There are only 4 wealth CREATORS.
1. Mining (including oil extraction)
2. Manufacturing
3. Agriculture
4. Applied research & intellectual products
Every other activity consumes wealth.
Lawyers, accountants, doctors do not exist
in countries with no wealth.
Out of those 4 primary wealth creators,
manufacturing is the largest component.
That is why China is soon to be world’s largest economy.
Because They are are not known to be big in other 3 areas.
Damn..... I couldn’t have said it better
The money phrase is “economic troglodytes”. Thats a lot of syllables so e trog is a satisfactory reduction
There is a rejoinder for those that frivolously and I might add ignorantly, cast about their self manufactured phrase Free Traitors.
Such folk are hereby designated e trogs.
It’s a horrible article. Not very thoughtful. A service based economy is very vulnerable both as a nation and economically.
You have to put the middle class somewhere or you’ll have none. Just like in a service economy.
I think that’s what historically is known as slavery, albeit a modern day version.
I’ll add one more thought. To the question, “What is it about sitting in front of an assembly line for hours on end, repeating the same task of putting gizmo A into whatchamacallit B 240 times per day that defines “economic prosperity” to some people?,” I would say this:
a nation is filled with a full range of people, who both have skills and lack skill, have intellect and lack intellect, have initiative and lack initiative, etc. There is nothing snooty about admitting that for some people, putting gizmo A into whatchamacallit B 240 times per day is the appropriate level of intellectual challenge. And guess what? When they are doing that, they are productive members of society. When they are not doing that, they are unemployed on a street corner subject to the undercurrents of a decaying society.
We need all kinds of employment opportunities in this country, including those that are not particularly stimulating from an intellectual perspective.
Apparently Steve Feinstein, like most pundits, writers and politicians has not been in a manufacturing plant recently. or never. There are damn few manufacturing jobs still around that require someone “putting gizmo A into whatchamacallit B 240 times per day”.
There is still a craphouse load of manufacturing jobs being done here. The biggest problem is they are not owned by American companies and much of the low skilled labor is being performed by illegals. And in many cases the high skilled jobs are being done by H1B immigrants displacing American labor.
There are Marxists and useful idiots that do Marx's bidding. Free Traitors™ unknowongly fall into the latter category.
The presence of Donald Trump in this race is bringing all the snobs and globalists out of the woodwork, revealing how worthless and destructive their 'contribution' to this society is. I repeat your excellent question, Bowden1 'Who is this clown?' and agree also that he cannot possibly have ever worked for a living.
Priceless.
Most modern manufacturing plants do not have people sitting there like monkeys doing repetitive work. It’s all done by automation equipment. The workers are either operators, mechanics, engineers, office personel etc.
This article is complete BS.
We need those jobs, tax revenue, and real estate occupation.
China has become a superpower practically overnight on manufacturing alone!
Strange to use a French company as an example and a product that is made by machines.
What is the difference between manufacturing cars and manufacturing software code?
What is the difference between manufacturing cars and manufacturing McBurgers?
A key difference is economics is productive work for local consumption vs productive work for export. Cars and software have a worldwide market. McBurgers have a very limited local market.
In any kind of job creation (or other economic event) watch the local impact and the import/export impact.
GA is currently debating gambling expansion. If GA could import gamblers and money like Las Vegas or Atlantic City then it could be argued that gambling is good for GA. But look at the recent struggles with those tourist destinations and it is obvious that tourist market for gamblers is saturated.
So if GA gambling expansion attracts only local money, then it is just shifting money from food, clothing, the mortgage and other existing destinations to gambling. If the casino owners are from LasVegas and take the profit back to LV then it is a net loss to GA. Of course, when people in LasVegas buy Coke at HomeDepot they are supporting employees of the home offices in GA.
So whether one does manual labor or intellectual labor is not as important as whether the money enhances the local economy or not.
The beauty of the States is that there were no immigration or tarriffs between the states, and for most of our history, relatively open borders and no trade restrictions with others. That resulted in economic activity making rational decisions, rather than politicians pandering to one voter group or another to protect their jobs.
1. Creativity - Applied research & intellectual products.
Everything comes from creativity, the cotton gin, automobile, fracking, light bulb, wheel, hoe, dams, rockets, canals, canal locks, aquifers, Roman arch, PC, iPone, etc.
Trump is right, we are exporting our jobs because of poor tax policy and excess regulation.
Trump may also be right about “free” trade agreements depending how they are negotiated. The TPP is thousands of pages long and was done in secrecy. Much of it was negotiated before the Obama Tyranny. Obama has not done much in the interest of the USA, and don't make me list his record. OK fine, three huge examples: ObamaCare, the Iran Trade Nuclear Deal and the Taliban Exchange.
Now a huge a aside, Expat. This caught my attention yesterday except experts say it is now $9 Trillion instead of $7 Trillion (link only, hopefully that is alright):
My comment, WTheck! This cannot be good!
Drawing upon comments posted at the Feinstein article, one of many aspects not considered is the one China faces at the moment. The wage structure within China doesn’t support domestic consumption of factory output developed to supply an export market.
The vast majority of China outside of the coastal regions is an agricultural based economy of little wealth potential. The youth were drawn from these areas to the coastal manufacturing hubs which offer better earnings.
Wages have risen approaching a cap based upon what the populations of other Asian countries would accept to perform the same work, potentially displacing China’s factories. The wages are still insufficient to allow the factory workers to become consumers and transition factory output from an export to a domestic consumption market.
To accommodate domestic consumption of industrial production, the production costs must come down (higher factory productivity) allowing a lower selling price to accommodate the weak earnings potential within their economy, or a way found to raise wages.
Within the U.S. the attrition of employment which payed sufficiently high wages, such as to afford a $1000 locally manufactured television versus a $600 imported model, was counterbalanced by the $400 differential spent in alternative venues within the economy.
The contingent of workers paid the higher wages diminished over time, as employers shifted more jobs out of the country. Approaching the endpoint of the employment transition from higher paying to lesser paying positions, fewer have the means to support consumption of production from the industrial base. We therefore approach the Chinese quandary from the opposite direction, we have reached a point of diminished earnings, such that we also cannot afford to buy.
Drawing upon lines of credit, taking on debt to sustain consumption is of limited long term facility due to eventual default. Artificially raising wages by decree has the unintended consequence of removing job positions by substitution of automation (Wendy’s), or the employer becoming non-viable (restaurants facing $15 min. wage for floor wait staff), or other employers’ benefits package cuts through employment hours (ACA).
Drawing down individual stores of wealth can not be sustained forever rather than fostering growth of wealth from fundamental processes. We in the vast majority have lost the economic web of structure which allowed earnings sufficient to buy local in support of an expanding industrial base.
The wealth transferred to import energy as petroleum, to import manufactured items, to import raw materials available domestically, the wealth potential lost by not developing new technology locally, by not fostering employment within the cutting edge of industrial development-—this surrender of prerogative for near term advantage is the challenge we rally against.