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.''
Welcome to the new age Greenspan economy where everything is an illusion and we are all playing "let's pretend" using monopoly money to buy and sell structured financial instruments to each other. It works perfectly unless you open your eyes.
Richard W.
Globilization had killed many cities like Rottenchester and Kodak. Next step: The multinationals, like W-M have so much money and power they now rule the world. Think not? They already do.
Yes, yes. As taught in a econmics class - a trade deficit is where you import more than you export. Now do we have an overall trade deficit - or just with one country? My understanding is - we have an overall trade deficit. Now if I have an overall trade deficit - that is - continually buying more than I sell or spending more than I make - I would have an overall deficit. That's a bad thing.
I gave at the office. I build my country by providing value to my customers, not by asking them for handouts.
Who is talking about handouts? It costs to maintain a nation - to have the relative freedom and safety we have here. Granted we are paying for more than we are getting. But if you are not paying for part of that - then you are getting a handout - a freebie - welfare or just being a leech. NOthing is free.
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
Really? What would that be? In some things we do, for now. Once it was manufacturing - then it was computer technology (we see that dwindling), now the 'service' industry you say. HOw long before we no longer have an advantage in that? Do you think with our present tax structure, heavy regulations on businesses, education system (or lack of), number of people who are just interested in making money - nothing else, no cohesiveness in this country, rampant corruption in government (but hey who cares if you have the right letter associated with your name), we can long have any advantage in anything?
Now some are posing the theory that we have a 'world' economy and as long as everyone in the world is making money, there won't be any war. Or be sure everyone has a MacDonald's. That all we have to do is raise the standard of living of other countries (or lowering ours - or both) and the world will be on an even keel and there will be no need for war. That is just not true. It makes no sense. You see the people touting that think ( or want the rest to us to think) that money rules everyone's lives. It doesn't. Many people are ruled by idealogies and money is just a means to an end. Everyone taking our money and selling us their products are not just your average, everyday person who 'justs want a better life'. When those people get enough of our money and enough of our factories - then they get the rest of what they want - their idealogy forced upon the rest of the world, American included. To not see that as a fact is just putting your head in the sand.
why doesn't the u.s. invest in robotics?
robo-made textiles, furniture, etc.
It is not your choice to put someone else through medical school and it is not your choice to engineer society so that they cannot open up their own donut shop or maybe a Dunken Donut franchise. You realize you are speaking as someone who thinks he can decide how to engineer our society? I thought this was supposed to be a free market?
And in exactly the same manner, it's wasteful and inefficient to try to prop up things like textiles -
"Free trade" as it turns out props up things like textiles outside the country while looting american industry.
let's concentrate on the things we do better than everyone else, rather than trying to race for the bottom by competing with the Indonesians to see who can make the cheapest tennis shoe. Even if you "win", what's it worth? Not much.
American society is not based on making the cheapest shoes. We have expenses and expectations in our society. We dont use slave labor. We dont have sweat shops filled with children. We have restrictions on dumping toxic waste in the oceans. We have to build an expensive military to protect our society. Going out side the country to get around these things is simply a disregard for our own country. What America has been best at is creating a free country with a responsible govt.
What people like you can never respond to is the unfair situation where Americans are forced to compete with rules and restrictions and taxes that those outside the country do not.
Of course I can - what exactly do you think things like WTO are for? To level the playing field, of course. Look at the record of WTO decisions - the US is by far the most active player in terms of bringing disputes to the WTO, and the US wins far more cases than it loses. And every time the US wins a trade dispute in front of the WTO, that's another door opened for American business.
Heeh, the WTO doesnt level the playing field for the American worker or most small businesses. The WTO does not even begin to meet up with the expectation that Americans have for a free society.
The Chinese will find out that membership in WTO is a poison pill for them, although by the time they realize it, it'll be too late. They can't beat us without becoming us. And in the end, we win no matter what.
With the communists now able to point nuclear warheads at America it looks like we are the ones taking the poison pill. This is where you can realize that America is being looted. China is going to have to take one hell of a poison pill to make up for the massive failure of "free trade" at this point. The WTO wont change a thing and you know it.
Well, it makes a big difference if I send money to China or the moon. If I send my money to China or the moon - then I am building China or the moon. If I try to keep my money here, I am helping to provide jobs for my fellow countrymen - who in turn, help keep this country running - so we can all, at least for right now, enjoy the benefits of said country.
Any way you slice it, they don't do the things you claim make a deficit with your supermarket okay, so is buying from Amazon then a bad thing?
Well, you see, I consider my entire country part of the community - don't you?
Now how is that an overall deficit?
Answered above.
You give them money, they give you groceries. You aren't trading with them, just buying their stuff with your money. That's a deficit, and any other factors are irrelevant. You're also running a trade deficit with your car dealer, your plumber, your telephone company, and a whole bunch of other companies that don't employ your daughter. The fact that they give that money to other people after they've extracted it from you doesn't change the fact that you run a deficit with them.
But, you see, I am not running an overall deficit. If I were, I would soon be bankrupt. You can't send out more than you bring in - just doesn't work.
that's not a bad thing. You undoubtedly find it cheaper and easier to let one of the Bells handle the mechanics of your phone service, rather than trying to do it yourself from the ground up. In the same way, we as a nation find it cheaper and easier to have our shirts made in Guatemala. We are good at other things, so we do that instead.
I find it easier to have Bells handle my phone - since I can't. Not a matter of cheaper. It is not cheaper to have our shirts manufactured in Guatemala. First, a lot of it is inferior quality - meaning I must buy 2 or 3 when previously I could only buy one. It is a matter of replacement - not having more. Secondly, it isn't cheaper when the manufacture of those shirts, the wages, taxes, etc., are no longer in this country. Then I have to pick up a little more of the tab for keeping this country running. For my fellow countrymen who used to make good shirts for me, I sometimes have to help pay for unemployment and retraining (you see someone pays for that), and if they have to take a job making less, then someone has to pick up the slack. Yes, they can all get jobs at Wal Mart or the dollar store selling those cheap products or even higher end stores. It is not quite the same as making a wage that will sustain a family. It is not t cheaper to buy those products - it is just more profitable for the companies. As long as our government has not loaned them monies, paid for their 'protection' through foreign aid, or otherwise used my tax dollars to promote their added fortune - that is fine. But that is not true in many cases. So you see - the shirt is not cheaper. There are other costs involved other than the check out stand price.
What will we do if China boycots the U.S.?
Thank you."
It is by the design of the Global order crew who have a plan for there One Global government. That is why this is being allowed to happen. We cannot be so strong and proud-It messes things up for them. We are like little children being led to the slaughter. Right now we have our candy and that is all that we can understand.
A fun thing to do when you are at walmart is to ask anyone with you to find things that were made in the USA. It is not easy.
We have a deficit in terms of importing more goods than we export. And you have an overall deficit in terms of "importing" more goods than you export. You pull it off indefinitely because you keep earning money doing whatever it is you do, with which you finance your deficit in goods. So does the nation. We send them dollars, they send us stuff, just the same as your relationship with your store. As long as you have a steady supply of dollars, you'll be fine. As long as the nation keeps making money with which to buy stuff, we'll be fine. So we go off and make money in high-value fields, and send our dollars off to buy the manufactured goods we want at a price we're willing to pay. Why is that wrong?
Who is talking about handouts? It costs to maintain a nation - to have the relative freedom and safety we have here. Granted we are paying for more than we are getting. But if you are not paying for part of that - then you are getting a handout - a freebie - welfare or just being a leech. NOthing is free.
That's right. Except that trade barriers and tariffs, which is where these arguments invariably lead, are pure redistributional economics. I'm paying more for a hammer than I otherwise would because the hammer makers think it's "unfair" to charge what Chinese hammer makers charge. Frankly, I don't care. Make me a product worth buying, at a price worth paying, and I'll buy it. But nobody has the right to use the law to rob me by making me pay more than I otherwise would have to. That's a handout in my book, and the fact that it makes the hammer makers feel all warm and fuzzy doesn't change the fact that they expect to finance their lifestyle at my expense.
Really? What would that be? In some things we do, for now. Once it was manufacturing - then it was computer technology (we see that dwindling), now the 'service' industry you say. HOw long before we no longer have an advantage in that? Do you think with our present tax structure, heavy regulations on businesses, education system (or lack of), number of people who are just interested in making money - nothing else, no cohesiveness in this country, rampant corruption in government (but hey who cares if you have the right letter associated with your name), we can long have any advantage in anything?
We will always have a comparative advantage in something. That something is what we will sell to the world. It's a purely mathematical fact, involving nothing more than some very basic algebra to prove - you should look up David Ricardo and the Law of Comparative Advantage sometime.
When those people get enough of our money and enough of our factories - then they get the rest of what they want - their idealogy forced upon the rest of the world, American included. To not see that as a fact is just putting your head in the sand.
They need us as much as we need them. Why would they screw up a system that's making us both rich?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.