Jeremiah 29:11

MGDMike

I like the the world as well!

lear4406

Just curious as to how much gas prices are in everyones area. I live in SC and work in NC. All my cars use premium and the price is $3.45 in NC. $3.25 in SC. I'm not sure why NC is higher except that they put a higher road tax on the gas. But the roads in SC are much better. I wish I knew where they were spending all the road tax dollars at?

DSkippy

Hear, hear, MGDMike, I too like the world a great deal.

stevelegel

I like the world too, and my business continues to fluorish.

Never the less, we have a world economy, not a global economy...the playing fields are not level, trade is not freely exchanged.

Any economy needs manufacturing to bring "value" or "wealth" into it. It is the taking of raw materials and making them into something that people can use that "creates" money. Without manufacturing an economy will fail. Service, creativity, healthcare, all support manufacturing and make it better, but they do not create "wealth" (not meaning wealthy people, I mean "value" in the economic sense). Agriculture creates value, just not enough of it.

2. Americans are the world's consumer. Without us, the world has no real market in which to sell goods. I see that the American Market is just about saturated. I get a ton of junk mail flyers every week, I look through them and cannot think of a single thing I need to buy. People have garages so stuffed with stuff they cannot park their cars. And so the cycle will roll along, always some, Jeremiah, like you and I, continuing to prosper and work hard and do well in business. But as consumers cut back, manufacturinig will cut back and infrastructure will cut back.

It will cut back to a point where unmet needs are born, and growth will follow. In 1981, we in Detroit felt a hard long auotmotive recession. Eventually, people had cars that were no longer servicable for them (remember the cars of the late 70's early 80's?) AND new technology of computers and cell phones created new demand in the market place and manufacturing resumed.

Among my concerns is the increase in technology. Manufacturing jobs are not totally lost to foreign countries based soley on wage. But technology (robotics, laser guides and computers) now do the work of many, and do it better. For example, we toured Ford's Wixom assembly for the Thunderbird. The raw body panels are picked up by magentic robotic arms, laser lights guide them into alignment and then robotic arms weld them into place. Used to take 30 to 40 workers. Now, one guy at a control panel , and one trying stay out of the way. The work is better too.

Workers elsewhere sold short. At one time families across the country aspired to move to Detroit and get a job in the auto industry. But workers in other parts of the country sold short at $16.00 per hour insteads of holding out for the $22.00 that was paid in Detroit. As workers around the world underbid each other, eventually that $16.00 hour per job at Saturn in TN will go away too, to the guy in Hondurous working for 35 cents.

Foreign workers are not stupid or lazy, they just don't speak English. If Iran can build a nuclear reactor or weapons, they can build a tractor or an airport.

I am not pessimistic. When the worker in Sri Lanka is making $22.00 bucks per hour, America and its hard working well trained workforce will flourish.

I worry about America's young adults. In a job market that pays 10/hr with no benefits, how will they buy a house, or car or take vacations and provide for children, or get their teeth fixed? I also worry about their smarts and work ethic. How will a generation brought up on video games, that is becoming obese, can't do well in reading, science and math, hope to compete, locally or globally?

There will always be those that do well. There was wealth and luxury in Europe and Germany during world War II, even here in the states, even during the depression.

I share my opinion and concerns in the spirit I saw the thread, no soapboxing.

Gas price here in metro Detroit $2.99 no lead regular, up to $3.19 premium

Steve Legel

1 Bad Mirada

Its because our government has made it far too easy for slackers to get along in life.

66Cuda

Actually that is none... they closed Wixom Assembly a few years ago..

RLSH700

A lot of truth was in that article. Another thing people keep forgetting is that although the Big Three might be having problems, the work force is actually doing pretty good. The Japanese manufactures are bringing in jobs by the fact that they are building plants here in the U.S. which helps to compensate for the losses in manufacturing jobs from the Big Three. The big industry these days are our drug companies. They make the new drugs that are on the market and those jobs pay better than manufacturing thanks to the knowledge which that requires. Along with those jobs comes jobs to market these products. I think most of us here, have had it so spoiled for the last 20-30 years that we don't even know what a bad economy really is. There are some sectors in our economy that are less than perfect, but I still see people living more luxurious lifestyles than what I did growing up.

66Cuda

I agree with most of what you said RLSH.

Ithink that as we move forward as we lose more manufacturing jobs we are going to see the "middle class" dry up. There will only be "lower class" and "upper class". Buy that I mean people will either make just enough to own a car, pay there bills and maybe save $100 a month (lower class). And then there will be people who make more money then they know what to do with (and most don't deserve to begin with)

I hope that as we move forward we are able to keep more manufacturing jobs in the US... Especially since I am a manufacturing engineer

RLSH700

I don't completely agree with you there. 80% of my family is middle class and only a select few are in manufacturing. Some have run their own small businesses (house rental, recruiting, stores, etc.), others work for the government in many different jobs, others sell items in person or over the internet (they make quite a good living at that I'll add), others get pretty basic jobs at various companies utilizing their different strengths (office jobs primarily), others have physical labor jobs (plumbing, house building, etc.), etc. My observation has been that by each generation, my family is getting higher on the pay scale. When my family first came to America, we were either farmers or barbers. During this time, most of them were lower class, starting with my parents generation, we became middle class through having either a college education, a competitive small business, climbing the ladder through hard work, or some other effort to improve ourselves. We have had our periods that were less than desirable and our failures, but we never gave up hope. Farming is extremely expensive and there isn't much money in it, so instead we folded our tents and used our knowledge about this topic to become accountants, sales people, and other positions to serve those who still work in this field. Others work for large farming businesses and actually get paid quite well and receive good benefits. The fact of the matter is this is still the land of opportunity, so times we just have to accept that the opportunity may not be in what we originally wanted it to be in.