My opinion: Globalization smashed American manufacturing. Globalization is a consequence of the elimination of tariffs and cheap shipping which will be even more economically efficient.
Yesterday I saw that it currently costs $500 for an average cargo container to be shipped from Asia to Europe. They are now building container ships that hold 18,000 containers. Those in current use only haul 14,000 containers.
My average current cost for an HVAC service technician is $46 an hour, including health insurance, cell phone, uniform, employer matching SS and Medicare, unemployment insurance, and worker's comp insurance. I am not a union contractor. Since I am in service and not manufacturing my company does not have to compete with a service company in Maylasia or China or India. I doubt a manufacturing company in the US could pay minimum wage with no benefits and get its hourly cost down to double that same cost in China.
Not until we decide to impose tariffs will the factories and manufacturing jobs reappear here. Blaming our current loss of manufacturing on greedy unions or slothful young people or greedy capitalists is in error if you believe that market forces work. So now we buy our manufactured consumer goods at Walmart, and really cheap at that. My shirt was made in Sri Lanka, my pants in India. Many of the tools in my garage were made in China.
Last year I hunted bobwhite with a friend on his family ranch. They were drilling oil wells every two hundred yards or so in one area. Must have been a hundred. I was shocked to find out that the pump jacks on newly completed wells had been manufactured in China.
I think this is what Pogo said: "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Last edited by AmarilloMike; 06/01/15 08:06 PM.
