keep these youtubers off of my dang lawn!***

Oculus Spirit [97716]

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We will at some point.

Jun 20, 2022, 12:28 PM

Rome became the wealthiest city in the world, and the wealthiest country, on the backs of conquered lands and people, who could sell the city goods, pay taxes, and provide Romans with goods FAR beyond their own domestic/local capabilities. We have done the same thing in the US. It's because we are a dominant military power, which underwrites it all. Military dominance makes the currency the safest, safe currency makes it valuable in OTHER places. That drives trade, and importing more goods than the nation/state could produce on its own.

Only two things derail our economy, war and/or (evidently) a pandemic. We don't know, nor understand, how dependent we are on other countries for what we take for granted. I'm typing this post on a Chinese keyboard, using a Chinese mouse, with two desk lamps made in China, with a VERY old desk made in Canada, sitting in a chair made in China, in a house with Chinese drywall, Chinese light fixtures, on a computer with chips made in Taiwan and China, and a monitor made in South Korea, with a phone on my desk made in China, from a Korean company, and my house was built with largely imported goods and non-domestic labor. I drive a car with foreign made parts. Just bought new tires from China. My shirt was made in Malaysia, and my boxers in Guatemala. And that's just sitting here at my desk.

Yeah, it's going to change at some point. We take so much for granted, really we do. Our demand has outstripped our domestic labor supply for a very long time. We simply can not make enough goods to satisfy demand, at a price that maintains demand. This happened in Rome a very long time ago as well. We consume the labor of more than 400 million people. We consume the labor of well over a billion people. We don't have a billion people. We rely on free trade to deflate prices, and when we must have domestic labor (for domestic goods and services) we allow immigrants, legal and illegal, in by the millions to subsidize domestic labor. It all hinges on the dollar, and that relies on military dominance. If another country rises, their currency will challenge ours, and we will lose labor, supply, etc. A pandemic can do the same thing really, accomplish the same domestic demand problems without a war.

We think we live in some bubble. We think if we earn X dollars, we can afford Y products. We don't know or care about the labor that made them, we care about our finances, and then the price of goods. We want a car, we go out and buy (usually finance) one. We know they're made here in the US, but with a massively streamlined labor force, and even then they use imported parts. Chips from Singapore, rubber from China, we can't assemble vehicles without foreign parts. So we lose China's supply chain, and many other countries, and we all of a sudden can't afford the things we thought we could afford and we thought we made. At prices we once were accustomed to. We castigate and complain about trade deficits, then gladly spend our dollars further on imported goods made cheaper than we can make them. We lament illegal immigration, yet we gladly buy the house they built, cheaper than American workers could build it. We eat cheap food, made cheaply either through mechanization of agriculture, or where manual labor is needed, with imported labor. And we think that food costs X, and then suddenly it costs Y when we don't have enough because the tractors lack foreign parts, or lettuce pickers are not allowed to flood the border for their seasonal agricultural harvesting they do for us, illegally.

Yes, it will end sometime. And the worst part is we will blame whoever we can, other than the person who stares at us in the mirror every morning.

Some people will be fine, but MANY people, most people, will not know how much they relied on others until others can not be relied on. The realization we don't stand on our own two feet will be the hardest thing to swallow.

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in the labor pool. I posted on this a while back after driving from Nashville to Indy or Columbus...can't remember. But what hit me in driving through these little midwest towns is why do we have 19 fugging fast food joints?

How many FTEs are appropriating their time doing useless ####, at extremely low wages, when the product they're producing is horrible for society? Certainly not the solve, obviously, but still something that's limiting our production, IMO.

We're trying to automate but the guys in my field are at or way over capacity as is. I'm sure resources are even tighter on the pure MFG / Production focused automation shops.

We're at capacity in the transportation space. Driverless trucks are way farther off than people think, based on my understanding of driverless vehicles (something I have experience doing).

I've posted before that I'm a firm believer in Fordism. We've shifted away from this by exporting production overseas or south, and now have a generation that couldn't support the production needed.

Again - just my opinion - we're in a mess that won't be fixed in a generation. It would take two at a minimum. And furthermore, I believe it would take a catastrophic type event (Armageddon depression/collapse and/or WW3 with China) to push the needle. The shareholders and string pullers seem to be pretty satisfied with the status quo as is.

The end of the Wal-Mart economy. Can you do it?

Re: The end of the Wal-Mart economy. Can you do it?

Unions help when real goods are being made, IMO

Re: Unions help when real goods are being made, IMO

Re: Unions help when real goods are being made, IMO

Unions served a purpose when there was a good chance you would

How many of our children or grandkids aspire to work …

Who wants to work in a factory when you could be an

Not many, BUUUUT, I have a PhD-holding friend who works a

We will at some point.

Re: The end of the Wal-Mart economy. Can you do it?

There definitely needs to be a massive shift

People are saying COVID, Ukraine, and China are exactly

Re: People are saying COVID, Ukraine, and China are exactly

Re: The end of the Wal-Mart economy. Can you do it?

Irony is that the problems are also global

Correct. The "developed" economies of the world depend on

the gap will just grow wider

Re: the gap will just grow wider

environmentalist will never let if happen

NAFTA and GATT contributed greatly to low inflation from

Re: NAFTA and GATT contributed greatly to low inflation from

Yep. The Chinese control African cobalt, so we're trying

Re: NAFTA and GATT contributed greatly to low inflation from

It's a matter of national defense.

My father helped organize the Teamsters at Owens-Corning.

Even back in the day Greeks and Turks worked at OCF.

I work at a factory that we actually make stuff at

The only reason stuff would be more expensive

Re: The end of the Wal-Mart economy. Can you do it?

Re: The end of the Wal-Mart economy. Can you do it?

Well, that was the promise of NAFTA and Matamoros.***

Best thread on Politics Board in months. TU!

OK. Well, contribute to the convo and get me over the top

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