Sorry, your actual name is to long. That’s why I am FTL.
I would just add that the effect of computers and robotics has greatly increased efficiency, lowering production costs. Millions of middle class skilled jobs on assembly lines, accounting, paper shuffling have been lost, they aren’t coming back and this trend will continue.
The profits from tech advances are trickling up exclusively to the 1%. Our entire culture has been built on a foundation of middle class jobs. When robots replace us, and we don’t own the robots and have no good jobs, the vote is our only peaceful tactic left.
Tax the robot owners. Tax the billionaires. Like Dillinger said when they asked him during the great depression why he was robbing banks, “I thought that was where the money was”.
The Marxist economist Richard Wolff pointed out that, if the ownership and control of a company were in the hands of the workers themselves, it is doubtful that the workers would chose to relocate their business to another country.
Some free-market capitalists say they’d like to see jobs stay in the U.S., but that we need to be more “competitive” with other countries in order to make this happen. Of course, that might require that we bring back slavery, because that’s what’s happening in Indonesia, for example.
Individuals and states have a right to protect their own economic interests. Capitalists would like us to believe that this interferes with the “invisible hand” of capitalism, which is supposed to make everything work out all right. Meanwhile, they game the hell out of the system, while referring to it as a “free” market.
It used to be that Ford made one car, in Detroit. Everyone was driving around like crazy, but happy.
Ford even went so far as to solve a problem of millions of circles of wood (from cutting out holes for the pedals of model T’s) by frying them and making the Richford charcoal business.
Now though, and I don’t see us turning back, container ship transport is the thing. A Ford could be assembled in Mexico using parts from 15 countries. A Harley has a German ignition , while Honda Gold wings have been made in Maryland for decades. KH uni’s are designed in Canada, but made and shipped in container freight from Taiwan.
There is such a thing as regional pride, but sometimes that backfires. Computer hard drives used motors made almost exclusively in Thailand. Then when they had a huge flood there , world prices went up and stayed up until recently.
I see problems with capitalism, but my prediction is that the days of “made here” stuff will be something local orchards will brag about. I don’t think it’s possible to make a competitively priced complex thing without sourcing parts globally. Shipping is cheap.
Shipping is cheap, but shipping costs have been on the rise for a long time. There is a bunch of manufacturing moving back to the States, though I don’t know what kind of percentage, or speed of growth.
This is true. Unless of course it’s a publicly held company, with shareholders. Then the bottom line is hard to avoid.
What I’d like to see more of is a choice to buy local-made stuff, even if it’s more expensive, long as it’s of high quality. That’s possible some of the time, but not enough. I’d like to have that choice with more products. Maybe they will return someday…
Container ships are getting larger and ports also. The efficiency of diesel engines has improved a bit. So, with lower oil costs, the cost of container shipping is going down. It’s role in the USA economy is increasing.
I buy “Made on Earth” products. Why does it matter where it is made? Isn’t it about quality and price (more than just dollars in the “price”)? Somebody made it… should we really discriminate against foreigners vs those locally close to us? Heck, maybe it takes two or more people working a living wage in their locality to equal the cost of one person making a living wage next door to you. Ultimately what is better, employing multiple people, or just one? If you can get the same product, at the same price and quality, that was made by and helped more people farther away from you, is that not ultimately better than buying from someone very close to you?
As an aside, this series reports how ships dump more oil and toxic waste than the big ocean oil spills. And today’s paper indicates people get away with murder in the high seas. How would you like to be the US Coast Guard Commander of the Pacific Ocean? I would!
What does STEP produce? You’ll agree it could be done more cheaply overseas, right? Think of how your employees could live on easy street if you took all that government funding and outsourced overseas at a fraction of the cost, and turned the profit over to the now unemployed “employees”? Could we do that with every government funded service? Consumers could Skype in to their families??? KIDDING!!!
CORPORATE WELFARE: More recently, subsidy tracking group Good Jobs First released a report last year detailing where exactly taxpayer dollars are being funneled, and which states are the most likely to divvy up handouts. There are some surprises in the report, but many details won’t come as much of a shock at all. New York and Washington were the top two states for handing out corporate subsidies, with New York alone topping more than $20 billion across nearly 69,000 individual handouts. The data also shows that roughly 75% of disclosed subsidy dollars have gone to 965 big companies. The total known value of subsidies across the country came out at an estimated $110 billion, although its likely more.
We’re too big to fail!! Can you imagine the world court deciding to let all the nations of the world bail us out, and then (like Wall Street) we all get $million bonuses
Donald Trump still claims to be a wise businessman, yet he has failed to repay funding for some of his projects, increasing his net profit http://www.cpa-connecticut.com/blog/?p=2235
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/world/stowaway-crime-scofflaw-ship.html quote: Ships intentionally dump more engine oil and sludge into the oceans in the span of three years than that spilled in the Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez accidents combined, ocean researchers say, and emit huge amounts of certain air pollutants, far more than all the world’s cars. Commercial fishing, much of it illegal, has so efficiently plundered marine stocks that the world’s population of predatory fish has declined by two thirds.
Yes, it’s alarming. “Scientists estimate that 150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate and, say many biologists, is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago.”
I admit it, I’m a blatant sharkist. They suck in my opinion. If we fished them to extinction (doubt that’s possible) I would cry so hard it would make the ocean salty.
But yeah, seriously I was a fisherman, diver for years. Barracuda are actually kind of polite. They will steal your fish, but not right off your hand. Sharks are a menace. I would sooner donate to the “diversity of roaches fund”. Or let’s save the mosquitoes. Sharks don’t sip your blood, they take off huge chunks.
What I don’t get is how the same people that want to throw red paint on a teen starlet for wearing a seal fur, want to protect sharks. What do you think sharks eat ?How they got their taste for warm blood?
The only thing less funny than a shark is…You know funny come backs is sorta my thing, but this ones hard. I can’t think of something less funny than being bit by a shark. Uh, I don’t know, a chain saw accident, being struck by lightning. It’s not cool being bit by a shark.
At the same time fishing restrictions on sharks are imposed.
Great whites are present in healthy populations in all oceans. They prefer eating warm blooded animals, from the walrus of the arctic to the penguin of the south pole.
And as many seals as they can catch. With unrestricted commercial trawler factory ships pulling herring and sardines out by the megaton, these protected sharks aren’t just hungry, they are moving inshore, looking for a warm blooded animal that would taste like a seal.