[Velvet]

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan

Yes I did, and the administrators helped by making it a 2 week mandatory go stand in the corner.

And you brought back that lovely dog too.

[Nucky]

I was Made In America. I outlasted the implied warranty by far.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan

Well, my take is that we have prayed at the god of money for many decades. We raised our children to dream of getting rich and retiring early. EVERYTHING in this country is about making a fast buck. Bill Maher had a good "New Rules" last week pointing out how it is almost impossible to get any big projects done in this country because everyone wants to make some "under the table".

A lot of people blame outsourcing, but the fact is American's are addicted to cheap. Wall Street demands companies make quarterly goals that are set by money managers who have never worked for a living. Let a company miss money managers projections and the company's stock will tank. Not because the company did something wrong, BUt, because what they did right was not what the money manager wanted them to do.

Personally, I think most of our country's "issues" at this moment all have a root cause of making fast easy money no matter what the cost to our country.

True that! And WALL ST. and corporate managers tend to have a ONE quarter time-horizons on their decisions. Japan and some European countries have business leaders the have 5-year plans. Japan uses a "Circle of Management" philosophy that they got from a book written (probably 1950) in the US, but was ignored. It means that upper management MUST pay attention to the lowest line workers because they are close to the action and therefore, the most knowledgeable.
That RARELY happens in the US, which adopted a top-down approach like the US military after its success in WW2. Last time I checked Japanese CEOs were considered GREEDY if they made more than 10 to 15 times more than their average line workers. Compare that to US CEOs. And then, even realize that it is the reason why the average person does NOT even realize how and why the whole US wealth gap problem has developed. And why it may be impossible to reverse!

[chuggmeister]

Example?

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by Topspinmo

But. Will you care when robots eliminates cashiers jobs? Well, not now right?

So here's what happens when the self-service cash registers came:

1. You need an entire manufacturer to make those machines, from the coder of the program, to the frame the machine sits in, the trucks that deliver the machines. So that's a lot of new employees. Global, yes. Some in America, some in other countries. It's a global project.

2. You need a sales force to convince stores to use them. That's definitely American employees, there.

3. You need people who are trained in repairing these machines, that never existed before. So you'll need to hire a contractor, which means more new employees. Definitely American, they won't be flying in from Japan to fix the register at the Winn Dixie.

4. You need AT LEAST one dedicated employee in the store, every shift that the store is open to the public, available to help Mrs. Smith who thought she was supposed to stuff all the coupons in the slot at the same time, and now she isn't getting her discounts and the machine won't let her leave til she deposits one coupon at a time so the machine can count the quantity of coupons and compare it to the quantity of coupons scanned. And to change the receipt tape when it runs low. And to show Mr. Jones how to turn up the volume of the fake machine lady who recites the price of what he just bought. And bag the groceries for Miss Hines, who always demands that people help her in the self-serve aisle and refuses to just go to the normal cashiers.

and so on, and so forth.

Yes, that store might need to not hire a couple of people once a couple existing employees retire. But the cash register industry has hired thousands of people who might otherwise have been unemployed. And again - this is a global effort, so yes there are new American employees, and new Chinese employees, new German employees, some in India, maybe the material for the rubber gaskets came from Thailand or Indonesia, thus requiring more rubber-tree-processors there.

[jdulej]

Originally Posted by jimjamuser

True that! And WALL ST. and corporate managers tend to have a ONE quarter time-horizons on their decisions. Japan and some European countries have business leaders the have 5-year plans. Japan uses a "Circle of Management" philosophy that they got from a book written (probably 1950) in the US, but was ignored. It means that upper management MUST pay attention to the lowest line workers because they are close to the action and therefore, the most knowledgeable.
That RARELY happens in the US, which adopted a top-down approach like the US military after its success in WW2. Last time I checked Japanese CEOs were considered GREEDY if they made more than 10 to 15 times more than their average line workers. Compare that to US CEOs. And then, even realize that it is the reason why the average person does NOT even realize how and why the whole US wealth gap problem has developed. And why it may be impossible to reverse!

I have always been amazed and confused by the reaction "normal" people have to any proposal to somehow make the 1% (really more like the .1%) pay their fair share. After all, they have the most to lose and get the most benefit from the government. Who wields the most power over congress and the pres - you and me or Jeff Bezos, the Kardashians, etc?
As an example - when AOC (yes, that AOC) suggested adding an additional tax bracket that kicked in only AFTER income passed $50,000,000 for a year (fifty million) you would have thought the world was ending. We have 7 brackets thanks to the Ryan/Trump tax give away, why does adding one more mean the end of America?

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by Billy1

Americans should be willing to pay what ever price American manufacturers want to charge, patriotism.

You should be willing to pay everyone a wage that allows them to afford to pay whatever price American manufacturers want to charge.

[jdulej]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

You should be willing to pay everyone a wage that allows them to afford to pay whatever price American manufacturers want to charge.

Agree!

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan

Yup, true. And with intercontinental commerce on the rise, we can not compete. We need to rethink what we do and how we do it. I personally think Elon Musk is showing us the way. His competitors around the globe (space, cars, etc) are trying to figure out how to catch up, and lots of negative misinformation is spread about him and his companies because they can't compete with the truth. He does crazy sh!t and does it faster and better than anyone. He is not motivated at getting rich, all his profits go into his pet project (SpaceX to Mars Colony). He wants to make things better for others.

A long time ago, people worked hard, saved, and tried to make a better life for their kids. It seems that is no longer a trendy thing to do. Today is "I got mine, screw you".

It is not a matter of people NOT being willing to work. They have just had their ambition to better the next generation beaten out of them. The ladders for upward mobility have been burned up by things like systemic elimination of Unions, the artificial difficulty for some groups to become homeowners, constant competition from legal and illegal immigrants and a "greed is good" mantra instead of a "teamwork and a rising tide lifts ALL boats approach. There are MANY other reasons like, what are all the lobbyists REALLY contributing to society? Maybe they need to be boiled in oil? (Just joking!)
How about limiting the size of farms and ranches? How about turning the clock of tax policy back to the 1950s that people today agree were superior in many ways Sociologically (not Scientifically).
Made in America was a big part of the healthy attitudes and social equality enjoyed by Americans in the 1950s. Also, foreign countries had not YET infected Americans with LETHAL drugs like beginning in the (about) the 1980s and continuing and getting worse today.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by rlcooper70

You are now seeing that manufacturing is moving back to the US in some fields .. automation makes it cheap enough anywhere. And we have seen supply chain disruptions get the attention of our leaders finally. Intel is building a $30 billion manufacturing plant for high end chips because we are worried China will take over Taiwan where all the high end chips are made. You will see changes over the next few years and globalization and monopolization is being questioned.

An excellent post! Very informative!

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by rpcurt

Boeing is the largest US manufacturing exporter. We also, thanks to Pres Trump, have become the world's largest producer of oil and gas, which we export.
True, we lost hundreds of manufacturers during the Obama years...recall Obama saying 'manufacturing will never return to the US'.
Intellectual property is a huge product for the US.
But here is a crazy example: golf balls. COSTCO makes its Kirkland golf balls in China. Why? Making golf balls is not a labor-intensive process, but somehow it makes economic sense for COSTCO to make them in China and pay to ship them to the US. The raw materials cost the same in US, manufacturing machines cost the same, labor costs are low.
So what is different? Taxes, regulations (like OSHA, etc.), ease of doing business.

I disagree with the content of that post.

[jdulej]

Originally Posted by jimjamuser

I disagree with the content of that post.

I agree with your disagreement. I wrote a rebuttal to the post, but it apparently did not get posted or was deleted. Bottom line - moving jobs to the lowest paying, least restrictive place has been going on for at least 50 years and was considered "smart business practice" until it wasn't all of a sudden. I think Obama was trying to be realistic, and despite some feeble attempts to change it, it remains true that manufacturing, for the most part, is NOT coming back. Hi skilled, specialized work - yes and that is good. The put A into B stuff is gone forever IMO.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by Luggage

Macro economics. Money goes where it is most efficiently used . Consumers look at price first . Don't you buy the cheapest gasoline. Did you buy the most expensive home even though others were less? When you shop for food do you compare prices? Many consumer goods are not made in America, many industrial items are like tractors, but even those companies understand you need today to spread factories to their buyers . I could go on , but it then becomes a book

I look for brands 1st and price 2nd. For example, when I buy a new car (once every 15 years) I look at Toyota, Nissan, and Honda. I don't even look at the price of a Chevy or Chrysler. Ford has some quality recently, but not enough for me yet. I would prefer to buy American, but in new cars and trucks, the quality difference is too large For tools, I prefer Craftsman and Kobalt. I would decide between them individually and look at the price. I do NOT need the best top-quality professional-grade tools.
So, in general, I lean Ameican, but take in ALL qualities, including price.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan

So what is the point of this thread? American mfgrs have abandoned plants in the US because it is more profitable to make them overseas and sell them here. Seems like capitalism at work to me.

Buying something BECAUSE it was made in America as opposed to because it is the best price and quality seems dumb to me. Kind of like voting based on party instead of candidates qualifications. I am registered NPA and always vote for the person and not a party. The same goes for my purchases.

There is something that I always prefer to buy American and even LOCALLY American and that is, any local produce because it tastes better and has more vitamins and nutrients in it than produce from further away. And less wasted oil to support Saudi Arabia. I also like to support the small farmer rather than the big farmer or rancher. Big farms are usually using excessive fertilizer instead of rotating crops and wasting more water, fuel oil. and other resources than small farms. Small farms benefit larger numbers of families than big farms and ranches. In Ca. large pecan farms EVEN get greater priority for WATER than people. That IS some seriously inverted priorities. And that shows the problems caused by the POWER of big farms and their lobbyists.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by Geodyssey

In the USA, nothing is more important than making money. Not family, not nation. Just keep making money. It's how score is kept. And we're #1.

Not necessarily #1. Switzerland has greater income and wealth per person. And Many, many countries have a greater "quality of Life" than the US! We rank around 25th.