Mikill
10-22-2008, 12:05 AM
I'm a middle aged guy living in america who is in the manufacturing sector(what's left of it).Most regular people have just woken up to the economic realities that have been writen on the wall for years.
What really set the USA and the world up for the current collapse is GREED.Pure and simple.Let's examine the past and we shall see how and when the seeds were planted and how we as consumers fertilized them.
NIKE.- fledgling shoe company back in the late 70's who came up with a great idea to make comfortable athletic shoes with a very cool logo.What they then came up with was a very bad idea-slave labor.They made their shoes in Japan to increase profits.It's all about the bottom line and Nike made a killing using slave labor pratices to make shoes AND apparell.Lots of competors took notice in the 80's and figured they would do it too so they could compete with Nike.Slave labor became the easy sure fire way to make it in many industries into the 90's because CHINA came into the equation.100 million plus workers just begging to be exploited.China pays it's workforce below 1$ an hour,plus no health benefits.In reality these poor people who make all the things we buy now are really barely alive working up to 80 hour weeks for little or no money.Sometimes they don't even get paid.
Enter WAL_MART.Sam Walton preached to "Buy American" until his death in the early 90's.His kids inherited the company and guess what they did?
They started importing massive amounts of cheap Chinese made goods onto the shelves of Wal Mart.Wal MARTS profit margins doubled.Wal mart became the biggest retail co. in the world.Then it became the biggest company period.All wal mart's competetors followed wal marts lead and started selling imported goods too.For some reason,Americans didn't notice that they were buying cheap craapola,they thought they were getting a great deal and were smart frugal shoppers.WRONG.
The economic impact is this:
The american who used to make all this stuff cna't get the good factory job out of high school anymore.
He doesn't make nearly as much money as he would have.
The money he doesn't make and spend cannot be taxed.
This means the govt doesn't take in as much money and starts DEFICIT SPENDING.
The money that used to circulate from this mans lifestyle is now put directly into a few peoples pockets (Walton's,Chinese leaders) where it sits in a few huge bank accts doing nothing but collecting interest(And building up the Chinese Red Army).
Basically a deal with the devil was made.Massive jump in profit margins on the backs of slave labor suffering.Sort term pleasure was the exchange for long term pain down the road.We are now on that road.Watch out for the pot-holes.
What really set the USA and the world up for the current collapse is GREED.Pure and simple.Let's examine the past and we shall see how and when the seeds were planted and how we as consumers fertilized them.
NIKE.- fledgling shoe company back in the late 70's who came up with a great idea to make comfortable athletic shoes with a very cool logo.What they then came up with was a very bad idea-slave labor.They made their shoes in Japan to increase profits.It's all about the bottom line and Nike made a killing using slave labor pratices to make shoes AND apparell.Lots of competors took notice in the 80's and figured they would do it too so they could compete with Nike.Slave labor became the easy sure fire way to make it in many industries into the 90's because CHINA came into the equation.100 million plus workers just begging to be exploited.China pays it's workforce below 1$ an hour,plus no health benefits.In reality these poor people who make all the things we buy now are really barely alive working up to 80 hour weeks for little or no money.Sometimes they don't even get paid.
Enter WAL_MART.Sam Walton preached to "Buy American" until his death in the early 90's.His kids inherited the company and guess what they did?
They started importing massive amounts of cheap Chinese made goods onto the shelves of Wal Mart.Wal MARTS profit margins doubled.Wal mart became the biggest retail co. in the world.Then it became the biggest company period.All wal mart's competetors followed wal marts lead and started selling imported goods too.For some reason,Americans didn't notice that they were buying cheap craapola,they thought they were getting a great deal and were smart frugal shoppers.WRONG.
The economic impact is this:
The american who used to make all this stuff cna't get the good factory job out of high school anymore.
He doesn't make nearly as much money as he would have.
The money he doesn't make and spend cannot be taxed.
This means the govt doesn't take in as much money and starts DEFICIT SPENDING.
The money that used to circulate from this mans lifestyle is now put directly into a few peoples pockets (Walton's,Chinese leaders) where it sits in a few huge bank accts doing nothing but collecting interest(And building up the Chinese Red Army).
Basically a deal with the devil was made.Massive jump in profit margins on the backs of slave labor suffering.Sort term pleasure was the exchange for long term pain down the road.We are now on that road.Watch out for the pot-holes.