U.S. Jobs Shrinking Daily; No End in Sight:
Good Morning
The Reuters headline touts “Struggling at home, Ford sees lessons in
Ford determined that if having very poor people manufacture autos for very low wages and very few benefits, makes the company more money,…then it just goes to reason that having even fewer people employed would make even more money. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
Chief executive of Ford’s Brazilian and Mercosur units had this to say, “There are several elements of the turnaround in
These “things” that included canning some 46% of the work force and closing several plants in Brazil, worked so well that Ford came back to the U.S. and has cut 36,000 jobs since 2005 and has scheduled 10 plants to close. Oh joy.
Is Ford at fault for the massive loses that they have sustained? Are they at fault for 36,000
So Ford’s idea is simple and necessary under the present conditions. Fewer plants, fewer workers, more robotics, and larger profits. But what about the workers? We have now entered the era of the “The non-reusable, non-returnable worker.”
The results to date of this shift in manufacturing to the poorest nations on earth are that some 3 Million workers have lost their jobs in manufacturing since 1998.
This trend will continue to the point that manufacturing nearly anything in the
We now go back to yesterday’s column regarding the
Yet we have many politicians who calmly dismiss these issues as simply as calling for government to pay for re-training. Oh yes, the grand and delusional plans of our government. We’ll simply retrain welders to work as computer program analysts. Carpenters as stock brokers. Machinists as insurance salespeople. Sure we will.
I have a terrific idea. How about come election day, we don’t re-elect anyone? We prohibit past politicians from becoming lobbyists, and all of the displaced politicians can attend re-training classes for their new careers.
We need new leadership, totally new leadership.
Wake up
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Mike, It never seems to end, does it! Probably the worst part of this is the ever increasing dependance of America on other countries for almost all of our everyday needs. I always get upset when people gripe about WalMart buying a lot of their goods from China. No one else makes those goods and certainly not here in the US. The actions/inactions of our so-called government over the last 10-20 years have amounted to what can only be described as sabotage and treason. If someone was planning on taking down our country 20 years ago the actions taken by our government would have been a master plan of the first degree. Even scarier, the government still does not understand what they have and are allowing. It has to be the biggest sellout in the history of our world. I almost expect to see our country on EBAY! It is very plain to see that capitalism has been allowed to go way to far and a major dose of socialism will be needed to bring it back into line. It is too bad that we have so many people that get all spazed out over system titles, like communism, socialism, capitalism, Bushisms. Who ya going to call?
Hayes
Lots of issues here, but the real killer is that we live in a system that is impossible to maintain. The base of our economy is exponential growth in a finite world. We hit the wall some time back and lived since on credit rather than fess up and take a new tact.
I see some tough times coming very soon that will require totally new leadership to pilot us through without running completely up on the rocks.
The issue that will the most difficult to digest is that all the promises that government has made regarding Social Security, Medicare, job creation, etc. etc. cannot be funded under any system of government. There are problems that simply don’t have palatable answers.
The bitterness that millions of Americans will feel toward government when the truth is known is going to be considerable.
Mike, I think bitterness will be an understatement. Bush and the administration like to keep pointing out that the economy is doing well. The economy might be doing fine at this time but the people are not. I do not remember anytime in my life where the economy was going strong and the public was not. I think some of this is based on Wall Street being the basis that most companies are run on instead of their produce. Quanity and quality seem to be bygone ideals and making your predicted gain/loss is all that is important. Workers have become just hardware to be bought, sold, or written-off to meet quarterly predictions. Technology is used to make products easier to produce off-shore with less training and lower expenses. It would seem that humanity is no longer humane. We never even got to 1984 but went straight past it to whatever it is we have descended to. Our government has reached a stage to where it is only interested in defending itself and has absolutely no interest in the rest of the country. How do we get a population to realize this when the majority of them are too absorbed in their own lives to even notice anything past their own noses? This all reminds me of the German ball bearing factory that was bombed out in WWII. Even though there was no production going on the paperwork was still being processed. I think our economy is like that. No one has noticed that it has died since the Wall Street paperwork is still being processed. Oh well, Try to have a good day!
Hayesml,
As apparent as this issue is to you, few people really get it. Two chapters in my book deal with your concerns in earnest. Chapter 6- Modern Colonialism and Chapter 10 - people and profits.
My column today puts a little humor on a horrible problem.
The rich who run America, are not necessarily planning to eliminate Americas Middle Class by design, it is simply the results of their remaining rich at all costs.
U.S. Middle Class, mathematically can’t compete against 30 cent per hour Chinese.
The U.S. has come to an impasse regarding domestic expansion, at a rate that will float the boat. Where does that leave us? I wouldn’t be surprised to see Yellowstone National Park with a FOR SALE sign at the entrance.