Posted on 10/25/2006 5:56:53 AM PDT by from occupied ga
TVs, Radios, and hi-fi components (there were no VCRs or DVD players back then)were made in large numbers years ago in the USA, and qualitatively and they were the best in the world; prices weren't so bad either. Sadly, manufacturing of these goods drifted overseas, and a big chunk of the US manufacturing base was gone.
Graphite is a naturally occurring form of carbon. It can also be manufactured, as can diamonds, which are also naturally occurring forms of carbon. Strictly speaking, I can make a pencil from a chunk of pure graphite dug from the ground and sharpened by rubbing it on a rock.
I was trying to elicit thought (obviously unsuccessfully in your case) about the complexities of manufacturing even a simple object like a pencil. The point was that even a pencil requires materials and machinery (the knife in your simplistic example) that are either beyond the means or beyone the skills of most individuals to manufacture.
Your point was obtuse and irrelevant. No one is advocating individual and personal manufacturing of every item. That's why I said your argument was a red herring.
You can pay more or you can pay less, or you can waste your labor in trying to make on yourself, but unless you go for the cheapest alternative you are going to be missing out on capital or lifstyle.
Nonsense of the same sort that Williams employed: logical fallacy of false dilemma. That would only hold true if expense, or "cheapness" was the only variable component of lifestyle. Reliability, availability and quality are just a few other variables. How cheap are the tires on your car? How cheap are they when you factor in the cost of accidents caused by blowouts?
Likewise, how cheap is foreign steel when the transportation gets interdicted and domestic sources cannot be found for any price?
There is no profit in making something out of parts made in only a certain place by certain people for a minuscule customer base.
Why would you want such an item?
Uh, because chicks dig it?
Please explain why Americans should produce goods and services that are not in demand at the profit levels they desire?
The problem is with the government. Start to finish.
Government set prices, unfunded mandates, over regulation, carrot and stick tariffs and subsidies are the problem.
Eliminate those problems and watch the economy in this country make the current one look like a depression.
That's as good as any reason I've heard.
Wrong again; the poster to which this was originally addressed was advocating exactly that.
Likewise, how cheap is foreign steel when the transportation gets interdicted and domestic sources cannot be found for any price?
Here you're again showing a lack of quantitative thought and are even contradicting yourself. The reason the foreign steel is displacing domestic is that foreign producers can make it cheaper. However, what happens to the price if the foreign supplies dry up or (as some people suspect) the foreign taxpayers stop subsidizing their steel industry. The price rises. When the price rises, it then becomes profitable for inefficient and unionized American producers to sell their steel so they make more of it. As long as the tariffs exist the steel industry has no incentive to compete effectively.
A far better solution is to kill the tariffs and let the current American producers sink or swim. I guarantee there will be some who sink and some who swim. And the sinkers will be the most heavily unionized. If they go bankrupt, then they can reorganize and dump their union contracts and emerge leaner and better able to compete. Of course, I'm surprised that you haven't mentioned environmental laws as a major millstone around the neck of domestic producers. A lot of forcing the production of stuff like iron and steel into other countries where they can't afford to screw their industries for a bunch of hollyweird wack jobs, room temperature IQ soccer moms, and greasy haired hippy activists who think you can make omlets (and industrial materials) without even chickens.
When a "need" is found in the market, the market will react and work to provide for that "need".
In other words, some smart son-of-a-gun will figure it out and start making the product to fill the gap.
It is the way it all works.
As long as foreign nations accept U.S. dollars in payment for the commodities, products and services they sell to us, they are effectively part of our "empire" whether we think of it that way or not.
Using a period of time in U.S. history that was an exception (rather than the norm) doesn't help make your case very well.
That's not what I said at all. I suggested that your personal standard of living has to be worse than that of your trading partners in order for certain sectors of your economy to be strong.
That's true even on a personal level. Anyone involved in the business of producing or selling things will tell you that their business only thrives when customers or clientele are wealthier than they are.
Do you think the guy selling a Porsche has the money to buy that car?
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that "the need" is a wartime supply of something that is no longer made in the US ... electronics, perhaps.
Suppose, also for the sake of argument, that our adversary during wartime is the same country where our peacetime electronics are manufactured.
Would there be any justification -- on national security grounds, say -- to protect the US against the peacetime decisions of "the market?"
In WW2 we went from virtually no war munitions made in the USA to supplying most of the allied war materials in a few short years.
We can be up and running on electronics in a matter of months.
New England Wire and Cable was bought out because because of the competition optical fiber brought to copper wire. What about carbon fiber? Or other materials that more and more are replacing the Sherman tank type construction characterizing 1950's automotive products?
I bet New England Wire and Cable products carried some of the telegraph communications vital to our national security - maybe in the time of Lincoln. Does this make 1980's America less safe without New Engalnd Wire and Cable?
electronics
Stated this broadly it is hard to know what industry you identify. Regardless, I cannot think of any aspect of "electronics" which is not becomming increasingly commoditized. It seems to me that our industrial base is in how to deploy these things rather than where they come from.
concrete
I though this was composed of basically three constituent parts. I bet some people will never forget how to make it or where to get the ingredients.
plastics
I have one word for you... I have used pop culture examples to make a point. We can argue all day what may make a better and more safe future - but in the end nobody can predict how the law of unintended consequences will spoil the soup.
As I see it, our collective memory will not erase how to make these relatively simple products composing our one time called "industrial base." If we need them badly enough, i.e. the price increases suficiently, we will have all we want or need. So I do not want to subsidize people who fear by paying higher prices for whatever I feel like buying.
You, like other trolls, substitute insult for logic when they can't think of anything else Go back to DU they think like you do there.
That's because America has pretty much invented electronics.
All those tech industries were pioneered by Americans. The US generates a flood of designs and patents for new inventions that we pay others to make. This is what (1) makes us rich, (2) causes the 'trade deficit' that's making the protectionists wet their beds over, and (3), can continue indefinitely --as long as the bed wetters don't kill off innovation with their high import taxes.
Something else, if there ever was that kind of national emergency, America could sure as hell be up and running in electronics a lot faster than say, the Japanese could ever get going with any new original ideas.
That's as good as any reason I've heard.
What sounds better:
"Hey, let's take my Toyota Celica! It's made in America!"
or
"Oh, let's take my Astin Martin. Do you really care where it's made?"
...the Japanese could ever get going with any new original ideas.
Oh, I don't know, the Walkman was a pretty good idea.
The Walkman was a a good niche product placement in the consumer electronics market that America had gotten moving. It had transistors, chips, tape heads, all stuff America invented. America leads the world follows.
OK, the Japanese invented Ramen, sushi, and kimonos, but I don't see them putting us on their payroll to manufacture it for them. They have to do that themselves because we've got better things to do.
But the idea of letting vital domestic abilities "sink or swim" puts us at risk of needing them suddenly, only to find out they have sunk. We had two global wars in the last 100 years that crippled merchant fleets ability to supply overseas trade. Things like that need to be considered when assessing the cost of depending totally on foreign sources for vital products. Especially since the main supplier of many of these products is one of the most credible potential enemies in a future conflict, and sits strategically close to the suppliers of many others.
Chinese manufactured auto parts and Japanese steel sitting on the other side of the Pacific during a shooting war does Americans no good. Instant scarcity crashes markets and eats up profits really quickly. It would behoove us to make an effort toward preserving a modicum of domestic capability as a hedge against disaster. It isn't as if we could flip a switch and start pumping out steel without trained workers and modern facilities.
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