Interesting email I recieved today......

[Larry Edgerton]

19 Facts About The Deindustrialization OfAmericaThat Will Blow Your Mind

The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing. It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution. It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes. It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germanyand Japan in World War II.

But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America . Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period.



The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little. Do you know what our biggest export is today? Waste paper. Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us. The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was. Once upon a time America could literally out produce the rest of the world combined. Today that is no longer true , but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world. If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?

Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things. So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation? We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable. Every single month America goes into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.

So what happens when the debt bubble pops?

The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country.



But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.

For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them. Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.

The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind....

#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation.

#2 Dell Inc., one of America ’s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.

#3 Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. in November. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.

#4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States ? Zero.

#5 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.

#6 As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.

#7 The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000.

#8 According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million.

#9 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.

#10 Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul , Minnesota. Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford's new "global" manufacturing strategy.

#11 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

#12 In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.

#13 The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#14 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.

#15 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products. Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.

#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.

#18 One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.

#19 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.

So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?

How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?

How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?

How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?

The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis. It needs to be treated like one.

America is in deep, deep trouble folks. It is time to wake up.























Thoughts?

Larry

[Mike Henderson]

I didn't read your whole post, but manufacturing is going to go where it cheaper to manufacture the goods. The only way the US could compete would be for the workers to be paid what we would consider poverty wages. Would you want to see that in the US? A whole class of people who are working but living on the street, or in some shanties thrown up on the side of the road.

If the US is to maintain it's standard of living, we (the workers) have to be able to produce things that have value and that cannot be easily moved to lower cost workers in another country. That probably means jobs that involve more education, and probably creativity. The financial services are doing very well in the US, and silicon valley is growing again.

Other opportunities involve jobs that are personal service and cannot be moved off shore (well, certainly not easily). Health care is one of those fields. Electricians, plumbers, etc. will always be needed in the US.

You're never going to see the kind of good blue collar jobs that used to exist in this country, certainly not in any significant numbers. There will be auto workers building American cars but a lot less than in the past.

We have the choice of looking forward, or looking back. We can look back and wish things were like they used to be but that world is gone. Or, we can look forward and see the opportunity that exists today. And it does exist - it always does - you just have to find it.

Mike

[Ken Fitzgerald]

First..... The absolute validity of the details in the email should be checked. So much of what is sent around on email is extremely erroneous or contains information from a biased perspective without showing all the information so the readers can accurately determine or weigh fairly or completely for themselves what the information means.

Secondly Mike is right.

Companies make a profit or go out of business. Companies that go out of business don't support any workers or retirees. Everyday the consumer votes for the next decision by what products they buy, in what price range and where it was manufactured. The costs of doing business are effected by taxes, labor costs, material costs, transportion costs and the costs to meet environtmental standards and more. But the turning point isn't now nor was it a decade ago. The turning point was when businesses like Walmart became so popular with the consumer.

Over 20 years ago, a x-ray department manager in a local medical center was working on his MBA. In a conversation, he stated the US economy was beginning to make a transition to a service based economy and his comment was we were in the right place for the future. He was right. The last I talked with him, he was sales manager with Siemens and had just come back from spending his 1 year term working at the company's home office in Germany.

Continued lamenting isn't going to change the situation and as Mike suggested, the smart thing to do is to find a niche and get trained for it.

Education and flexibility in the future will be more valuable than ever before.

[Brian Elfert]

America could produce more goods than just about anyone if wage cost wasn't a factor. We have automated factories that can produce massive amounts of goods with minimal labor. Even with automation it still costs more to make stuff in America than in China or other countries. The total cost to operate a factory in America is way higher than in China in most cases. I saw a documentary showing how flip flops are made in some 3rd world country. Everything was essentially done by hand and they still produce for less than an automated factory.

Yes, we'll still have auto factories in the USA, but they will no longer be the place you can depend on to raise a family and retire comfortably. The wage for new workers is $14 an hour instead of $28 an hour for older workers. A lot of the benefits for new auto workers have been scaled back. We allowed the cost of American production to get so high that corporations started looking elsewhere to produce goods.

There are big pushes by corporations to push down labor costs which in turn means lower standard of living for employees. I don't think these corporations understand they need well paid employees to buy the goods they are selling. If all of their employees are outside of the USA how is anyone in the USA going to buy anything? Right now, there are a great many electricians, plumbers, and the like unemployed. There is almost no job that is completely recession proof. Banks are starting to lay off employees because people aren't taking out loans these days. or they are paying off the ones they do have.

[Sal Kurban]

I agree with Mike. Competitiveness is determined by cost and cost is determined by the cost of productive resources adjusted for their productivity. To compete with the Chinese in a sector you have to pay your workers what the Chinese pay adjusted for productivity. This is plain impractical and undesirable. The way we can compete is not to go back and design some industrial policies or engage in protectionism but focus on education, training, and enhancing productivity. Productivity is what makes wages high. To enhance productivity we need education, training, innovation, investment in research, patent protection and such.

[Sal Kurban]

.... [snip] The turning point was when businesses like Walmart became so popular with the consumer. [snip]
....

Over 10 percent of all Chinese exports end up on the shelves of Walmart. Ironic is the fact that those who lament the loss of the industrial base in the US are the same people who frequent Walmart. I personally am neither for nor against any legitimate business model including that of Walmart.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbi...317_680254.htm

[Ken Fitzgerald]

There is no one segment of a business that is solely responsible for this. All things including customers effect the profitiblity of a business. Too often, one sided arguments are used to justify or demonize one portion of a business....whether it's managment....stock holders......labor.....environmental regulations.....taxes....consumers support or lack there of through buying habits.......etc.

No one portion of the business is solely responsible for what has happened. It's the overall effects created by all of those things that effect the profitibily of a business. Typically each element acts independently without concern on the overall picture. Management has effect the overall picture and decisions have to be made to keep the company profitable. Companies that go out of business support nobody.

I don't favor any of the business models, I am just stating my observations and opinions based on what I believe has happened.

[ray hampton]

Over 10 percent of all Chinese exports end up on the shelves of Walmart. Ironic is the fact that those who lament the loss of the industrial base in the US are the same people who frequent Walmart. I personally am neither for nor against any legitimate business model including that of Walmart.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbi...317_680254.htm

according to some reports, the majority of WalMart customers are the poor people, how can poor people afford some much ?

[Leo Graywacz]

There is a lot of regulation that is in America that is not in those other countries. A lot of the pollution regulations we have to deal with no other country does. And it shows. The insurances that companies have to hold to protect their employees is not required over there, there are no unions. A lot of it is government sponsored whereas we have to have private funds for our companies. The tax rates that we pay here are much more than the other countries.

It is just an expensive place to do business. Eventually the countries that are producing cheap products will start to become more modernized in their thinking. Their citizens will start to demand higher wages and eventually they will become like us. Then other third world countries will take over. What is happening to us will happen to them.

We need to look at a lot of things that hinder a business from being profitable and able to continue on and provide jobs. It is going to have to be a big restructuring of the way the taxes are implemented on businesses. And now they want the businesses to take over the paying of the health care system for the countries population. This will not help a business flourish. It will kill it.

The biggest problem I think is greed. A person 50 years ago was willing to work for 40 years to attain his wealth. Now everyone wants to be able to retire at 35 and will take all kinds of draconian short cuts to get there.

This was really hard to do without mentioning the government. Oh darn, just did.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Ray...Nobody is berating poor people....people from all walks of life shop at Walmart but you missed the main point. The point Sal and I were making is that when you buy the Chinese made products at Walmart, the higher priced equivalent US made products don't sell...so eventually the US factory closes and they move it to China so that this company can compete with the products sold at Walmart.
Now we have more workers out of work who can't buy the US made products so they shop at Walmart....though they probably were when they were working.

The economic decisions made by the US consumer well over 20 years was one of the factors that started this decline. But it is ever so more complex than that. Don't believe anyone who tries to sell you a simple solution to the economic problem. It's far too complex and none of the factors involved....none of the groups will accept any of the responsibility that they may have contributed and yet.....none of them are solely responsible. Yet all in their selfishness failed to see what effect their individual part played on the BIG PICTURE......20 little pieces sum up to a big piece....

We have become a society of consumers that don't look at long term effects and expect short term, immediate satisfaction. Look at all the consumer credit card debt people are carrying. Now, you can say some of it is a result of the current economy but people were defaulting or opening new credit card accounts and transferring debt well over a decade ago. The short term effect........yes...you bought that big flat screen television at Walmart and it's at home.....and the game boy.....the long term effect.....you can't make but the minimum payments which means you could die of old age and not have the credit card debt paid off.

I speak from experience on the credit card debt. I met my wife 12 days before I left for Navy bootcamp and we were married 2 days after I got home from bootcamp in 1968. 25 years ago in 1986 she came to me in tears stating we had a financial problem, she was the main cause and if I wanted a divorce, she'd understand. Then she explained though I never used credit cards, she had run up over $10,000 in debt and was only able to make the minimum payments. This was in 1986. $10,000 was a pretty large sum. Luckily for us? The large corporation who employed me, had sold our subsidiary to a much larger corporation and they wanted me to do something with my 401K. So, I closed it out and paid the taxes and penalties. I told my wife set 30% of it back for income taxes and pay the rest on the credit cards. It paid the credit cards down by about $6500. So then we cut up all but 1 credit card and I told her....if we can't pay for the charged amount at the end of the month, we don't need it or buy it. Period. And.....we never paid JUST the minimum payment on the balance we still owed. We paid the minimum plus more every month. In about 18 months we had the credit card totally paid off. We would still be paying on it if we had not used the money from that 401K. We learned the lesson of short term buying satisfaction, the hard way and were lucky enough to find a way out. But seriously, it wasn't luck that had me putting money in the 401K for the previous 10 years.

And home loans....when I got out of the US Navy after 8 years, the bank that handled my GI loan for our first house made us show our financial status and if IIRC, our home loan monthly payment couldn't exceed 30% of our net monthly income. Some of the crazy loans banks started inventing 25 or so years ago.....variable rates....etc. Short term gain...instant gratification.....with little regard to the long term effect.....and if you didn't get that promotion with the giant pay raise or you couldn't sell it for a profit before the rate raised.....Well....HELLO? What did you think was going to happen?

That's just part of the consumer involvement....there are the other elements too that contribute to it.....stockholder greed.....corporate greed...labor costs...taxes....materials cost....environmental regulations......so terribly complex.....

[Bill ThompsonNM]

One thing that always surprises me, however, is how many things we should be able to manufacture cheaply, but we don't. Take, for example, hypodermic needles. Surely they are made entirely with almost no human labor. Yet why do they all come from pakistan or china?Surely we can excel at automation?

[John Fabre]

Well our Sawmill creek is produced here still.

[anthony wall]

hey the usa is not on its own in this the uk has already gone through all of the same problems and has become as they say a nation of shopkeepers

[Keith Outten]

I won't weigh in on the cause of the problem, suggest a solution or point my finger at who I think is to blame.

I do feel that our ability to protect our way of life is directly related to our ability to manufacture. We could never build planes, tanks and airplanes at the level necessary to support a major war today as we did in the past. This situation would leave us with nuclear warheads as our only means of defense which is unacceptable given the fact that America will use its military at the drop of a hat and since the 1960's our motives have been suspect at best.

According to a TV News program just two days ago there are about 9 million manufacturing jobs left in America. The loss of huge numbers of jobs also brings with it the loss of valuable experience that cannot be replaced overnight. Some jobs take generations to train and to produce master tradesmen.

Americans are the hardest working humans on the planet, unfortunately we are spoiled rotten and have forgotten how to be fiscally responsible. Our children and grandchildren will pay dearly for our sins.
.

[Larry Edgerton]

Now we have more workers out of work who can't buy the US made products so they shop at Walmart....though they probably were when they were working.

The economic decisions made by the US consumer well over 20 years was one of the factors that started this decline. But it is ever so more complex than that. Don't believe anyone who tries to sell you a simple solution to the economic problem. It's far too complex and none of the factors involved....none of the groups will accept any of the responsibility that they may have contributed and yet.....none of them are solely responsible. Yet all in their selfishness failed to see what effect their individual part played on the BIG PICTURE......20 little pieces sum up to a big piece....

.....

Read the Wallmart Effect, it shows how this evolved.

I would agree with this entirely. It all seems so large that no one feels that they are at all responsible. Not at all true of course, but what ever it takes to sooth the beast.

We want to much, as a country, and we are not willing to work hard enough for it, and it is coming home to roost it seems. We were willing to work hard once, but that time has past. The cost of government to our productivity is staggering. I see this in my own business. I agree with Mike that we need to find a competitive edge, but we also need to make some other basic changes. We need to learn personally, and in government, that we are not entitled to anything, we only get what we work for.

Need coffee...

Larry