Buy American, Again?

No. We don't make anything here anymore.

How about, "Assembled In America"

I am not sure that I understand globalism. Animals reach certain "economic" sizes and don't get any bigger. Why not countries or trading blocks too? I think that trading blocks have gone past their natural limit and that is why the sky is falling everywhere. Why couldn't America or Canada or Cuba manage to supply all or nearly all their own needs? Imagine a global minimum wage. 23 cents per hour. And a global minimum price of energy relative to what an average human can output in an hour (related to that 23 cents per hour). How much would a liter of gas cost? It would totally change our way of thinking.

It is extraordinary how quick we are burning through our resources. And for what? I know people who pay 2 and 3 and 4 hundred dollars per month storing stuff they cannot fit in their houses. At 25 bux an hour, they are working 8, 12 and more hours a month just to store their stuff!

Other people spend 4 hours a day commuting. Shouldn't that 4 hours be added to your work time? It is a cost. Why not buy American where you can? A little economic patriotism goes a long way. I think of coal miners in Wales in "how green was my Valley" working 12 hour days, 6 days a week. I bet if they could spend a week in our shoes, they would not waste their free time driving to and from their jobs in stress and traffic.

I live in Victoria, on an island where 95% of the food is imported. (Much from california). We have good soil, great weather, and lots of wonderful farm land idle. If we got a reasonably large earthquake or tidal wave, a bunch of us would starve within weeks. And all because we live in an "integrated" economy.

I think whether we like it or not, global trade is here to stay.

A lot of people aren't going to like this, but I think one of the primary things we need to do to compete in the global marketplace, is to turn the US back into a "right to work" nation..........................eliminating unions that artificially inflate wages, and allowing people to work as individuals. Each individual would be paid in accordance with their worth to a particular company.

This would serve to lower our production costs, increase productivity, and help us to be able to compete with the rest of the world.

There is no logical reason for a person that turns screws all day long at an auto plant to make $50,000 a year.

I don't see anything here about encouraging hard work and productivity.

http://home.earthlink.net/~local1613/steward_goals.html

or here

http://www.goiam.org/index.php/headquarters/goals-of-the-iam

or anywhere. They have become political machines. Nothing more.

I agree 100% about corporations being able to afford to pay a living wage and I am always amazed when someone gets upset about a family income of $50,000 when CEOs are making multi-million dollar salaries! I, for one, think unions help to keep wages up for all of us and one needs only read "The Jungle" by Sinclair Lewis to understand what it was like before unions (and could easily return to). A real solution to the inequities between the third world countries' slave labor and lack of environmental regulations would be to slap a nice big import tariff on the goods coming into the U.S. from these places. Level the playing field and you'll see a rush to return factories to this country! The purveyors of "free trade" are nothing more than greedy politicians being bribed ("campaign contributions") by greedy corporate elites who want higher profits and salaries. We need a third party that is willing to stand up to the "free traitors"!

I, for one, am sick to death of hearing that we must accept bad ideas ("globalism") whether we like them or not. This mantra has been growing tired for quite some time, as illustrated by the beginnings of what could become a revolution (the occupy movement). Taking even more from labor and further enriching the 1% is not something that we should just sigh and take. "Right to work" is a spin for get rid of the ability of workers to bargain with employers for decent wages, benefits or anything else that greedy corporate types don't like to give, while giving themselves golden parachutes and multi-million dollar stock options. If workers lose the ability to bargain collectively, we will return to the bad old days of child labor, 7 day work weeks, terrible wages and all the other abuses of the "gilded age". Be careful what you settle for or you will end up with the wages and working conditions of a Chinese factory worker by osmosis.

Don't be mad at the 1%. You've got your government to blame for just about everything, including globalism. Go ahead and accept it. The US just signed another trade agreement with South Korea last week.

Guess which way the goods will be flowing?

Hint: Not from the US to South Korea.

Yes, the latest trade agreeement was signed by another union darling. Good luck with that.

Please refer to my earlier comment about the need for a third party candidate who isn't a "free traitor"/aka for sale. Yes, I do blame the 1% as well as the politicians who go along with their anti-social tendencies. No, I won't just go along and hope that there are others out there with a backbone and a conscience.

I think we're on the same side here. I don't see a viable third party candidate happening. We've got one party with two different names and they're not going to let that change anytime soon. Those are the true elitists. Forget about the 1%.......................we could take everything they make for the rest of their lives and it wouldn't make a dent in this mess.

I'm as broke as anybody, and the last thing I'm going to do is start hating rich people. If they made their money honestly, good for them.

Don't hate, but don't roll over either. Greed has nothing to do with dishonesty. These are 2 separate vices. Excessive greed often leads to dishonesty; however, thus the tendency for the greedy to take unfair advantage of the power that comes with wealth. Power corrupts and the thirst for power is driving "this mess". Last election, I voted for Nader. Even if others aren't willing to think outside the box, at least the "one party" candidates know there are some of us out there who understand what's going on and we will speak to others as long as we have a voice. This is something each of us can do.

Kramarat, I worked in Germany. Unions there were pretty strong, actually really strong. I also worked in the Netherlands. Good wages, and unions. (and I was just a temporary foreign agricultural worker). I got the same pay as temporary dutch workers beside me.

My friends who worked through a contractor were getting about 20% less but the farmer was paying the same amount. Note that these are top countries which are weathering the storms pretty darn good.

In the free market, there is no such thing as artificially inflated wages. Either you get big bux or you don't.

Execs at big banks bargain (with their buddies on the board) and get INCREDIBLE pay. And that is ok too. Anyway, I think blaming the unions (especially in the USA) is like blaming a dead duck for all the other ducks dieing. There is some other thing causing the failure.

For a lot of people in the US, any bux is looking like good bux.

Call me an individualist. To me, unions are mini socialist enclaves.................................a few powerful, (rich), leaders at the top of the heap. Everybody else falls in line and is exactly the same as the next person......................it doesn't matter how hard or little you work.

I've never been in a union. Maybe I could have made more money. But I'm also a person that has always been able to work smarter and faster than the next guy, so I've been treated pretty well by my employers.

The pride that comes with being able to outperform others, and the extra pay that comes with it, has always been worth more to me than earning a slightly larger negotiated salary, and going to work every day as just another cog in the wheel.

But none of this matters. Both the US and the European Union are on extremely shaky ground....................largely because of union entitlement obligations that can't be met.

To think that it's going to be business as usual, with big paychecks, paid health insurance, and fat pensions forever, and still think we can compete in any meaningful way with China, India, and many others that are vying for a piece of the pie, is naive.

Much like the government, those that run the unions make far more than the working people that are paying them.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117290533.html

http://theunionlabelblog.com/2008/04/23/corporate-heads-make-too-much-what-about-union-leaders/

During downturns people start to save more and spend a lot less, thus worsening the downturn. The problem is how to convince people to spend again.Obviously where they spend it can be important. You want them to spend locally and nationally, not internationally.

I have been buying things overseas on the Internet, because of prices. Suddenly I realise that I am being charged locally for this, $6 per transaction, because of the perceived risk in these transactions using Paypal and credit card. So now I check more carefully whether or not the Internet purchase is such a good deal. I might be better off buying locally, although the price is higher.

Yes, and now it's wonderful, all the cash made by US corporations is stuck overseas because they don't want to pay the taxes due to bring it back into this country. Now they want another special deal, reduce the rate. HA! fat chance, I say you made it there, pay the taxes due or keep it there.

Hi Guys,

When we started to buy transistor radios from Japan back

in the sixties we started to ruin our own economy.

Much of the high technology (including computers) was developed

here in North America but the technology was stolen by who ? You guess right

Look what we have done by buying cars from overseas.

TTYL Jens

Hey now some of us in America would feel rich as kings if we made it into the $50K a year income bracket. Until then we poor and huddled masses will swallow our pride and buy what fits our income level regardless of where it came from or how many homeless children it took to make it.

When you cant afford health insurance you certainly cant aford most of made in America either.

It seems to me that the 'science' of economics developed in a historic period that was a bit of a fluke, and many of the lessons learned are not as universal as they appear. Most economists have come from western civilizations (Europe and North America), and most of their 'scientific' findings have come since the industrial revolution. This has been a period during which most of the economic power in the world was in the hands of a very small part of the global population. I say this was a fluke because for most of human history economic power and population size have been strongly linked. Only in the last few centuries has this pattern been broken. That era is now coming to a close. Western civilization no longer has a monopoly on technology, and economic power is now becoming more diffuse and more closely tied again to population. Much of what economists believe may no longer hold true. When you live in fat city it is possible to believe all sorts of nonsense and still prosper, at least for a while.

So most economists tend to blame the Great Depression on protectionism. I would think a bigger factor was the outcome of WWI, where the victors imposed drastic reparation payments on the losers. The effects of the war itself was pretty devastating to the European economy. The payments demanded of Germany (while perhaps defensible on 'moral' terms) created a vast hole in the world economy where Germany used to be. This reduced both the supply of tradeable goods and the demand for such goods.

When I hear economists talk these days I hear a lot of talk about taxes, interest rates, regulatory systems, etc. These are all like the 'superstructure' of a ship - communications, command and control, and such. These are not insignificant details, but it is the hull of the ship and the engines that make it all work. When was the last time you heard an economist talk about fundamentals like supply and demand, the multiplier effect, elasticity, etc.? I think in the field of economic thought the tail is wagging the dog at this point.

Economics is about people making things, offering them up for sale, and other people deciding to buy them. Economists don't make things, and don't really understand the people who do. It kind of like asking a eunuch for advice about your love life...they may have lots of interesting theories on the subject based on their impartial by-stander status but no real experience. I'd say buy local as much as you can and don't worry too much about what the economists say.

After WW I, a lot of surplus appeared on world markets and depressed economies, because of competition with manufacturing. After WW II, lend-lease equipment was destroyed everywhere, to prevent this problem happening again. A waste of good materiel, but a necessary evil.

How about if companies decided to "Sell American"; e.g., by offering high quality at favorable price?

Sounds good. About 25 years ago, something began to go wrong. I lived in Ireland, and basically, I couldn't buy crap. I could go into the hardware store, and buy any drill bit (they were pricey) and they all worked for quite a while and could be sharpened and would work again. Nowadays, some drill bits are really soft and it seems that no attempt to harden them has been made. You can actually bend the bits they are so soft! I guess something happened to national standards at that time? Today they even paint a strong looking coating on some drill bits to trick people into buying them! I think that prior to 25 years ago, these things were spotted in the customs area and barred from entry. Can crap be returned (before it enters) now or is there a law against banning crappy products?

Actually having something to sell would be a good place to start.

Perhaps this will deal with the current "deficit in demand" that I heard one economist spouting.

Yup.

I think that we in the developed world (whose economies are currently suffering) might be wise to concentrate more on specialty products and services. Until wages rise significantly in the developing world, competing head to head in with low wage countries in mass production markets is going to be tough. It is in such markets where economies of scale are most important that our disadvantage will tend to be greatest.

I'm probably biased here because the products I design and market are very specialized, but for what its worth my business has been fairly steady for the last several years, and my overseas sales are increasing.

While our economies in the developed world are stagnating the global economy is booming. The upside of this is that hundreds of millions of folks who used to live poverty now have some disposable income. Competing for a share of that new market will require that we understand how those people live and what products and services would make them want to part with a bit of their cash. Superior technology is important in this but is not enough - we need superior imagination as well. That is of course easier to say than do...but a good place to start is to put more emphasis on the products we make and less emphasis on the palaces we will build for ourselves to live in when our product takes off. If we want to understand these new consumers we would be wise to live the way they live.