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| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:00 pm Post subject: Death of first world industry (Goodbye lala land) | |||
I came accross an interesting read in the Washington Post, thought I'd share it with you. It talks of the state of the american auto industry today, but really, in essence describes the state of the whole supply infrastructure in the western world, mainly North America.
As I walk the streets, I don't marvel any more, I don't get upset, I laugh. I look at the houses on wheels, the so called SUVs, with 99.99% of them having a sole occupant, and I laugh. I think of the price of fuel predicted to break all records this summer, then I look back at the teeny eeny little person inside that monstrosity on wheels, and I laugh. Yes, I kow, if they're driving around in a house, they can afford it and they want to flaunt it, but I still laugh. A few years ago someone came up with an idea of selling stars and planets. I've come up with an idea of selling oil refineries on those planets. I'll go around town and hand out flyers to all the teeny eeny little people who drive those houses on wheels and get them to buy their own dedicated refinery on a planet that they had bought a couple of years back. It shouldn't be hard for them to imagine, they're already living in lala land. That was my little rant. Back to the article. Most everything we buy is already made in China. Appliances are now starting to come in from there too. So it is little wonder that the auto industry hasn't been able to escape this trend. We want our high wages, yet at the same time we want cheaper prices. By our own math, we have to sell things for a third of the cost it takes to manufacture them. In the real world, that math doesn't add up. While we're scratching our heads, trying to figure out where we forgot to add a number, or carry a decimal, workers in "third world" countries are only too happy to pick up where we left off, for a tenth of the wages. In their math, it is three times their regular pay. I laugh when I hear "third world". These are countries that manufacture top notch first world products better and faster and cheaper than we were ever willing to. Yet we have the gall to keep calling them "third world". China is predicted this year to leave Germany, UK and Japan in the dust and take number two spot in online nations (people accessing the internet). Not bad for a "third world" nation. Don't even get me started on Korea, who is now also outsourcing. We're slowly waking up now, slowly realizing that kraft dinner cooked on your own stove is still better than the downtown Salvation Army soup kitchen. We're slowly realizing that our wages are plummeting, while "third world" wages are rising. While "third world" citizens are beginning to, for the first time, enjoy the pride of proprietary car and home ownership, we are beginning to realize that it is taking more and more of us to band together to afford a single residence. Yes, we're slowly waking up. We're not there yet, but we are slowly waking up. For now, I'll just keep laughing at those SUVs. It's fun walking around lala land. |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 1378
| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 3:20 pm Post subject: | |
| Scary. | |
Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 5:44 pm Post subject: | |
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I agree on the SUVs and to that I would add cell phones. After all, 99.99% of those SUV drivers have a cell phone glued to one ear while they use the other hand to drink their coffee, straighten their hair, slap one of the kids and, once in a while, drive the damned car. Heaven forbid that Mrs. Soccer Mom missed a minute of the latest gossip while delivering little Junior to preschool. (After making sure HIS battery was charged and he knew how to speed dial her number.)
An avid walker because of my heart problems, I've been hit twice now in crosswalks as I was crossing with the little man all lit up, by people making right hand turns on a red light without stopping and in both cases, the drivers were yammering on their cell phones. My friend was hit broadside by a woman exiting the local WalMart parking lot (in a Ford Excursion) who was so enraptured by whatever she was hearing in her phone she didn't look before pouring that behemoth out into traffic and I can't count the number of near misses under the same circumstances, many of which I have been involved in myself. I've watched women in supermarkets maneuver and fill a cart with groceries with one hand, and the only time that phone left their ear was when they switched hands. People come to your house for dinner and get (or worse, make) 15 phone calls during the course of the evening, rendering face to face conversation impossible. Parties now consist mainly in large part, of groups of people of varying size all standing around in one spot talking on their phones. People bump into you on sidewalks because they're engrossed in their phone calls. People carry on phone conversations in movie theaters and in restaurants. There are signs in doctor's offices and hospitals requiring patients to turn off their phones in the examining rooms. A rite of passage for eight year olds in this country is that they get their own cell phones, especially little girls. Phones have become a must have status symbol for children above the age of ten and their lives are totally ruined if they're "the only one in the whole school" whose phone wont's take pictures, access the internet, send text messages, do email, play MP3 and audio files, show streaming video and do an emergency repair job on Michael Jackson's nose for court today. Schools now have to require that phones be deactivated in the classrooms also. People bitched and moaned to the point that the airlines had to come up with a way for them to use their cell phones on airliners. America's idea of roughing it is having to live in their $100k Recreational Vehicles in a "wilderness" of an RV park where there isn't a cell tower within three miles and their calls are scratchy. What is so flipping important that a person dare not be out of contact with the outside world for longer than it takes to flip the case open on this dicatatorial little electronic piece of crap that suddenly rules the world at every level of society? Why this obsession with never being more than an instant away from hearing about Joe's aunt's operation or little Suzy's new tooth? Do we really NEED to spend billions a year just to make sure that neither we nor anyone we know ever has a moment's privacy again? And what happens to the cell phone industry when, just like the average automobile company, it has priced it's gimmicks and services beyond the reach of those sixty million Americans who make less than $25k a year? What happens to those millions of consumers who have been deliberately taught that they cannot exist without this new "basic necessity of life" by constant hype and commercial bullying when it comes to adding a new choice to the "rent, food, medical care" decision so many of us are being forced into these days? What about our poor children? The ones that have o go to PUBLIC schools and who will be deprived of their only status symbol until they're old enough for their first BMW? Bah! Humbug!!! |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 1378
| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:58 pm Post subject: | |
Oh, Nofs, I love my cell phone. 
There IS an upside that you didn't mention... My (then) seventeen year old daughter left town on a two lane highway on a trip out of town to see college friends... Twenty minutes after her departure, she telephoned me, screaming that she had been in an accident. After I confirmed she wasn't injured, I immediatly told her to hang up with me and call 911 to report her location. She had been run off the road at a high rate of speed and ended up in a water filled ditch. The cell phone did come in handy there! 
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 916
Location: roaming...
| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 7:10 pm Post subject: | |
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Yeah Nofs, lay off the cellphones. Mine comes in muchos handy every time I'm in Mexico, when I forward my land line to it, call in sick and go away for the long weekend.
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 7:45 pm Post subject: | |
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Guys, I'm not saying that there aren't legitimate uses for the things. I have one myself because my ex insists that I have some way to call for help on my country walks for health reasons (although quite frankly it sits in the desk drawer with the battery run down most of the time. She's always chewing me out about not having it with me.)
But K, you've said it yourself. We're sheep. We'll buy anything that's hyped enough to convince us we can't possibly live without it. The things are marketed to kids the same way everything else is marketed to kids... "your parents are losers if they don't buy you this (insert whatever doodad is the big rage right now here)." Once you go beyond the realm of necessary communications, that thing just becomes another way to one-up your buddy or worse, for your kids to one-up your biddy's kids. Still, if you're daughter is going out on the road, a cell phone to call for help in an emergency is a damned fine idea. To the extent possible, I've made sure my kids had one in those kinds of cases. That has nothing to do with anything I said in my post. For every daughter who calls her mom because she's been in an accident, there's another daughter running over old cripples in crosswalks or CAUSING accidents or near misses because her attention isn't on her driving. Reread the post guys. I have no objection to cell phones for necessary purposes and even casual purposes as long as they're used with a modicum of common sense. When they inconvenience, annoy, interfere with or even endanger the people around us, they become a problem. When marketers and advertisers are willing to play on the relationship between parents and their children to line their pockets, then they become a problem. At least for me. My doctor was complaining just the other day because his five kids were running between $900 and $1100 a month in wirless bills. Let me turn this around a little bit. Hey K, why do you find SUVs a subject for a rant? Surely if they can afford to buy and fuel the damned thing and have sufficient reason in their own mind to need it... hey, what's the problem here? I know they drive up fuel prices but since the only people that worry about fuel prices are people like me who can't afford to drive my old Ford mini-truck anyway. what's the big deal? Look at the type of vehicles that are advertised on TV these days? Luxury sedans, pickups and gigantic $40k SUVs. Those people are doing what the ad industry tells them to do and it's the same way with cell phones.
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 1378
| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 8:34 pm Post subject: | |
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aw, Nofs, of course, I understood you. Just playin' with you!
Of course, you made very valid points that I definitely agree with. And kanaka, though I drive a little paid off car which uses all of $10 worth of gas a week, to putt back and forth to work and on errands, I do know people who have bought HUMMERS (as "trucks" for a business write off), for God's sake, who do nothing but the same 'round town driving like I do. 
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 1378
| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 8:36 pm Post subject: | |
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on the flip side...
I happen to have made the aquaintance of a woman four years older than I, who gave up her car after 911 and will only go as far as she can peddle her bike. She's the extreme... |
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2005 10:38 pm Post subject: | |
| I'm thinking of getting me a bike. Gas is up around $2.40 a gallon around here now and threatening to go a bunch higher. | |
Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 1965
| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 7:49 am Post subject: | |
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1. I have a prepaid cell phone mainly used for emergencies only. Maybe a few short calls but always when not driving.
2. I own an economy car so I only get to fill up every paycheck (every 2 weeks). Don't go anywhere anyhow except work and run a few errands. 
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 916
Location: roaming...
| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 1:23 pm Post subject: | |
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USA#1, you just quoted my life.
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 1965
| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 6:24 pm Post subject: | |
Yep. My life as well. Work and sleep. Don't have the money to do squat. Life as I know it. 
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:41 pm Post subject: | |||
You can afford to fill up every two weeks at today's gas prices? Here in CA it's up to $2.40 already and I can't afford to fill my old Ford Ranger even once a month and it gets 24 milers a gallon. I allow myself $20 a month for gas and I'd better not run out before the end of the month. Needless to say, road trips are a thing of the past and the only time I've been able to go visit my brother, who only lives 150 miles away is when he's come and got me. I expect this for people like me who have been pensioned off on fixed incomes but it is really disheartening to see it happening to you folks who are still going to have to work for a lot of years. I wonder what Lacy drives or has driven for him and how much gas he burns a month. I envision his car being a BMW luxury model and family car being one Kanaka's gigantic SUVs in which his wife runs back and forth between the beauty shop and and the nearest luxury outlets. Don't know why, it's just the way I see it.
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 1965
| Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 7:50 am Post subject: | |
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Like I said, I really don't go anywhere except to work and run a few errands. Work is only a 4 mile drive, one way. My folks live a mile and a half away. Have no reason to travel out of state, or instate for that matter.
As for Lacy, he seems he thinks he's a man so he drives a Hummer. 
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:05 am Post subject: | |||
You do realize the great number of punch lines that could be attached to that straight line, don't you???
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 1965
| Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:09 am Post subject: | |
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LOL!!!
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 916
Location: roaming...
| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:38 am Post subject: | |||||
Excellent! As if right on cue...
Gee, they even had a snippet about China's energy consumption putting a burden on world oil reserves. Where did I hear that before? Oh wait... I think I said it...
Bring on the pain!
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2005 5:09 am Post subject: | |
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Yes you did say it. I agreed then and I agree more than ever now.
Probably got the same reaction I did when I tried to talk about our trade deficit with China. I think one response was that it kept mortgage interest rates low in the US and that therefore it wasn't such a bad thing. People just don't flipping get it. You cannot go on buying more than you sell and stay solvent. Remember when, next to the Soviet Union, China was the great bogeyman who was going to come here and kill us all in our beds if we didn't stop communism in Southeast Asia? I do. Got me and my brother both drafted. Now they're rapidly becoming the citadel of capitalism while still remaining communist with WalMart alone sending more money to China than makes up the entire budgets of many countries. Communism may yet be the great bogeyman, at least in small, impoverished countries like North Korea and Cuba, but it ain't gonna stop our big corporations from dealing with them if they can make or save a buck by doing so. If they're still the devil, then our leaders are dealing with the devil and not ven blinking an eye. They're not going to have to come and kill us in our beds. All they have to do is keep outsmarting, outmaneuvering and outhorsetrading all those experts with MBAs running this country and they'll be THE economic super power while we'll be a bunch of low rent clerks selling their cheap goods that we can't afford for minimum wage. |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 916
Location: roaming...
| Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 3:36 pm Post subject: | |||
Just like clockwork...
I wish some of my other stocks were as predictable on the upswing as these manufacturing stocks are getting to be on the downswing. So, to take stock (no pun) of the situation as a whole, cars will now be cheaper to produce and should have better fuel consumption, but will cost an arm and a leg to operate, because of the skyrocketing fuel prices. See, there is balance in the world after all. |
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Joined: 06 Jul 2003
Posts: 7090
Location: Central CA
| Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 4:57 pm Post subject: | |
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Way back in the mid 70s, when the first big gasoline price debacle took place, gasoline surged from less than 50 cents a gallon to almost two bucks in a lot areas and this took place overnight. Blamed on the newly emerged OPEC countries and their "blackmail" of the industrial nations, these gasoline price trends never recovered. There have been spikes upward and downward over the ensuing three decades, but the prevailing trend has been ever upward since then.
Nobody but profit takers and people who make their money from this type of crap has ever tried to justify what happened and try to make it sound necessary and even ethical. Later in the decade, after this general situation of rising prices had been established for a while, figures were published that indicated that the major oil companies were enjoying annual actual pre-tax profits in the 500-600% range during times of major price increases at the pump which were being fueled by an oil "shortage". Just here in our local area, several major oil companies were caught hiding gasoline in the tanks of the shut down refineries in order to keep it off the market and justify price increases. Some shortage, eh? At the same time, they were successfully lobbying for federal and state tax breaks they claimed were needed to enable them to stay in business and "compete" with those terrible third world companies so not only were we supporting their ravening greed at the pump but with our tax dollars too. Oil production virtually shut down in the several high level producing fields in my area and refineries were closed. Thousands of jobs were virtually "outsourced" since the emphasis went from producing our own petroleum to buying it from countries where there was less regard for the rights of individual workers and labor was extremely cheap. This was most likely the actual predecessor of the cheap labor above all else movement as oil production was simply outsourced, starting the bandwagon that every industry has been jumping on since. You can drive through Kern County today and see tons of rusting junk and miles of pipeline carrying nothing extending as far as the eye can see. Hundreds of sucker rod pumps litter the landscape, having been scavenged for motors and any working parts. The Kern County oil fields went from being some of the highest producing oil fields in the country to being shut down virtually overnight. They didn't gradually dry up. They were still producing at a high rate when they suddenly went away. Several innovative ways were found to inflate the price of a barrel of crude oil to unprecedented levels every few months. All were duly reported on by the news media and all were virtually glossed over by the enforcement agencies. Punishments ranged from none to virtual wrist slaps and there is no reason to believe that these practices do not continue to this day. When the government has lost interest in protecting the consumer from predatory practices, then predatory practices become standard operating procedures for predatory corporations and you've got to admit, based on our own experiences, that now includes most of them. The oil companies have even been excused from cleaning up the blight and toxic waste on the idiotic premise that they might have to re-open production in those fields and they need that infrastructure in place. Ninety percent of it has rusted into an unusable mess and if they ever do need to reopen those fields the taxpayers will finance a major replacement of all that stuff anyway. To me, talk of re-opening some of our own production means that the oil is still there, and they're simply enjoying the increased profits inherent in using third world labor for now. Now that that's coming to a head, we may actually see some of these fields re-opened (barring legal actions by various environmental groups) and new ones brought in, but only if the American labor force is willing to live at third world levels in order to maintain the current bottom line. |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 1378
| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2005 12:17 am Post subject: | |
Nofs, I'm still combining my errands and hesitate to cross town for just one thing if it can be avoided. This idea is foreign to my kids and their friends who will drive just to drive! 
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