

If were going to have a global economy, at least demand Congress level the playing field by negotiating fair trade deals rather than giving away the farm to our competitors overseas.

[em2vn]

Do you mean like china where there are no freedoms?
How much of American manfacturing do you think was unionized before we swallowed the free trade pill?

[RaceBannon]

Unions are only part of the problem.

Of the 3 companies that I worked for that sent their labor overseas, none were union.

It is all about the cost of production, labor unioned or not, the cost of production is all that matters.

[gas0linealley]

Wow...the article appears to have missed the whole part about unions driving the cost of labor up so that it makes a lot more sense to make your goods in countries where there are no unions.

Right, then you turn around and sell your goods in countries where there are unions and you can charge more for your goods. ...Until they go broke from importing more than they export.

[cp124]

unions driving the cost of labor up

For the entire U.S. economy, only 12.5% of wage and salary workers were union members in 2005. So it is not just unions. How about regulations, taxation, litigation, and health care? All of these make us not competitive with the 3rd world, slave labor countries we compete against. I don't like unions and have never been in a union, but it is a lazy argument for the uniformed. Not all manufacturing is car building. That is an industry where the union and bad bargaining by management has created its demise.

[Lee'sGhost]

Agreed. Based on the header, "Goodbye, Production (and Maybe Innovation)," I just knew this was about unions.

[hinckley buzzard]

The majority by far of union members in this country are government employees transportation and service industries who don't make anthing anyway. While they have hamstrung the auto industry I don't believe the unions broadly are the prime mover in this matter.

[hedgetrimmer]

so that it makes a lot more sense to make your goods in countries where there are no unions. slaves

[BW2221]

It's one thing to say that union workers are over paid, it's another to expect our workers to work for a few dollars a day as they do in Third World Countries.

The FR free traders' creed seems to be, "What's good for me is good for the United States. Outsourcing is wonderful (as long as it's not my job)."

Kind the reverse of JFK's famous inaugural line.

[GingisK]

Most of the issue is the obsene profit levels at the retail outlet. I know for a fact that a router Sears used to sell for $79.00 was manufactured and sold to Sears for $7.20. WalMart took that to even greater levels.

The issue really is the greed on the part of retailers. This forces manufactureres to find ways to reduce production costs so that they can make just a small margin.

[Paul Ross]

Wow...the article appears to have missed the whole part about unions driving the cost of labor up so that it makes a lot more sense to make your goods in countries where there are no unions.

Wow right back at you. Apparently you don't know what makes things more costly to manufacture in the United States. It's called a middle class wage. And it's called taxes and regulations, bud. Our government taxes all production, income, both personal and corporate, all capital gain, and thereby punbishes savings and investments, while the dogmatists temporarily in charge refuse to acknowledge the trade war taxation that China and its Pacific fellow-travellers impose on our trade goods and their currency manipulations to stay cheaper...and we let their stuff into our country... without any appropriate countervailing tariffs.

Net result: U.S.-based production is taxed by the U.S. Foreign production isn't. And it gets a free ride into the U.S. at Customs. Where would you manufacture, Bud?

And, unless you're being facetious... you're more than guilty of aiding and abetting those making that decsion by blithely continuing your anti-American pogrom against Americans who actually work. Because you begrudge them a middle class wage. You begrudge them their constitutional rights to freedom of association. You begrudge them their constitutional rights to petition their government to redress grievances.

Your whole screen name is a misnomer.

Your anti-unionism, which is rife among the 'bots has cost us the last election...and it will go much worse the next go-round because you still haven't learned your lession.

And, oh, btw, the Communist Party in China is imposing its form of "unions" on U.S. firms there. Which simply means that they won't be allowed to strike...i.e., until the Communist Party is good and ready to destroy the U.S. companies if they won't play ball. So much for unions being the basis for your spurious competitiveness differential.