Tuesday, February 8, 2011

A Few Facts!


America's Industrial Future
A group of businessmen were recently asked "What can the government do to increase business in this country?"   There were two very simple answers: 
        DEREGULATE      LOWER TAXES

Here's a few interesting facts for you!

#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.
Foreign governments already own a good portion of American Real Estate and businesses.  What's it going to be like in 10 yrs?
America is in deep, deep trouble folks.  It is time to wake up.


Obama's response?  "We need to be a world leader in *clean energy* and we need to *reach out* to the Muslim Brotherhood.   The guy is C.L.U.E.L.E.S.S.

1 comment:

  1. The reason China is killing us is very simple, slave labor. Contrast union labor & highly paid government workers producing very little with Chinese labor working 12 hours a day 7 days a week at next to nothing pay and you can easily see why China is growing and why every competing business practically in the world wants to do business there. Even with robotics doing much of the work in factories, we cannot compete with the labor in China. Take the computer industry for example. All it takes is for one company to go to China and they can undercut the competition. If the competition then wants to survive, they too must do the same.

    Example: China can import heavy slabs of granite from Brazil, finish them and ship them back to the US cheaper than the Brazilians can finish them and ship them here. And Brazil is not an expensive economy by any means. An importer can then pick up a container of finished granite slabs from LA and ship them to Idaho for a cost of less than $100 per slab, practically cheaper than a Formica countertop made in this country. And much of that cost is the shipping cost from LA to Idaho.

    It’s not only China that is exploiting slave labor; it is our companies every time they do business with China. The only answer in my opinion is tariffs for countries that exploit their people this way. It may be too late for that to work since it would substantially increase inflation in our country which would kill our economic growth even more. I think we can expect more of the same in the future. China is now, where Japan was 20 or 30 years ago and where we were 60 plus years ago. Suppose China due to their increased inflation, began paying their people more. Manufacturing costs would then increase. Companies would simply go to another climbing third world country for their cheap labor instead. In my opinion, until the whole world begins to treat their workers fairly, there is no real answer.

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