Posted on 12/14/2002 10:22:42 AM PST by arete
ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Charles Seitz remembers when Rochester was a bustling manufacturing town. Now, all the 58-year-old unemployed engineer sees is a landscape of empty buildings.
''There's nothing made here anymore,'' the former Eastman Kodak employee says, his eyes welling with tears as he talks about his struggle to find a new job. ''Wealth is really created by making things. I still adhere to that.''
It's a situation that's been playing out across the country for decades but has received increased attention in recent years.
Fifty years ago, a third of U.S. employees worked in factories, making everything from clothing to lipstick to cars. Today, a little more than one-tenth of the nation's 131 million workers are employed by manufacturing firms. Four-fifths are in services.
The decline in manufacturing jobs has swiftly accelerated since the beginning of 2000. Since then, more than 1.9 million factory jobs have been cut -- about 10% of the sector's workforce. During the same period, the number of jobs outside manufacturing has risen close to 2%.
Many of the factory jobs are being cut as companies respond to a sharp rise in global competition. Unable to raise prices -- and often forced to cut them -- companies must find any way they can to reduce costs and hang onto profits.
Jobs are increasingly being moved abroad as companies take advantage of lower labor costs and position themselves to sell products to a growing -- and promising -- market abroad. Economy.com, an economic consulting firm in West Chester, Pa., estimates 1.3 million manufacturing jobs have been moved abroad since the beginning of 1992 -- the bulk coming in the last three years. Most of those jobs have gone to Mexico and East Asia.
Last month, film giant Eastman Kodak -- the largest employer in Rochester and the central focus of the community since the company was founded by George Eastman in 1888 -- announced it was shutting down an area plant and laying off the 500 employees who make single-use, sometimes called ''throw-away,'' cameras. The work will now be done in China or Mexico, two countries where the company already has operations.
The movement of jobs to other countries angers Seitz the most.
''The United States got to where it is today by making things,'' he says. ''People are suffering, and communities are suffering.''
Give the U.S. another 20 years, and that may be considered a good living standard.
Richard W.
Giving tours of downtown Toledo and selling insurance?
Richard W.
Big deal! This has no basis in reality. It's a number fudging game and means nothing to me. The cost of living goes up every year as my company takes away benefits, my taxes go up, the cost of clothing and goods go up.
2. Unemployment has gone down dramatically since introduction of NAFTA and GATT, despite the recent downturn.
Another number fudging game. People out of work for, what is it?, one year are no longer counted on the unemployment roll. That's absurd.
3. A global economy improves standard of living both here and in other countries, making war less likely, and making it more likely they will stay home instead of coming here as a penniless immigrant.
Complete fallacy. Have you ever heard of the laws of equilibrium? As their standard of livin goes up ours must come down.
I know you don't believe this but that is reality not some bean counters theory. I see it here where I work first hand. Immigrants come here and are happy to work for $8/hr because to them it represents an increase in their standard of living ten-fold. However, that same wage represents a reduction in the standard of living of someone else whose factory closed and this is the only job they can find.
Look at Gateway. Initially they manufactured and sold. They then created their retail centers and started providing a service to go along with their computer.
BTW- Greenspan says ".....once you remove all the things that have gone up in price from the equation, you'll find there really is no inflation".
In the Bush Administration, robotics are only used for cheerleaders.
robo want cheap, slave labor.
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Perot was one of the most intelligent and wise people in American politics. I voted for him and am pround of it.
Yes, and the $$$ we save purchasing their goods at a lower cost, can go into other areas of our economy, and support a higher standard of living.
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Hell yes. The lawyers working for the Clintons made millions. It averages in well to raise the economic statistics and we can all live vicariously through them. What a country!
This is the "Quote of the Day"!
All those Gateway Country stores are now closing faster than they opened. That was a costly business mistake for them and I believe that they will not survive another year.
Richard W.
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