Stimulus Info

aint that the truth
curtis

Wait... Why am I laughing? It's so true and my wife won't even let me have A prostitute

padlock said:

Go to a ball game with a tattooed prostitute that you met at a yard sale and drink beer all day !

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Do you have to buy domestic beer and an american prostitute? LOL

My line of work is the internet. A sideline to this is I own several domain names in a speculative capacity. Most are .com, .net and .org but I own a few in our severely-underused country code, dot-us. For example, I own MetalDetecting.us, etc, etc...

One of them is MachineXTools XdotX us (remove the X's, they're put there for a reason) I recently got an inquiry to buy it with a reasonable opening offer. Names like this are particularly useful to industrial concerns that wish to denote their US presence for the marketing advantage; US based manufacturing is the biggest holder of this sentiment and since all manufacturing begins (and usually ends) with Machine Tools, I was excited to see a realistic offer... which I found out came from France

The money still spends either way and they were qualified to own it with a US Subsidiary (dot US domains, unlike .com, aren't freehold. You must be a US resident or have a bona-fide US Presence in order to posses them) but I passed. It just broke my heart to see that name- one of my favorites, being a hobbyist machinist myself- going to an overseas interest.

We really, really need to figure out how to facilitate a manufacturing renaissance in this country. The game has definitely changed and we will never be able to compete with labor costs or the lack of environmental restrictions (aka- "less costs") that developing countries enjoy, but there must be a way we can leverage our industrial base to start 'making stuff' once again. To be sure, we will probably never make socks or plastic drink umbrellas again, but meaningful items, we have to start producing them... If we don't, it's at our peril. While it's impossible to take a straight Buy American line in the year 2010 and forward, I always do, wherever I can, presuming the increased cost translates to increased quality, which is usually the case.

We are spoiled.. Thats about it.

To do my own small part, I have requested that family members do not buy me any Xmas gifts made in China.

Twenty years ago, I bought some Woolrich corduroy shirts which were made in USA. Those shirts are still not worn out (of course I only wear them in the winter). A couple years ago I saw some Woolrich shirts in a store. Yep, all made overseas.

I did manage to buy athletic shoes (New Balance) this year which are marked "made in USA of imported materials".

L. L. Bean used to carry almost all "made in USA" clothing (25+ years ago). Now almost all imported.

I tend to want to buy US made things but even some of those can be cheap crap. I support the highest quality product. I don't care what country it's from. It won't help one bit if a handful of us only buy American stuff. Other counties have cheap labor which results in usually cheap products which means lower prices. Lower prices make me happy. I'm not wasting more money on something just because it was made here. I do get your point, but I'm going to be a jerk and buy whatever has the best value. For computer parts I buy exclusively online because it's almost always cheaper. I do shop at US online shops though, like newegg, not some random Chinese site. You can't trust those. I don't even know why I bothered to type any of that out. Nothing better to do I guess.

There are a few unforunate realities to globalism. A woman sitting in front of a sewing machine at some textile factory in Appalachia isn't going to produce a significantly better product than a similar woman at a similar factory in China- certainly, the difference in quality isn't any more than the respective difference in cost.

If people understood the 'true cost of low prices' via imported goods, though, they would absolutely, positively get on board the "buy American" bandwagon, but unfortunately, the case that needs to be made is just too complex for the internet generation, who has the attention span of an autistic gnat.

Macroeconomics and the way 'capital' works isn't exactly easy-reading, but it's easily understood if you take the time to look further into it. When an economy is no longer producing more than it consumes, it has a problem. When it's consumption is measured mostly in terms of imported goods, it has a problem. When you combine these two factors- an economy that consumes more than it produces and that consumption is mostly of imported goods- there is a *huge* capital outflow problem, which we presently face.

Go ahead and enjoy whatever savings you might find with goods imported from the 3rd world, but just understand that for every purchase you make with them, a job is lost here. Enough people out of work and 'certain' political sentiments will rise (or, already have risen), which in turn will lead to heavy taxation. They can only 'tax the rich' for so long, before everyone has to step up and pay the piper- not to mention the rich are in the unique position of being able to tax you back, via the necessary goods and services they provide that caused them to be rich in the first place. The other option is to inflate the currency- just print billions of dollars and drop it into the system. The lag time between when the liquidity is introduced and when the value of the dollar starts to drop will ease our pain for a minute or two, but don't cry when 15 years from now, a dozen eggs costs $35.50 and your 30 year savings/401K now represents a years average wages.

If you don't support American manufacturing and the capital-flow models it supports, then you support *much, much, much* higher taxes and/or severe inflation to keep our standard of living propped up, which we cannot do forever.

Eventually we can have bills with denominations like this:

if you want mfng to come back to the usa, send the union bosses to china,india,mexico,sri lanka etc. establish unions there and then we can compeete with the rest of the world. don't mean to p.off any body, but some times i feel the unions are why this great republic is in the shape it's in. why do american goods such as cars cost so much more here than foreign cars, when most of their parts come from foreign countries? just saying,,,sorry if any one is offended

I tend to enjoy the 40 hour work week, paid vacations, holidays off, and not having my 8 year old daughter working beside me in a factory... But that's just me.

harleyeater said:

if you want mfng to come back to the usa, send the union bosses to china,india,mexico,sri lanka etc. establish unions there and then we can compeete with the rest of the world. don't mean to p.off any body, but some times i feel the unions are why this great republic is in the shape it's in. why do american goods such as cars cost so much more here than foreign cars, when most of their parts come from foreign countries? just saying,,,sorry if any one is offended

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Unions per se are not 100% at fault. History is full of documented abuses perpetrated on the workers by the factory bosses. Unionism was an attempt to curb those abuses.

The management that negotiated for the companies in those union contracts didn't always care much about the downstream effects as they, in many cases, planned to be gone by then.

However, union labor content driving steep car costs is really an excuse that doesn't hold much water. Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and many other car companies manufacture cars in the US, with union labor in many cases, and sell them at competitive prices and make a handsome profit in the process.

The decline of car manufacturing in the US was due to poor quality control, lousy reliability, too much "sameness" from(too many car badges making the same thing with slight cosmetic differences), largely overlapping model lines and last, but not least, very poor management and marketing.

Its scary how true this is but a very funny way to put it! Looks like I need to call the bunny ranch and hit a game!! Oh wait I wont see any of that money! (DAMMMMM)