Good observations, I was there when Lazy Boy closed the Tremonton facility to chase low labor costs in Mexico. As I recall they had to move again when that didn't work out. I've worked in a different industry getting things off the ground in China. One HUGE difference I observed was China & the Chinese valued education. The "service economy" was once the "New American Economy". The truth is, moving a mouth, adds limited value and none when that movement serves only to manipulate instead of to lead. I was also there when BIC pens were shot through a board to prove they would still write, they didn't tell you how many pens it took to get a survivor. When being entertained and "winning" is given greater value than "contribution" and "creation of real value" we loose. Corbin is right, we've let it happen. I always heard folks from Asian cultures accuse American's of "short term planning". They are also right. The corporate board room focus on the next quarter is part of what has sunk us. Our snorkel is taking water.
Great article. But my analysis of America's decline begins before the rise of neoliberalism. The first blows against US industrial capacity did not come from offshoring to nations with cheap labor, but from another industrial power, i.e., Japan. This was most notable in the automotive and consumer electronics industries. Japan beat us because they built a better product and a product that Americans preferred. The US consumer electronics industry insisted on building TV and stereos encased in furniture. The high end market for stereo was considered a niche market and we were content to let the Germans have it. The Japanese came in and said, "You don't want a TV or stereo encased in furniture and, by the way, we make a product that's as good as the German stuff." Within a matter of years, not decades, electronic factories across the nation closed. With cars, Japan entered the market with cheap and gas efficient economy models that the US refused to make. Our first new car was a 76 Toyota Corona. We ran it until we got sick of it (over 200,00 miles) and upgraded to a Mazda 323 in the mid 1980s. By that time, Toyota and Honda had captured much of the sedan market as well as the economy car market. Of course, Japan and others now make cars in the USA, but the industry is concentrated along interstate corridors, like I-85, in the South. The other event in America's decline that occurred before the rise of neoliberalism was the war in Indochina. People who grew up after Vietnam tend not to understand how that war devastated the US morally, intellectually, economically, and politically. But that's a story for another day.
Ralph Nader was against NAFTA. I trusted him. Have you ever looked into Democracy Collaborative's "Community Wealth Building". It's a great concept, that been proven to work in several countries.
I too worked at a couple of companies in the early 2000s as they transitioned manufacturing offshore to places like China and Mexico. While saving on labor, costs in other areas, such as transportation and travel, increased significantly. Seemed to me the loss of expertise was never considered since that’s not measured financially, much like impacts to the country and climate.
The exact same thing has been going on in high tech. I'm newly retired but looking back 40 years one of the big differences is that employers were really good about wanting their workforce to upgrade. Most companies paid even the lowliest workers college courses at a rate that they could actually finish in a reasonable amount of time. I was in the military in the 1970s and went in for the old GI bill but after I got out I found my employer would pay for courses I took for an Electrical Engineering degree and later I did a computer science degree and paid for an MBA on my own after companies stopped paying for their employees education.
Now the companies are very very few that pay their workforces college education. I say few because I am not aware of any, but then they also used the H1-B to hold down pay for decades. You can argue this all you want but remember the basic rules of supply and demand. The H1-B made supply unlimited so for the last 20 years working as an engineer I competed against the best engineers that about 4-6 Billion other people could produce. Working in engineering was like being in the UN, and actually I enjoyed it but PAY remained flat as I completed a masters degree and many additional courses paid by myself just to remain relevant to the workforce. Those who didn't, were mostly pushed out.
I despised Trump ( and still do even more) but when he killed the H1-B program during his first term, for the first time I made some decent financial gains - companies had to compete demand dropped. This proves in Trumps case a stopped clock is right twice a day and that they were for a period of time giving US citizens the opportunities at the top spots.
This pay gain of course were eroded when the Dems came back to office and then the rates actually dropped from what I could see. I wrote lots of letters to my senators and congresspeople but got either no reply or piles of wasted paper not directed to any response - money in politics is cancer.
Education elsewhere is very inexpensive compared to he US, the US stopped funding it's colleges long long ago in any meaningful way as to hold down tuition, In the mid 1970s I could go to state school (Umass) for $300 a semester which I could easily earn working in the summer doing farm labor, Now they put kids in chains and lifetime debilitating debt. The oligarchs learned the lessons of slavery, if you are a master with a plantation, it is expensive to take care to feed, cloth, house, and keep your workforce in good health.
It's much cheaper to run a sweatshop where if someone doesn't perform, kick them out into the street and get another. Welcome to H1-B. All of this happened as the top grew wealthy beyond all expectation, and the working class and educated professionals unless self employed watched their pay flatline. To quote Warren Buffet "Of course there is a class war, and my side is winning" ( paraphrased said about 15 years ago). To make my point, we are at war, the working class and professional class are at war, and if they don't start fighting back with the same or greater ruthlessness as those ( both corporate Dems and GoP, though this particular administration is by far the most corrupt and ruthless ever) who will put both us our kids into dire poverty for another golden toilet or Temu ballroom. We need to make billionaires millionaires, get money out of politics - because corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE they are just a veil to prevent litigation and to hide the intentions of those running them.
Lay down and surrender you and your your kids future, or stand up and fight ruthlessly with NO empathy towards the enemy as they have done to you for decades. Gloves off, it will be very ugly but if you really want your country back, you have to do it. Educate yourself ALL the time. Toss Schumer and the other sell outs, yes, people were suffering, maybe they meant well but they were weak and stupid.
We need strong leaders who are not stupid and can talk themselves into selling out America for the good of the few rather than the welfare of the many, The suffering they enabled by a group that has been directly culpable to let millions die through cuts to programs like USAID and food and medical programs in the US for mismanagement on the covid epidemic cost the lives of hundreds of thousands because he didn't want his makeup to get mussed by his mask.
Make no mistake, the empathy they have towards starving African children and AIDs patience is exactly the same as for American citizens - ZERO. Glad to have Veterans die, children die, Americans die, and see anything destroyed for tax cuts. Get strong now, stand up now. You are fighting the oligarchy who would keep us divided, and use that to impoverish and repress us to serve themselves.
Oligarchs only care about making themselves richer. We have to turn our culture around -- yes, that big a change -- so money and power are subordinated to the public good. Thanks for your work Corbin. Please get an editor to fix those spelling errors (like "use" instead of "us")
Good observations, I was there when Lazy Boy closed the Tremonton facility to chase low labor costs in Mexico. As I recall they had to move again when that didn't work out. I've worked in a different industry getting things off the ground in China. One HUGE difference I observed was China & the Chinese valued education. The "service economy" was once the "New American Economy". The truth is, moving a mouth, adds limited value and none when that movement serves only to manipulate instead of to lead. I was also there when BIC pens were shot through a board to prove they would still write, they didn't tell you how many pens it took to get a survivor. When being entertained and "winning" is given greater value than "contribution" and "creation of real value" we loose. Corbin is right, we've let it happen. I always heard folks from Asian cultures accuse American's of "short term planning". They are also right. The corporate board room focus on the next quarter is part of what has sunk us. Our snorkel is taking water.
Great article. But my analysis of America's decline begins before the rise of neoliberalism. The first blows against US industrial capacity did not come from offshoring to nations with cheap labor, but from another industrial power, i.e., Japan. This was most notable in the automotive and consumer electronics industries. Japan beat us because they built a better product and a product that Americans preferred. The US consumer electronics industry insisted on building TV and stereos encased in furniture. The high end market for stereo was considered a niche market and we were content to let the Germans have it. The Japanese came in and said, "You don't want a TV or stereo encased in furniture and, by the way, we make a product that's as good as the German stuff." Within a matter of years, not decades, electronic factories across the nation closed. With cars, Japan entered the market with cheap and gas efficient economy models that the US refused to make. Our first new car was a 76 Toyota Corona. We ran it until we got sick of it (over 200,00 miles) and upgraded to a Mazda 323 in the mid 1980s. By that time, Toyota and Honda had captured much of the sedan market as well as the economy car market. Of course, Japan and others now make cars in the USA, but the industry is concentrated along interstate corridors, like I-85, in the South. The other event in America's decline that occurred before the rise of neoliberalism was the war in Indochina. People who grew up after Vietnam tend not to understand how that war devastated the US morally, intellectually, economically, and politically. But that's a story for another day.
Ralph Nader was against NAFTA. I trusted him. Have you ever looked into Democracy Collaborative's "Community Wealth Building". It's a great concept, that been proven to work in several countries.
I too worked at a couple of companies in the early 2000s as they transitioned manufacturing offshore to places like China and Mexico. While saving on labor, costs in other areas, such as transportation and travel, increased significantly. Seemed to me the loss of expertise was never considered since that’s not measured financially, much like impacts to the country and climate.
The exact same thing has been going on in high tech. I'm newly retired but looking back 40 years one of the big differences is that employers were really good about wanting their workforce to upgrade. Most companies paid even the lowliest workers college courses at a rate that they could actually finish in a reasonable amount of time. I was in the military in the 1970s and went in for the old GI bill but after I got out I found my employer would pay for courses I took for an Electrical Engineering degree and later I did a computer science degree and paid for an MBA on my own after companies stopped paying for their employees education.
Now the companies are very very few that pay their workforces college education. I say few because I am not aware of any, but then they also used the H1-B to hold down pay for decades. You can argue this all you want but remember the basic rules of supply and demand. The H1-B made supply unlimited so for the last 20 years working as an engineer I competed against the best engineers that about 4-6 Billion other people could produce. Working in engineering was like being in the UN, and actually I enjoyed it but PAY remained flat as I completed a masters degree and many additional courses paid by myself just to remain relevant to the workforce. Those who didn't, were mostly pushed out.
I despised Trump ( and still do even more) but when he killed the H1-B program during his first term, for the first time I made some decent financial gains - companies had to compete demand dropped. This proves in Trumps case a stopped clock is right twice a day and that they were for a period of time giving US citizens the opportunities at the top spots.
This pay gain of course were eroded when the Dems came back to office and then the rates actually dropped from what I could see. I wrote lots of letters to my senators and congresspeople but got either no reply or piles of wasted paper not directed to any response - money in politics is cancer.
Education elsewhere is very inexpensive compared to he US, the US stopped funding it's colleges long long ago in any meaningful way as to hold down tuition, In the mid 1970s I could go to state school (Umass) for $300 a semester which I could easily earn working in the summer doing farm labor, Now they put kids in chains and lifetime debilitating debt. The oligarchs learned the lessons of slavery, if you are a master with a plantation, it is expensive to take care to feed, cloth, house, and keep your workforce in good health.
It's much cheaper to run a sweatshop where if someone doesn't perform, kick them out into the street and get another. Welcome to H1-B. All of this happened as the top grew wealthy beyond all expectation, and the working class and educated professionals unless self employed watched their pay flatline. To quote Warren Buffet "Of course there is a class war, and my side is winning" ( paraphrased said about 15 years ago). To make my point, we are at war, the working class and professional class are at war, and if they don't start fighting back with the same or greater ruthlessness as those ( both corporate Dems and GoP, though this particular administration is by far the most corrupt and ruthless ever) who will put both us our kids into dire poverty for another golden toilet or Temu ballroom. We need to make billionaires millionaires, get money out of politics - because corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE they are just a veil to prevent litigation and to hide the intentions of those running them.
Lay down and surrender you and your your kids future, or stand up and fight ruthlessly with NO empathy towards the enemy as they have done to you for decades. Gloves off, it will be very ugly but if you really want your country back, you have to do it. Educate yourself ALL the time. Toss Schumer and the other sell outs, yes, people were suffering, maybe they meant well but they were weak and stupid.
We need strong leaders who are not stupid and can talk themselves into selling out America for the good of the few rather than the welfare of the many, The suffering they enabled by a group that has been directly culpable to let millions die through cuts to programs like USAID and food and medical programs in the US for mismanagement on the covid epidemic cost the lives of hundreds of thousands because he didn't want his makeup to get mussed by his mask.
Make no mistake, the empathy they have towards starving African children and AIDs patience is exactly the same as for American citizens - ZERO. Glad to have Veterans die, children die, Americans die, and see anything destroyed for tax cuts. Get strong now, stand up now. You are fighting the oligarchy who would keep us divided, and use that to impoverish and repress us to serve themselves.
Oligarchs only care about making themselves richer. We have to turn our culture around -- yes, that big a change -- so money and power are subordinated to the public good. Thanks for your work Corbin. Please get an editor to fix those spelling errors (like "use" instead of "us")
The only way America survived as anything other than some kind of Balkanized failed state is if we build a new American labor movement.
Fantastic! I look forward to the upcoming articles.
I always thought we were making a mistake in farminv out the industrial capacity.