The left hates history
- Thread starter Diogenes
- Start date
What happened was corporations moved the jobs to states with no labor protections and cheaper costs. That is the same justifications for taking production abroad. Going to Mexico and China was unprotected, cheap labor and no environmental protections. There was nothing wrong with the cities we built, except they were not maxing profits.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
What happened was the Electronics Revolution, and the US was on the leading edge of that. When you consider that the US has lots of land suitable for expansion, there is no longer any real need for urban density. That density was necessary in the Industrial Age where you needed a concentration of population to work in factories both to make 'stuff' and to administer and run those factories.
What you have now, is people voting with their feet--and U-Hauls. That is, they no longer have to live in high rise apartments in a dense urban environment. They can move to a more open, less dense, cityscape where they can use the automobile (regardless of how it is powered) coupled with the computer (electronics) to work, recreate, and do everything else they want.
What you have now, is people voting with their feet--and U-Hauls. That is, they no longer have to live in high rise apartments in a dense urban environment. They can move to a more open, less dense, cityscape where they can use the automobile (regardless of how it is powered) coupled with the computer (electronics) to work, recreate, and do everything else they want.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
Wrong! Unions and government, particularly in blue states, made it impossible to produce anything profitably. So, manufacturers moved elsewhere. Rather than strike a balance between owners and workers, the Left / Democrats took everything to the extreme against owners who were seen as uncaring and evil.
Cities themselves were also no longer really needed to get mass production of anything done. Concentration of labor has become less and less relevant in the Electronics Age.
You are nuts. The Big 3 were making enormous profits. The auto suppliers were making bank.
Owners are uncaring and evil. Not all of them, but most are. The head of GE said he wished he could not his plants on barges and move them to wherever he got the best deal. In essence they did that . They moved to the south, them Mexico, then China and then any 3rd world nation that would give them the low paid unprotected workers and no regulations.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
Back in the late 80's I watched a 60 Minutes segment about Maquiladora plants in Mexico and US auto manufacturers. The segment included a biographical essay of one of the US UAW union workers at some GM plant in Michigan. He was like in his late 20's with a high school diploma and worked on an assembly line putting doors on cars. He'd use a mechanical arm to position the door, an impact driver to tighten the bolts, hook up the electrics, then test close and open the door.
For that simple task he was making over $70 an hour in the 80's. He had a house, vacation cabin on a lake, a boat, RV, several cars, etc. He was whining in the segment that the plant was closing, and he couldn't find another job that paid more than a fraction of what he got working in that plant. He had no real skills, no useful education, and was going to lose most of his 'toys' as a result.
Then they went to Sonora Mexico where there was a plant making the same car(s). The worker there, with no particular higher education, was doing the exact same job just a well as the American worker. He was ecstatic and enthusiastic that he was getting paid the equivalent of $1 an hour to do that job.
The UAW fucked its workers by overpricing their labor.
Obama was part of an attempt to retrain workers in Chicago that were likewise displaced around the same time. The people doing the interviews to help those workers found their skill set and education was completely useless for any sort of more than minimum wage job. Their unions had fucked them by overpricing their labor.
If companies can compete using US labor in the US they will. If they can't they're going to move elsewhere. This isn't unique to the US. Across Europe the same thing is happening.
Oh, by the by, if you want "huge profits" in corporations today it's credit cards and hedge funds. Their profits are usually obscene.
U tend to turn up 20 years out of date.....I did not read this.
Perhaps U Might consider condensing!
Yakuda
Verified User
Why did they move shit head?
They were not paying 70 bucks. an hour That is not true. That was the cost of having emp[loyees. It added up everything including secretarial costs, equipment ,parking and benefits, I cannot believe you bought that .
I worked in the big 3 and I remember when GM moved a plant to Mexico, justt across the river, They Mexican plant put all their crap straight into the water.
The owners moved to where they could get cheap unprotected labor and no environmental regulations. No way we should have matched that.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
Exactly! Unions and government regulation did in the auto industry. Workers were getting paid far too much for their labor and the government was strangling business with overly restrictive regulations.
Here's a question for you: How much pollution should we allow?
Or, how about this question: If a worker adds $10 in value to a product an hour for the company they work for, how much per hour should that employee be paid?
So you do not understand the point. They were folding in heat costs, air conditioning and every cost not related to their wages. The workers were making between 10 and 15 an hour.