The Gift America Needs Most: Manufacturing

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5356/the_gift_america_needs_most_manufacturing/

Tuesday December 22 5:34 pm

By Leo Gerard, USW International President

In Columbus Ohio, a 5-year-old girl jumped onto Santa’s lap last month and asked if he could give her dad a job as an elf.

Mike Smith, who works the Santa station at the Polaris Fashion Place in Columbus, asked why, the Wall Street Journal reported. The little girl in the Dora-the-Explorer sweat shirt responded: “Because my daddy’s out of work, and we’re about to lose our house.”

Happy Holidays America.

The gift this country needs most this holiday season is an economy built on a solid foundation, one that will provide middle class, family-supporting jobs now and into the future.

That present would not be another version of Monopoly for Wall Street wannabees. It would not be Barbie-goes-to-the-mall-credit-cards for youngsters in families already maxed out on their plastic and their mortgages.

The metaphorical gift our economy could really use is an Erector set – a strong steel construction kit from which the intrepid manufacture airplanes, automobiles, robots on motorized tracks, backhoes, helicopters, skyscrapers, cranes, even working Ferris wheels.

That’s because, most of all, this economy needs manufacturing. Enthralled by the glitz, glamour and bogus bonuses of Wall Street, we’ve allowed multinationals to export our grit and grimy factories overseas. Factories that made clothing, sports shoes, large appliances, tire, glass and so much more in big and small U.S. towns and transferred to China and Indonesia and India, lured not just by cheap labor, but also by lavish government subsidies and absent environmental regulations.

FULL story at link.

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Americans are going to learn a very hard and bitter lesson about globalization

It ain't gonna get better. Those jobs in manufacturing that we have lost are not coming back. The other very bitter lesson that is going to be taught to Americans is that venerable American companies like Black & Decker, GM, IBM and the rest have NO ALLEGIANCE TO AMERICA!!! Sure, as a nation we paved roads, built infrastructure and fought wars to keep communism and totalitarianism at bay, but these corporations don't care at all about that kind of stuff. The only remaining real value we have for many global corporations is to act as their personal muscle when they need to kick some ass somehwere on the globe.

[Boxerfan]

2. Find the LCD used to be a math problem-now its a corporate moto

Lowest common denominator..or how cheap can I make this stuff. Ever since they pulled the tarrif on imports. Well I posted about that a while back. It's friggin essential to put Americans to work & at a living wage.

You can always find someone to do the job cheaper-but as Henry Ford found out-Who's gonna buy your products if Americans can't afford them. Way too simplistic yep-But bottom line is you have to have a way to equalize public need with corporate greed.

[kenny blankenship]

3. Some people can get fantastically rich on a service based economy

but you can't have a strong currency with a perpetually negative trade deficit; and service based economies will end up importing their goods from abroad, and paying for them in somebody else's currency.

People advocating the dismantling of American manufacturing should have been treated like enemy agents. No foreign spies or terrorists have ever done a tenth as much damage to our nation as our own globalists, free traders and job exporters.

[lib2DaBone]

4. What is worse..NAFTA and Offshoring is not even on the radar...

NAFTA gave us the SHAFTA... and it's "business as usual" in the halls of CONgress...

..that is... when they are not busy using both hands to stuff money in their pockets from Big Insurance.

[Omaha Steve]

5. Kick

[mdmc]

6. $$