Democrats and the Decline of Manufacturing in America
We have heard it for so long that most people assume it is true: the Democratic Party is the party of the working man, the hard-working blue-collar guy, the primary beneficiary of the manufacturing economy. Nonsense.
The reality is the Democratic Party is both a potent political force in the demise of the manufacturing sector and a primary factor obstructing any type of resurgence. The party has been controlled for decades by forces that in fact are destructive to that most American of enterprises, manufacturing.
The rhetoric coming from the party is certainly not representative of their true role. Their demons are, of course, the evil corporations that move plants overseas just to make more evil profit. Then there are more demons running unfair trading partners, the ones that act in deliberately predatory ways that take unfair advantage of the justly deserved high wages of the noble American worker. And all these demons work together under a master plan run by shadowy secret business/political organizations. Villains everywhere with only the Democrats and their friends actually working hard on the workers’ behalf. Despite some elements of truth, this propaganda has been remarkably effective in keeping voting blocks intact despite years of steady decline in manufacturing jobs. While the Democrats pronounce their fealty to the “working man,” they, possibly more than any other group in the last 20 years, have been responsible for the toxic environment that has so advanced the decline of manufacturing in America.
Manufacturing is indispensable not only in the structure of the American economy, but also in the very culture and fabric of American society. Since World War II it was the backbone of the tremendous advancement of the American standard of living during a period spanning barely 50 years. Manufacturing jobs allowed the low-skilled and semi-skilled worker to generate enough economic value to create remarkable wealth among the working class, something quite unique to America. An average factory worker could live in a good home in a thriving neighborhood, drive a new car, take vacations, own a boat, and send his kids to college, all on a factory wage. Manufacturing provides the basis for economic prosperity to the person who has no desire to go to college, prefers to work with their hands, or is simply not cut out for “knowledge” work, as Peter Drucker used to term it. In order for this to occur, conditions must exist for the worker to produce enough value per hour to support wages at the elevated levels needed in America. In addition, the business must be able to operate in an environment that allows it to do the things to make such value generation both possible and marketable.
All businesses, and manufacturing in particular, must have certain resources available in order to thrive. First, they require a steady source of workers that possess sound basic skills in math, reading, and language in order to operate effectively on the plant floor. In addition, the workers need to have a strong sense of responsibility and a work ethic; they need to show up on time, work their shift productively, and get along with co-workers. The abilities of the individual worker largely determine the most important dynamic in manufacturing: productivity and the constant need to increase output and lower costs. It is the source not only of profit and competitive ability of the company relative to its competitors around the world, but it is also the basic determinant of the level of compensation that can be afforded to the average wage earner. If the company has high productivity it can and usually does pay a higher wage. The reverse is also true.
Second, manufacturing businesses need to have the resources to acquire and update needed equipment and plant facilities. Manufacturers are capital intensive, that is, they require physical assets of plant and equipment that need to be purchased, maintained, and constantly upgraded to new technology. Cash flow generated by their activity must be available to build and expand capabilities and not be unreasonably siphoned off into uses not related to production. Nor can their earnings be taken in taxes, depriving them of needed investment capital in order to fund less productive social activities. Simply put, the resources needed to stay competitive are such that manufacturers are hard-pressed to support their own needs while at the same time pay for government adventures.
Third, businesses need a stable and predictable market environment in order to assess risks involved in various strategies and then to pursue directions that appear to have potential. The risk-taking attitude that built the massive auto companies, steel mills, and millions of homes relies on the confidence that a well-conceived and well-executed business model will find a market. The potential of significant financial loss unrelated to the actual market forces, as from the threat of legal profiteers, stifles the willingness to take commercial risks.
In summary, manufacturing businesses need good workers with basic skills, they need the ability to acquire and generate from within the cash resources necessary for extensive investment in assets, and they need a market environment that reasonably allows them to assess the risks and profit potential of their endeavors. Pretty basic stuff.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has allied itself and become totally beholden to a small group of special interests that obstruct these factors and, in many cases, actively seek to undo them. Let’s consider them one at a time.
“In summary, unions are not evil, but…”
That’s not accurate. The unions are essentially evil. They are run by sleazy thugs and quasi-Marxist university graduates. These union officials don’t give a fat damn about their blue color members. Nope, they are instead focussed on the big picture of creating a socialist utopia. The possibility that their particular union might eventually fold due to future job losses is a somewhat minor threat. They are counting on the left-wing establishment to find them better employment elsewhere. I highly recommend Linda Chavez’s 2004 book, Betrayal: How Union bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics. It’s a real eye opener.
Consider the American Film Industry.
How ironic that this most left-leaning business suffers now from unions, runaway production and tax policy.
And, truth be told, for how often its movies’ themes deal with the unfair treatment of the little guy, in reality Hollywood is the last bastion of cold hard performance-based capitalism.
Hollywood employs only the best. If you are on a shoot and become viewed as less than capable, you are out on your ear.
Runaway production is also a reality. Capital goes where it’s wanted and is most effectively utilized. If that means shooting in Ireland or New Zealand with local talent instead of expensive Los Angeles crews, so be it.
And finally, tax policy. The same Hollywood liberals totally in favor of increased taxes to cover all the Californian Utopian social programs scream for special tax incentives to keep their productions in California. And other states offer tax incentives to move production to their states.
Taxes matter.
“In summary, unions are not evil, but they have become obsolete in an environment where managing productivity has become a cooperative effort shared by management and the workforce.”
Unions will never be necessarily evil, but they are never a public good unless management is unreasonable to the extent of offering contracts which amount to slavery.
Mandatory non-legal tender pay and yellow dog clauses, for example, are an example of a contract provision which should be unenforceable, and if the laws do not prohibit it, then voluntary unions are a reasonable response.
Thing is, there are no unions today which exist as a result of unreasonable management, they are all conspiracies against the public interest.
The Democrat Party is a criminal enterprise.
Insightful article, a keeper.
With regard to liability as an aspect of American legal life, there are simple solutions that can be both fair and expense-saving. It is essentially unfair to limit people’s right to sue, just as it is unfair to shift liability to companies unassociated in any way with the original sin.
In Israel, when someone becomes disabled, that person becomes eligible for welfare benefits. Those benefits include complete medical and hospitalization insurance, but also includes a stipend for living expenses not unlike SSI or social security total disability insurance. It represents the government’s commitment to not allowing people to fall through the cracks. But that is it. There are no punitive damages unless the case is egregious in the extreme. Other European governments must have similar arrangements, though I am unfamiliar with them.
Perhaps, with modifications, that would be a model upon which we might build in America. The offending company contributes to a fund that the government administers and supplements. The person is taken care of for his lifetime. Major monetary settlements are avoided. Lawyers might still make something from connecting the person’s disability and its causation, but there would be no 25 percent of millions, multiple times.
After 40 years in manufacturing as a factory guy, management, and finally an owner, one feature of unions stand out over all others. You have 8 hours of work?…. time to hire you a ‘helper’.
I’ve seen tens of thousands of dollars of perfectly good product, deliberately destroyed by union slugs, ….getting even with the ‘Man’.
They can all rot in HELL before I spend another ‘buck’ on their crap.
As this currently unemployed member of the manufacturing sector can attest, this article should be required reading for each and every congresscritter and their staff members.
The decline in this sector speaks to our need to elect lawmakers with business experience who recognize the value of diversity in economic opportunities for all Americans. Currently, the majority of lawmakers are lawyers. The legal sector of our economy functions by confiscating wealth from those who produce it. From this flows their misguided notion of all workers as “exploited” and their fondness for false class warfare rhetoric while they gleefully enjoy their own wealth.
The government’s efforts to transform our economy into a service-based one is designed to fail. Service jobs can’t make a toaster or a car or any of the hardware necessary for our high quality of life. A revival of our manufacturing sector will be a sign that we’re through experimenting and are ready to return to economic reality.
Unions, or at least large unions, have perhaps become obsolete but you should not downplay their role in bringing decent wages and working conditions to us ordinary people, in the first place. Much of what is wrong with America, today can be described as, and attributed to, too much of a good thing.
Unions had their much-needed time and place, but that time is long past.
They are now political tools that are on net balance are very bad for America. Especially bad are the public employee unions for the conflict of interest they present at the ballot box. Even for otherwise good people, being a government employee union member is a black mark on their character. It is unethical.
Unions breed mediocre work ethic by protecting their worst members, while discouraging initiative and hard work by their best members.
I recall the electricians in the auto plants, walking around like feudal lords, dragging their feet, moving so slowly, leaving lines shut down so they could come in on the weekend at double and triple time. Shameful and destructive behavior blessed by the unions.
This goes double for what the unions and Democrats have done to education in America. The monopoly exercised over education by the stae and national level unions have made it nearly impossible to provide your child with a worthwhile eduation. Scholls have become political indoctriination centers and pop-psychology “feel-good” laboratories.
Don’t like the system, fine send your kid to private school, but you still have to pay for the public-school education that you aren’t using. Too Bad for you, you can’t get a voucher for the money (YOUR MONEY!) that you paid in taxes to the school district, you will jhave to spend even more money for that private school.
Unions should be prosecuted under the anti-monopoly laws as they prevent the customer (business) from having the opportunity to make a free choice. Unions have become big corporations that rent wage-slaves to other big corporations.
Shakespear had the right idea as far as tort-reform goes; “…kill all the lawyers”.
Very good piece. He seems to have left out how work rules and a union vs management argument has prevented a quality management approach in US manufacturing. This has contributed greatly to the lack of competitiveness of American manufacturing. The ‘if its not broke don’t fix it’ argument does not work in the competitive environment of manufacturing.
The anti-business approach of the Democrats is killing American producers. Obama recently stole my GM bonds, breaking 233 years of legal precedence, and gave my money to the UAW. So when I had to buy a new car I bought….a Honda made at a non-union plant in Ohio. (A cash for clunker deal I might add.)
Anyone want to buy my Suburban? I’m done with union-made cars. I’m done with Democrats too – as soon as I can change my voter’s registration.
You forgot about “Democrats and the Redistricting of Texas” and “Democrats and the Watergate Break-In” and “Democrats and Valerie Plame” and “Democrats and the Slide of America into a Fascist Theocracy.” If you’re gonna play that blame game, go all the way. We all know the Republicans are not responsible for anything bad or wrong. In fact, they’re just not respoonsible, period.
Most manufacturing in the U.S. used to be done in and around the inner cities. Initially the work force consisted of many hard working immigrants who strove to get ahead not only by working hard at work but by working hard in school and emphasising education to their children.
As these immigrants succeeded they moved out of the cities to the suburbs leaving as the main work force and uneducated black cadre of children the majority of them raised by single parents, usually a mother. This along with poor public education in the inner cities has led to culture more interested in drugs, sex, hip-hop and becoming the next Lebron James rather than becoming educated and raising a family.
In areas where there has been a strong influx of Hispanic immigrants this trand has been slowed down if not reversed. Unfotunately the immigrant Hispanic population has for the most part not migrated to the “rust belt” but rather stayed ooncentrated in a few states. In the case of CA many of gone to work in the farming industry as well as manufacuring. Of course CA has other problems that have helped kill the economy there.
The solution to problem is complicated and difficult and beyond the scope of this comment.
Please excuse the typos. Thanks
Couple or Three points:
1. Americans are real good at making policy based on a book title or a headline. Sometime in the 50′s there was a book called “The Post Industrial Society”. Instead of reading it and discovering that the author was defining a service economy based on a vibrant and efficient manufacturing sector we said “Cool, now we don’t have to work in those dirty noisy old factories anymore”. Then we “outsourced” all the stuff that was hard or that we didn’t want to do anymore.
2. Once the process of outsourcing starts and all those folks you outsource to get a taste of a factory job with a paycheck (however small compared to an American one) they don’t want to go back to subsistence farming. Mainly because compared to farming factory work is mostly a walk in the park.
3. The mfg company I retired from paid well, it was unionized but out guys saw the big picture and with the exception of one or two slugs showed up every day and worked hard. It’s really hard to compete with somebody who is doing the same job in China making $5 a day when you are at $32 an hour fully burdened. And the guy (or gal)is working 11 hours a day 6 days a week. And every morning when he gets to work there are a couple of thousand people at the factory gate just in case he doesn’t show up. And the company is getting massive injections of capital from entities all over the planet so they can buy the latest machines and equipment.
Please don’t mention manufacturing moving overseas because child labor and environmental laws were lax. Please don’t mention that manufacturing moved overseas because labor was so cheap. What the heck, a dollar an hour buys the little people enough food to show up the next day.
In India the moguls pay enough for a little food and a lota porno. Keeps them coming every time. And those Japanese, well you just can’t beat them. Hell they even had more fielty toward their companies then that did toward their own wives. Way to go! Then they started thinking hmmm…my wife loves me, the company well…
Please don’t mention manufacturing that moved around overseas because once the workers over there started to demand better wages and better working conditions their was plenty of other third world countries to pack up and go to. Hungry people are so grateful they will just about work for nothing.
You should thank the Democrats for destroying our education system. You all might wanna think bout comin back over her now cause we dum mericans cant reed a contract, sifer our paycheks, and prefer to go to the bar rather thin get together like them thar assosations clubs partnerships an sum such. Cum on back to us dum mericans. us dum mericans even gave back sum of our paycheks to bi sum of them thar stocks so you culd take sum of our muny and send it over to them thar cuntrees that are better than us. Bangledesh whar in hell is that thar plase.
well thar i go agin ramblin on. i git a hedake wen i read or rite two much an i doin lik that smel of fear when layoffs, downsising, restruktering, regruping, reasesng cums an i jus nevr no ifin i shuld work hard or kis ass. never cure wut the bossin wants that day.
Hey an we dont mine helpin them thar people who we faugh back in that thar big war one or too I don no. well ona them, i tink it is good thang they doin good so hour kids don’t hafta go over and fite agin.
Your like the guy who walks around bragging because the cops helped clean up your neighborhood the patrols cars left, and your pretending they aren’t needed. Maybe there are less unions more because companies are doing things to avoid their necessity. Mission accomplished but still ready to fight the good fight.
It’s a delicate balance you see, the Democrats want to keep us dumb so we don’t notice their really out for themselves and the Republican want to keep us smart enough so that we can be a productive Human Resources and not push the button that says don’t push this button.
What do worker want? Well if were a part of the American Dream we want it to imply that it is our dream also and not your dream, our nightmare.
and…Thanks a lot for putting the word human in front of resource so we know we’re special to you.
As tiny tim said, God bless us, everyone.
I agree with the article and comments but have a problem: Even if lawsuits and unions were somehow controlled would that be enough to defeat labor competition with places like China? In China and all of SE Asia people are happy to work for $.50/hour doing semi-skilled factory work. They have no pensions, no paid holidays, no workers comp, no health insurance, etc. Granted, these workers are less self-determined (they are more drone-like) and corruption in supply chains and elsewhere requires huge investments in quality control compared to the welfare-state West. However, the bottom line is, North America-based companies have to drastically reduce labor costs to compete. Or else wouldn’t pressure have to be brought to bear on off-shore localities to match Western levels of worker protection?
So I don’t see that much good in doing all these things outlined in the article. By the looks of it, workers in America agree and are looking to Big Government to protect them, i.e. rob Peter to pay Paul.
great article.how do we penalize companies who have made the decision that it is cheaper to pollute the enviroment than follow the guidelines?
say for example:a company saves three million dollars by dumping toxic waste into the ocean,but is only fined 1 million(if caught)for it’s actions.or,knows a chemical is harmful to employees,but crunches the numbers and decides it is more profitable to sweep it under the rug.
we have to start putting more of these people in jail,civil litigation is not enough.
Manufacturing is really pretty simple. Get people to make stuff, then sell it, then gather up the money. Repeat as desired. I never understood why manufacturing companies seem to muck-up something this simple, this badly. I guess that’s why I’m pushing forty, stuck in manufacturing middle management. Either that or the fact that I don’t golf.
We don’t have as many manufacturing jobs in America as we used to. For me, this makes perfect sense. The American manufacturing production worker wants to get paid an honest-day’s-pay for sporadic work of marginal quality–and that’s the non-Union workers. The Union workers get more money to actively undermine their own companies. As we have seen with the UAW and the “American” auto companies, the only thing that can save unions from themselves is socialism. Without that and thug tactics, unions, a vestige of a by-gone era, would cease to exist.
Even without unions, there is not much hope and change in the cards for American manufacturing. It’s not a lack of technology or education or diversity that drives jobs overseas. It’s not corporate tax rates or “cheap labor”, either. All these things are important. The real burden and roadblock to success is the poor management. The lack of principle. The lack of conviction. The lack of spine.
We have no one to blame but ourselves.
There is a pathetic penchant for mediocrity in American manufacturing.
You forgot draconian environmental laws and the stifling lawsuits they bring, the coming destruction of “cap and trade” and the inevitable rationing of energy if this Congress and Administration get their way. Everything the left says it stands for is destroyed by its actions. The left does not want to solve anything, it only wants chaos so it can claim “solidarity” with the people.
Bravo. I appreciate liberal myth busting. I think a good follow-up would be to look at manufacturing in right to work states – seems to be doing fine. Then follow up with myth busting on the feds involvement with schools, energy, the environment, minimum wage, criminal justice…the list goes on…enough of a list to make a great tv news series. What 60 Minutes should have been.
“…Despite some elements of truth, …”
Every evil that the demoncrates rail against that has some bases in truth was created by Democrat-voting socialists. E.g. “Corporatism”, which is not capitalism. Corporatism relies on “Power of State”. It was the creation of “industrialists”. Almost without exception, the “wicked capitalistic” industrialist of the 20th and 21st century were socialists.
BTW, The Banking, Insurance, Financial, Real-estate, and Agricultural industries are all controlled by demoncrates.
Steve – You recall electricians walking around like feudal lords but you don’t remember actual feudal lords or your twelve year old children working in the factories and mines.
If conservatives wish to be intelligent about unions, which let’s be honest, are not bad in principle, they need to help establish them in places like China and India. At least level the play field. Besides, maybe a few hundred SEIU thugs could be sent to do something more productive. Think outside the box. Organize the opposition!
I hate unions, but no one should forget why they came into being: employers became distant, officious and exploitive in the worst way. Business let that happen and then adopted an advesary stance instead of reaching out to their workers and short-cutting the unions.
Like republicans today, the employers lacked the slightest imagination or ethic on how to deal with real people and helped solidify the positons of the unions. The employers lacked a work ethic of their own and were surprised that the workers followed suit.
Now unions are the new exploiters: they penalize imagination and diligent work: they bleeed our states and cities with GM style pensions. They make crappy cars in Detroit. Their work rules are visibly inefficient and silly to even a 10 year old. Whoever characterized them as new feudal lords is right on the money.
Many interesting comments. To those making the routine argument about the low pay in other countries and about corporate greed being the only motivation factor for moving offshore: yesterday I drove past an enormous Toyota plant in southern Indiana. I’m sure it doesn’t pay $.50 an hour, exploit the workers 11 hours a day 6 days a week, or dump millions of barrels of toxic waste into the ocean. Yet it seems to be getting along OK. Just how do they do that in the US? And they aren’t alone.
And Lynn (#17), the workers there would have very little use for your thoughts- might even be a bit hostile to your opinion of them.
Just a thought.
Just curious, who or what within the medical industry determines how much a service costs and is their a agreement between hospitals and/or doctors/dentists on a ball park price for their services so as not to price each other out of the market?
And it looks like this may be an example of a “Free” market strategy and global too. http://www.medretreat.com/procedures/pricing.html
Save 50-80% off the price of a spinal fusion!
I think it’s kind of funny how the “free” health care proponents are up against the “free” market proponents. Human nature always wanting something for free.
I think the only way a economy works using the free market system rather than our messy mix, is if everyone is honest. Well, forget about that one.
If Japanese companies can assemble cars for profit in the US, and they have (though lately things are tough) then we can ask why American companies cannot? Unions. As productive as Americans are, and they are, the adversarial relationship between workers and management has to go. We are in this together folks, or our manufacturing sector will go the way of big steel and the auto industry (and airlines). I have personal experience of the insanity of union work rules – those which prevent cooperation and productivity must go. Must. Ditto tort laws and crazy enviro legislation that kills jobs.
Now and then: ” Fascist Theocracy”
Add moonbattery, lather, rinse, repeat.
It is plainly a product of our unionized public schools, since it doesn’t have a clue what ‘fascism’ or ‘theocracy’ actually mean. Just words parroted from the Lefty Bag o’ Insults.
Pathetic.
I worked in a GM factory during summers while I was in college. I loved the factory environment and considered a career in manufacturing. But…I also saw a company that had completely surrendered to the unions and faced constant pressure from environmental groups and all levels of government. The entitlement felt by the workers and the resignation exhibited by management was stunning and unsustainable.
State and local government looked at the plant as a tax cash-cow to be milked dry until dead. It was the town (Framingham) that eventually pushed GM over the edge by not allowing them to expand the plant (and hire more people and pay more taxes).
The plant has now been idle for 2 decades. A Korean company considered buying it. They visited MA to see the site and meet politicians. When they realized the forced-union, high-tax, environmental wacko situation they were walking into, they quickly jumped into their limos and sped away and didn’t stop until they got to Alabama.
You missed one of the most important ones for manufacturers – cost of doing business due to environmental considerations. Getting the necessary environmental permits to get onto a site (building, zoning, wetlands), then additional permits to stay in compliance at the site along with associated operating/equipment controls (Look at Air Permit requirements as an example) is expensive and exasperating. Finally the environmental restrictions on energy supply – drill elsewhere baby, drill – makes power costs skyrocket here.
You left out the biggest one: environmental extremism. If it’s not obvious why that has chased more jobs offshore than all of the other reason combined, you don’t understand how the economy is structured.
The US decline in manufacturing traces back directly to Woodrow Wilson’s administration. The only thing that confuses the issue is that WWII destroyed more than half of the world’s manufacturein and left the United States with the bigger half of all of the manufacturing capacity in the world at the end of WWII. Other than that the reversal of acendence in merican manufacturing has been steady both before WWII and after the immediate post war years. The nineteenth century accendance of American manufacturing was hurt by the vast waves of immigration at the begining of the twentieth century (you do not need to mechinize if you have enough cheap labor) but was killed by Woodrow Wilson replacing hard dollar currency in 1913 with the Federal Reserve note, breking up capital formation with the 16th amendment income tax and freeing the Congress from the restraints of the States with the 17th amendment. Woodrow Wilson was our worse President ever.
Last time I looked at a map of Indiana, it was a part of the United States and therefore strange that the Japanese would find it attractive to open a plant here in hostile to manufacturing unedukatid America. Twenty dollars an hour? I think many workers would find that a dream job especially since the Japanese seem to think it is dishonorable to treat employees badly.
Geez, unions in Japan working closely together with business, practicing with something called honor. Wow, what a concept. I’ve been in the work force long enough to know that lazy is not just a blue collar word and thuggery is not exclusively stitched on their pockets. Often times that white collar hides a ring of corruption evidence by the conduct on Wall Street leading to the election of an ‘ism’ and that’s not a capital ‘ism’.
Well it sure was fun getting drunk but oh man that hangover, OUCH!
As far as unions go, in principle, they’re not obsolete, but their focus is in the wrong place. Even if they’ve negotiated a fair and reasonable contract, employees need certain guarantees of due process when things get political, and people start accusing other people. Employers (particularly government agencies) are notorious for taking the coward’s way out, and firing the accused without a fair hearing of the facts.
If the unions were really doing what they collect dues for, they’d be spending most of their time and resources advocating for accused employees. False accusations happen all of the time, and the worst places for this kind of behavior is government offices. Often though, the management in these offices are in bed with the union officials, precisely because they’re all Democrats.
When donkeys scratch each other’s backs, the rest of us usually end up getting hosed.
Nth agreement with environ mental disease;
Let one example stand for all: Asbestos
http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/bulletin.php?id=219
The one chance the US has to escape economic
collapse is to manufacture goods our foreign creditors want, and cannot produce more cheaply
(or at all) on their own.
In practice, this means surfing the shockwave of
technological advance: Create, develop, produce,
and, when the product becomes a commodity, repeat.
Furtherandmore, the root driver of manufacturing
cost reduction is electrical power: $/KWH.
And what do we have here, courtesy USN:
Thermonuclear powerplant demonstrator on-line
around 2012.
http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2009/05/wb8_in_the_work.html
Oh, yeah, like the Republicans had nothing to do with any of this. Republicans, the party of the rich who want to keep it that way. When I listen to Rush or any of the conservative blowhards blame every damn thing on Democrats, as though the Republicans never laid a dirty hand on a single piece of legislation, I want to vomit. The reason why this country is a mess is because the average American is stupid. Union membership, which I think was once around 20%, is down to 8% of the workforce. Tell me how that’s improved your life? It only made things better for your overlord masters who now can pay you less money and fewer benefits.
The only way out of this mess is to bring back manufacturing and pay real wages again. Even a Nazi like Henry Ford realized that, unless he paid his workers decently, they couldn’t afford to buy his cars. What we have now is a bunch of paper pushers who don’t care if you earn a living wage because that’s not how they make their money.
Many moons ago I was struggling to get through college and worked in a variety of industries, warehouseing, paper mill, punch press operator, and as a janitor. I held four union cards. I recall as a warehouseman I worked with summer, non-union labor. They worked hard and were twice as productive as the union guys who were protected. The union held a meeting to get rid of these summer workers because they “didn’t work consistent with union rules.” I always valued being a union guy but that experience taught me something – I became an entrepreneur and avoided businesses that were dependent on union rules. No wonder right to work states (the south) thrived while northern cities lost their industrial base. This article is on the money, as it were.
So what if a bunch of workers want to form a club? The evil part is our politicians who pass laws that force the employer to accept and “bargain” with the unions, upon threat of strike which they cannot fight back against by firing the employees who refuse to do their jobs. This is legalized crime. It has been this way here for a long time. Marxism has been on the march here in America for a long time. We need to not just stop it but roll back the Marxism. The only thing “exceptional” about America has been our relative freedom and the prosperity that freedom inherently promotes. We need to move hard back toward freedom. Politicians should not run our ecomony.
37, do you have a real argument, or is that Rush Limbaugh red herring all you have?
And that was neat how you managed to Godwinize a comment on manufacturing. Quite creative.
If you want to see what UNIONS can do to a state ,visit MICHIGAN .When I was growing up people came here for jobs and to build careers,it was a geat place to live. We had ships coming into our ports,trains in every large city to take us on trips and good roads to travel on. We now have 15% unemployment and that does not count the people who have given up and a governer who takes expensive oversees trips and comes back with 30 jobs,while adjoining staes that are right to work states are getting a lot of jobs . Our governor also encourages Hollywood to make movies here,I have met one person who got a job as an extra. But our governor is a good Democrat she is pro-union and anti people making a living,her job skills are marginal . Why would any large employer come to Michigan with our militant unions ,evry time a large foreign industry looks here the union and its members come out in force to make their demands known to a prospective employer. Even an education does not get you a job here,I fear for this sates future and this countries future now that we have Union influence in the WH. Our inexperienced leader and his group will bring the whole country down with the help of the Union .
“Unions will never be necessarily evil, but they are never a public good unless management is unreasonable to the extent of offering contracts which amount to slavery.”
*”Offering” and “slavery” don’t go together. Slavery is “forced” labor, not “offered” labor. Don’t dilute the word! Slaves never had a choice. It was do or die.
The FREE MARKET is made up of deals, or contracts on deals, in which there is a VOLUNTARY exchange. Labor, products, services, property…. we usually use a “dollar value” as a tool communicate the exchange.
Who doesn’t wish they could get more in an exchange than they usually do no matter what side of the exchange you are on? EX: I wish I got paid more at work. I wish I got more for my money at the store. I wish I got higher rent receipts for my apartments. And I wish I could find some one cheaper to put the roof on my house. (And I am sure the other parties are wishing too.)In the end, I decide freely to take the deal or leave it. I might not find a better deal. If my employer finds the lady next to me a better deal for the promotion, she gets it. If rentals are in short supply I can get more per month, and make up for the years when I have to charge less because of a glut.
We have to have food, housing, jobs… and sometimes we “feel” forced to take what we can get, but that is usually because if we don’t the next guy is willing to pay for it. It is the law of supply and demand in a free market. When the demand becomes high enough or the supply low enough, that the dollar value goes up, then someone will see it worthwhile to provide a supply.
I know this elementary, but it so elementary we sometimes forget to think about it.
Regulations, big unions, and freebie entitlements screw the free market up. They are seeds of destruction, cogs in the wheel…
Look at free “public”, (I rather say government,) schools and teachers with the biggest unions in the US. We have free education, (now unappreciated by the masses,) and teachers with tenure who are near impossible to fire. The student or the parents are so removed form the deal with the teachers… and they are compelled by law to attend somewhere. So the teachers have a guaranteed “customer base.” Is it no wonder that private schools can educate students better for less money per student. On the national average, it cost $10,000 less per year per student. Government education was one our first and largest “socialistic” programs to experiment with and we are starting to see the failure.
It is time to wake up because the free market with cogs forced in it won’t work for long. Eventually it falls apart.
Nice writing Pope.
37. sharonsj:
So many Democrats need history lessons..
Rewind: NAFTA-1993
1995- World Trade signed into law by,
Guess Who?
Bill Clinton (D-ARK)
A dumb ass democrat cut America open like slicing open a big juicy.. UH… Watermelon.
NAFTA opened the door for car manufactures, FORD-GM to send union jobs to El Pedro down in old Mexico.
Why pay Detroit thug controlled workers $40.00 dollars an hour in wages and benefits?
Owners sent those jobs to Mexican workers and paid them $2.00 dollars an hour with no health insurance or welfare benefits.
Southern workers looked at it and grinned.
Then came WTO-1995,
signed by guess who?
Bill Clinton- (D-ARK)-
or had he moved to Washington to be closer to the ThugOcrats?
Whatever.
Anyway…
Southern boys and girls didn’t grin anymore their $12-$14 dollar an hour Furniture and Hosiery jobs went to China, India, Vietnam.
Thank You Mr. Bill Clinton-
(Democrat) for sending 35 million-
35,000,000 good paying jobs out of the country.
But I still have some blame on the average American for allowing this Shiite to happen.
I bought a Carolina hat at Dollar General for 6 dollars.
Took it home showed the wife what a bargain I got.
Opened it up and saw the Vietnam label.
40 years ago I fought life and death battles with their parents now I buy their sons 25 cents an hour hat.
And I wonder why my college educated son in law can’t find a job?
A lot of folks have trouble separating principles from situations. I could do what is being done here, to many things which are good in principle but have had things go wrong in certain situations. Should we condemn all of them for the excesses of the few? The police are a good and necessary thing, no? How about if I make a list of all the things policemen have done wrong in the last hundred years? Does that change the initial statement? Let’s remember the bad apple principle and not condemn all apples. In its most extreme form, you have enviro-fascists who would sooner wipe the earth of people because … well, change the words and keep the substance and they have just as good an argument.
I think the bean counters and the scientists betting on the market and using humans like product to be brought in an out as needed forgot that the worker they laid off is also the consumer that buys their goods and or services.
I took a while but once we realized that part of our paycheck went toward a market that made restructuring the new profit strategy caught on.
Umm…some of us know that two many workers employed at a company for too many years collecting too many raises start absorbing too much of the color red into their once black and well…time to re-access the situation.
It’s all in the numbers, scientifically speaking. Don’t be surprised if some of the beans the bean counters count start jumping around, a little agitated, a little put out, pun intended. Most business don’t like the fact that the workers might have a say in who stays and who goes.
Ah! That smell of fear. Call in the plumber, I think the toilets backed up!
My theory is that the average time before companies begin to dump workers is about ten years. It might have accelerated, things were moving quite fast the last number of years. It was actually very clever, without the union companies were even under no obligation to call back laid off workers. I like the new word “job elimination”. Had a ring to it.
If everyone could learn the lessons of this article by the time they graduated from high school, we would not be in the mess we are today.
Given my experience in business and finance, I can tell you that Mr. Pope is spot on target.
Allow me to make one comment on wage differentials that some have brought up. The headline wage number is just one element of the cost of labor. The regulatory and social costs of labor in America are extremely high compared to the rest of the world. (That is not to advocate the absence of standards.) Likewise, labor costs must be evaluated with productivity.
It is very expensive to move production offshore. Of course, multi-national manufacturers that sell globally will have productive capacity around the world. It also adds layers of management and financial complexity. Most manufacturers would keep jobs in America if it made sense.
Mr. Pope explains why we have a problem with manufacturing jobs. Implicitly, he also points out what needs to be done to change the tide. There is no short-term fix, which ADHD Americans crave. However, policy can change for the better.
The question is do Americans have the will to cast off the yoke of government, accept a degree of personal responsibility, welcome the risks and rewards that come with freedom and believe in themsleves again.
The problem we are in today, and the reason we are in the mess we are in, is exactly because Americans believe in themselves and think they deserve a good living wage for the work they provide.
It’s the other guy they found out they couldn’t believe in. The expense of moving a business, conducting business, setting up business is made up for and more by other countries LACK of regulatory and social costs.
Mosey on over to another PJM article about organ harvesting in China research it further and the story gets more rather than less horrifying.
Someone once said that you can’t serve two masters and that is certainly true. Profit has no conscience and sometimes what results in more profit is not something that would sit well with conscience. What does it profit a man if he gains Ada yada yada.
Once the workers benefits was tied to the stock market and companies gained such a large pool of money to invest they could not serve two masters and often times the workers became the very reason the stocks were not performing as hoped. The stock holders became the workers and the stocks the sign of their health but unfortunately when one was sick the other was healthy and visa versa. Any stock holders not in the work force or not working for the company they invested in, had absolutely no reason to be concerned about workers by the thousands being let go.
Sometimes adversarial relationships keeps us on their toes preventing lethargy and stagnation but once our country became a bunch of gamblers at the roulette table no one was home minding the shop. Instead of walking out with our arms full of cash, we walked out with our arms full of paper worth nothing mostly debt. Businesses and business owners were exchanging pieces of paper, giving them worth because well, they said so.
Now business is thinking they might want to come home, lick their wounds, give the unedukated mericans another chance to prove themselves before that cheap labor and non-existent environmental regulations beckons, and we are supposed to be grateful?
Your all cheering for the merican wurker and many of us are saying that the games over and it’s your turn to prove yourself. Your counting your profits and we’re keeping score. Guess what? Now that you have the whole globe for your play ground many of us figure that this isn’t your home anyway.
It’s a global economy, it’s a global economy, it’s a global economy, it’s business, it’s business, it’s business. No it’s lives, human lives, not pawns in a chess game, not numbers on a sheet of paper.
What risk are you taking if a worker will do a job for 1.00 a day and you can let him/her go at your whim. Really, I want to know what risk are you taking? What risk are you taking if you go to the bathroom up stream?
Cory Doctorow had an excellent article in a 2007 issue of Information Week titled, “How Hollywood, Congress, And DRM Are Beating Up The American Economy” Another pundit observed that if you see large groups of people doing something stupid, they are doing it for a reason.
In this case, we can blame Congress and their progressive taxes. Much of our taxation is hidden in the cost of goods and services. In actuality, the U.S. is paying some of the highest taxes in the world. Our business taxes are the second highest. This is why it is profitable to make stuff on the other side of the Pacific Ocean and ship it here despite all the issues with shipping costs, delivery, etc.
This situation would vanish virtually overnight if Congress cut business taxes. Congress would be replaced at the first opportunity when voters realized despite all the claims of taxing the rich, they are actually paying a flat tax somewhere over 50%.
#37 sharonsj
It amazes me that anyone believes the “Henry Ford” argument that you’ve parroted. He did say that he wanted to pay his workers enough to enable them to buy the cars he produced, and he did pay them more than formerly, but this is not what explains his greatly increased car sales, since, obviously, neither he nor his workers could have made money if this depended on those same workers to buy the cars! What Ford did was to cut the cost of manufacturing cars; he increased the per-worker output. This made car prices lower, which increased the size of the market; more people could afford cars than formerly. This is what enabled him to increase his workers’ pay.
A great article. The party that looks out for the working man has done such a great job of organizing that unemployment is now at the highest in what, 50 years? In California, where I live, there are places where unemployment is 25%. High minimum wages, environmental regulations, unions, your work is almost complete.
This is why we need to seriously look at repealing the 16th Amendment and replace the woefully-broken Internal Revenue Code with a taxation system that -encourages- personal savings and capital investment staying in the USA. The FairTax proposal (H.R. 25/S. 296) will specifically do this, a change that would literally ignite the American economy to unprecedented heights as we get back potentially as much as US$19 TRILLION (!!) in repatriated liquid assets from outside the USA and will encourage American companies to keep corporate headquarter and manufacturing operations inside the country. The current deep recession is the perfect opportunity to finally make the change that will do the American economy a lot of good for a change.
Don’t think this article is so fair towards the democratic party. This is obviously one side of the story, and a democrat will present a different side of manufacturing and the unions. The truth as usual, is somewhere in the middle.
quote: 53. Medical Tourism & Health Travel
Don’t think this article is so fair towards the democratic party. This is obviously one side of the story, and a democrat will present a different side of manufacturing and the unions. The truth as usual, is somewhere in the middle. unquote
Fair is in the eye of the beholder. Republicans have much to answer for, but Democrats in government always…aways…always work primarily and foremost toward more government, less freedom, more restrictions, bigger government programs that demand more and more taxes while at the same time passing laws that squeeze businesses (run by citizens who are creating jobs for other citizens) out of business or make it harder and more expensive to stay in business and keep the jobs open.
Time after time in their heydays unions did not act in the best interest of their members but in the better interests of their absolute rulers — organized crime and the democrat party; shake with one, you’ve got the other. And there’s more but the big picture eludes most democrats, and so it’s useless to continue with any discussion in that direction.
Instead, take a look at the chart titled THE RED-TAPING OF AMERICA at this link:
http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2010/11/recession-on-margin.html
Wake-up call: the ruling class is getting bigger, more powerful, more dangerous to human life in America. (For those who don’t “get it”, the more people working in government, the more people working in non-productive jobs. The main priority of people who work in non-productive jobs is to work very hard at proving the importance of their jobs so that they can keep those jobs, which requires more and more regulation and restriction of the common folks, leading to restrictions on business where real productive jobs are created.Meanwhile the class that really rules the government classes (the banksters) runs wild. This is a pernicious, viscious develoment that is guaranteed under democrat administrations and administrations of democrats posing as republicans, and in congresses controlled by same. Once government jobs are increased they are like cockroaches; they never ever go away. Bigger government hurts all Americans, and government jobs never are cut either by democrats OR republicans. The US is strangling in a cesspit of corruption and debt loaded on citizens by the government ruling class through the passing, tinkering with, and removal of key laws that the government classes are put in position to change by and for their ruling class, the banksters. And that is why statements about the honor or debaucery of either of the two ruling political parties or their members are stupid and uninformed. “Government” guarantees to enslave those who are “governed”.