Posted on 12/31/2001 11:42:06 AM PST by Rockinfreakapotamus
MISSION:
The purpose of this Crafted with Pride in U.S.A. educational campaign is to inform American consumers about the importance of domestic manufacturing to the long-term well being of the United States of America and its people. HISTORY:
The Crafted with Pride in U.S.A. Council was formed in April 1984 to strengthen the competitive position of the U.S. textile and apparel industry. for an entire history of the council. ADDRESS:
Crafted With Pride in USA Council, Inc.
P.O. Box 65326
Washington, DC 20035-5326
Telephone: 202-775-0658
eMail: cwp@craftedwithpride.org
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US Job Growth In Crisis Job Losses in Most Manufacturing Industries Have Spread to Services.
US Trade Debt US Debt in Billions of Dollars, 1960-2001
% of US Labor Force Engaged in Manufacturing With Fewer US Manufacturing Jobs than in 1964, Has Manufacturing's Share Reached Rock Bottom?
Job Growth and Decline by State Job Growth and Decline by State: Slowdown Spreading Outward From Manufacturing.
US Trade US Trade Losses Remain Near Last Year's $450 Billion Annual Pace
US Economy Components of the US Economy: Gross Domestic Product
1.22 Million Jobs Lost Job losses are widespread lead by Electronics in last 12 months.
Is "Leveling the Playing Field" the Issue? Article 6, November 2001: How does America advance the interest of its workers and its companies in a world filled with low-wage workers, productive over capacity, and shrinking demand.
Are We Tearing America's Economic Tapestry? Article 7, November 2001: The American economy is akin to an intricate tapestry and when one strand breaks the linked threads are weakened.
Does Steel Matter? Article 8, November 2001: America is the world's largest steel consumer. And its demand is growing.
Article 9 ?? (missing from website)
Who Makes U.S. Trade Policy? Article 10, November 2001: Congress must fulfill its Constitutional obligation to regulate trade.
Can We Stop the Great Job-Giveaway? Article 11, December 2001: Congress shall regulate commerce with foreign nations. [NOTE: The link to this article is bad and the CWP Council has been duly notified via email]
What Do American Voters Think About Fast Track? Article 12, December 2001: By a 47-33 percent margin, voters believe that Congress should use normal legislative procedures, not fast track, to consider trade agreements.
Should U.S. Trade Policies Promote the Environmental Ruin of Other Nations? Article 13, December 2001: American voters overwhelmingly say no to U.S. trade policies that encourage global environmental ruin.
Polling Questions & Results December 3, 2001: Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates, National Voter Survey
How about a 'Made in the USA' label becoming harder to find on shoes as plants close
How about a Manufacturing's slide hits 13th month: Reports fuel fears of `deflationary recession'
What are the rules regarding statements of origin for manufactured goods?
I like to think so. I did well enough in microeconomics, anyway ;)
The textile industry you are so happy to be done with is an essential defense industry.
I think you're missing the point of what I'm saying. If textiles are high value-added industries, that American firms can compete in, I say "go textiles". But they aren't, and we can't - domestic textile workers have priced themselves out of the market for textile workers. Therefore, I draw comfort from the fact that, even though the textile industry may be dying, the resources currently expended on manufacturing textiles will be put to more productive use elsewhere, thus making all of us richer in the long run.
So is the shoe industry, Tanneries, steal production, brass manufacturing, farming, chemicals and assembly lines for thousands of items.
So, essentially, any manufacturing industry is critical to national security?
Adam Smith made exceptions for national security, too. He thought that the British should continue to produce their own sailcloth so that their navy wouldn't be dependent on foreign suppliers. I happen to agree, but I think both Smith and I would draw the line much more narrowly than you have done. If there is some thing that is demonstrably critical to the physical defense of this country, in and of itself, then a reasonable case can be made that that particular thing should be produced in such a way that it cannot be used to hold us hostage. But that's a pretty stringent standard, I think. For most things, trying to claim that it's critical to national security - and I'd put most of the things you listed in here - is just special pleading that you shouldn't have to compete because you're too "important".
To wave the flag for a lower paying "service" job is down right stupid.
But my whole point was that those service sector jobs aren't lower paying. That's certainly the popular conception, but it's completely false. After all, we have a service-driven economy now, while nations like China and Taiwan are manufacturing-oriented economies. But, who has the higher standard of living? If manufacturing is so great, why aren't the Chinese living in the wealthiest nation in the world?
Instead, we are - you are fortunate enough to live in the wealthiest nation in the history of the entire world. And it's grown wealthy over the last 20 years especially by providing services to the rest of the world. Again, I stress to you that burger-flipping is not the be-all and end-all of services. Telecommunications is a service, too. And banking. And so forth. It is empirically false that all service-sector jobs are low-paying - the bulk of them pay much more than manufacturing jobs do.
Our problem is over regulation brought on by controlling Socialists. Must a company pollute to produce? No. The solution may be prohibitive to implement with a old factory but how is a company to build a new technology factory with a capitol gains tax in place? They are in the same straits as the family business with the "Inheritance Tax".
Look, I'm not about to defend the current tax regime. But I feel compelled to point out that, even if all taxes and regulation went away tomorrow, American textile workers are still not going to work for $0.80 an hour, or whatever their foreign counterparts make. American workers are highly skilled - they are the most productive and best-educated workforce in the world. Doesn't it seem wasteful for them to do low-skilled jobs that others will do for some absurdly low wage?
Wouldn't it make more sense to concentrate on the highly skilled, high value-added jobs instead? I promise you, the 10 or 20 fellows (or whatever) who designed Boeing's latest airliner created far more value for their company and their country than all the thousands of folks who actually build the thing do, put together....
If you want to sell it to the USA market, you can damn well make it in the USA with honestly paid labor. Period !!!
Thanks!
Thanks!
Geo Metro is a piece of crap, japanese-made & re-badged with GM label.
Yea.
I realize that, alright.
But 'cat?
This whole argumant begins shaping-up to one of, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
NO ONE's more in favor of an American laborer making a good, decent living for an honest day's work; v.s., a Capitalist's right to make a fair return on their investment. [read: risk]
I don't think for one moment today's upper classes [read: Capitalists] are any more altruistic than those of the past, either; hardly, they're probably worse.
To a large extent, IMO, we may all thank a runaway DOW & the unreasonable expectations of everyone A to Z concerning stock performance?
However, the average laborer isn't a damned bit more ambitious either, eh?
That sure describes an adversarial relationship, to me.
I come from a big union family & have always believed in my heart for the need of a balance; for all concerned -- period.
When I say the problem of our present day situation is a complex one?
I'm not mincing words; nor, do I have any solutions except to say IF we remain a free market?
Theory tells us the free market will correct most if not all ills.
The alternative?
-Socialism- pure & simple.
"And if you are opening a new plant..."
Seems only the Germans (BMW) and/or the Japanese (Toyota et al) have opened large manufacturing facilities in the US & I ask that you make note of where those facilities were located?
Because therein lies the reality of Labor's fate stateside; if there's to be any labor a'tall.
And you may never mind that these places are strictly *assembly* operations, too; with not a value-added item produced in any of 'em.
...investement portfolios have been deversified; &, so too it appears has the labor market.
So, do the rest of them deserve special protection? Is stocking the shelves of Wal-Mart with genuine Made in the USA underwear critical to national security?
I think not. I think there's no particularly good reason to prop up uncompetitive underwear and shirt and tennis-shoe makers just because they think their services are worth more than people are willing to pay. And that's exactly what we're all being asked to do - what they want is for all of the rest of us to be forced to pay higher prices for textiles than we otherwise would, just so they can live the lifestyle they think they somehow "deserve".
Well, they don't "deserve" anything more than the rest of us get. The labor of a textile worker is no different than anyone else's labor - it's worth what you can get someone to give you for it, no more and no less. And they've priced themselves out of the market.
So, if you want to listen to their claims that somehow they're special and deserve special protection, I ask you - why are they special? Why should they get protection others don't? Where do you draw the line? Must we take steps to prop up the living standards of everyone who feels they're getting less than they "deserve"?
There's a word for that, and it isn't "capitalism"...
How many? Ideally, it will provide jobs for everyone that wants one, but in order to insure that there will be workers to fill those jobs, we need to insure that our educational system is preparing people for the jobs of the 21'st century - skilled positions, rather than preparing them for the jobs of the 19'th century.
What will they be doing? Well, pretty much what they're doing now - engineers, architects, designers, programmers, advertisers, bankers, brokers, lawyers, et cetera. Lots of white-collar jobs, basically.
You keep talking as if the coming of the service economy is some future event that must be avoided. I'm here to tell you that it's here, now - it's a done deal. Tell you what - try to guess what percentage of the GDP is created by the manufacturing sector, and what percentage by the service sector. I'll post it below, but before you scroll down to see it, see how close your reckoning is.
There must be a balance between manufacturing and service, tell us what that balance is.
Why must there be a balance? Or if there must, why should it be some sort of rough parity between the two? Nobody complained about the lack of services contributing to the economy at the turn of the last century...
I hold that a country that produces nothing, while chasing economic well-being, is doomed to slavery.
But service jobs don't produce "nothing". You need to get past this notion that it's not real work unless there's a thousand sweaty guys laboring to produce something tangible. The guy who sells you insurance gives you nothing tangible at all - you give him money, and he gives you, essentially, a promise. But does that mean he did nothing at all? If he did nothing, why did you give him money?
There's far more value-added in the service sector than there is in manufacturing. It's not hard to see why - you're essentially creating something from nothing at all. The guy who designs buildings for a living creates value straight out of thin air.
Either you have never held a paying job or you can't differentiate between slave wages and shoddy products or artificially inflated prices caused by government interference in industry.
Well, I have held a paying job. Several, actually. All of them service-oriented ;)
But, as I said before, taxes and regulation are only part of the problem. US textile workers are not going to work for the same wages their foreign competitors work for, even if there were no taxes and no regulation. The textile workers need to recognize that they, like everyone else, have no particular "right" to a particular standard of living. If they want high-paying jobs, they need to find jobs that people will pay them highly for. We don't accept it when anyone else tries to extort higher wages out of us by forcing us to pay higher-than-market prices for their goods - why should textile workers get a pass when nobody else does?
Anyway, here's the breakdown:
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 2%
industry: 18%
services: 80% (1999)
Source: CIA World Factbook 2001
So, were you close?
There is, however, more to it. With each dollar each of us spends, we are "buying" the future social structure of our country, for our kids and grandkids and posterity. So, done deal or not, it makes sense to debate the issue, and for each of us to decide how to spend our money. We are NOT merely purchasing goods and services: we are purchasing the future of our country . . .
My concern is family enterprise (farm, business) and the communities they support. We are not faceless consumers as in Econ 101. We are people, who live and work in families and communities. For communities to be effective, money has to stay in the community, for charities, ads in high school yearbooks, etc. etc. Not all go to Wal-Mart or China. Small town and rural America is a great strength of our country, and if you don't think it matters, look at the Bush/Gore election map . . .
There is still more to it. Freedom includes the freedom to freely make a living; this includes a reasonable access to productive assets for the people as a whole, not only oligarchists and mega-capitalists.
If economic efficiency were the only consideration, maybe we should all be wage-slaves for an international mega-copropration. However, it is not the only consideration. In addition, as has been pointed out on this thread, government tax and regulatory policies do not create a level-playing field. So "economic efficiency" is distorted.
Thanks for the ping. I've added my 2 cents worth! :)
Oh for heaven's sake!
There is something so TYPICALLY crazy about this that in it's own way it should become famous...
1) Nobody needs to "inform" the American people about the importance of manufacturing! Hell, we're the ones sitting around out of work and looking at the foreign labels on everything we can afford to buy! We the American people know manufactuing is important.
2) The American people aren't the ones giving away the manufacturing jobs! It's the CEOs and policy makers and social engineers who are _creating_ the future of America. They sure as hell don't need to be "informed" about the importance of manufacturing. They know. They don't care. They're looking at a bigger picture.
3) You've got to wonder about a "campaign" like this... Who is behind it? Who is funding it. Points #1 and #2 are obvious. Clearly this campaign is just going to raise frustration levels. Is that its goal?
Mark W.
Close the borders to trade? Shocking economic illiteracy.
I agree - sort of ;)
My point to posting was not to forestall debate, but to point out that there's an upside to the loss of manufacturing jobs. Capitalism is all about "creative destruction", as it's phrased - old industries die off and make room for new ones. Less profitable manufacturing jobs disappear and are replaced by more profitable service jobs.
None of this should be taken to mean that these transitions are easy or painless - simply that in the long run, we are better off letting the market seek its own solutions, rather than trying to preserve a particular way of life for a subset of the population, at the expense of everyone else.
My concern is family enterprise (farm, business) and the communities they support. We are not faceless consumers as in Econ 101. We are people, who live and work in families and communities. For communities to be effective, money has to stay in the community, for charities, ads in high school yearbooks, etc. etc.
I agree - more than anything else, small business is the engine of growth in this country. And I think that small business will continue to be just that. I only predict that businesses of the heavy/light manufacturing type will continue to be increasingly endangered. And while that's going to be difficult for some in the short-term, in the long run, we'll all be better off for it.
The world's changed, and this country has changed. The days when a person could get a high-school diploma, head down to the local steel mill or auto parts plant the day after graduation, and get a job that lasted an entire lifetime and paid enough to comfortably support a middle-class family on, are gone. Those days are gone forever. And rather than talking about how to bring them back, I think we're better served by preparing for the future, rather than the past.
There is still more to it. Freedom includes the freedom to freely make a living; this includes a reasonable access to productive assets for the people as a whole, not only oligarchists and mega-capitalists.
Well, you should have access to productive assets in the "your money is as good as anyone else's" sense, but I draw the line at anyone arguing they have a right to a particular standard of living. Everyone should have the same opportunities to provide for themselves, but that doesn't mean that some choices aren't better than others. We don't argue that minimum-wage burger-flippers have a "right" to make more money because they feel they should have a higher standard of living (well, okay - the libs do, but we don't make that argument much around here), so why should that argument be valid for anyone else? Opportunities are rights belonging to everyone - a particular outcome is not.
If economic efficiency were the only consideration, maybe we should all be wage-slaves for an international mega-copropration.
Economic efficiency may not be what concerns us as individuals, but that's what markets do. They move resources to their most productive uses. You can fight the market, and try to sweep back the tide; or, you can try to figure out how to ride the wave and profit from it. I would point out, however, that the fate of nations that try to preserve a particular way of life in the face of a world changing around them is generally not good. Move ahead or die, is the general lesson of history in this respect. Ask the Imperial Chinese. Ask the pre-Meiji Japanese. Ask the Native Americans. Heck, ask the Taliban, who want to pretend that it's still 1350 AD.
And I should point out that slaves are not as productive as free men. Slaves have little vested interest in maximizing productivity - their incentive is to do the absolute minimum amount of work possible. That's not the point you were making, I know, but there it is ;)
In addition, as has been pointed out on this thread, government tax and regulatory policies do not create a level-playing field. So "economic efficiency" is distorted.
Again, I don't mean to defend the current tax and regulatory scheme, but if you go through the CPUSA (still can't get used to that) site, they aren't talking about lowering taxes and reducing regulations. They want to increase tariffs - bottom line. They aren't arguing that they're overtaxed and over-regulated, but that wages elsewhere are "unfairly" low, and thus that they need protection.
Sorry, that's a non-starter for me. I see no need to pay twice as much as the rest of the world for shoes simply because these folks feel that they deserve it so much that they feel justified in forcing me to pay it. If they have a product worth buying, price- and quality-wise, I'll take a look, and if they don't, I won't. But either way, nobody has a "right" to force me to pay more than I otherwise should. That's simple theft, and I won't stand for it. Appeals to patriotism are simply shameful - I don't "owe" textile workers my money, any more than they "owe" me a shirt. And that's the bottom line for me.
How about simply putting tariffs on the imported goods which would compensate for the difference between a slave-child created VCR in China,
vs
one made in an American manufacturing Co where an HONEST LIVING WAGE is paid ... where Fire Exit signs are SOP and working ... where the CEO is actually required to dispense with his toxins in a responsible manner!!
What's so hard to understand? What's so wrong with Win - Win??
I know... I know ... the GOUGE isn't up to your NAFTA/GATT/WTO greed-standards.
On the other hand, I see nothing wrong with my deciding to buy their shoes, even if they are more expensive than those made in China. I don't want to buy shoes made in China, for a variery of reasons. I do want to buy shoes made in the USA if I can. I want my fellow Americans to be able to earn a decent living. I don't want them to sink to the wage levels of the Chinese.
Re: the efficiency of the market and driving out old inefficient industries in favor of new industries, etc., and not artificially proping up an old way of life . . .
I agree with you that that is what the market does. However, the market is the collective of individual decisions. So if we want to preserve a way of life in America, there is nothing wrong with using our purchasing decisions to do so. The market is using cold economic calculus. So we have to reflect our preferences for certain American ways of life in our purchasing decisions, or the market will not reflect those preferences.
The grand American experiment is an amalgamation of many things, certain freedoms and ways of life along with capitalism. Since we don't disagree on a lot of the basic issues, maybe the debate should be about which ways of American life are important and even vital to our uniqueness and promise as a nation, and thus worth preserving? I think small manufacturing fits into that. You would probably argue, I am dreaming, and only trying to postpone the inevitable. I am hoping technology will help in the revival. E.G. shoes again: many people in my family cannot find shoes off the shelf. Technology should permit making individual shoes to fit based upon measurements. Just in time manufacturing to the person. Etc. . . .
Unless we are going to do away with the nation state, there is also some logic to the national security argument. . . .
Thanks for your thoughtful response . . .
I guess you changed your mind about closing the borders after you made the above comment? I'll stick by my first comment and question which was exactly this;
Close the borders to trade? Shocking economic illiteracy.
BTW, who decides what an "honestly paid labor" wage is? The people involved? Or you? Maybe some group of central organizers? Maybe the politburo?
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