Friday, May 10, 2013

Free trade my ass!

Who's clamoring for free trade?  Business because it opens markets to American products they say.  Look, when the US was the manufacturing engine of the world only 30 to 60 years ago, with innovation, quality, and massive amounts of products, the world bought our products, even with stiff taxes and duties they bought it because it was the best and demand for good products sells.  They want more free trade deals so they can import not export.

This free market shit is for the uber rich, for Bain Capital, for business school graduates, they don't know how to run a lathe, sharpen a cutting tool, how to correctly shut off a heat treat furnace, they know how to buy cheap, skim, fire people, and vote Republican.

Manufacturing job growth last month was Zero.  Why?  *Oil and fossil fuel are stuffing their pockets and stalling the biggest new technology wave in decades, clean energy jobs, their enemy.  *Congress and the president still have not made shipping jobs and factories offshore a penalty, even a minor one.  *There is no buy American program of any kind, even for the defense industry which means as domestic sources die off we have no alternative but to import, which in national emergency is a disaster.  *Wall Street would rather import than produce, profit rather than create and build.  *Retailers value buying low, and successfully hide from consumers a penny saved is dollar gone to China.  *Consumers are weak, we flock to wallmart or menards killing local businesses. *Finally, my own contribution to the problem, machines being sold (some by me) now into industry produce more with fewer people operating and feeding them, productivity go's up without adding another body to the payroll, and wages are flat though the worker is generating this year what a few years ago 2, maybe 10 did, what a century ago a hundred did, this won't change, tools and machines will continue to gain, a trend no politician can change, this is a technology Bain and big oil are just fine with.

All those guys out of trade schools, or laid off from the local machine shop or factory, none of the reasons above are lent to them when they are spoken of, nope, they were lazy, probably belonged to a union, and now why don't they just get a job, get off their ass and get a job.  Or, take a drug test to see if you can find another job or get assistance.  Use to be a bread winner, now he's a suspect.  Oh, free trade, that's the ticket, if only that, he could get his old job back.   What's that?  Oh, the bullshit alarm.

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