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 ...
You hit on an important point Willie.
It is true that we have become a “service” based economy, when we were formerly known as a production based economy.
During the period from WW2 to 1975, we were considered to be about 85% production based, 15% service based. Today, we have become over 60% service based and production is declining rapidly.
It’s no wonder why unemployment is approaching double digits permanently. NO economy can sustain itself for very long if it is so heavily service based as we have become. It’s an economic law. If you notice, the Government does not regulate or harass the service based sector, it is literally choking the industrial sector to death. No wonder why industry is leaving here as fast as it can.
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.
My father who passed away this year worked in a factory for 38 years (machinist and aerospace workers). The plant made equipment for the medical fields. Six years ago they closed the plant doors for the final time. The union had for many years worked with the company trying to keep the plant viable. The union approached the company and asked what did they need to do to keep the doors open? The response was “even if we payed you minimum wage it does not make economical sense”. The plant was moved to Mexico.
We have to make things. We have to make things that are so good everyone wants them, and sell them at a price that provides a decent profit and ensures a good market. If we are to be technically innovative, we have to make the most of those innovations. We have to perceive possible markets: the Japanese saw the potential for transistor radios and VCRs that we missed. But we must make things: we cannot sell each other pizza and hair cuts as the basis for an economy.
Try and get a permit for a new foundry here in the U.S... Won’t happen.
NO economy can sustain itself for very long if it is so heavily service based as we have become.
The only way a nation can succeed is by taking what comes from the ground, under the ground, and the sun then make something out of them that people will buy. Nations that have such natural resources are very fortunate, as we are. Unfortunately, we have been looking for ways to NOT take advantage of and use what God has given us.
We can't beat that wage, but we could beat that wage + shipping if we could build a new foundry in this country, run it with non-union labor, and not have to deal with the excessive taxes and regulations that we now have in this country. Environazis, over-regulation, unions, and taxes add up to make productive industry all but impossible in the US these days.
The Founders of our country lived in colonies where there were police, paid by the local community. Apparently they liked the idea enough to state that they are providing for the general welfare at the national level, but that providing for the general welfare of local communities and states were their responsibility.
Also: I wouldnt want to live in your vision of a world.
If we don’t recycle all our paper here, we’re doomed!!
The Industrial Revolution is over and the traditional job is dead, but too many rent-seeking vultures are profiting from the red tape put in place under the old system. Either we sweep them away, or China will.
Thanks for posting this- very sobering.
Problem identifed. You nailed it.
Unions.
So, who pays for “Public Sector” employment? Public Employees?
Who pays for “Service Employees”? More Service Employees?
Eventually, you run out of the actual reason for a Service based economy like the one we find ourselves in. The pathetic thing is, people like yourself, have no clue what will eventually happen, nor do they care.
Having been complicit in the murder of the US industrial base, the greater number of parasitic union workers are now sucking blood from the throat of the host that is least likely to die on them: government.
The pathetic thing is, people like yourself, have no clue what will eventually happen, nor do they care.
***Overunionization, overtaxation, and overregulation are paralyzing us.****
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Certainly we can’t forget an education system that since the late 1970’s has been run by socialists whose goal is to turn their students into mush brained idiots with overreaching political correctness and the inability to teach anything useful that would instill self reliance.
I think the article is BS. US is still the largest manufacturer in the world. you could have written the same doom and gloom article about agriculture a hundred years ago when 70% of the workforce was on the land. then it switched to manufacture, now its switching again. so what. In ohio for every job that “got shipped overseas” more jobs are now involved in export.
why its a good thing to have people stamping out galvanized buckets rather than writing software is beyond me.
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