Made in America

[AHNC]

There is much discussion today, everyday really about this topic. I would strongly recommend that everyone read to the New York Sunday Times 1/22/12 issues article "How US Lost Out on iPhone Work" Outstanding article. Depressing, but outstanding reporting.

 

[AHNC]

link


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/b...queezed-middle-class.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

 

[UWAdventurer]

Very interesting, thanks for posting the link.

 

[schoolsout]

Meanwhile, Apple continues to take advantage of slave labor...

Apple's Foreign Suppliers Demonstrate Widespread Scamming and Horrific Abuse of Employees | | AlterNet

 

[Beltzington]

This highlights the point I have been trying to convince several friends of since 2006 and the reason why the trickle-down economy and American corporations create American jobs don't hold water. One, Corporations are in business to make money for the shareholders and even during recent periods of huge profits they outsourced and hired to and from other countries. Two, emerging markets and core company growth (profits) are no longer in the US but overseas.

This is the new world and won't and should not be changed by government policy. My beef is our taxation policy is still rewarding American corporations and stock holders for the old world system. Corporations and stockholders want to play the capitalism card, let them pay for the chips and be taxed accordingly based on the costs of infrastructure, military, etc. and the profits gained from doing business overseas and let them fail or succeed on their business acuity not cry for and accept bailouts when they are no longer the "smartest folks" in the room.

American customers are best served by buying based on value as sales are the only metric which will drive changes in the quality, price and type products companies produce.

Good topic and hopefully we can keep the right and left fringe comments to a minimum as unfortunately most of us have had more than a lifetime's quota.

 

[raasd]

It was a great article. I recently got in a discussion with a friend about American manufactuting. His belief is that regulations and the need for environmental impact studies make building a factory too much of a hassle. He just didn't get it. Why pay American workers minimum wage ($7.25/hour) when you can pay asian workers $17/day for 12 hr days. Its simply the labor cost. Some people just don't understand why it doesn't matter how many tax breaks you give major corporations, they won't bring those jobs back and reduce profits.

 

[MessickFarmEqu]

Its simply the labor cost.

its not always the labor cost. Moden manufacturing has things to the point that the amount of labor in a product is increadibly small. A robot does not cost any more to operate in the US than it does in China.

The problem is our government. As a business owner, I can't begin to tell you the difficutly of just being open for business. Government at every level demands control and its slowing us down and adding massive inefficiencies to our simple retail business.

Another is the labor force. I'm becomming increasingly convinced that Americans don't what certian kinds of jobs. Its been very clear as we've seen people in the farming community having a nearly impossible time finding Americans to work on farms when the people with 'questionable' documentation have left.

Like many political issues, if we'd just address ALL the factors in small ways rather than taking one aspect of a problem and creating a national riot about it we could chip away at these things. But we won't.

 

[Volfandt]

Interesting topic.
We've faced the enemy and it is we.....

Messick is right, the problem has a multi front, and theres no one single fix. That said we must chip away at it to survive. All could probably be traced back to the start of our great society nanny state. Temporary fixes became permanent, greed escalated and our work ethic decreased, well manual work ethic if you will.
Funny we take it out on the new segment of our society that actually works... Document them and tax them and that problem dininishes drastically....

More gov is not the answer, it's one of the major problems, if not THE major problem.

No matter what course we take, it's going to painful. No baby wants to ween and I believe we're taxed enough already. Theres got to be middle ground...

re. the OP topic. I've had the pleasure of visiting the far east, middle east and Europe via Uncle Sam and while I had respect for the prople of the country's I visited, theres NO place like home boys & girls .......

Dave

 

[houstonscott]

Tired of the southern stuff. The two most backwards places I have traveled to are silicon valley and NYC. Both are yesterday cities and places.

HS

 

[raasd]

I'm a business owner as well and can speak to the truth that a number of people just don't have the work ethic that I was taught, and that is why farming and construction have turned to people with "questionable" citizenship.

Government regulation is not the problem, it's the lack of consistency and commen sense in regulation. We recently had some new rules put in place by our state health department on our busines. I understood the reasoning behind the rules and their value. I, along with some other business owners, cooperated with the state to get the rules written so that they were understandable and make sense. It seems that the stance business wants to take is that all regulation is bad and lets fight it all no matter what. If business leaders would only be more cooperative, understanding that if we worked together we could get good regulations, that make sense, are not overburdensome, and benefit everyone.

Manufacturers aren't going to invest in unknown robot technology, possibly costing millions to develop and millions more to produce and operate, when you can get such low manufacturing costs going overseas. I have a friend that has a company producing ATV accessories and just moved his manufacturing overseas. He was having production done at a small shop in SD, moved it overseas and cut his production costs by more than half. The shop in the USA was already up and running so no regulation barriers to starting up.

 

[gabrichter]

[ Manufacturers aren't going to invest in unknown robot technology, possibly costing millions to develop and millions more to produce and operate, when you can get such low manufacturing costs going overseas. I have a friend that has a company producing ATV accessories and just moved his manufacturing overseas. He was having production done at a small shop in SD, moved it overseas and cut his production costs by more than half. The shop in the USA was already up and running so no regulation barriers to starting up.[/QUOTE]

That's sad to see a SD company going overseas more than likely only to put that reduction of cost by more than half in his pocket not shared with his SD employees. Typical SD business man.

 

[MasseyWV]

Made in America is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Unfortunately, junk made in China and other third world countries seems to be here to stay.

 

[raasd]

He didn't have any employees, all contracted work. He is a one man business, design and prototype on his own. He is trying to build his business and the savings he gets by going overseas allows him to invest more into building the business. I'm not sure what you mean by "Typical SD business man", he actually lives in Illinois. Does that make a difference? I'm a SD business man and don't outsource, does that make me atypical?

 

[crazyal]

Our labor costs are a large portion of our over all costs but the regulations kill us. Just look at the laws for waste and what the government calls toxic. If something you produce has anything that falls under the definition "toxic" you own it until the day your company is terminated. Sounds sort of reasonable until you get into the details.

Someone finds an illegal dump and they find anything with your name on it and you own the whole dump. It could have been a 55 gallon drum that your company once used to hold rainwater and was recycled and they painted over your name you own everything in that site (it's gets split between every company they can tie to the site). So just to properly get rid of waste costs a fortune.

And that's just one small aspect. When you add up the higher cost of everything from electricity to taxes, it's amazing that anything gets built in this country. On the other hand when you can just move your business to China and all of your costs drop by huge percentages it becomes a no brainer. What's even worse is the thought that the US should tax a companies profit they made on a product built overseas and sold overseas. That's just begging the company to move it's HQ overseas removing even more ties to the US.

 

[powerpace]

Back in the Sixty's the farm my Uncle managed raised pole beans, strawberrys, and other crops. The Pole beans about 80 acres, Strawberrys 100 acres. Every summer buses from Portland, and Salem, Oregon would brings kids and adults to the fields to harvest. Four to six buses and cars from the local area loaded with kids and parents would arrive at about 7:00 AM.

Money for school clothes and to help the family survive. Work would usually be done by 2:00PM. No one whining about how hard it was or "I want to be home watching TV". There wasn't much on anyway, no Ipods, xboxes, cell phones, personal computers, no Nikes. The Realistic brand pocket radio I bought with my money was "not going to catch on my Dad would say".

Sometime in the late Sixty's child labor laws were enacted. No one under 12 years old in the fields. That was the end of familys going to the fields and participating in a learning experience. Work ethics didn't seem to mean much after that. The kids had no example or incentive to go to work.

I was "management" as much as a 14 year old could be. Weighing sacks of green beans and punching tickets for crates of berries.

We always had Mexicans working in the fields but they were the only one's after the Child Labor law prevented the younger kids from being there.

 

[Grateful11]

Went to buy a step ladder the other day and Home Depot carries Werner brand, every single ladder from a $39 to the $385. one was made in Mexico. Ours was stolen off our carport a while ago.

Needed some nails for the Framing Nailer and a couple boxes of 8's and 16's, every box including the 4000 3" Framing nails were made by Grip-Rite in UAE(United Arab Emirates), picked up a 16 pack of incandescent light bulbs for $3, made in Poland. It never stops, I still remember what Ross Perot said about that big sucking sound of jobs leaving the US, that's one reason why I voted for him. Wife wanted me to go into a recently opened Rose's Dept. store and I was looking at where stuff was made and picked one of old style woven throw rugs like my grandparents used to use at door and guess what it was made in USA and the price $1, if they can make that rug here for a $1 we should be able to make our own frickin' nails.

 

[Monster5601]

It was a great article. I recently got in a discussion with a friend about American manufactuting. His belief is that regulations and the need for environmental impact studies make building a factory too much of a hassle. He just didn't get it.

He got it right. Our labor cost are higher than other countries but when you look at the percentage of labor it takes to make a product, well, it usually isn't that much.

As other posts have said, we are the enemy, we have regulated and taxed ourselves out of business.

The company I work for moved some of our electronic manufacturing (from Tampa) to Mexico. The machines make all of the electronics and just a few people to watch over the machines. Labor per unit is fractional. Why Mexico, not because of labor costs, because of regulations and taxes. Our company first tried to expand our manufacturing plant in Tampa but the new regualtions we had to meet chased us out. Even though we now have to truck the electronics to automotive assembly plants all over the US and Canada from Mexico, it is still much less expensive.

 

[MessickFarmEqu]

I'll second what everyone is saying. The government is a huge burden on business. Labor savings is really a nominal reason for fleeing. I've posted this before, but we've been struggling to build a new building for 5+ years. We've thrown away nearly a hundred grand so far simply on engineering fee's, plans, blah, blah, blah and still have not broken ground yet. Even if your a business that wants to grow and wants to put people to work, the government is standing in the way.

 

[psdx]

Made in America is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Unfortunately, junk made in China and other third world countries seems to be here to stay.

The company I work for moved some of our electronic manufacturing (from Tampa) to Mexico. The machines make all of the electronics and just a few people to watch over the machines. Labor per unit is fractional. Why Mexico, not because of labor costs, because of regulations and taxes. Our company first tried to expand our manufacturing plant in Tampa but the new regualtions we had to meet chased us out. Even though we now have to truck the electronics to automotive assembly plants all over the US and Canada from Mexico, it is still much less expensive.

I'll second what everyone is saying. The government is a huge burden on business.

Taxes are a huge reason for the jobs going abroad. If you ran the manufacturing (or the call center) arm of a business (with a responsibility to share-owners) and you could have the profit from operations taxed at 35%, or at 15% - which would you choose?

The world has gotten smaller, and the US-based business are not a captive audience anymore. The US businesses have to compete globally with other companies that aren't subjected to all the taxes and regulations they have here. So they either adapt, or perish. Adaptation can mean other creative ways to reduce cost and/or improve productivity, but in many cases it simply means the export of jobs.

Messick is right. The government burden from regulation (and taxes - my addition) is holding us back. These factors tend to restrict the growth of business here and accelerate the development of jobs in locations where the costs are lower. Years ago, we saw individual states competing for business by attempting to create a favorable business climate. More recently, that has shifted to a global proposition, and it's countries - not states. The book called, "Who Moved My Cheese" comes to mind.

 

[Gator6x4]

I'll second what everyone is saying. The government is a huge burden on business. Labor savings is really a nominal reason for fleeing. I've posted this before, but we've been struggling to build a new building for 5+ years. We've thrown away nearly a hundred grand so far simply on engineering fee's, plans, blah, blah, blah and still have not broken ground yet. Even if your a business that wants to grow and wants to put people to work, the government is standing in the way.

I think the answer is simple. Enact one law listing what rules, regulations and EPA guideline a business must follow. Require a business to post a bond that will correct all problems he creates and not pass the cost of clean up and recovery on to the tax payers. Let him open the doors and suffer the results when he/she takes short cuts. Make prison terms mandatory and filing bankruptcy not and out option. We have had enough "Love Canals" and "Copper Field" "Super Fund" Tax Payer Clean Ups.