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.''
But see General, it is not all about "I".
Whether we like it or not we are a nation of some 259 million legal and who knows how many illegals. For all of you 50 million educated folks to succeed you have to keep the 200 million and illegals busy and somewhat prosperous, if not, they tend to get restless and things can get broken.
Now when you take well paying jobs away without decreasing the need for these jobs or replacong them with equal or better paying jobs, those 200 million see their net worth decline. If their net worth declines too much they will come and steal stuff from Double-E's to balance the books.
Does this help?
So says Karl Marx in Das Kapital, anyway. Either I give people more than they're worth, or they'll come and take it from me anyway. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere - I was looking for FreeRepublic.com. Maybe you've heard of it?
Look, the bottom line is that nobody has a right to a particular standard of living - not me, not you, and not anyone else. We all make a living by providing value to other people, and if I don't provide enough value to my customers, they'll go elsewhere. I don't ask them for handouts on the thesis that my labor is somehow worth more than I can get someone to pay me for it. That's what Marx's basic misunderstanding was, and it's what the shirtmaker's basic misunderstanding is. You labor is not worth what you say it is, it is worth what you can get someone to pay you for it. And if they think you're not worth it, they'll take their business elsewhere. And you can either lower your prices to be competitive, or get out and find a more lucrative line of business. Personally, I recommend choice "B" for this country.
How else would you have it be?
No I am not. When I buy from someone - they buy from someone else, etc., and it stays in this country to build schools, roads, churches, etc., that is not a deficit. When I spend money in China and they build roads, schools, etc., that is a deficit. The difference, I am not a country of one and I don't think only of what is in my pocket. When we all do our part in building a country - we all benefit. When we think only of ourselves and what we can put in our pockets - we lose as a nation. If you don't take care of your nation - it can't take care of you.
Right now, I see that A T & T and the others are doing fine - but soon those countries, with our money, are going to have their own service companies - then what? Do you think they are forever going to depend on us for anything if they don't have to? Of course not.
Now you go ahead and buy their geegaws so they can build the best military - then I think you might actually see what a real 'service' economy is.
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In a few years they'll be able to break our backs.
Yes, it is. You're entitled to any opinion you like, of course, but you don't get to redefine words to suit your argument.
Trade deficit. You're "importing" more goods than you "export" to your grocery store. That's a deficit. Notice how that definition omits any mention of what happens after that - that's because it's entirely irrelevant.
When we all do our part in building a country - we all benefit. When we think only of ourselves and what we can put in our pockets - we lose as a nation. If you don't take care of your nation - it can't take care of you.
I gave at the office. I build my country by providing value to my customers, not by asking them for handouts.
Right now, I see that A T & T and the others are doing fine - but soon those countries, with our money, are going to have their own service companies - then what?
We'll always have a comparative advantage in something. Then they'll come to us to provide it. That's the way economics works. Period.
When your "facts of life" could be lifted straight from the pages of Karl Marx, what can I say? Get used to it.
You must understand, I'm not saying abandon the steelworkers to the cruel hands of fate, by any means. Rather, we must provide them with the means to make their way in a changing economy. That means making sure our educational system is preparing kids for the jobs that exist today and are liekly to exist tomorrow. That means helping people to find new careers where necessary. Give them the tools to make their own way, and then let them go and do it. I'm not interested in propping up dying industries, and most folks would prefer an honest living to a series of handouts from their neighbors. We can all be happy if we do it properly.
As an EE, you should know that withour manufacturing, there is not much use for you, no that may not be true, but there will be reduced demand for others that follow in that profession.
I'm not an EE, but there's still plenty of jobs in this country for them if you know any.
Seriously? Electrical engineer. Or were you just being sarcastic? ;)
Everybody can't be an executive wise guy, take away a man's ability to amke a legitimate living and he will resort to whatever means are necessary.
I don't believe that for a minute. I think we don't do a good job of steering people in the right direction. We suck at teaching math, science, reading...well, pretty much everything in the public schools. It used to be that that didn't matter much, since you could take your high school diploma, get a job at the mill or auto factory down the street, and expect to work there your entire life and make a good enough living to live comfortably and support a family.
Well, there's still jobs where you can do that in this country, by the millions. But you need more than a high school diploma any more. Those kind of blue-collar jobs are gone, and gone for good. Let's get our kids ready for the work of the mind, which is where the real money is, and leave the heavy lifting to others.
Even if you work in one of those manufacturing jobs that rapidly going extinct, I'd wager that, when you're honest with yourself, you'd want your kids to do better than you did, right? Of course you do - we all do. My parents wanted it for me, I want it for my kids, you want it for yours. It's there, it's possible. We just have to see it and take advantage of it. Telecommunications is a service industry. Banking is a service industry. Increasingly, software is a service industry. Engineering is a service industry. These things are out there and they're real jobs, with real futures, making real money. We have the best-educated, most productive workforce in the world - let's not waste it on jobs that are inefficient and unproductive.
I'm sure Karl also wrote this somewhere, but I wouldn't know as this was not covered in primary school.
LOL. I think you're wrong, not stupid. "Wrong" is fixable, given the right environment. Tell your kids to stay in school and get good grades, and then send them to college and tell them to get a degree in something practical. Do that, and they'll be just fine. I promise ;)
I agree with you as regards to Europe. No one is hired because they can´t be fired - thus we have a black economy where people work but still draw unemployment. Only a fool would start a business in Spain with the powers granted to the unions by successive leftist governments. Businesses close down and move to the third world countries.
Recently, a fabrics factory closed down and the workers were complaining. But the boss said... when my workers go to the stores they don´t buy our products they buy products made in China, they are less expensive.
Would you care to disprove anything I posted in that reply?
Do you disagree that our society is made up of the educated and the rest?
Do they not become educated so as to lead the rest?
If their leadership ends up hosing the rest, do you not think there might be recriminations?
Does pointing this out make one a, what was it, marxist?
Do you disagree that our society is made up of the educated and the rest?
Do they not become educated so as to lead the rest?
I didn't go off to get an education so I could "lead" anyone - I did it because that's what you have to do to get a good job any more. If you think society is divided into educational haves and have-nots, then the answer is simple - educate everyone. Give everyone the tools to find those jobs that actually exist, and will exist tomorrow, rather than setting them loose on the world, unprepared to do anything but flip burgers. We do a crappy job of that right now, but it must be fixed, or we really will spiral straight into the toilet.
If their leadership ends up hosing the rest, do you not think there might be recriminations?
The big problem wih predictions of class warfare is that Marx failed to foresee the possibilities for upward mobility in capitalist societies. So long as it's possible for people to escape the circumstances of their birth and do better than their parents did, the revolution will not happen. The key is making sure that people have the tools to succeed. Teaching them to make widgets is a dead-end - if we steer people in that direction, they'll be unhappy when they figure out that the Chinese make widgets for a tenth of the cost we do. Steer them towards high-value jobs, like software, banking, et cetera, and they're likely to be a lot happier.
It doesn't have to be a disaster - gloom-and-doom is not an inevitable part of a postindustrial society. But it does call for some retooling ;)
Damn sure is, in fact I spent twenty years honing my craft in that very area, started out at $5.00 bucks an hour in '81.
When I got laid off last year was making close to a hundred grand. Can't buy a job now, can't even sniff an interview.
There are about 500,000 of us out here, the last count I saw. Do you think we can go build China's infrastructure now?
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