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.''
You CHinese junk peddlers keep coming up with this lame excuse for destroying the American manufacturing base...You all know that a Chinese made shirt sold at Wal-Mart will cost you 20 bucks...The same as an American made...And you know that a shirt made in Indonesia sold at Penny's will cost you 30-40 bucks...Same as made in the USA...
This Chinese junk isn't cheaper for Americans...It just raised the profit margin for the manufacturers...If your theory were correct, a pair of Nike shoes wouldn't cost me more than about 8 bucks...
From the link:
"American factories produced 17% less in 2001 than in the previous year. Moreover, consumption fell 21% placing the U.S. out of first position as leading consumer for the first time since 1993. Production and output are not likely to turn around quickly, since orders, as tracked by the U.S. Machine Tool Consumption (USMTC) series of survey showed 2001 down 34% in orders compared to the year before. Those order levels, in fact, posted a 55% decline from their peak in 1997.
Data in this World Machine Tool Output & Consumption Survey is based on actual shipments reported by factories and at ports. This is in contrast to the orders for future shipments booked by those AMT and AMTDA trade-association members who elect to participate in the monthly USMTC survey, whose index is issued jointly by those groups."
So in this WAR they use their people as slave labor to provide us with cheap goods, which frees up more of our money to go to other areas of our economy which raises our standard of living.....Meanwhile they keep their people poor and their purchasing power low, which keeps their ecomomic growth low and stiffles their national prosperity.
Perhaps this sentence should have included the fact that companies are responding to unrealistic demands of organized labor.
Unfortunately, we are not.
I have a firm grip, it's just that I'm willing to say and act in a manner that makes most a little queasy.
If supporting the rights of the individual under the Constitution make me a bit of a nut case, then so be it.
All of the talk and breast beating about the path this country is taking is getting us absolutely no closer to solving the problem, while this country continues it's slow march to a socialist state, and all that that implies.
I'm not a "power-hungry maniac", I just want to be left alone to pursue my happiness while living in a civilized society.
Take a looong look around you. Look at the corruption of the youth of this nation with the complicity of the govt, and realize that these little socialists are going to be trying to run this country in your near future.
Look at the intrusion of the various forms of govt and how you now have to have permission to breath anymore.
Look at how your way of life and your culture are being rapidly eroded by, among other things, a massive invasion of illegal aliens.
And finally, take a look at Randy Weaver. (to use your example) This guy only wanted to be left alone, and moved his family far into the relative wilderness to get away from the very thing(s) I've described. And even there, the govt insisted that he do their bidding or else. When he told them to FO, they set him up and tried to kill him and his entire family. BTW, one of the federal thugs who destroyed evidence in the resulting murder investigation and was complicit in the entire affair, just had his civil rights restored by our ignorant governor here in FL. This FBI thug served a little over a year for helping to murder two people under the color of law.
And you tell me that I need to get a grip? I'm sorry you are willing to watch the govt juggernaut continue to run over good, moral and patriotic Americans, but I'm shouting a warning, as loud and as often as I can, in the probably hopeless quest to get enough people on board to stop this march before the blood starts to flow.
Although, history is not on my side.
Are you aware that currently the hardest job to find in America is one that would require an EE degree? A key component to innovation is Engineering. These jobs are moving off shore.
Finally a bit of good news on this thread. I've always thought the last bagholders of our overpriced stocks would be foreigners.
Yah we gotta get rid of those restrictive anti slavery laws and we should stop being so picky about toxic waste.
Do you know how much a Doctor makes in Turkey? The fact is that every worker in America is being paid more for their services than most other people in other countries in the same profession. Why is it that we do not bring in millions of Doctors from other countries and drive down the wages of this profession?
Yes, I think education is one of the keys.
The next is get the government off the back of business. Stop this stupid environmental regulations. Some are needed yes, but by and large the worse offenders either make a 'contribution' or ignore and pay the fines. It's the small business that gets hit the hardest. Let business hire the person who can do the job - be they black, white, male female, etc. and let them fire the one who doesn't contribute. AS LONG AS THEY ARE HERE LEGALLY- and I don't mean government sponsered H1B workers either.
Then government needs to stop using our taxpayer money to help build these plants in foreign countries and use our taxpayer monies to pay tribute to the heads of these countries (called foreign aid). If they want to be there, let them sink on swim on their own - you know real free trade.
Close our borders, get out those who are here illegally and taking, yes, dad gummit, taking American jobs. And no, before you say it, housing prices will not sky rocket, you will still be able to buy that head of lettuce - strawberries, too. Remember when a man makes a good living, he can afford to buy your product. When he makes a good living, he is contributing to the economy - not taking from it.
Not true. I've bought shirts and pants of comparable quality at Wal-Mart for half of what I've been used to paying at other stores.
Of course not everything at Wal-Mart is cheaper, but the reason they get so much business is precisely because of their lower prices.
And not all of their cheaper products are manufactured overseas either. Some savings are just a result of their buying USA produced good in huge quantities.
Since jobs are leaving mexico to china do you think american workers should try for a wage somewhere inbetween or should we tuck in our belts and go for the 12 cents an hour?
Socialist? Lots of young people have naive ideas about the causes of and solutions to poverty. But that doesn't necessarily make them socialist. One of the most notable aspects of Generation X is that they do not expect to be taken care of by the government or the company they work for. They understand that the are the stewards of their own future.
There are huge numbers of entrepenuers under 35, and business is still the most common major. This is socialism?
Look at the intrusion of the various forms of govt and how you now have to have permission to breath anymore.
I agree that there's excessive regulation. But I really wonder what the heck it is that people are doing that they find themselves stymied by the government at every turn. I don't remember the last time there was something I really wanted to that I couldn't do because of a law.
Look at how your way of life and your culture are being rapidly eroded by, among other things, a massive invasion of illegal aliens.
My way of life is doing pretty good to be perfectly honest with you. I worry some that the culture is to youth oriented. I'd rather we disposed of the of the brazen public sexuality. But it doens't have me running for the hills.
It really makes me scratch my head to complain lost freedom and creeping socialism and in the same breath complain the way the free market works.
Wait, I thought we were all supposed to go get tech jobs now?
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