Posted on 09/26/2010 4:44:23 AM PDT by RS_Rider
The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing.
It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution. It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles, to televisions, to airplanes. It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.
But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America. Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period. The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little.
Do you know what our biggest export is today? Waste paper. Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us. The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was.
Once upon a time America could literally outproduce the rest of the world combined. Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world. If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?
(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com ...
The single greatest enemy of industrialization is unionism.
Overunionization, overtaxation, and overregulation are paralyzing us.
The company I work for is hamstrung by mandated political correctness including diversity programs, environmental programs, and safety programs. Even though we’re a clean electronic assembler we’re terrified of the various federal, state, and local EPA organizations; any one of which can instantly shut us down. (Recently, a fire sprinkler head leaked a dime-sized drop of rusted water. You’d have thought it was purified plutonium. Somebody had to stand beside it while someone else ran for the “danger, wet floor” cone. Then, they had to have a “qualified” person wipe it up.)
We haven’t had an OSHA inspection lately, but we certainly get about two hours of irrelevant (to us) OSHA lectures a year.
Then, there’s legal liability. It’s not a matter of whether you’re going to be sued. It’s a matter when. As I understand it, the company is in court somewhere in the country basically all year around.
These are all problems brought to us by our government. If you examine the regulations on the micro-scale, they mostly make sense. But on the large scale and all combined, they kill industry. I know if I wanted to start a business, I couldn’t do it here. I have owned two companies, and I had to abandon the second because the taxes (fees) cost me more than I made. I think I could have pulled it off given more time, but the government wants its money for the privilege of doing business in their fair state NOW.
Environmentalism is running a very close second if not sprinting to the lead.
No it is not. Laws and regulations are. Many non-union manufactures have left the U.S.
Having said that, I think every economic problem in America is primarilly due to taxation.
In my opinion, taxes should be levied and used for basic social needs; police, fireman, needed politicians, and the infrastructure(s) that are necesarry for the aforementioned services.
Franklin's library has seen it's day, so IT can go (as an example and an etc.)
I wish I was patient enough to try and collect the data to break down what is taken in taxes and what is needed to operate society and compare/contrast the two.
I honestly think (with no real data to support my thought) we can operate from a very small tax burden.
Ironically American industry has responded to the challenge of unions, by exporting our factories to the largest organized labor union in human history:
The Peoples Republic of China.
At first I thought this article was going to list the benefits of the loss of our industries, no so, interesting and frightening.
That's because there ARE NO benefits to losing our industries.
A "service based" economy is an economy in decline.
The polidiots in Washington keep pushing for more consumption...
but as a nation, we can't keep consuming more than what we produce.
That's what's causing our collapse.
Some was lost for other reasons. I bought new brake rotors for a GM car years ago. They were cast in Mexico. Because foundries made smoke and were stinky and killed spotted owls and whales and the work was too hard and hot and stuff.
I totally agree,with crp and wrp government programs are taking some of our most productive acres out of production ,
The problems started when the Federal gubmint deviated from their role of promoting domestic tranquility to trying to provide domestic tranquility. The failure has been epic.....for everyone except the politicians, who continue to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense.....
The Union members are now figuring out that those at the top are the only ones who are benefiting from this relationship, at least in the private sector......
Thought this was a bit odd, so I checked. Turns out that waste paper actually is our biggest export. By volume. LOLOL
I have been to China twice as a customer. We were having our equipment built through a vendor in China. This equipment is for mining so it qualifies as heavy industry. We visited several forging and foundry facilities and it just about made me want to cry.
One evening we had banquet with the management staff of one of the foundries. I asked the G.M. how many foundry plants were in China? He laughed at the question and talked to his subordinates and came back, shrugged his shoulders and said at least 40,000.
This particular foundry had only been operating for five years. When we arrived at the plant the first thing I wanted to see (if it was there) was the pattern shop. I figured that with the plant being so new that they were having patterns made in western europe or the U.S. Not so. I couldn’t believe my eyes when we went into the pattern shop. The quality was unbelievable. I asked how they were able to transfer that craftmanship over so quickly? The interpeter said “we have 2 billion people to choose from”. He also stated that China has 43 Einstien’s and they just need to find them. They pay ~$365 a month for skilled labor. How in the hell do we compete against that?
Try and get a permit for a new foundry here in the U.S... Won’t happen.
Yup.
Most Americans are utterly oblivious, what we’re up against.
Distracted by stuff which doesn’t matter. While we eagerly give away - everything which does matter.
Two books, The Collapse of Complex Societies by Tainer, and The Fall of the Roman Empire by Grant.
Summed up. Taxes and regulation. Productive people from the most humble of occupation cease striving because the cost curve becomes too steep. Honest captains of industry flee to better climes, the wealth is left to be squeezed dry like a slumlord tenement owner, or eventually looted by the welfare state, the government minions like the Pratorian Guards of old, or like copper and wire thieves all over our nation stripping once productive factories and homes. At the other end are lawyers and finacialists paper shufflers of various occupational titles, growing fat like flies off a corpse, or a weak man with a gangrene foot.
We lived fine with out police. You got a lot of stuff? Hire a kid to guard it. Why should I subsides protecting your property, or you me?
Worried about assault, rape? Get a gun. Again, why should I subsidize the protection of people that won’t protect themselves? ( And, ladies, wimps, elderly, too f’n bad. Marry, move in, take care of old dad. Move into a building, gated community where YOU pay to be protected. )
Police are welfare security. They are the welfare of security. They are to security what public housing is to shelter.
Ditto Firemen.
Nicely done, team. I withdraw my claim with a caveat. Obama and the evil political establishment he represents is aligning the fatal trilogy of unionization, environmentalism and statism.
But the rising tide of Constitutionalism is flooding us with the ancient spirit of freedom that flows out of Christian principles. Thereby will we regain our heritage and become, once again, a New Jerusalem, a shining city on a hill, with genuine HOPE and CHANGE in a sin filled world.
We are, after all, a Christian nation, birthed in a commitment to the One True God.
In truth we have lost our way, allowing ourselves to be driven by false gods. After running ourselves into a ditch we sought help from a political establisment that seeks to catapault us over a cliff into the pit of hell.
Ahhh. It’s Sunday morning. The spirit of sermonizing has got me. I will likely persist for a while, elsewhere, in deference to your sensibilities.
Praise the Lord.
That's just plain nonsense if you stop and think about it because it isn't just manufacturing that has lost jobs. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs have been sent overseas in dozens of industries, both manufacturing or service. The overwhelming majority of those jobs were not unionized. The greatest enemy of industrialization is the fact that a worker in China makes a tiny fraction of what a worker in the U.S. does, unionized or non-unionized. You could have done away with unions decades ago and it wouldn't have saved many jobs.
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