Discuss Detroit » Archives - Beginning January 2007 » We're Detroiters: We MAKE Things! « Previous Next »
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Eastsidedame
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Username: Eastsidedame

Post Number: 11
Registered: 12-2006
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 4:13 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

During a discussion with several of my fellow Detroit expatriates in Texas, we agreed on only one thing: Detroiters make things. From way before the auto industry, Detroit made anything anyone could buy. We even had a few cigar companies at one time. Grandpa smoked RG Dunns, made in Detroit.

It seems to us that the Federal Government's desire help other countries by importing their goods, has not only given us a mountainous trade deficit, but has ruined the manufacturing industry in this country. And Detroit bears the brunt of this misplaced benevolence.

Why aren't we DEMANDING an end to the trade deficit and a return to manufacturing? Shouldn't we be slapping high tariffs on imported goods? Giving tax breaks to start-up manufacturing-based businesses? Stop kissing China's butt, in particular. Have unions outlived their usefulness (sorry, Grandma & Grandpa)?

There is just something so incredibly twisted and wrong about this whole situation. Is anybody running for President who actually gets this? I'd vote for them in a heartbeat.
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Supersport
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Username: Supersport

Post Number: 11437
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 9:43 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Eastsidedame,

This was on my mind recently after reading a chapter in a book on labor in the United States during the late 1800's, when labor unions and workers were really starting to organize. I have come to accept something, in many ways, this country has brought this situation upon itself.

We are in this situation because workers organized, demand safe working conditions, shorting work days that 16 hours in a grueling sweat shop environment. Because the workers demanded that companies take into account their health in regards to work conditions.

For many decades, things worked out great. Company after company caved to unions, because when so well organized, in addition to their willingness to use brutal force in protest of work conditions, the companies had no other option. If they held out, unions and labor workers had the ability to damn near shut the country down, such was the case with the strikes by railroad workers back in the day.

Let's face it, today this country has some of the best work conditions of probably any country in the world. So what happened? Well, for the most part, I point the finger at consumers. How many people in this day an age look at a label to see if it is made in the U.S.A.? How many people instead will bounce from Meijer, Target, or Walmart, shopping for the lowest prices, regardless of where the product was made?

We as a country have cut our own throats. Demanding that prices remain low, and in the process driving companies to ship their labor to 3rd world countries where the work conditions are much like that of the United States during the 1800's before workers began to organize for change.

I had spoke to a couple of coworkers in the past, both born and raised in China, not coming to the U.S. until well into their 20's. While the pay, according to them, is sufficient to live because of the low cost of living, the work conditions are similar to those here 200 years ago. Contracts are signed with many companies in which you essentially live in a prison type environment. A compound containing a factory in which is fenced in. You live in dorms on site, work the hours they demand, and are obligated to fulfill the contract signed at hand. Essentially, you are a paid slave unable to leave.

People refer to this "world market," yet in reality, it's all of the world sending their labor to all the same countries where work conditions are horrible, labor is cheap, and it allows them to make the most profit. Aside from grassroot efforts where you'll occasionally here a group suggest a boycott against a company because of their labor conditions for their products, the masses in all honesty really don't care. All people today care about is that they can venture into that big box retail store and pay $2 less than the product at the other big box store.

Is our government partially to blame? Sure, they could impose tariffs that would end such practices in which involve horrible work conditions, but it's much like gas prices. People don't care the reasons how or way, they simply want to pay less at the pump. I paid $379 for a DVD player back in 1999. That DVD player by Sony was manufactured in Japan. There, while they may put in hellacious hours sometimes, their pay is on par with ours, as is their benefits, and their time off often is way more than hours. My previous employer in Japan had 23 paid holidays, in addition to vacation.

I would gladly pay $379 today for a new DVD that was manufactured in the United States, as opposed to one assembled in China for a sale price of $49 or so. Yet most people would not, thus our manufacturing jobs continue to go over seas, with IT support, engineering, design, and others following closely in those footsteps.

Don't place blame on our federal government, this country has brought this upon itself.
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Urbanize
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Username: Urbanize

Post Number: 351
Registered: 02-2007
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 9:47 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I have two repsonses to your point supersport:

-Inflation
-Lower to no Wages
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Bulletmagnet
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Username: Bulletmagnet

Post Number: 144
Registered: 01-2007
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 10:41 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

What Supersport said.
ps: why is this posted twice? Admin please.

(Message edited by Bulletmagnet on March 24, 2007)
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Jiscodazz
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Username: Jiscodazz

Post Number: 9
Registered: 02-2007
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 11:20 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

It's kind of a sad irony that the only stores that seem to be opening in Detroit are dollar stores.
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Urbanize
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Username: Urbanize

Post Number: 353
Registered: 02-2007
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 11:26 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

"It's kind of a sad irony that the only stores that seem to be opening in Detroit are dollar stores."

Don't forget your neighborhood, Asian owned Beauty Supply Store.
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Motor
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Username: Motor

Post Number: 3
Registered: 07-2006
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 11:43 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

We can blame unions, consumers or whatever we wish. The fact of the matter is that the source of Detroit's suffering is greed, greed by the uber-wealthy. The U.S. census report from their web page shows that the household income for the 50th percentile has gone from $32,075 in 1967 to $38,875 in 1998. Compare this to the 95th percentile which grew from $85,317 to $132,199 during the same time period. There are not any statistics for the top 1 or 1/2 percentiles although I would guess that the disparity would by extremely higher. This distribution of income is far to favorable to the right side. Us Americans need to take a stand against greed that is ruining our country, that is if we all can get past our own delusions of one day being filthy rich.
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Lilpup
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Username: Lilpup

Post Number: 1905
Registered: 06-2004
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 11:49 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

Don't place blame on our federal government, this country has brought this upon itself.


Who do you think controls trade policy? Who do you think should be making sure national trade agreements we've entered are adhered to? Who should be suing China and a few other countries for the rampant product pirating that undercuts legitimate trade?

Everybody in this country should be beyond worried that we've lost so much manufacturing. The idea that a nation as large as our can live as well on 'service' and 'knowledge' jobs is absurd.
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Jjaba
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Username: Jjaba

Post Number: 5062
Registered: 11-2003
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 1:44 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Hold your horses a bit. The USA does export plenty. jjaba can provide a huge list if you want.
You might not like the list of exports and if you can only bolt cars, you are one sad sack.

Smoking RG Dunn's is disgusting. It causes lung and throat cancer, liver problems, and stinks up the house. Now losing Vernor's Ginger Ale, that's a damn shame.

jjaba.
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Mpow
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Username: Mpow

Post Number: 243
Registered: 11-2003
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 1:59 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

yes, can't blame labor. labor evolved the way it should in this country. now it is china's turn to organize, even the field. Tha won't happen for another 50 years unfortunately.
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Lilpup
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Username: Lilpup

Post Number: 1907
Registered: 06-2004
Posted on Saturday, March 24, 2007 - 2:06 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The USA imports substantially more than it exports - that is why there's a trade deficit, has been a trade deficit for 30 years, and has now set new records for five years in a row. Even investment income went negative last year - Trade deficit hits record for 5th year. This goes hand in hand with disappearing good jobs (which is just the tip of the iceberg), a failing housing market, and, eventually, the total loss of a strong American economy.
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Fnemecek
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Username: Fnemecek

Post Number: 2411
Registered: 12-2004
Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 11:17 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

I have two repsonses to your point supersport:

-Inflation
-Lower to no Wages


I have 1 rebuttal to your 2 responses, Urbanize.

We as a nation manufactured almost everything we used, right here in the good ol' U.S. of A, for most of our existence as a nation. Inflation wasn't out of hand and wages were just fine for our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and so on.
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Urbanize
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Username: Urbanize

Post Number: 381
Registered: 02-2007
Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 11:43 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

"Inflation wasn't out of hand and wages were just fine for our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents"

My point exactly. It was fine for our older folks becuase THEY were assured that they're stuff WAS made in America and they got what they wanted for their money. In YOUR day and age, you can't tell what's made in American and how good of a quality would you get IF you were to pay the outrgeous prices for it. Typically, the imported stuff that is also compared to things in America is cheaper and you get what you pay for.
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Iheartthed
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Username: Iheartthed

Post Number: 544
Registered: 04-2006
Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 12:52 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Well, what it sounds like you're saying is that capitalism killed Detroit.
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Lilpup
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Username: Lilpup

Post Number: 1910
Registered: 06-2004
Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 1:00 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Unrestrained capitalism does kill
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Ordinary
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Username: Ordinary

Post Number: 161
Registered: 06-2006
Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 1:38 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

" that is if we all can get past our own delusions of one day being filthy rich."

Hey isn't that the American dream in a nutshell?
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Lilpup
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Username: Lilpup

Post Number: 1911
Registered: 06-2004
Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 2:27 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Is it? Or is the American dream one where we can just live with a sense of personal and economic security?

How much is enough?

A short time ago I heard an interesting report on the radio about a study. It was along the lines of "Given the choice, would you prefer to have a $50,000 income in an area where the average was $30,000, or would you prefer to have a $100,000 income in an area where the average was $200,000?"

Seems obvious, doesn't it?

(Message edited by lilpup on March 25, 2007)
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Jelk
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Username: Jelk

Post Number: 4271
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 2:37 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

In the agricultural age, we grew crops. In the industrial age, we made things. Now in the information age, the essence of our economy is something different, more abstract in concept but very real.

Maybe Detroit and Michigan can give it a go, staying in the industrial age but I would suggest touring Youngstown, Bethlehem, Gary, and Flint to see how that will work out.
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Lilpup
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Username: Lilpup

Post Number: 1912
Registered: 06-2004
Posted on Sunday, March 25, 2007 - 2:44 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

the essence of our economy is something different, more abstract in concept but very real


my fear is that in itself it's too fluid to regionalize - it has to go hand in hand with the less abstract fundamentals
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Ordinary
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Username: Ordinary

Post Number: 163
Registered: 06-2006
Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 - 7:19 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Lilpup,
You are correct. I don't want to be filthy rich, just having enough to pay the bills and have a few toys is great with me.

Jelk,
Somehow I think that we still need to make things. The people who make things are the ones who make everything possible. In a radical kind of way, everything else is just non-productive overhead.
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_sj_
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Username: _sj_

Post Number: 1765
Registered: 12-2003
Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 - 11:10 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

In the late 1800s and early 1900s this was the manufacturing center of the world. We had resources, workers, money and goods. Other countries who did not have these wanted our goods. American made goods were in high demand. Then something happened.

These other countries figure this shit out and starting making their own goods.

The worlds has evolved and is continued to evolve into the area that we held a monopoly on for decades.

Those days are over, time to adjust or die. Look at the all the industries that have went through this, Textiles, Electronics, Steel, etc. Times are changing and their is nothing you can do about it. People want cheap goods because they are available, however they also want high wages that are unfounded. Something had to give.

You can't just apply illegal tariffs to protect certain jobs, talk about being greedy.

Look how many jobs have been eliminated but made your life easier, did you ever stop and think about those people, hell no. Think about all the bank tellers replaced by ATMs, Operators replaced by phone switches and systems. Grocery clerks (who were at one time nicely paid) by scanners and barcodes. The list goes on and on, but who cares about them.

BTW, Lilpup, you might want to check and see who is suing who for unfair trade practices. You might be surprised to see that many of these so-called tariffs that individuals and some unions call for are illegal and these tariffs have allowed foreign countries to dump their products on American markets for lower prices due to unfair American trade practices. How can you demand others play fair when it us who makes the playing field unlevel.
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Lilpup
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Username: Lilpup

Post Number: 1928
Registered: 06-2004
Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 - 11:58 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

The people who make things are the ones who make everything possible. In a radical kind of way, everything else is just non-productive overhead.

Exactly
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Lilpup
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Username: Lilpup

Post Number: 1929
Registered: 06-2004
Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 - 11:27 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

bump to land above cloned version of this thread
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Eastsidedame
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Username: Eastsidedame

Post Number: 22
Registered: 12-2006
Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 2:00 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Guess what Senator Dianne Feinstein's husband does for a living? Here's a passage from Wikipedia:

"In 1980, she married Richard C. Blum, an investment banker.

"Feinstein has received scrutiny for husband Richard Blum's extensive business dealings with China and her past votes on trade issues with the country.

"In 2003, Feinstein was ranked the fifth wealthiest senator, with an estimated net worth of $26 million. By 2005 her net worth had increased to between $43 million and $99 million dollars"

And they make what, in California? Movie Stars??

Sheesh, talk about "sleeping with the enemy"! How many other legislators are more interested in helping the economies of countries who want to kill us than reversing our foreign-dependent situation. No wonder we can't kick start our economy! Will we ever get legislation to level the playing field?
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Eastsidedame
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Username: Eastsidedame

Post Number: 23
Registered: 12-2006
Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 2:32 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

BTW, I try to buy USA whenever I can. And I think Americans are sensitive to this, because whenever something is Made in America, the ads scream it. Even Toyota puts it in THEIR ads! "We bring jobs to Americans in Tennessee.." Remember that one? You really can't blame people for the death of mfg. We can't do a thing without a fair shake.
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Danny
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Username: Danny

Post Number: 5665
Registered: 02-2004
Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 8:47 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

In Detroit WE DO MAKE OTHER THINGS besides mass producing CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANGS:

Faygo and Vernors make soda pop. Try the Boston Cooler.

Stroh's make ice cream since the Prohibition days.

We have Better Maid and Jay's making flavored potato chips.

any many more.
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Urbanize
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Username: Urbanize

Post Number: 416
Registered: 02-2007
Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 9:11 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Problem is, Vernors and Stroh's isn't labeled as headquartered here. WE could of diversified our economy perfectly 40 years ago in to the still sucessful industries such as (Soda Pop, Potato Chips, Alcohol, Dairy Products, and heck, even go out on a limb to Fast Food). Too late now, as these industries are getting all the wealth and recognition they deserved somewhere else, and don't plan on turning around.
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_sj_
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Username: _sj_

Post Number: 1767
Registered: 12-2003
Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 12:04 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Fair Shake? Fair shake of what?

It is you the workers, companies and corporation that have created this imbalance. No one else did this to you, you created it yourselves.

UAW members are actually picketing for BETTER wages, health care and pension benefits. Sounds like a fair shake to me.

Stop blaming others for you past mistakes.
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Eastsidedame
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Username: Eastsidedame

Post Number: 27
Registered: 12-2006
Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 11:21 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

A fair shake means that foreign goods should cost more than domestic. That imported goods should be subject to tariffs to offset the loss domestically. A union member has a plumb job, my friend. The job itself may be boring, but benefits up the kazoo, arbitration and representation are a given and it takes an act of Congress to get 'em fired. BETTER wages than whom, doctors? Live in a "right to work" state for a while, and you'll know what I mean.

The workers and companies, yes, do bear some responsibility, but when push comes to shove our own legislators and executive branches are responsible for the flood of cheap foreign goods, the demise of domestic manufacturing (due a wide range of factors)and our dependence on all things foreign. Yes, oil is SOME of it, too, but just a portion.

In a report compiled in 2003 for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI)it states:

A new (2003) study has found that the United States' growing trade deficit with China has had an increasingly negative impact on the U.S. economy, causing job losses that reach into the most technologically advanced industries in the manufacturing sector and affect every state.

EPI is a nonprofit, nongovernmental research organization that focuses on the economic conditions of lower and middle-income American workers.

The study found that 1.5 million jobs were lost to lower-wage Chinese competition in the 14-year period between 1989 and 2003. During that time, the U.S. trade deficit with China rose twenty-fold, from $6.2 billion to $124 billion. It is expected to increase another 20 percent in 2004, to $150 billion.

The study noted that the pace of job loss has more than doubled since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and that China's exports to the United States of sophisticated electronics and communications equipment requiring skilled labor are growing much more quickly than its exports of low-value, labor-intensive products.

"The assumptions we built our trade relationship with China on have proven to be a house of cards," Robert Scott, EPI Director of International Programs said. "Everyone knew we would lose jobs in labor-intensive industries like textiles and apparel, but we thought we could hold our own in the capital-intensive, high-tech arena. The numbers we're seeing now put the lie to that hope -- as China expands its share even in core industries such as autos and aerospace."

Surprise! It's more than just cars! At least the Chinese love Buicks! Wonder how much the tariff on THOSE imports are? I bet a bundle!

The latest figure I could find of the trade deficit was from January 2007 at $59,118 million dollars. Geez, I don't even know how many zeros that is. And the study further states that it's hitting EVERY state, but we know Michigan is suffering hard.

_sj_, you just cant blame workers and corporations for the legislation and foreign policy that has done a good job to help sink this city into its current economic condition? You're not Dianne Feinstein, are you? (smile)
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Barnesfoto
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Username: Barnesfoto

Post Number: 3268
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 11:48 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

A friend from HK tells me that any car in Hong Kong has a 100 percent tax on it, I'm not sure about the rest of China. Yet luxury cars seem to be selling well in HK.
I've never owned a stove that wasn't made in Detroit. I've owned two Garlands, made in the thirties and one Detroit Jewel, made in the forties.
They worked flawlessly, except for the oven on the DJ.
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Eastsidedame
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Username: Eastsidedame

Post Number: 28
Registered: 12-2006
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 12:26 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Yeah, but are you still cooking on them now? If so, frankly, I'm jealous. I don't think they're nationally available, right?

See, that's the trick...have people in OTHER states buy made in DETROIT.

BTW: My oven is a Maytag, the range is a Magic Chef but they're built-in..they came with the house. I have no clue where they were manufactured.
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Lilpup
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Username: Lilpup

Post Number: 1941
Registered: 06-2004
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 12:35 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

My stove is a GM tagged Fridgidare from who knows when

Eastsidedame, Obama hasn't said anything about foreign trade yet, but he's got the domestic attitude going:

Obama accuses Bush of 'social Darwinism'

"It's a strategy that we've seen this administration pursue over the last six years, that basically says
government has no role to play in making sure that America is prosperous for all people and not just some."

(Message edited by lilpup on March 28, 2007)
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Barnesfoto
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Username: Barnesfoto

Post Number: 3270
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 12:51 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

"Yeah, but are you still cooking on them now? If so, frankly, I'm jealous. I don't think they're nationally available, right?"
I am not still cooking on them...I have renovated and sold 3 historic Detroit houses, and the stoves stayed when I sold them. They never wear out, although the Bakelite knobs occasionally break, but I have a box of spares in storage.
Old stoves are a hot commodity, but can often be purchased at garage sales, estate sales and antique stove appreciation sites. I never paid more than 100 bucks for any of my vintage Detroit Stoves.
When I purchased my last Detroit house in 2004, an aged Philco refrigerator was in the basement, and was sold via Craigslist to a buyer in Houston, TX, who eagerly paid for the fridge and shipping.

I sold my last home, and the Garland Stove in December, and am currently traveling. So I am not currently cooking on a Garland Stove, but my point
is that they hold their value, and don't wear out.
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Eastsidedame
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Username: Eastsidedame

Post Number: 30
Registered: 12-2006
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 3:25 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Lilpup, thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

Wow, Barnesfoto, you have my deepest admiration and respect. That's what I'm talking about...quality. There's nothing like American quality. I still believe we're the hardest workers making the best products on the planet, when given the opportunity to fairly compete. I can't tell you how many VCRs I've had over the years. Too damn many! Cordless phones, printers...boy, what junk!

Vintage is very big in the South, so yeah, I could see that Houston buyer salivating over the thing. Now I'm really jealous!
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_sj_
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Username: _sj_

Post Number: 1769
Registered: 12-2003
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 10:51 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

A fair shake means that foreign goods should cost more than domestic. That imported goods should be subject to tariffs to offset the loss domestically.



I give the illegal Byrd Amendment. That is my my exact point, demanding illegal tariffs.

quote:

_sj_, you just cant blame workers and corporations for the legislation and foreign policy that has done a good job to help sink this city into its current economic condition? You're not Dianne Feinstein, are you? (smile)



Yes, I can because a day does not go by that someone on this forum, in the op-eds or on TV is demanding an illegal tariff be placed.

If the carrying these deficits were so bad for American Jobs why has the American Payroll increased during this time.

Explain how the American Economy actually shrinks during times of lower deficits and expands during times of higher deficits.

We live in the most desirable economic market in the world, deficits are not going away, sure we can limit them but that would require PERSONAL SAVINGS and INVESTMENTS and we all know how bad the American public is at that.

In fact, the reverse would happen if we had a surplus. You think the economy is bad, imagine what it would look like with a surplus. No demand for American built goods = no jobs.
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Lilpup
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Username: Lilpup

Post Number: 1943
Registered: 06-2004
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 11:02 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

You think the American job market is doing well? Then why have over 26,000 people applied for a scant 1,000 casino jobs?

And are you misunderstanding the trade deficit issue or being intentionally obfuscatory? Higher demand for American products both domestically (in place of imports) and overseas (in place of other countries products) is what will make the deficit go away. It's ass backward to say a trade surplus (we export more than we import) is undesireable.

(Message edited by lilpup on March 28, 2007)
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Skulker
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Username: Skulker

Post Number: 3729
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 11:04 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The full text is unavailable on line, but for the ninny's here wringing their hands, here is a very lucid article by Malcolm Gladwell. Turns out the unions had it right after all.....

quote:

The years just after the Second World War were a time of great industrial upheaval in the United States. Strikes were commonplace. Workers moved from one company to another. Runaway inflation was eroding the value of wages. In the uncertain nineteen-forties, in the wake of the Depression and the war, workers wanted security, and in 1949 the head of the Toledo, Ohio, local of the United Auto Workers, Richard Gosser, came up with a proposal. The workers of Toledo needed pensions. But, he said, the pension plan should be regional, spread across the many small auto-parts makers, electrical-appliance manufacturers, and plastics shops in the Toledo area. That way, if workers switched jobs they could take their pension credits with them, and if a company went bankrupt its workers’ retirement would be safe. Every company in the area, Gosser proposed, should pay ten cents an hour, per worker, into a centralized fund.
The business owners of Toledo reacted immediately. “They were terrified,” says Jennifer Klein, a labor historian at Yale University, who has written about the Toledo case. “They organized a trade association to stop the plan. In the business press, they actually said, ‘This idea might be efficient and rational. But it’s too dangerous.’ Some of the larger employers stepped forward and said, ‘We’ll offer you a company pension. Forget about that whole other idea.’ They took on the costs of setting up an individual company pension, at great expense, in order to head off what they saw as too much organized power for workers in the region.”
A year later, the same issue came up in Detroit. The president of General Motors at the time was Charles E. Wilson, known as Engine Charlie. Wilson was one of the highest-paid corporate executives in America, earning $586,100 (and paying, incidentally, $430,350 in taxes). He was in contract talks with Walter Reuther, the national president of the U.A.W. The two men had already agreed on a cost-of-living allowance. Now Wilson went one step further, and, for the first time, offered every G.M. employee health-care benefits and a pension.
Reuther had his doubts. He lived in a northwest Detroit bungalow, and drove a 1940 Chevrolet. His salary was ten thousand dollars a year. He was the son of a Debsian Socialist, worked for the Socialist Party during his college days, and went to the Soviet Union in the nineteen-thirties to teach peasants how to be auto machinists. His inclination was to fight for changes that benefitted every worker, not just those lucky enough to be employed by General Motors. In the nineteen-thirties, unions had launched a number of health-care plans, many of which cut across individual company and industry lines. In the nineteen-forties, they argued for expanding Social Security. In 1945, when President Truman first proposed national health insurance, they cheered. In 1947, when Ford offered its workers a pension, the union voted it down. The labor movement believed that the safest and most efficient way to provide insurance against ill health or old age was to spread the costs and risks of benefits over the biggest and most diverse group possible. Walter Reuther, as Nelson Lichtenstein argues in his definitive biography, believed that risk ought to be broadly collectivized. Charlie Wilson, on the other hand, felt the way the business leaders of Toledo did: that collectivization was a threat to the free market and to the autonomy of business owners. In his view, companies themselves ought to assume the risks of providing insurance.
America’s private pension system is now in crisis. Over the past few years, American taxpayers have been put at risk of assuming tens of billions of dollars of pension liabilities from once profitable companies. Hundreds of thousands of retired steelworkers and airline employees have seen health-care benefits that were promised to them by their employers vanish. General Motors, the country’s largest automaker, is between forty and fifty billion dollars behind in the money it needs to fulfill its health-care and pension promises. This crisis is sometimes portrayed as the result of corporate America’s excessive generosity in making promises to its workers. But when it comes to retirement, health, disability, and unemployment benefits there is nothing exceptional about the United States: it is average among industrialized countries—more generous than Australia, Canada, Ireland, and Italy, just behind Finland and the United Kingdom, and on a par with the Netherlands and Denmark. The difference is that in most countries the government, or large groups of companies, provides pensions and health insurance. The United States, by contrast, has over the past fifty years followed the lead of Charlie Wilson and the bosses of Toledo and made individual companies responsible for the care of their retirees. It is this fact, as much as any other, that explains the current crisis. In 1950, Charlie Wilson was wrong, and Walter Reuther was right.

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Skulker
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Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 11:06 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Pt 2
quote:

The key to understanding the pension business is something called the “dependency ratio,” and dependency ratios are best understood in the context of countries. In the past two decades, for instance, Ireland has gone from being one of the most economically backward countries in Western Europe to being one of the strongest: its growth rate has been roughly double that of the rest of Europe. There is no shortage of conventional explanations. Ireland joined the European Union. It opened up its markets. It invested well in education and economic infrastructure. It’s a politically stable country with a sophisticated, mobile workforce.
But, as the Harvard economists David Bloom and David Canning suggest in their study of the “Celtic Tiger,” of greater importance may have been a singular demographic fact. In 1979, restrictions on contraception that had been in place since Ireland’s founding were lifted, and the birth rate began to fall. In 1970, the average Irishwoman had 3.9 children. By the mid-nineteen-nineties, that number was less than two. As a result, when the Irish children born in the nineteen-sixties hit the workforce, there weren’t a lot of children in the generation just behind them. Ireland was suddenly free of the enormous social cost of supporting and educating and caring for a large dependent population. It was like a family of four in which, all of a sudden, the elder child is old enough to take care of her little brother and the mother can rejoin the workforce. Overnight, that family doubles its number of breadwinners and becomes much better off.
This relation between the number of people who aren’t of working age and the number of people who are is captured in the dependency ratio. In Ireland during the sixties, when contraception was illegal, there were ten people who were too old or too young to work for every fourteen people in a position to earn a paycheck. That meant that the country was spending a large percentage of its resources on caring for the young and the old. Last year, Ireland’s dependency ratio hit an all-time low: for every ten dependents, it had twenty-two people of working age. That change coincides precisely with the country’s extraordinary economic surge.
Demographers estimate that declines in dependency ratios are responsible for about a third of the East Asian economic miracle of the postwar era; this is a part of the world that, in the course of twenty-five years, saw its dependency ratio decline thirty-five per cent. Dependency ratios may also help answer the much-debated question of whether India or China has a brighter economic future. Right now, China is in the midst of what Joseph Chamie, the former director of the United Nations’ population division, calls the “sweet spot.” In the nineteen-sixties, China brought down its birth rate dramatically; those children are now grown up and in the workforce, and there is no similarly sized class of dependents behind them. India, on the other hand, reduced its birth rate much more slowly and has yet to hit the sweet spot. Its best years are ahead.
The logic of dependency ratios, of course, works equally powerfully in reverse. If your economy benefits by having a big bulge of working-age people, then your economy will have a harder time of it when that bulge generation retires, and there are relatively few workers to take their place. For China, the next few decades will be more difficult. “China will peak with a 1-to-2.6 dependency ratio between 2010 and 2015,” Bloom says. “But then it’s back to a little over 1-to-1.5 by 2050. That’s a pretty dramatic change. Thirty per cent of the Chinese population will be over sixty by 2050. That’s four hundred and thirty-two million people.” Demographers sometimes say that China is in a race to get rich before it gets old.
Economists have long paid attention to population growth, making the argument that the number of people in a country is either a good thing (spurring innovation) or a bad thing (depleting scarce resources). But an analysis of dependency ratios tells us that what’s critical is not just the growth of a population but its structure. “The introduction of demographics has reduced the need for the argument that there was something exceptional about East Asia or idiosyncratic to Africa,” Bloom and Canning write, in their study of the Irish economic miracle. “Once age-structure dynamics are introduced into an economic growth model, these regions are much closer to obeying common principles of economic growth.”
This is an important point. People have talked endlessly of Africa’s political and social and economic shortcomings and simultaneously of some magical cultural ingredient possessed by South Korea and Japan and Taiwan that has brought them success. But the truth is that sub-Saharan Africa has been mired in a debilitating 1-to-1 ratio for decades, and that proportion of dependency would frustrate and complicate economic development anywhere. Asia, meanwhile, has seen its demographic load lighten overwhelmingly in the past thirty years. Getting to a 1-to-2.5 ratio doesn’t make economic success inevitable. But, given a reasonably functional economic and political infrastructure, it certainly makes it a lot easier.
This demographic logic also applies to companies, since any employer that offers pensions and benefits to its employees has to deal with the consequences of its nonworker-to-worker ratio, just as a country does. An employer that promised, back in the nineteen-fifties, to pay for its employees’ health care when they were retired didn’t set aside the money for that while they were working. It just paid the bills as they came in: money generated by current workers was used to pay for the costs of taking care of past workers. Pensions worked roughly the same way. On the day a company set up a pension plan, it was immediately on the hook for all the years of service accumulated by employees up to that point: the worker who was sixty-four when the pension was started got a pension when he retired at sixty-five, even though he had been in the system only a year. That debt is called a “past service” obligation, and in some cases in the nineteen-forties and fifties the past-service obligations facing employers were huge. At Ford, the amount reportedly came to two hundred million dollars, or just under three thousand dollars per employee. At Bethlehem Steel, it came to four thousand dollars per worker.
Companies were required to put aside a little extra money every year to make up for that debt, with the hope of someday—twenty or thirty years down the line—becoming fully funded. In practice, though, that was difficult. Suppose that a company agrees to give its workers a pension of fifty dollars a month for every year of service. Several years later, after a round of contract negotiations, that multiple is raised to sixty dollars a month. That increase applies retroactively: now that company has a brand-new past-service obligation equal to another ten dollars for every month served by its wage employees. Or suppose the stock market goes into decline or interest rates fall, and the company discovers that its pension plan has less money than it had expected. Now it’s behind again: it has to go back to using the money generated by current workers in order to take care of the costs of past workers. “You start off in the hole,” Steven Sass, a pension expert at Boston College, says. “And the problem in these plans is that it’s very difficult to dig your way out.”
Charlie Wilson’s promise to his workers, then, contained an audacious assumption about G.M.’s dependency ratio: that the company would always have enough active workers to cover the costs of its retired workers—that it would always be like Ireland, and never like sub-Saharan Africa. Wilson’s promise, in other words, was actually a gamble. Is it any wonder that the prospect of private pensions made people like Walter Reuther so nervous?
The most influential management theorist of the twentieth century was Peter Drucker, who, in 1950, wrote an extraordinarily prescient article for Harper’s entitled “The Mirage of Pensions.” It ought to be reprinted for every steelworker, airline mechanic, and autoworker who is worried about his retirement. Drucker simply couldn’t see how the pension plans on the table at companies like G.M. could ever work. “For such a plan to give real security, the financial strength of the company and its economic success must be reasonably secure for the next forty years,” Drucker wrote. “But is there any one company or any one industry whose future can be predicted with certainty for even ten years ahead?” He concluded, “The recent pension plans thus offer no more security against the big bad wolf of old age than the little piggy’s house of straw.”

In the mid-nineteen-fifties, the largest steel mill in the world was at Sparrows Point, just east of Baltimore, on the Chesapeake Bay. It was owned by Bethlehem Steel, one of the nation’s grandest industrial enterprises. The steel for the Golden Gate Bridge came from Sparrows Point, as did the cables for the George Washington Bridge, and the materials for countless guns and planes and ships that helped win both world wars. Sparrows Point, a so-called integrated mill, used a method of making steel that dated back to the nineteenth century. Coke and iron, the raw materials, were combined in a blast furnace to make liquid pig iron. The pig iron was poured into a vast oven, known as an open-hearth furnace, to make molten steel. The steel was poured into pots to make ingots. The ingots were cooled, reheated, and fed into a half-mile-long rolling mill and turned into semi-finished shapes, which eventually became girders for the construction industry or wafer-thin sheets for beer cans or galvanized panels for the automobile industry. Open-hearth steelmaking was expensive and time-consuming. It required great amounts of energy, water, and space. Sparrows Point stretched four miles from one end to the other. Most important, it required lots and lots of people. Sparrows Point, at its height, employed tens of thousands of them. As Mark Reutter demonstrates in “Making Steel,” his comprehensive history of Sparrows Point, it was not just a steel mill. It was a city.
In 1956, Eugene Grace, the head of Bethlehem Steel, was the country’s best- paid executive. Eleven of the country’s eighteen top-earning executives that year, in fact, worked for Bethlehem Steel. In 1955, when the American Iron and Steel Institute had its annual meeting, at the Waldorf-Astoria, in New York, the No. 2 at Bethlehem Steel, Arthur Homer, made a bold forecast: domestic demand for steel, he said, would increase by fifty per cent over the next fifteen years. “As someone has said, the American people are wanters,” he told the audience of twelve hundred industry executives. “Their wants are going to require a great deal of steel.”
But Big Steel didn’t get bigger. It got smaller. Imports began to take a larger and larger share of the American steel market. The growing use of aluminum, concrete, and plastic cut deeply into the demand for steel. And the steelmaking process changed. Instead of laboriously making steel from scratch, with coke and iron ore, factories increasingly just melted down scrap metal. The open-hearth furnace was replaced with the basic oxygen furnace, which could make the same amount of steel in about a tenth of the time. Steelmakers switched to continuous casting, which meant that you skipped the ingot phase altogether and poured your steel products directly out of the furnace. As a result, steelmakers like Bethlehem were no longer hiring young workers to replace the people who retired. They were laying people off by the thousands. But every time they laid off another employee they turned a money-making steelworker into a money-losing retiree—and their dependency ratio got a little worse. According to Reutter, Bethlehem had a hundred and sixty-four thousand workers in 1957. By the mid-to-late-nineteen-eighties, it was down to thirty-five thousand workers, and employment at Sparrows Point had fallen to seventy-nine hundred. In 2001, Bethlehem, just shy of its hundredth birthday, declared bankruptcy. It had twelve thousand active employees and ninety thousand retirees and their spouses drawing benefits. It had reached what might be a record-setting dependency ratio of 7.5 pensioners for every worker.
What happened to Bethlehem, of course, is what happened throughout American industry in the postwar period. Technology led to great advances in productivity, so that when the bulge of workers hired in the middle of the century retired and began drawing pensions, there was no one replacing them in the workforce. General Motors today makes more cars and trucks than it did in the early nineteen-sixties, but it does so with about a third of the employees. In 1962, G.M. had four hundred and sixty-four thousand U.S. employees and was paying benefits to forty thousand retirees and their spouses, for a dependency ratio of one pensioner to 11.6 employees. Last year, it had a hundred and forty-one thousand workers and paid benefits to four hundred and fifty-three thousand retirees, for a dependency ratio of 3.2 to 1.

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Skulker
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Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 11:14 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Pt 3
quote:

Looking at General Motors and the old-line steel companies in demographic terms substantially changes the way we understand their problems. It is a commonplace assumption, for instance, that they were undone by overly generous union contracts. But, when dependency ratios start getting up into the 3-to-1 to 7-to-1 range, the issue is not so much what you are paying each dependent as how many dependents you are paying. “There is this notion that there is a Cadillac being provided to all these retirees,” Ron Bloom, a senior official at the United Steelworkers, says. “It’s not true. The truth is seventy-five-year-old widows living on less than three hundred dollars to four hundred dollars a month. It’s just that there’s a lot of them.”
A second common assumption is that fading industrial giants like G.M. and Bethlehem are victims of their own managerial incompetence. In various ways, they undoubtedly are. But, with respect to the staggering burden of benefit obligations, what got them in trouble isn’t what they did wrong; it is what they did right. They got in trouble in the nineteen-nineties because they were around in the nineteen-fifties—and survived to pay for the retirement of the workers they hired forty years ago. They got in trouble because they innovated, and became more efficient in their use of labor.
“We are making as much steel as we made thirty years ago with twenty-five per cent of the workforce,” Michael Locker, a steel-industry consultant, says. “And it is a much higher quality of steel, too. There is simply no comparison. That change recasts the industry and it recasts the workforce. You get this enormous bulge. It’s abnormal. It’s not predicted, and it’s not funded. Is that the fault of the steelworkers? Is that the fault of the companies?”
Here, surely, is the absurdity of a system in which individual employers are responsible for providing their own employee benefits. It penalizes companies for doing what they ought to do. General Motors, by American standards, has an old workforce: its average worker is much older than, say, the average worker at Google. That has an immediate effect: health-care costs are a linear function of age. The average cost of health insurance for an employee between the ages of thirty-five and thirty-nine is $3,759 a year, and for someone between the ages of sixty and sixty-four it is $7,622. This goes a long way toward explaining why G.M. has an estimated sixty-two billion dollars in health-care liabilities. The current arrangement discourages employers from hiring or retaining older workers. But don’t we want companies to retain older workers—to hire on the basis of ability and not age? In fact, a system in which companies shoulder their own benefits is ultimately a system that penalizes companies for offering any benefits at all. Many employers have simply decided to let their workers fend for themselves. Given what has so publicly and disastrously happened to companies like General Motors, can you blame them?
Or consider the continuous round of discounts and rebates that General Motors—a company that lost $8.6 billion last year—has been offering to customers. If you bought a Chevy Tahoe this summer, G.M. would give you zero-per-cent financing, or six thousand dollars cash back. Surely, if you are losing money on every car you sell, as G.M. is, cutting car prices still further in order to boost sales doesn’t make any sense. It’s like the old Borsht-belt joke about the haberdasher who lost money on every hat he made but figured he’d make up the difference on volume. The economically rational thing for G.M. to do would be to restructure, and sell fewer cars at a higher profit margin—and that’s what G.M. tried to do this summer, announcing plans to shutter plants and buy out the contracts of thirty-five thousand workers. But buyouts, which turn active workers into pensioners, only worsen the company’s dependency ratio. Last year, G.M. covered the costs of its four hundred and fifty-three thousand retirees and their dependents with the revenue from 4.5 million cars and trucks. How is G.M. better off covering the costs of four hundred and eighty-eighty thousand dependents with the revenue from, say, 4.2 million cars and trucks? This is the impossible predicament facing the company’s C.E.O., Rick Wagoner. Demographic logic requires him to sell more cars and hire more workers; financial logic requires him to sell fewer cars and hire fewer workers.
Under the circumstances, one of the great mysteries of contemporary American politics is why Wagoner isn’t the nation’s leading proponent of universal health care and expanded social welfare. That’s the only way out of G.M.’s dilemma. But, from Wagoner’s reticence on the issue, you’d think that it was still 1950, or that Wagoner believes he’s the Prime Minister of Ireland. “One thing I’ve learned is that corporate America has got much more class solidarity than we do—meaning union people,” the U.S.W.’s Ron Bloom says. “They really are afraid of getting thrown out of their country clubs, even though their objective ought to be maximizing value for their shareholders.”
David Bloom, the Harvard economist, once did a calculation in which he combined the dependency ratios of Africa and Western Europe. He found that they fit together almost perfectly; that is, Africa has plenty of young people and not a lot of older people and Western Europe has plenty of old people and not a lot of young people, and if you combine the two you have an even distribution of old and young. “It makes you think that if there is more international migration, that could smooth things out,” Bloom said.
Of course, you can’t take the populations of different countries and different cultures and simply merge them, no matter how much demographic sense that might make. But you can do that with companies within an economy. If the retiree obligations of Bethlehem Steel had been pooled with those of the much younger industries that supplanted steel—aluminum, say, or plastic—Bethlehem Steel might have made it. If you combined the obligations of G.M., with its four hundred and fifty-three thousand retirees, and the American manufacturing operations of Toyota, with a mere two hundred and fifty-eight retirees, Toyota could help G.M. shoulder its burden, and thirty or forty years from now—when those G.M. retirees are dead and Toyota’s now youthful workforce has turned gray—G.M. could return the favor. For that matter, if you pooled the obligations of every employer in the country, no company would go bankrupt just because it happened to employ older people, or it happened to have been around for a while, or it happened to have made the transformation from open-hearth furnaces and ingot-making to basic oxygen furnaces and continuous casting. This is what Walter Reuther and the other union heads understood more than fifty years ago: that in the free-market system it makes little sense for the burdens of insurance to be borne by one company. If the risks of providing for health care and old-age pensions are shared by all of us, then companies can succeed or fail based on what they do and not on the number of their retirees.

When Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy, it owed about four billion dollars to its pension plan, and had another three billion dollars in unmet health-care obligations. Two years later, in 2003, the pension fund was terminated and handed over to the federal government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The assets of the company—Sparrows Point and a handful of other steel mills in the Midwest—were sold to the New York-based investor Wilbur Ross.
Ross acted quickly. He set up a small trust fund to help defray Bethlehem’s unmet retiree health-care costs, cut a deal with the union to streamline work rules, put in place a new 401(k) savings plan—and then started over. The new Bethlehem Steel had a dependency ratio of 0 to 1. Within about six months, it was profitable. The main problem with the American steel business wasn’t the steel business, Ross showed. It was all the things that had nothing to do with the steel business.
Not long ago, Ross sat in his sparse midtown office and explained what he had learned from his rescue of Bethlehem. Ross is in his sixties, a Yale- and Harvard-educated patrician with small rectangular glasses and impeccable manners. Outside his office, by the elevator, was a large sculpture of a bull, papered over from head to hoof with stock tables.
“When we showed up to the Bethlehem board to approve the deal, they had an army of people there,” Ross said. “The whole board was there, the whole senior management was there, people from Credit Suisse and Greenhill were there. They must have had about fifty or sixty people there for a deal that was already done. So my partner and I—just the two of us—show up, and they say, ‘Well, we should wait for the rest of your team.’ And we said, ‘There is no rest of the team, there is just the two of us.’ It said the whole thing right there.”
Ross isn’t a fan of old-style pensions, because they make it impossible to run a company efficiently. “When a company gets in trouble and restructures,” he said, those underfunded pension funds “will eat it alive.” And how much sense does employer-provided health insurance make? Bethlehem made promises to its employees, years ago, to give them medical insurance in exchange for their labor, and when the company ran into trouble those promises simply evaporated. “Every country against which we compete has universal health care,” he said. “That means we probably face a fifteen-per-cent cost disadvantage versus foreigners for no other reason than historical accident. . . . The randomness of our system is just not going to work.”
This is what Walter Reuther believed. He went along with Wilson’s scheme in 1950 because he thought that agreeing with Wilson was the surest way of getting Wilson and the other captains of industry to agree with him. “Reuther and his brain trust had a theory of capitalism,” Nelson Lichtenstein, the Reuther biographer, says. “It was: If we force G.M. to pay extra, we can create an incentive for G.M. to join our side.” Reuther believed, in other words, that when American corporations reached the point where they couldn’t make their business more efficient without making it less profitable, when their dependency ratios soared to unimaginable heights, when they got tens of billions behind in their health-care obligations, when the cost of carrying thou-sands of retirees forced them to stare bankruptcy in the face, they would come around to the idea that the markets work best when the burdens of benefits are broadly shared. It has taken half a century, but the world may finally be catching up with Walter Reuther.



If you bothered to read this article, congratulations you are now smarter and able to speak more clearly about the demise of US manufacturing.

Trade tarrifs and knee jerk protectionism are the bailiwick of folks with pea brains...those are counterproductive policies that will not address the structural issues resulting from very bad mistakes made decades ago.
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_sj_
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Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 11:24 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

You think the American job market is doing well? Then why have over 26,000 people applied for a scant 1,000 casino jobs?



Those numbers show nothing more than a job at the casino is a job in demand to those 26,000 people

quote:

And are you misunderstanding the trade deficit issue or being intentionally obfuscatory? Higher demand for American products both domestically (in place of imports) and overseas (in place of other countries products) is what will make the deficit go away. It's ass backward to say a trade surplus (we export more than we import) is undesireable.



If the US carried a Trade Surplus the reason would be that people are not purchasing American Goods, if they are not purchasing these goods, then jobs are lost. If jobs are lost and the goods are not selling investment disappears. Job loss and net capital loss are not a desired economic situation. We will always carry some sort of deficit with countries as we have largest free market economy in the world. Even though we are the largest we have not maximized our economy to its fullest. And that is what is needed. And to maximize the economy takes investment and we as American do not invest we purchase with credit.

Don't get me wrong, the US carring such large debt(Trade and budget) is a very bad situation both domestically and world wide, but blaming the trade deficits on your problems is illogical and ill-conceived.

This is a lot more complicated than just Deficit bad, surplus good. Do you know what China is doing with that surplus? Buying Treasuries Bonds so Bush can finance his wars. Which today are bad investments as the dollar is losing value.

If the deficit were to shrink China could call in those bonds and guess what, that would do more damage than all of us could possibly comprehend.

(Message edited by _sj_ on March 28, 2007)
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_sj_
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Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 11:35 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Skulker, you know what is funny about that article is the UAW now has the exact opposite viewpoint.
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Lilpup
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Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 11:38 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

quote:

If the US carried a Trade Surplus the reason would be that people are not purchasing American Goods


you have that backwards
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_sj_
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Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 12:03 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

By definition yes, but not in this case. Just because you increase exports those items does not equal increased demand nor increased revenue.

For example

quote:

In Mexico in 1995 and more recently in South Korea and other East Asian countries, trade balances flipped overnight from deficit to surplus because of plunging domestic demand and the flight of foreign capital. In Japan today, a soaring trade surplus has been accompanied by record high unemployment.



You want to achieve trading balances, a scale tipped to far in either direction causes dire consequences.

(Message edited by _sj_ on March 28, 2007)
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Danny
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Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 12:41 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Skulker, GOOD RESEARCH! that's why how our American unions are not living up the socialist cause against the Imperialist competition and it hit very hard in Detroit and the rust belt cities.
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7milekid
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Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 2:42 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

It will all work out where we will be forced to work in those conditions and China will be like we are now! then we will be able to get jobs for a dollar an hour, YES!
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Dfd
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Posted on Wednesday, April 04, 2007 - 6:53 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

If manufacturing isn't what it once was, what about turning the usable buildings in town into colleges or branches of other universities. That might be an ongoing business.
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Eastsidedame
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Posted on Wednesday, April 04, 2007 - 9:00 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Great idea, Dfd, except....

Have you seen the cost of college tuition, lately? You (or your parents) gotta work somewhere to pay for that tuition. I worked 3 jobs while I was at WSU...and that was 25 years ago, when it was $35.00 a credit hour. Today, it's more like $300/per.

What might really attract out-of-staters, though: How about a world-class building trades college? Detroit would be a perfect proving ground.
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Dfd
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Posted on Wednesday, April 04, 2007 - 10:36 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Yeah, I didn't really know all the particulars, although my son is finishing his degree at a state school, and my daughter is just getting ready to start at a private school this fall. (Thank God for academic and soccer scholarships!)
I just thought that education is always going to be needed. Plus some schools have big neighborhood volunteer programs.
I like the building trades idea. Lots of potential.
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Eastsidedame
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Posted on Thursday, April 05, 2007 - 12:29 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

On both ends:

Your kids are lucky to have scholarships; many more are qualified, but there aren't enough to go around. In the very near future, a college education will be out of reach for a staggering number of students. Also, not everyone is academically inclined or highly computer-oriented. It's a lucrative career choice for the well-trained. If you've priced plumbers lately, you know what I mean.

Plus:

You're always going to need plumbers, electricians, roofers, etc. In reading the roofing post, it seems as though it's tough to get local craftspeople who can work on vintage buildings. We're importing engineers on H-1B visas all the time; the government seems to encourage it. And what does the US get in return besides one worker for a limited time?

We can get master craftspeople from Europe to come in and teach a new generation of tradespeople. Think of all the plaster work that needs to be replaced, the brickwork repaired, the custom mouldings to be matched, the ironwork...the needs are great. You'd be hard-pressed nowadays to find someone who can replicate these literal works of art. The added bonus is that Americans will be taught new, old-world skills and can teach future students.

When the Statue of Liberty was restored, Lee Iacocca (the head of the project) had to import workers from France to do the copper repoussé inside the statue. He could not find anyone in the entire country to execute this lost skill! And that was 20 years ago.

Just as the dental school will work on your teeth, or a beauty school will trim your hair for a cut rate, so will the school fix your house under the supervision of an instructor-foreman and guarantee the work. Would you consider that option? I sure would! And it's revenue-generating as well.

Imagine students renovating a reasonably sized abandoned theater, building or house as a graduating class project! I'm sure the unions would love to get on board with this as well. If it was organized properly, it could be the Harvard of building trades. Now, that would be making something.

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