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The relevant variable is profitability. If widgets can be profitably manufactured in South Carolina, they will be. If the bast profits are possible only by manufacturing in Bangladesh, well guess what.
I love been reading a book about manufacturing in the 1970s.
Most factory jobs back then paid the inflation adjusted equivalent today of $9-13 an hour. The ones with strong unions, a minority, got a step above that, equivalent to 14-19 an hour, but often with exceptions for seasonal workers who still made that 9-13.
The main advantage over today that I can see was that people could actually just walk in to the office and get hired on the spot.
Last edited by redguard57; 01-04-2017 at 07:04 AM..
I love been reading a book about manufacturing in the 1970s. Most factory jobs back then paid the inflation adjusted equivalent today of $9-13 an hour. The ones with strong unions, a minority, got a step above that, equivalent to 14-19 an hour, but often with exceptions for seasonal workers who still made that 9-13.
But CEOs did not make $20 million per year back then. Imagine what a horrible time that must have been!
Tariffs may NOT bring back jobs, it may simply mean it costs more to buy something.
Companies are NOT necessarily going to say "oh, lets make it cheaper in the USA by NOT paying a 30-35% tariff and create HIGH PAYING jobs here" {and TRUMP can't "make them"}...they will simply pass the tariff cost on to the consumer.
And Minimum wage is becoming a "norm" in many areas {like mine}, so they{we} will be priced right out of buying anything.
SOunds real good for the economy.
Same with the so-called "repatriation of US Dollars" held by companies in overseas accounts to avoid paying taxes....doesn't exactly mean the companies will bring the money "HOME".
I love been reading a book about manufacturing in the 1970s.
Most factory jobs back then paid the inflation adjusted equivalent today of $9-13 an hour. The ones with strong unions, a minority, got a step above that, equivalent to 14-19 an hour, but often with exceptions for seasonal workers who still made that 9-13.
The main advantage over today that I can see was that people could actually just walk in to the office and get hired on the spot.
I am not sure that the "inflation adjusted equivalent today of $9-13 an hour" is correct (these days every author/publisher seems to have a spin), but assuming it is true, I can think of several reasons why that would be a good pay:
1. Factory jobs seemed to have lots of overtime.
2. Defined contribution pension plans, not 401k.
3. Factories were located all through the country and the population was more evenly distributed. A factory worker cold live in a low COL area and still have a vibrant community.
4. Three of the biggest expenses for a family have appreciated much faster than inflation: health care, real estate, and college. You could buy a house for the equivalent of 3-4 years salary, have your kids work summers in high school and between semesters to pay for college, and no one had heard of a deductible to be paid at the doctor's.
5. There usually was just one car not a fleet.
6. Less regulation. Complying with a lot of regulations costs you directly. Around here, people used to run a drain line from the sump pump to a street culvert. Now it has to run into an approved dry well. That's a good grand for some elderly people who can't do it themselves.
7. Fees. Fees. Fees. From govt to private contractors there are fees.
I hope Trump, Pence and Steve Bannon succeed in reversing this.
There are millions of jobs in the USA that would disappear if we started something stupid like bringing back tariffs.
That's debatable. When sanctions were imposed on Iran (essentially in economic terms insurmountable tariffs), more workers were hired in industries making local copies of imported products or substitutes than workers who lost jobs due to exports. Typically, all workers took home much less. More or less the same thing is happening in Russia. If countries that have 1/4 or 1/2 of the U.S. population can do it, it would seem possible it could be done here.
I am not sure that the "inflation adjusted equivalent today of $9-13 an hour" is correct (these days every author/publisher seems to have a spin), but assuming it is true, I can think of several reasons why that would be a good pay:
1. Factory jobs seemed to have lots of overtime.
2. Defined contribution pension plans, not 401k.
3. Factories were located all through the country and the population was more evenly distributed. A factory worker cold live in a low COL area and still have a vibrant community.
4. Three of the biggest expenses for a family have appreciated much faster than inflation: health care, real estate, and college. You could buy a house for the equivalent of 3-4 years salary, have your kids work summers in high school and between semesters to pay for college, and no one had heard of a deductible to be paid at the doctor's.
5. There usually was just one car not a fleet.
6. Less regulation. Complying with a lot of regulations costs you directly. Around here, people used to run a drain line from the sump pump to a street culvert. Now it has to run into an approved dry well. That's a good grand for some elderly people who can't do it themselves.
7. Fees. Fees. Fees. From govt to private contractors there are fees.
I hope Trump, Pence and Steve Bannon succeed in reversing this.
It talked about their actual pay. Non union shops were paying $1.80 to $2.50 an hour in 1972-3. Union shops paid in the $3+ per hour range and depending on the union you didn't have to deal with management breathing down your neck in those cases. Non union shops had no pensions. Union shops had pensions for some workers but far from all. One factory profiled was a ping-pong paddle manufacturer, one of the non-union ones. Basically the job sucked with a capital S. Standing all day doing mostly the same task with a tyrant manager watching your every move.
The book was published in 1975, so it was relating things as the author saw them at the time. You can see globalization taking hold as the constituent parts of the products were increasingly coming from overseas. You can also see how the unions failed because the leadership was highly corrupt & in a lot of cases a 2nd arm of management screwing their own workers, ie: at this fish cannery the author profiled, the union worked out contracts that allowed temp hires for part of the year. It protected the high pay of a few senior workers in the short term but in the long term planted the seeds for replacing the entire workforce.
Based on what I've read, these jobs were not that much better than the service jobs that exist today. A waiter can make what those folks were making, which was basically a step above minimum wage. That's it.
It's s.s.d.d. The jobs were of a different nature but they had about the same outcomes as the retail//food service jobs that are in abundance for the working classes today.
Last edited by redguard57; 01-05-2017 at 10:55 PM..
redguard57------That book you are quoting is not the whole story.
Factory workers back then, could afford to buy a home, I know as I took their credit reports and had them to review from the 50s to the early 70s. Average workers in that area were bringing in $350 to $500 a month. They could live quite well. I was selling furniture at the best middle class furniture store in the area on commission. My annual income was $125,000 up in today's dollars and was well above average. I was selling a lot of furniture, as the area was growing fast. Stevens Creek Road from the Macy's Shopping Center to Cupertino was a nice drive through orchards, as the old timers can tell you, when we moved there in 1956 from the North Western part of California where I was the third generation there.
We bought our first new home in 1956 and it cost $13,750 in the Heart of the Silicon Valley in Cupertino, GI bill, nothing down, and $77 per month payments including taxes and insurance. We were not the low cost area to buy new homes, and there were homes being built and sold new for under $10,000 in the 50s. Over the next 10 years we bought 3 homes as we moved up in Saragoga, and other west side locations, and none of them were over $22,000. Today homes that sold for $22,000 back then are are re-selling today for high six and low seven figures after all of these years according to listings in the Realtors books. Today the factory workers in those same positions cannot afford to buy homes in that area.
From end of WWII until the 70s, America had lots of manufacturing jobs. After the war, we were the only country that had industrial capacity to restore Europe, etc. Our factories hummed. We were the Europe, China and Japan of today and flooded the world with manufactured goods, and now no longer are the only country that can produce high volume of goods for the world. We had a lot of jobs back then for anyone that wanted to work. The problem today, is that the production of goods has spread around the world, and today we have to compete with goods from other countries which we did not have to do back then. We call this unfair, and those countries consider it getting even with us for flooding them with goods back then, and it took years to get them to the point they were no longer needing all the things we could produce.
There are millions of jobs in the USA that would disappear if we started something stupid like bringing back tariffs.
The background here is that there are many, many tariffs currently in effect. You can review them in the hundreds of pages that comprise the 2017 Harmonized Tariff Schedule.
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