In article , Harold & Susan Vordos wrote:

"Jim Stewart" wrote in message
... mike wrote:
MKloepster wrote: snip

Cheap *******s who won't pay the higher cost of skilled American labor
are the ones steering this particular ship; snip

Those cheap *******s are US!!!
How many times have you gone down to the full service store to look at
stuff then called around the discount places to save a penny? WE won't
pay a nickel more than we have to. DEMAND drives the ship. WE won't
buy good stuff, so THEY don't supply good stuff.
....
Sometimes people choose cheap because they are tired of being screwed.

Yep!! Real tired, in fact.
I'm afraid the bulk of us here in the States are in for a wake-up call. We
no longer are an island, not since we started dealing with the entire
planet. How can any of us expect to be paid wages that are three, four,
or fives times greater than those paid in other countries, when those
countries are doing their level best to capture all the production jobs
available? Especially when our government, in all its wisdom, has been
telling us that we are no longer a manufacturing society, but service based,
helping chase the damned jobs away. Seems to me the "service society"

in 1990, Convex management (later part of Hewlett-Packard) told our
engineers that they were competing with their counterparts overseas
whose wages were much lower. the solution was to move _faster_ and
_smarter_ to keep ahead of the, "dragons".

by 1994, many of our engineers were thinking that almost all low tech
manufacturing would move of shore, leaving computers and telcom here.
my question then was, "can this nation survive just by selling each
other information and fast food?"

by 2001, folks were talking about competing "founderies" overseas (for
chip manufacturing). in about 1994 or so, TI built a memory manufacturing
plant in Richardson, Tx, partnering with a Korean(?) co. now there are
overseas competitors for the "Vitesse" type chips (fast).

title, along with the jobs it entails, have been shipped to India. What are
we now going to do to make a living?
As long as the unions and workers insist on more for less, I see everything
slowly leaving our country, everything, that is, but jobs like delivery
drivers, which can be accomplished only on location. Those that remain
....
Until the work force establishes wage equilibrium with other countries, I
see jobs continuing to leave our country wholesale. Sounds to me like
pretty much everyone is going to end up making a lower wage (if they're
fortunate enough to have a job, that is), something in keeping with wages
paid in other countries. It's just a matter of when it happens. Some of
.....
Don't lose site of the fact that regardless of how much a worker gets paid,
it is you, the consumer, that pays the salary. Business will continue to
raise prices to compensate for their increased overhead. They must, or
they go out of business. In the end, we all lose.
.... Didn't
any of us learn anything from the auto industry that shot itself in the foot
in the 70's, and were shamefully embarrassed by the Japanese? All of us
should be ashamed of ourselves for the greed and indifference we have
displayed in our ME FIRST society, with our exorbitant wages and low
quality. Heavy sigh! Rant off. Harold

you cover much ground, Harold, and make concise points. in general,
my opinion as to "why?" this is happening is the fallout of WWII and
certain philosophies adopted in the postwar decades. these were not
owned by any single class: the Marshall Plan, Japanese reconstruction,
the Cold War, and my personal favorite, "the Dale Carnegie methods of
management". the near antipathy of Dale Carnegie, whose name escapes
me, was in postwar Japan, helping them develop a modern base for manu-
facturing.

our leaders came to believe that wars would be avoided by world-wide
development and these "newly developed" nations would help support
our economy and values. we literally gave away most of the base
technologies. later, for fun and profit, many of our successful
companies did the same with advanced technologies. well, enough
time has passed to begin seeing the results, but only the painful
ones. whether or not it leads to world peace is still decades
away. my 2cents for the quarter. grin --Loren