Posted on 05/12/2016 4:35:21 AM PDT by expat_panama
A lot of those regs and expenses have to do with people. Fewer people, less cost. Plus there is a cost to shipping things overseas.
Of course, I’ve never managed a factory......
Since when is it the governments role to figure out what people are supposed to do for a living? What limited power is granted to the government in the Constitution to serve this role? Get rid of the government safety net and people will figure this out for themselves. Before the rise of manufacturing they survived through small scale agriculture, cottage industry, and working as servants in a variety of capacities for the more successful. People who think like you are a big part of the reason America has lost it's spirit of individualism and self-reliance and why we have the permenant underclass problem; it's like feeding wild animals, once you show your kindness you create dependence. This has gone on so long that now far too many good people think its the governments job to create opportunities for every one, no matter their talents. If we need to have a shooting war to sort this out, then so be it, but becoming a socialist welfare state where the government has to create jobs and opportunities for one group at the expense of another is never the answer.
The solution isn’t to make McDonald’s pay more, it’s to make the taxpayer pay less.
Automation is already bringing manufacturing plants back to the US. Problem (from your point of view) is that a plant that used to take 500-1000 people now has a staff of about 30 and that’s including the people who work on the loading docks.
If you want to see how that works, just look at Amazon’s distribution centers, what they call “Fulfillment Centers.” Huge, enormous warehouses that would take hundreds and hundreds of people to operate in the traditional manner is now down to a few dozen packers. Usually a tiny fraction of the ‘conventional staffing.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtBa9yVZBJM
——What an employer pays an employee is no business of the federal government.-—
Actually, by law, what an employer pays workers is set down annually in a form W2 describing precisely how much was paid. The knowledge is necessary to determine exactly the income to be taxed.
I’ve had some conversations with execs of US defense companies on this very subject. Trust me, they would luv to outsource the work to foreign countries if they could possibly get away with it. When you put common sense & national security against profit, profit will win out every time.
Warehousing and retail do not create wealth. Those are services. There are three ways to create wealth; mining, manufacturing and agriculture. Everything else is service and value added to the original wealth/product creation via mining, manufacturing and farming.
The w-2 tells the govt what already occurred.
Not what is going to happen.
The govt has no business telling a factory what it can pay its employees.
The regulations in the US are causing manufactures to do only the bare minimal manufacturing in the US, this is mainly just short term work where they aren’t making a long term investment which translates into low wages.
2/3s of the cost of an employee isn’t in their paycheck.
The point I am making, and that you are ignoring, is that automation and mechanization *decimates* the ‘normal’ expectations of man-hours required to do a task - whether it be manufacturing, mining, or agriculture. Even things previously thought to be too complex for automation - such as running a distribution warehouse. That enormous Amazon DC in the video would have required the kind of staffing seen in post-war automobile plants - tens and tens of thousands of people - to run like it does.
Yes, manufacturing will bring more wealth - but with automation, it brings it to far fewer people as fewer are required to *do* the manufacturing.
IF your business model includes low wages supplemented by my tax dollars, then you should not be in business to begin with.
In the eyes of the left the answer to your first question is yes.
Can you show me the chapter of the United States Constitution where "deciding what people are supposed to do" is a function assigned to the federal government?"
A couple of thousand skilled workers operating robots.
Bingo!
Government isn’t supposed to magically fix all the job problems. I agree with you.
Do you agree with me? I say government actively hurts the job situation through taxes, regulations, trade policy, immigration policy, etc.
Government has actively gamed the system to benefit the Globalists and they sell the idea to the gullible by callibg their intervention “free trade”.
I agree 100%. The only role the government should have is provide stability (national defense) and to limit taxes/regulation to let businesses thrive.
Bingo!
On occasion I was hit by little globules of molten metal coming off the spot welders. My gloves were soaked with machine oil and the occasional slip sent the edge of a steel sheet skittering off my wrist leaving a nice even slit. I became somewhat familiar with the nurses in the plant infirmary. I was paid a union wage of $5 per hour, $2 of which was deducted for taxes, health care, uniforms, and dues, and felt lucky to get it. I remained sane those two summers by immersing my brain into the minutiae of doing the simple repetitive tasks before me fast and to perfection. It was almost like Zen.
So I empathize with factory line workers. It's an odd existence. But in terms of the talent and training required vs. the actual value produced during each hour of the individual's labor it really isn't hugely more productive than a burger flipper burning a few dozen beef patties during the same span of time.
Sorry Rush, Ted, GOPe, et.al.
THIS is why the voters are rejecting Milton Friedman/Movement Conservative Supply-Side Economics.
They’re done with their thirty year test drive, and it’s NO SALE.
“...who say that some guy mopping a floor at GM...is somehow doing more than a scientist making a cure for cancer”
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