On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 12:17:26 -0700, Brent
wrote:
snip
I hope American Manufacturing has NOT been decimated to the point
where it cannot profit from the weak dollar.
snip
And with this observation you lay bare the entire fallacy about
trade adjustment.

In many cases manufacturing is as much mind-set and attitude as
it is materials and machines, and the people with the required
mind-set and attitudes have long been dispersed.

In the US the equipment/tools/tooling was sold for scrap and the
facilities were sold for redevelopment as yuppie condos. The
workers, including the lead men and foremen, with the required
skills and knowledge to actually get parts out the door have long
since gotten other jobs, and are not about to trust the suits
again. The infrastructure of second & third tier suppliers, and
support such as the local mill & metal supply houses no longer
exists.

Even more critical, the industrial environment has been poisoned,
so that the new younger desirable employees with drive, ambition,
smarts, etc. will take industrial employment only as a temporary
and last resort. Much of this is based on their first hand
observation as they saw parents and relatives discarded by their
employers after 10 -- 20 or more years, and the advise and
counsel of the older generation who took it in the shorts.

Where new manufacturing has been successfully established in
America, it has not generally been American firms, but Japanese,
Korean, and German firms, leading to my observation that the
Korean, Japanese, and German companies/executives are more
ethical [or at least perceived as more ethical] than their
American counterparts.

This has ominous implications.

When a national company does well, the profits are reinvested or
go to the owners/stock holders. If this is an American company,
the profits are reinvested in America and American stockholders
rewarded. If it is a Korean, etc. company, the profits are
reinvested in Korea and the Korean stockholders are rewarded.

In the case of transnational corporations, the profits simply
vanish, no taxes are paid, and no investments are made, thus
while temporary economic activity may be generated in the host
country, no permanent improvement results, and the transnational
will ship the manufacturing operations out to an even lower wage
area as soon as the opportunity arises.

Welcome to the new flat world.
for explication of this statement click on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_is_Flat
http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm
http://www.amazon.com/World-Flat-Upd.../dp/0374292795


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
============
Merchants have no country.
The mere spot they stand on
does not constitute so strong an attachment
as that from which they draw their gains.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826),
U.S. president. Letter, 17 March 1814.