When Can We Have A Discussion On Bringing These Jobs Back?

[Left Coast2020]

About a year ago, record numbers of garment laborers in factories across Cambodia - which exports 70 percent of the garments manufactured there to the US - were reported to be suddenly and mysteriously falling to the ground, unconscious. Hundreds at a time - sometimes less, although sometimes more. Workers at many scenes reported foul smells, difficulty breathing. Halting investigations took place at select plants by various parties involved: government officials; labor unions; human rights groups; business associations; monitoring organizations; and, weirdly, the international big-name brands that sell the clothes being made.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/8307-the-fashion-industrys-perfect-storm-collapsing-workers-and-hyperactive-buyers

[BOHICA12]

1. And we train sewing operators where?

To bring them back, there has to be a labor force. What would such employment pay? We can have the discussion, but understand gone forever might be the outcome.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. It's so complicated that I think we might pass out trying to figure out those things

It's much too complicated to figure out. That must be the reason we're not bothering to discuss bringing these jobs back.

(NOT)

[BOHICA12]

4. Well let's start .... if we can loose the sarcasim

All Manufactured or Agricultural products from outside the United States are to be tariffed to a level to make them competitive with domestic products.

So ... what do we do with foreign manufacturers here - say Kia, Cemex, Nissan?

Does that include oil? Does that include Canada & Mexico?

What would be the bottom wage set to ensure companies play fair?

If a product is equivalently priced but imported (say French wine) can it come in without tariff.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

5. How were things designed before we threw our economy out the window by

having open trade and allowing corporations to screw us up the behind?

[BOHICA12]

6. We built lots of stuff, imported resources as needed and

exported to countries that did not build lots of stuff. We didn't mind taking over counties that had resource in order for us to access to them. Excess often became foreign aid. Competitive goods from abroad were often subject to tariff as before the 13th Amendment - tariffs were the source of much of the Federal coffers.

For low margin products - textiles & sewn products - company towns moved south in the 20s & 30s to avoid higher unionized labor costs and set up near-company town.

In addition, quality of foreign products was not consistent or up to the US standards - particularly in automobiles - should have seen the 60 & 70 Datsuns. Now that changed as less emphasis was put on quality of US produced products by both management and labor, and overseas (read Japan & Germany) producers figured out how to make it better and at competitive price.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

7. I have a right wing acquaintance who says that we "lost" our jobs because we wanted to buy

better made products from abroad, that Americans were not good at making good quality products.

Such bullshit. I try my best to buy only local produce and used items, because products being brought in (a majority from China) are pure garbage, badly made. But oh, the CEOs of companies and shareholders are happy as pigs in shit.

We didn't "lose" our jobs. Corporations became traitors and the bottom line became more important than their country.

We need to bring our jobs back.

You seem to be trying hard to express a very right wing point of view. What exactly are you trying to say, but struggling hard not to say it?

[BOHICA12]

8. In the automobile industry .... management and labor forgot

that if they did not put out the best product - a product the consumer wanted to buy, there were others who would. Thus we have HONDA & TOYOTA seen as superior to Chevy, Ford & Chrysler. It was ugly, but the rust that would develop on a 70's Detroit product was frickin criminal.

When machinery parody became reality - the cost of labor became the deciding factor in profit - the necessity of all business. Japan had modern factories and new production paradigms, Germany had new steel plants and modern processes while US Steel did not modernize but tried to wring out profit from inefficient plants.

We - Americans - got fat, dumb & happy - and most dangerously arrogant. And now the Chinese and Japan own our debt and control our future.

So we have to start by refuting our debt - and that's ugly too!

[Sarah Ibarruri]

9. So if someone wanted a foreign car, they should've bought it.

What else?

You sound exactly like that right winger I correspond with, making the same arguments, etc. I'm not exaggerating.

[BOHICA12]

10. Go to Goodwill and look at silverware

and follow the cost of labor ... Japan to Hong Kong to Tawain to Korea to China. Is there a reason it is produced overseas and not here?

[Sarah Ibarruri]

11. Yes. Corporations will always seek to get labor for free or as close to it as possible.

Any other questions?

[BOHICA12]

12. Your answer to how to fix that?

[Sarah Ibarruri]

13. Return this country to the way it was before the corporations f'd it up. nt

[BOHICA12]

14. And when was that?

and what did it look like - rural / farm based? We're about 125,000,000 residents beyond that ever being a possibility again. And you talk about mono-cultural ----- yikes.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

16. Before Raygun took over and began the fast deterioration toward a third world nation nt

[BOHICA12]

18. Typed like somebody who didn't live it .....

.... our best era was the 5 years between 1996-2001 - as we got close to sanity with budgets, taxes and expenditures.

[HiPointDem]

20. I lived it, and no, 96-2001 was not our best era at all.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

23. So let's see: you like Reagan, you love corporations, you like small govt, uncontrolled capitalism

makes you drool... what about you is lib again? Care to say?

[Zalatix]

24. What Sarah Ibarruri said, totally. Let's keep the sarcasm, it is well-justified.

I have a simple response for you:

1) If it's sold here and made outside the country, it gets a tariff slapped on it.

2) Any questions? See #1.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. That's what I've been suggesting all along. How to bring jobs back. Apparently...

this is a very unpopular idea. Unpopular because it might fuck with the monstrous salaries of CEOs and upper management.

I think it's time to penalize all products coming into this country which are manufactured abroad.

You sew it, build it, grow it outside, you pay through the nose to sell it here.

[HooptieWagon]

15. They arent coming back.

Better to start education and training for the jobs of the future.

[Zalatix]

25. What jobs of the future? Yeah, you got nothin'.

As long as Americans need clothes, we can bring the jobs here. Textile jobs are not gone forever. Nor are manufacturing jobs.

[bhikkhu]

17. Mill jobs were always mind-numbing and low-wage jobs of last resort

Its been a long time, but my grandma grew up in a mill town, and I remember her saying once "good riddance" when there was a discussion of how the US shut down its factories. I'm not surprised that working conditions in Asia are as bad as they were here - high volume low-margin stuff tends to go that way.

It takes me an hour to make a shirt, and the materials cost about $12, but I can go down to the store and buy one made on the other side of the planet and shipped here for $9. I don't know if that's corporate greed at work, or the evil results of free trade manipulating my choices, or just the inevitable result of my desire to buy an affordable shirt I didn't haven to make myself.

[NNN0LHI]

19. Who does your grandma think is going to pay in to fund her SS and Medicare after the jobs are gone?

Does she think the workers in the other countries where these jobs are sent have FICA taxes withheld from their paychecks every week like the workers here were to pay her SS and Medicare?

Same goes for your $9 shirt. Do you think the workers who made that shirt are going to pay in to fund your SS and Medicare some day?

Perhaps you and your grandma are in the financial position that even without SS and Medicare you would still be alright? Lot of people aren't in that position.

Don

[Zalatix]

26. Ding ding ding, knockout!!!

[HiPointDem]

21. I don't know where your grandma lived or when, but I can tell that mill jobs weren't *always* and

*everywhere" low-wage jobs of last resort. During the 50s and 60s, and even into the 70s, jobs at the big mills were unionized, well-paying, and highly prized.

I can tell you that from personal lived experience in a mill town, formerly progressive and democratic-voting, that went to shit and became a republican hell-hole full of drug addicts when those good jobs went away.

[RB TexLa]

22. Why not support these workers in getting better working conditions?

It doesn't always have to be about Americans winning. We win plenty. Think of someone other than your God damn self!

[Zalatix]

27. I take care of my country first. And I dare ANYONE to try and stop that.

[RB TexLa]

28. So your country over others? Your race over others too? Your gender over others too? Where does

that stop with you? Just country right? The others you'd consider wrong, correct? That would just be wrong to say you take care of your race first and dare anyone to stop you wouldn't it, right? Just because they happen to be the same nationality as you, er, I mean race as you and putting them above others, that would be wrong, right.

[Zalatix]

29. I live in this country, I support the workers in this country. No apology.

No surrender, no backing down, no retreat. By GOD.

I'll fight to my death to make sure that American workers are hired to produce products for Americans. You can count on that.

See you at the ballot box. Fortunately there aren't many Americans left who think like you.

[RB TexLa]

30. Most people, people not just Americans do not hold the same prejudice against people

in others countries like you do.

They are equally deserving as Americans. Hate to burst your bubble on that. But go ahead with your hourly U-S-A chant.

[Zalatix]

31. Most Americans now want to keep American jobs in America, sorry to bust your bubble.

Hate to burst your bubble but Americans are being LOCKED OUT of the global job market, and we're getting tired of it.

We are now starting to fight back. You will not stop us.

Perhaps it's time for you to move to one of these foreign countries and fight for them?

[RB TexLa]

32. I'll be glad when we can treat nationalism as a mental illness.

Cause you people really are sick.

[Zalatix]

33. Your final argument is that the majority of Americans are sick and you're not?

LOL keep wishing for your naive little fantasy world.

[RB TexLa]

34. Keep thinking you stop globalism.

LOL

I am actually laughing at you.

[Zalatix]

35. That's okay, most of America is laughing at you. Who do you think will win this?

Worse than that, you don't even realize that globalism will stop itself.

1) We'll either run out of places where cheap labor can be exploited. Unless we can find a way to keep the rest of the world perpetually poor - which would totally contradict your naive mindset.
2) Outsourcing American jobs damages the value of the dollar and at some point import price hyperinflation will make it too expensive to import.
3) Outsourcing American jobs causes foreign-held debt to rise, and we'll wind up being like Greece.
4) We're going to wind up running out of jobs to send overseas and then what will the poor in other nations do? They'll collapse.

Of course, if you understood economics you'd know these things. But you don't so guess what, the laugh is on you.

[Left Coast2020]

36. I should point out that textiles claiming to be made....

....in USA may not be. As I have mentioned here several times before, I have been to Saipan which is near Guam. Look where it is located on Goog-earth. My hotel was across the street from the Tommy Hilfinger/Gap factory. Saipan is not in the U.S. Its a terrority. What is the prevailing wage there? Two to three dollars an hour. And the workers are all young girls. Its hot, sweaty, and the friggin place didn't have a A/C unit from what I saw. Just big fans. Its really humid there too.

[NNN0LHI]

37. Stuff made in our prisons are considered Made In USA too

I learned of this trick when I discovered I was competing against prison labor working for Honda of Ohio.

Pretty difficult to compete against prison wages.

Don