Blah blah blah tl;dr.

Here's my take:

A) This country has digressed from what made it a super power, manufacturing and self reliance. The country's that are now super powers(China!) are manufacturing GIANTS. There's a reason that a VERY VERY large part of our debt is owed to them.

B) As an employee in one of the larger and longest standing manufacturing companies(Deere), I believe a transition needs to be made back to our roots of self reliance.

C) This debt has to disappear. What happens when China calls their "loan" in? Are we willing to go to war over debt? People believe that "China needs us"...No...They need someone to buy their products, that can be ANYONE in the world with the cash.. We need China because they can foot our need for capital.

D) People blame Bush's "War" for this debt. I find that pretty interesting, because history has showed in ALMOST EVERY SINGLE CASE, that war has almost ALWAYS been good for the economy. Take the "Great Depression" for instance.. WW2 did wonders on that, and ushered in some 30 years of amazing prosperity...

The way to get this country back in shape is pull the ducks home, close the gates, get your self reliance back, and make the CORE strong again.. And the CORE of this country has ALWAYS been manufacturing.

 

Nice post!!!

 

I will also say this.. At 28 years of age I haven't had many chances to "make my voice heard", but I will say I've generally voted Republican due to what they portray as "their ideals"... Those being conservative, smaller government, and pro-small/big business. Being as such I generally do feel cheated in some ways because these haven't really come to fruition. I don't care if you have a donkey or an elephant next to your name, get **** done. I was unemployeed for a year and a half, my father is still unemployed after over 2 years. He was in the professional side of manufacturing(Senior Buyer), I'm in the grunt work/managerial(way over qualified with my Manufacturing Engineering degree from Purdue, but UAW pays DAMN good). This wasn't from a lack of looking, there just simply wasn't anything out there.

I honestly feel there's a pandemic spreading in this country.. I call it the "entitlement pandemic".. People believe because their parents spread their legs, and they just happened to be within these borders, that they are "entitled" to live on easy street. What happened to the ideals of, put your nose to the grindstone, work your *** off, and good things come? I shudder to think of how many percent of our paychecks go to "losers" who haven't worked a day in their lives. This comes from someone who was on unemployment, and that's what kept me living for a year and a half... But I feel like I earned that, and got shafted.. Trust me, I rather be working! There's an emotional, financial, and moral drain being on unemployment for me. You lose that sense of accomplishment, and that's a killer right there.

With that said, I think it's a disservice to the populace to make it even easier. Unemployment and these other programs are supposed to be a crutch until "the leg has mended", not a life long income.

Another situation that INFURIATED me was this.. A couple weeks ago I was looking for housing in Moline ILL, since I was slated to work around there. I found an amazing apartment, 2 bedroom, great floor plan, pool, ponds, garages, tennis courts etc. I drove over to inquire about it, only to be told I made 2x the maximum salary requirements they had. It was subsidized housing. WTF does someone making NOTHING, need a pool and tennis courts?!?!?!

 

You express yourself well, and I agree 100% what you are saying.

Wondering.....being in the UAW, do you find yourself in the minority when it comes to politics?

 

There is no doubt we need to bring jobs back home. If we didn't send all of our jobs away we wouldn't have such rampant unemployment.

The problem is we aren't protecting our workers and their incomes. Henry Ford paid his workers a higher rate so they could buy his cars. You can't have a consumer based economy without anyone with enough money to buy things.

Our goods that China imports are subject to a 24% tariff and Chinese goods we import are subject to a 2% tariff. Guess why they are kicking our butt? Plus they have artificially kept their currency low to drive more business.

American workers can't work for $2.00 an hour. It costs too much to live here. There is no way the American worker can compete with them on that level.

 

Point 1: I think you analysis of unemployment is a bit simplistic. It wasn't until the financial meltdown that we had the high unemployment. So while sending the jobs to other countries didn't help unemployment is really hasn't hurt the employment numbers. Jobs were created in other sectors. One of the problems with our economy now, and this actually supports your position, is it isn't as diverse as it once was, but that is a minor problem.

Point 2: You are correct we cannot compete on a price level, but where we compete is on reliability and quality. Not long ago I read of a cook ware manufacturer who had sent his manufacturing to China. The only problem was the company would order x number of widgets and have to wait. When the order would come in sometimes there would only be 1/3 the ordered widgets or the widgets did not meet quality standards, so they had to eat them. Add to this the long ship time it left the company with short stocks of their products. The company brought their manufacturing back to the US and their supply issues went away. I have also read where a company was attempting to import Turkish towels. They ordered x number of towels. They were shorted 10% of the order. When they went back to the manufacturer, they were told 10%+/- was as close as the they could come to hitting the exact number. The American company returned the towels and decided not to sell Turkish towels. The point is if people shop at places like Walmart/K-Mart/Target they will be getting stuff from China. If people shop at higher end stores often they will notice the products are not made in China. Some are made here some in other European countries. If all you care about is having a product and don't really care about quality then China is the way to go. If you care about the quality of an item then China cannot handle the request.

I also find it amusing that people in the US want items from around the world, while people from around the world want items form the US.

 

Did ya all catch that the azzclown of a president spoke at a black rally yesterday demanding blacks go out and spread the word that what he is trying to do is being threatened by republicans and tea partiers. Ok, so now that he is running scared he goes to the well of his "people" and tries to rally them. I swear, that buttmunch hasn't stopped campaigning since he got in office.

Oh, and for you people that support "free" health care: You do know that YOUR gov't is hitting you with extra taxes because you are gonna git hit at the end of the year when you do your taxes. This supposed health care is going to be shown as EARNED INCOME. So, in the end, we're paying for it, so why change it?

 

Many of our manufacturing jobs are gone for good.

Sure, there will be the occasional bright spot where someone builds a better mouse trap or an industry rebounds. Overall, the long term outlook is not good.

High costs of compliance with environmental protections and governmental regulations, as well as non-competitive labor costs have crippled manufacturing in this country.

Loss of manufacturing is bad news for the economy and our strength abroad. But that's water under the bridge - industries won't be coming back in droves.

50 years ago, we were the world's dominant industrial power. Now, it's time to plan for life as a debtor nation as we lack a manufacturing backbone.

 

The thing that was keeping the economy going even though we were sending jobs overseas was the housing market. People's equity was going up like a rocket and people were tapping that equity the moment it came available.

People were financing their purchases with ill gotten money from their homes and pumping money into the economy that way.

As far as the President campaigning for others, they all do that. Bush did that and Clinton did it before him and so on.

As far as health care, of course we are going to pay for it. You can't pull money out of the air. The hope is that while in the short run it may cost more, in the end through wellness programs and people going to doctors instead of the emergency room that we will save money.

 

Not true. Henry Ford paid his workers more because he was having trouble keeping up with demand and finding people to work. To overcome this, he increased pay.

 

There are two VERY simple things that can be done to get our country back on the right track and will "fix" most of the problems we've brought upon ourselves.
1. Lobby reform.
Most if not ALL the pork, back room deals, kickbacks, crappy legislation, and downright dirty dealings are spawned by lobbyists. Give the PEOPLE the real power back in Washington instead of the corporations.
2. Term limits. NO person should be in public service more than 8 years. The founding fathers wouldn't even have imagined that being in office more than that would be a good idea. Career politicians that do nothing more than making plans to be in office the next time elections come around cannot do their constituents any good.

 

Yes it was tedious work and had a high turnover rate at the time due to this. He drew a lot of criticism from other industrialists at the time due to this move. People were flocking to Detroit to work because of this policy.

This policy was justified by him being able to sell cars to the men making them as now they could afford a Model T.

Regardless, if people don't make enough money to buy goods and services, you can make all you want but it takes supply and demand.

Our standard of living and wages deplete the demand for our labor because the supply in 3rd world nations is so high. If we allow manufactured goods into our country made with "slave" labor then we are hurting ourselves.

 

Yes, and for some reason progressives believe that our government can undue this imbalance. The progressives did this with FDR. Price fixing, subsidies, and the like. It didn't work. It prolonged the pain.

I can't see how progressives believe that the government is going to solve this problem. It's clearly up to the consumer, that is us, to fix this problem. The progressives claim that the Tea Party types want to move the country backward. That is patently false. What this movement wants to do is return some of what made our country great to begin with. Part of that would be to have pride in purchasing products made by our fellow Americans. That pride isn't there. We live in a society that wants stuff, lots of stuff, and we want it cheap. Everyone, rich and poor, must have everything that is available. It didn't used to be that way. It used to be that you got what you need, and if you could manage to save, you could get some of what you want.

It's really a simple argument to say that Tea Party types, and the GOP just want to take everything away. It's wrong, and anyone paying any attention to what is happening in our country lately can see this. The people within the progressive movement saw an opportunity, with the election of the most liberal president, along with an ultra liberal majority in congress, to advance their agenda. It's really the same agenda that they've had for more than a century. This agenda is threatened by people in our country who are calling for the use of reason and common sense. It's quite obvious that the progressives will stop at nothing to advance their agenda, especially with conditions so ripe for it.

All conservatives in this country are saying is that governement has proven it's self to be grossly inefficient, and that the people of this country have become far to complacent and far to passive to our government. It's time that we stood up on our own two feet again, like the pioneers of generations past. It's never been a government that made this country great. It's always been the people. This is as true today as it was at the birth of our country.

 

Can you imagine the White House, a sitting administration, going on an assult against American people who are practicing thier first amandment rights? Why is the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Governement for a redress of grievances under assult?

NY Times-Obama Advisers Weigh Ad Assault Against the G.O.P

It's strange times when we have our own government perpetuating lies that the main stream media has created, without evidence. This isn't good. If the people who have choosen to be part of the Tea Party movement can be assulted by their own government, there is no reason that any other person, group or movement couldn't have the same thing done to it.

I don't think that our government was put in place to assult the people who make up our country.

Some people might find this amusing, untill you become the target of the assult.

 

More Saul Alinsky tactics. Also, have you ever noticed how Obama seems to enjoy 'playing the victim'?

Oldest trick in the book. ("Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced more true than truth itself."--Irenaeus)