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Originally Posted by chickentribs
Ohio has lost 50,000 jobs net during the past 4 years, most of which are blue-collar labor manufacturing jobs that aren't coming back to Ohio or anyplace else in the U.S. when companies can manufacture elsewhere in the world without penalty from our government. G.W. came to Columbus about every other week the last 3 months of the campaign, selling workers on pride in America, innovation and training in the workforce, and "circling our wagons" against the bad men who want to hurt us. Do you think he even knows the factory is closed today? He was pushing legislation this week to shave another week off of unemployment benefits that these people are living on now... "Tough love" I think he called it.
Revenues are up, that is true. The UPS guy picks up the smaller payroll checks every week to ship overseas.
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Interesting.
I was watching CNN the other night and they were talking about the economic crisis in Erie County (Buffalo NY). Seems like a similar situation is occuring there where good solid middle class jobs in manufacturing are being lost and shipped to China and the like.
It's so bad that Erie county is now talking about laying off 25% of its workforce, including cops, ambulance, municipal workers, etc.
I watch this and part of me thinks that we have no-one to blame but ourselves. We as consumers demand cheaper and cheaper stuff all the time, so business has no alternative but to relocate production to cheap overseas factories in China, etc. Walmart is the prime example. I wonder how many people in Erie County shop at Walmart all of the time. I know this has been covered before, but it's very real. The same guys who are now being laid off have probably been shopping at Walmart for years "because it's so cheap, and I can get way more stuff for my money, blah blah blah."
Well, now the chickens are coming home to roost buddy. You thought that it wouldn't affect you, but guess what. It does and now it is.
If people out there refused to buy manufactured goods produced in cheap third world countries, these jobs would NEVER have been lost. Business responds to the demands consumers place upon them. We demand to buy a Sony 27" colour TV for 500 bucks, then there is only one place in the world where they can make them. (I remember in 1972, my parents bought a 26" Fleetwood Colour TV (our first) that cost more in 1972 dollars to buy than a new 27" TV costs today in today's dollars)
These good middle class manufacturing jobs that have been lost to Asia are NEVER coming back. It's over. Those guys at the factory who have lost their jobs will most likely never know such a pay day again. At best, they might end up working at Walmart for minimum wage. (Walmart is now the largest employer in 25 of 50 states.)
What's going to eventually happen is a huge social upheaval in China and places like that where people get sick and tired being oppressed and of working for peanuts and revolt just like North Americans did in the early 1900s. Right now, Western culture is enjoying a cheap existance off the backs of the Asian workers. Some day, that is going to end.
Then we'll be really screwed because it will cost way more to buy the crap we are buying now for peanuts and they won't bring those jobs back to North America that they are shipping over there right now.