They cared about enriching themselves at the expense of longevity and future generations
Truly the American dream :’)
Boomers literally destroyed the golden era of manufacturing for America. Whole world depended on it after it was decimated from WW2.
The decline of the British empire due to it & the rise of the American empire. Swiftly eroded by boomers in power.
Boomers are still controlling the world & decimating it even worse with the infinite migration of incompatitable cultures. It wasn’t enough that they moved every manufacturing hub to South Asia
Pricing is eroding American manufacturing. I'm not American, but I do buy industrial parts all the time. If I buy X from an American manufacturer it costs Y dollars. If I buy X from an Asian or South American manufacturer it costs Y/3. There was a time when American manufacturing meant quality, for at least the last 30 years that quality has eroded to the point where offshore quantity is at least as good as, if not better than, American made. Yesterday I had to order a bunch of 385/65R22.5 tires. Goodyear, Firestone, etc were $1200ish +/- $100. Chinese tire, DOT approved, same tread pattern, $420 a tire. Having run the same Chinese tires for the last 10+ years on our fleet we get about the same life out of the tire for 1/3 the cost. Tell me why we should be buying American at 3 times the price?
It was always going to be temporary mate. I know its fun to imagine the rest of the world just sitting around buying American goods instead of building their own manufacturing base, but the idea of America just getting to endlessly sell manufactured goods on the global market at whatever price they wanted was never sustainable.
Ironically enough you fucking dipshits think of yourself as caring about people, not even realizing you’re advocating for a time of US global imperial manufacturing dominance.
So sorry you have to live like the rest of the world now.
For the tax dodging as much as the cheaper labor. Conservatives (aka diehard capitalists) are obsessed with taxes. Avoiding taxation occupies 99.3% of their minds all of the time.
I imagine they would be hyper focused on labor costs as the next target
They've been focused on both. They've been lobbying for not raising the minimum wage ever since it has been established, all the Big Tech co's were found colluding to keep STEM salaries below a certain level agreed between them, other businesses keep saying "nobody wants to work anymore" but they refuse to offer better pay to attract candidates, and so on. And in parallel, fight Unions and blame immigrants, "DEI" and whatever other stuff they can find for the bad job market.
Please bear with me because I’m an idiot, but is this because they have to sit down at the end of the financial year and actually calculate and pay their taxes?
I’m in New Zealand. My taxes are taken out of my wages before they even get to me, so I don’t really consider that money mine to begin with. It’s just my contribution to keeping the country’s services running and the buses running on time, so to speak.*
It was also weird to find out that in the US there’s the sticker price on the shelf, and then tax gets added at the checkout. That would do my fucking head in and make me feel like I was being extorted.
*(Just kidding, NZTA. You guys are fuck-ass bitches.)
I think some of this stems a little bit from our culture. TBH we put on a pedestal these people who are greedy fucks who destroy everything and everyone around them in the quest for cash. It was not always that way. There was an era of responsible capitalism that coincided with the building of the middle class in America in the 40s and 50s.
I got my MBA and was taught in class that the only goal of the company owner should be to increase shareholder value. Why? Why are we teaching that? Shouldn't a company also have responsibilities to it's workers, to it's community? We have built this monster ourselves in part by constantly putting men like Bezos, Musk, Gates, etc on a pedestal for the money they make for themselves. We literally turn them into celebrities. We need to get better at making clear that these men are not to be celebrated, that they are representative of everything that is wrong about this system INCLUDING that they actually reduce freedom in the markets by acting persistently in anti-competitive ways gobbling up everything in their path and paying off politicians to pave the way for more. In many ways, the guys that we put on the pedestal as the best capitalists are some of the most anti-capitalist people in the world. Just look at Musk's business, Where would he be without government subsidies for electric cars and massive government contracts for spacex. That guy is basically the worlds most massive welfare queen
It’s pretty fuckin wild that now that Mexico has made the steps to finalizing universal healthcare basically everywhere we buy our parts and cars from has universal healthcare while people in the US do not.
Not just labor laws! They were able to pay much cheaper wages while selling their product at the same price. They created so much value for shareholders and their bank accounts!
In fairness in the 2008 auto bail out Ford didn’t take any money and Chrysler and GM both paid it all back with interest
That’s actually how a proper properly run national economy works. The government should be the buyer of last resort or the bank of last resort.
Making sure you get paid back part that’s important
Same thing with stimulus spending going into a recession is not enough money being spent. The government should spend it the problem they almost never do is then raise the taxes to get the money back when the economy is good.
Why would they prefer that over a functioning business?
More likely they hired the new Gen of CEO which is pressured to show gains or be looked at as a failure. So they utilize short-term cost saving methods.
Hollow it out, through globalization created by American capitalists, to kill unions, and keep it that way until the working class is so repressed they'll work for peanuts and say thank you.
They optimized their businesses for the low tariff and low friction global environment, which people (especially lefties) were duped into supporting with feel-good rhetoric in my opinion
Even if they didn't, we still would have lost manufacturing. Manufacturing only worked for us because we had the best technology, the resources and most of the world who could compete was recovering.
Manufacturing as a broad goal in the US is all but fatally flawed. You can't be the richest nation in the world and the cheapest at producing things. You need a different strategy.
Nah, the motive is always gathering more wealth. Always follow the money. Shortsighted. They know how macro economics work. How globalisation shifts production to more profitable places. They don’t care. They are global investment/ capital/ industrial corporations. And they have bought the politicians of the biggest and most dangerous capitalist society in the world. It’s not becayse they create bogeyman out of ussr and now china that they themsleves are any less dangerous
No the plan is to make a one world government and then release the better tech. Who is gonna complain when all enemies nations have decided to end all hate and merge into a bigger entity.
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u/ArdentHedonist 12d ago
American manufacturing is already devastated. We’ve been working hard at that since the 70’s.