The problem with American business is that it has been regulated into a straight-jacket. There is no way that large American manufacturing businesses can compete in the world market. To compete you have to be small, smart, innovative, nimble and able to react instantly to any situation. Politics, and bureaucrats have to go. You have to be lean and mean, period. Traditions have to go. My wife, son, daughter, and myself started a very small manufacturing business in our garage with no money, or connections, just a small piece of railroad track for an anvil, a 3 pound hammer, an habachi, and an old electrolux tank type vaccum cleaner for an air supply to make a forge. For fuel my family and I walked the railroad tracks that went into the steel mill and picked up coke that had fallen off rail cars. I worked 1 factory job full time and my wife never worked. She stayed home and raised our three chrildren. For awhile we were so broke my family and I had to go through dumpsters every night to collect 4 to 6 dollars worth of cardboard to buy gasoline so I could get to work. Now it's 20 years later. I still work a factory job and the habachi and railroad track has turned into 2 lathes, 2 milling machines, 1 radial arm drill, 5 drill presses, 3 mig welders, 1 tig welder, 3 arc welders, 1 forge, 1 300 pound anvil, 1 100 pound trip hammer, 1 250 pound trip hammer, 90 pairs of tongs, 1 25,000 pound hydraulic press, 1 mechanical trip press, 2 sets of sheet metal rolls, 1 band saw, 3 air compressors, plus assorted air and electric hand tools and 1 8000 pound fork lift. I manage the business, my eldest son runs the shop, my wife is now the accountant (she's a country girl from the hills of Tennessee with a 10th grade education) and we have 3 A-1 employees. With this operation, we beat the pants off of our number one competitor, the Chinese. They hate us, however our American competitors hate us worse, because they can't even get close. This was all done in California, a state not known to be industry friendly. Needless to say I don't have much sympathy for people that just complain and not do anything about it. Granted, it's a bad situation in Wisconsin, but it is not going to get any better until the effected individuals decide to get going and do somthing for themselves. For openers they can do like they do in Hong Kong and start manufacturing small items in their apartments, they can manufacture clothes in an apartment, they make bakery goods in an apartment and start a small bakery route ect, ect, If they try and work hard they can rise above this, but it will never happen if they just sit around and obsess at what has happened to them. I wish them well.
What do you make?