"The fact is, we don't have to go along for the ride. We don't have to live with the death of retirement, the death of benefits, the death of the 40 hour workweek, etc. I mean, I don't think I slept through the years of my life where I learned that market forces in the US are what produced these things.. and that those market forces would be what saw them out."
The fact is we DO have to go along for the ride, unless you want to nationalize industries that are outsourcing in order to decouple costs and profits.
You are obviously hurting, and I'm truly sorry for that.
Businesses HAVE to make money. The objective figures I've seen are $130,000 per worker in pay, benefits, and payroll taxes. Add on top of that tax rates for business, environmental regulations, energy costs, automation technology, raw materials, transportation, etc. etc.....
What would you make that you could sell and support those wages and cover all the other costs?
You'll see that most everything else is a fixed cost....
If you look at it from the business perspective, lowering the labor cost (usually the single biggest line item) successfully means they get to stay in business.
It's tough to keep high paying jobs and make commodity items, unless you dramatically increase productivity per worker (read: fewer workers) or move the manufacturing somewhere where your fixed costs allow the activity to be done profitably.
It's really mind-boggling when you consider the costs/risks of moving a manufacturing facility - that it could be cheaper than keeping an existing, operating one open. Such is the burden of operating a manufacturing business in the US. Mind-boggling numbers for taxes and regulations. An uncertain risk that these figures will increase. An uncertain risk of lawsuits. An uncertain risk that you will be faced with a strike that interrupts your or a critical suppliers production.
Businesses die on risk, and they live on profit. I'm sure if you ran the numbers, you'd come to the very same conclusion. They really do have little choice, and therefore you and lots of other people truly are along for the ride.
I am very disappointed in the lack of imagination and vision of union leadership. It seems to me that there should be much expertise in the workforce that could and should be stepping forward to be bosses and owners of restructured businesses to meet the demand. both Wqalmart and Microsoft have profit sharing plans that make these 19th century unions seem intransigent in theiur demands to keep the status quo or let the businesses go overseas. The overemphasis on politics in this discussion is symptomatic of mistakes unions have made. Finally, this so-called middle class has none of the virtues that traditionally characterized the American middle class. they are middle income, but not middle class.
No, we need merely balance the playing field against those who have artificially lower labor costs. Usually by virtue of totalitarian government controls. Rather than drain the dollar of value, which seems to be the path preferred by our politicians, we should simply cut the chain.
Importing should be punished, production rewarded.
A general revenue tariff of 25% would do the trick, combined with elimination of the U.S. income, capital gains taxes...to be replaced by national sales taxes limited to 15% This would differentially reward U.S. based production, and punish foreign importing, and reward savings and investment.
And I agree that tort reform would be a good idea too.
The whole idea is to change the relative cost dynamics of foreign versus U.S. manufacturing. This is key to restoring American 'foundational' productive capacities that have been negligently lost...and have not been properly appreciated...and probably won't be until we are at war with the country that now has them.
And that might be too late.