Have they done a study to find out what the wages are after factoring out the overhead of a union? I'm curious what benefit is derived from the union. As a white-collar knowledge worker during all of my career, I was never represented by a union nor did desire to be. I was always a top performer. If I left my job, I could always have gotten another one in a week for more money. To hear my buddies that worked at union places, it always sounded like a way for the least amount of work to get done and protect the poorest performer. I drive a Honda Passport that was assembled in the US. I think my wife's Honda HR-V as an import as it sold worldwide. Either way, both cars employed a lot of Americans in the various parts of what it took to get that car into the consumer's hands. At least Japan is an ally.
The main tool of a Union is the ability to bargain with the company on issues like this, Pension Health benefits Hourly wage Work week hours. Such as, will company management approve of a 4 day, 40 hour work week. My brother-in-law has a son that has a life long disability (born with it). The company would not put his son on their healthcare plan. The Union went to bat for him and the company relented and gave his son healthcare. Basically, employees that work for a Non-Union company have no bargaining resources. They have to take what the company gives them or not gives them, or look for another better job/career. I'am a trade craftsman and worded in Virginia. Virginia is a right to work state, this means, a company can employ both Union and Non-Union workers in the work place. Being a white collar worker does give you any more advances when a blue collar worker. You key-in on what makes a valuable employee, that's a hard worker who comes to work every day on time with the attitude, i'am going to do the best work I can do. That's what gets you hired and stay hired. Vet
correct, Japan is the USAs largest creditor, followed by China. To be fair China owns over 10%….over 700 billion….
https://www.marketplace.org/2023/05/26/who-does-the-u-s-owe-31-4-trillion/ Correct...has come down...was over 1 trillion
That's why I can't see any reason to pay UPS charges when USPS is actually cheaper. Drop your package off at UPS or FedEx and they take them to USPS.
Most of the national debt is owed to the US citizens, by a wide margin. I wonder what the net national debt is nowadays?
Here is America's Debt: You are right on - Debt Held by the U.S. Public is by far the most $$$$. The United States owes a substantial amount of money, and the debt is held by various entities. Let’s break it down: Debt Held by the Public: This category includes debt securities like Treasury bonds and notes. It represents the money borrowed by the U.S. government from banks, insurance companies, state and local governments, foreign governments, and private investors. As of now, the debt held by the public stands at more than $24.64 trillion1. There's your Inflation!!!!! Vet (Navy) Foreign Countries Owning U.S. Debt: Japan holds approximately $1.1 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. China follows closely with about $859 billion. Other countries with significant U.S. debt holdings include the United Kingdom ($668 billion), Belgium ($331 billion), and Luxembourg ($318 billion)23.
71% of all U.S. debt is owed to U.S. entities or citizens. 29% of all U.S. debt is owed to foreign countries or entities. Japan or Japanese entities are owed 3% of the total U.S. debt. China or Chinese entities are owed 2% of the total U.S. debt.
My Dad had a saying about borrowing money. I would rather owe you, instead of beating you out of it. Glad I never borrowed money from him. LoL Vet
This thread seems to have become quite the political discussion. I guess I will add to the political nature of the thread while trying to tie back to the original country of origin discussion. The fact of the matter is that until wages, cost of living, and standard of living are equal across the globe, U.S. manufacturing will continue to be outsourced to the underdeveloped countries. Therefore, the only ways that the outsourcing of manufacturing will ever be reduced are to either lower the standard of living in the U.S. or to increase the standard of living throughout the rest of the world. The same principles outlined in the above paragraph can also be applied to immigration into the U.S.
I agree with you. You are preaching history. It's always been done that way. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the world was on equal footing. Then it would be the country with the most technology producing the most high-tech goods with the fastest method. Hum, does that mean, the other countries would be outsourcing their needs to that country??? It's all about competition. America was so used to being the country with huge amounts of natural resources and the ingenuity to design and build loads of various quality products. Now we have other countries that can build products at a much lower labor rate. People don't want to spend any more money than they have too. Vet
I believe history teaches that the United States having the greatest technology and most industrious work force is what lead the U.S. to become the leading producer in the world. The problem is that about 60 years ago the U.S. started getting fat and happy and lost the hunger necessary to maintain that leadership. Now the hungrier countries are beginning to catch up.
And we had a head start after WWII - we were on an engineering/building/manufacturing/making babies tear, while most of the rest of the world was digging through ashes. We didn't have to rebuild our cities and infrastructure from scratch so we could concentrate on making transistor radios, hot rod parts, McDonald's restaurants...
Your words are very true. I have to wonder if some of that lost hunger is a generational lack of drive. I want a 4 day 40 hour week. I want to work from home, where I don't have supervisory over site. I want to make more money doing less work. I want to hang out around the coffee pot BSing about sports or what I did over the weekend. The attitude to build the best products I can, is very lacking. I've had some brand new American products fail right out of the box. Holley, MSD and Legendary interiors. Had lack of good experienced auto mechanics and auto techs. I've experienced and seen the lack of Tech and Vocational schools. A lot of these schools when I was younger started to close because more emphasis was focused on higher education towards Collages and Universities. That's fine in one direction, but soon you lose skilled employees within the manufacturing procedures who have expertise in the building processes. Now you have to go overseas to get the products you want built by foreign skilled people. All this leads to a downfall of our country. We maybe able to maintain our computer chip design and software development, but not the ability to build the computer structures these products operate within. Vet
Early in the cycle it was more making transistor radios and hot rod parts. Later in the cycle it was many more making McDonald's restaurants.
It doesn’t help that, while we have all sorts of rules, regulations and laws to protect the worker, the consumer, the technology and intellectual property, the community and the environment, we’re competing not just with lower labor costs, we’re competing with what are oftentimes completely unregulated, and in many cases, government subsidized manufacturers who give zero shits about any of those. Patrick
To try to swing this back to the original topic, my filters are shipped. Currently in Lexington, KY, only 2.5 hours north of me. Too bad it will still be 3 days before they get here by the time UPS hands off the USPS. It will pass me on I-65 on its way to Nashville, an hour south, before again traversing the same section of I-65 north to reach me.
