Some jaw-dropping numbers in this report:
Calling the federal government a reluctant shareholder, President Obama on Monday characterized the bankruptcy filing of General Motors as necessary to assure that the company remained a viable part of America in the years ahead.
President Obama said that the government had agreed to support G.M.’s reorganization because executives had worked tirelessly to produce a plan that met his demand for a leaner company focused on fuel-efficient vehicles.
***In its bankruptcy petition, G.M. said it had $82.3 billion in assets and $172.8 billion in debts. Its largest creditors were the Wilmington Trust Company, representing a group of bondholders holding $22.8 billion in debts, and affiliates of the United Auto Workers union, representing nearly $20.6 billion in employee obligations.
In a court affidavit, Fritz Henderson, G.M.’s chief executive, said that bankruptcy and a Treasury-sponsored sale of General Motors’ assets to a so-called “New G.M.” were the automaker’s only option to move forward. Failing that, he said, the company faced liquidation.
Good piece in TNR by Jonathon Cohn about the significance of this:
GM was the symbol of American industrial might and, for three-quarters of a century, the world’s largest carmaker. Now, in order to qualify or government financial assistance, GM is eliminating half of its brands, shedding dealers by the thousands, and laying off a third of its already diminished hourly workforce.
Even if the Obama administration’s plan works–even if GM re-emerges from bankruptcy as a leaner, more competitive company–it will never regain its iconic status. It will be just another company, albeit one whose majority owner is the U.S. government, at least for the time being.
What major manufacturing do we have left in the United States?
Stefan
What major manufacturing do we have left in the United States?
Manufactured outrage.
cleek
weapons!
aircraft.
we still build cars: Japanese and German cars.
David
Who needs manufacturing when we can own all of the big banks?
R-Jud
@Stefan:
Also controversy.
Seriously, though? Not a lot of major consumer goods that I can see. Medical lab equipment, or the factory equipment used to make circuit boards, other specialist stuff like that still gets made in the USA though.
enplaned
Boeing, Cirrus, Cessna…
A lot of factories of Japanese manufacturers: Honda, Toyota, etc.
chopper
stupidity and religiousness.
Short Bus Bully
Damn it we need tariffs and more mercantilism!
Brachiator
Practically none. Which may not be a bad thing if this is what the future will look like. We went from an agricultural economy to an industrial one. Who knows what’s next.
Meanwhile there is this:
The US now owns 60% of GM (and Canada owns 12%). Let’s hope that the company can bounce back and that taxpayers won’t be left holding the bag on this one.
Jay in Oregon
— Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
(Not totally germane to the discussion, but the question made me think of this book.)
Incertus
I’ll add oversized, crappily-built, unsustainable houses to the list.
donovong
Less every day, and that is the problem. We haven’t given a shit about “value-added” manufacturing for so long that
I am afraid it is too late. I grew up in the “Textile Capital of the World” and after I left the USAF I decided that, rather than go to work in a field that was quickly leaving for China, I would go into an industry that would NEVER leave – wood products, specifically furniture and cabinets. Yeah, right.
I wish I could meet the assholes that made it more profitable for companies to ship our wood overseas, turn it into furniture and then ship it back in the form of furniture or wood parts. I have been “downsized” (also known as laid off, rationalized and/or right-sized five different times over the last 17 years from management and engineering positions.
Before long, we will all either be on the bread lines or working at Wally-world and McDonalds.
cleek
we export huge quantities of whoop-ass.
4tehlulz
It’s a sad day when even the New York Times misuses the word “assure.”
jake 4 that 1
@Stefan: Right. May as well shut the comments down.
James K. Polk, Esq.
Bio-pharma?
cleek
no shit.
i snicker a bit when i see my wife’s steel dumbbells, stamped “Made In China”. why the hell is it cheaper to buy poorly-cast chunks of low-quality steel from China and ship them half-way around the world. they are literally weight – you’d think we could make affordable weight in the US, too…
or Indian manhole covers ?
come on people, we can do this stuff.
Scott H
According to CCTV, GM outsells Toyota and Honda in China. From other sources I hear that China saved the Buick marque from being abandoned by GM. [CCTV is channel 265 on DISH network.]
Woody
Manufactured “consent” of the governed.
I have3 ventured into these waters, excerpting both Michael Moore’s excellent open letter to “the Prez,” and Greg Palasts ruminations on pension theft.
patrick
@Jay in Oregon:
he forgot porn….nobody does porn better than ‘muricans!
Awesom0
I’m trying to stay optimistic about GM. Just a few years ago Fiat was being left for dead, now they’re buying Chrysler.
There are few places in the world with our logistics, managerial, R&D and marketing skills. If our economy ever gets away from a mindset where short term investors are king (a good deal of the reason companies keep off-shoring; it’s a quick easy way to drive down costs and boost stock prices/dividends instead of resorting to pesky ole innovation) and gives labor more of a voice, we certainly can have a second manufacturing renaissance.
Granted, it’s an uphill climb, but not impossible.
PeakVT
Airplanes, industrial equipment, cars (yes, still), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, major appliances (slipping rapidly), and military hardware.
Consumer goods (assembled computers, electronics, kitchen appliances, clothing, shoes, etc.)? Not so much.
The trade trends have reversed of late, and we will get more manufacturing back once the dollar falls (it will) to a more appropriate value against the yuan and yen.
Interrobang
Could be worse — at least your government isn’t actively encouraging the wholesale selloff of all your primary industry and manufacturing base to foreign buyers. *sigh* Canada has always been the hewers of wood, drawers of water, and growers of wheat for the world, and now, thanks to years and years of stupid-ass governments who think protectionism is a dirty word, it’s not even our wood, water, and wheat anymore.
That said, in a just world, GM should have been dechartered years ago, mostly for serial antitrust violations that make Standard Oil look like a paragon of corporate virtue, and other crimes against the public good…
NonyNony
@donovong:
That’s the GOP War on Labor Unions that led to this wonderful state of affairs – aided and abetted by idiot Democrats who think that if they just trash the labor movement every once in a while their friends at the DC cocktail parties will like them more. 30 years later they’ve nearly succeeded – our labor unions are some of the most crippled labor unions in the developed world. Had to trash our entire economy to do it, but hey – ya can’t make applesauce without crushing some apples, can ya?
And as an upside – we can now buy all the cheap-ass particle-board furniture we want from Wal*Mart with low-low prices. For now. Until even Wal*Mart falls prey to the economic principle that if you don’t pay your employees enough to actually buy your products, your business is eventually going to fall apart. Stupid capitalists who don’t understand capitalism – they need their asses kicked.
Zifnab25
Sure. We can do this stuff. But you’d have to pay us a whooping $7.25 / hour. Companies can’t afford that. Just build a high tech factory in a third world country and you can get 8 year olds to do it for a dollar a day.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
Well, for a while we were quite good at manufacturing money, using only vapor as a raw material.
As someone who lives in Rocket City USA, the heart of the military industrial complex, I can say that we’re quite good at manufacturing ass kickings for brown people.
Woody
Both Michael Moore (who is still fat, of course) and Greg Palast (who hath a lean and hungry look) have today put forth columns which discuss the fall of GM. Palast places blame on Obama’s Car Czar, Steve, the Rat, Ratner, while Moore sees hope.
Dan
CIGARETTES!!!
And nobody does porn like the USA? Patrick, you have not seen any Japanese porn, have you?
DrPresident
@Incertus:
and overpriced, don’t forget that.
Violet
@cleek:
We can, but it’ll cost more. The people that make that stuff generally have a vastly lower standard of living. If Americans are content to live that way, especially without the OSHA safeguards (as thin as they are) and various other benefits, we could make it. But the variation in lifestyles is what allows it. Broadly, anyway.
I think a lot is going to have to change for Americans to resume a strong manufacturing sector. The decline-leading-to-elimination of the manufacturing sector has been obvious for decades now. Now that GM has succumbed, I’m not sure why people are suprised. Heck, Michael Moore made his film “Roger and Me” in 1989. It was well on its way at that point.
Markets rise and fall. Take whaling for instance. Not a lot of market for whale products these days. Anyone using blubber to cook or heat? The time for that has passed. I know there are limitations on whaling and more might occur should those be lifted, but I still don’t think the market will approach what it was 120 years ago. The demand for the products has gone.
Not that we don’t use cars. But we don’t seem to like what GM offers. Either that or they’re terribly managed. I don’t know which. Maybe some of both. But people will need to get from point A to point B and if GM vehicles aren’t there to enable us to do that, someone else’s vehicles will be.
EriktheRed
3M, maybe?
Although a good amount of what they produce is also overseas….
Barry Soetoro
@Dan:
Exactly. No nonsense overseas about second hand smoke and health problems and death. Doing just fine overseas, Big Tobacco is!
donovong
@nonynony:
Sorry, but the textile and wood products industries are/were two of the LEAST unionized in the country. Both were/are primarily located in the “right to work” (and get offshored) South. Home of Toyota, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Nissan and – coming to a Georgia town near you!! – Kia!
I am fairly agnostic on unions, because they have been a large part of the problem, but their existence did not contribute to the downfall of textiles and furniture. That was just good old American greed and the “Walmartization” of Americans’ attitudes.
uila
KitchenAid makes a nice blender.
Brent
I don’t know what will come of this, but all I can say is drastic times call for drastic measures. The financial world, and thus our normal lives, was saved by Obama’s and Geithner’s intervention, what about this? Gets complicated, try this video out for more http://www.newsy.com/videos/gm_refuels_with_bankruptcy
jehrler
We make these:
http://www.ursawagon.com
in Minnesota.
Jim
Co-owner and co-founder
Brachiator
@Dan:
Nope.
The largest tobacco company in the world by volume is China National Tobacco Co. Their production in thousands of tons is 2298.8. Followed by India and then Brazil.
The US is a puny fourth with 408 thousand tons.
adam freeman
Not to be all snarky but I believe working in a factory would be a horrible job. Manuafacturing use to be a good paying job but it was basically a job that required no special skills.
The problem is not how do we bring back manufacturing but how do we provide good paying jobs for people who only have a high school diploma.
Michael D.
Methamphetamine?
gopher2b
What a colossal f*&#king waste money.
I guess if we all pretend that a government owned and subsidized GM is good for the country then it will be so.
This country manufacturers all kinds of goods. This has nothing to do with manufacturing and everything to do with saving a corporate name, good union jobs, bondholder debts, and the state of Michigan: none of which I particularly care about.
jehrler
Speaking of Minnesota, we make a *lot* of medical devices here via Medtronic, St Jude and Boston Scientific (the big 3).
So add pace makers, implantable defibrillators, implantable pumps etc. to items manufactured in the US.
The Saff
It is very painful to read about the rise and fall of GM. My dad worked there (white collar purchasing guy) for 33 years and was able to raise 4 kids on one salary (and put my sister and me through college at the same time in the mid to late 80s).
I don’t work in the automotive industry but I live in southeast lower Michigan and it’s brutal. I feel very sad today.
JenJen
I’m reminded of that scene in “Band of Brothers” where Webster is screaming at the retreating Nazis. “General F’n Motors! What were you thinking”?”
It’s a sad day, if you ask me.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
I really enjoyed the post-speech segment that MSNBC did on the heels of Obama’s address on the GM situation.
I kept thinking, if they sent a camera crew into the jungles of New Guinea and interviewed two natives there who had never seen a television or a car, they probably could have gotten more salient and intelligent comments.
Jesus H. Fucking Christ on an Elliptical Trainer, is there nobody in the media who can talk intelligently on such a subject?
MSNBC’s talking mouth guy named “Jim” absolultely was talking in unintelligible gibberish. The only sense I could make of it was the GM was doomed because Tata is selling a car for $2500 in India.
Not kidding.
LD50
Nah, the Russians are chasing us out of that.
Mr Furious
So, who gets made whole on their GM debt?
Wilmington Trust and their $22 Billion? Or the UAW and their $20 Billion?
Place your bets…
Brachiator
@adam freeman:
Train them to be bankers. Really. They couldn’t do any worse than the Lords of the Universe MBAs who have bankrupted the country.
More seriously, in some professions, even people with advance degrees end up being outsourced or displaced by cheaper — often foreign — workers.
The idea that a college degree is going to immunize you against job loss is as antiquated as, well, as antiquated as GM.
That One - Cain
We could take up marijuana!
The american worker has not only become expensive, but the younger generation expect instant gratification they want the corner office in a few years and are not willing to start from rock bottom and work their way up. That’s why immigrants are filling the void, we have lost that “can do” mentality we used to have. I don’t know what we can do to change that. Overall we have become the laziest bunch of bastards.
As for offshore stuff, I find it funny how in the old days of colonialization western powers would take the raw materials from the colonies and then manufacture products in their own countries and then sell it back to the colonies killing the indigenous labor in the colonies. We are doing it to ourselves now. Yay. Maybe there is a certain kind of justice to that. **shrug** But there should be prosperity for all.
cain
sv
@cleek: well – keep in mind that there is a lot of steel to be mined IN India, AND mining/manufacturing/cost-of-living/total-labor-cost is vastly cheaper in China and India.
Death By Mosquito Truck
@jehrler: Send me one please. I broke my hand and can’t use my wheelbarrow.
evinfuilt
@patrick:
Hell no, I find the best Porn comes from Germany.
Well, most creative Porn. I think American Porn is like the automotive industry, its all about big SuVs and Muscle Cars.
NonyNony
@donovong:
Collateral damage, donovong. When you open up the rules for trade to the degree that needed to be done to make it attractive to offshore heavy manufacturing (and heavily unionized) jobs, you necessarily open up the rules to make it attractive to offshore the rest of it. Simple matter of accounting – it’s always cheaper to pay nearly slave wages to people in third world countries than it is to pay people who expect to be able to live in a developed country. Textiles weren’t the target, but the folks who have been pushing for decades to kill the power of the labor movement didn’t care that it damaged them too – hell they don’t care about the damage that their idiocy does to the entire economy – they’re still pushing this “Unrestricted Free Trade” nonsense as if it were an “obvious on the face of it” good thing, rather than the qualified good thing that it can be in certain cases – and the disaster it can be for everyone except the guy at the top in others.
On a related note – the myth that a college degree gets you ANY kind of job security needs to be roundly demolished as well. Anyone who watched their programming job or accounting job get offshored to India in the late 90s early 00’s knows what a lie that is. (“Go into programming” I was told “we’ll always need programmers”. HA! Better to go into trade school and become a plumber, or an electrician, or a general practitioner doctor – something that has to be done by someone on-site. Having a job that someone can do a half-a-world away via the Internet almost guarantees that at some point, you’re going to be out of a job.)
Little Dreamer
@Mr Furious:
Wilmington Trust Co. and while I no longer bank with them (I did in my youth), I found out not long ago they have an office in Phoenix and I could if I wanted to.
4tehlulz
OH SHI-
celticdragon
Cleek beat me to it.
I was going to say we still build some effing kewl weapons, but that seems to be about it.
jehrler
@Death By Mosquito Truck:
Happy to ship you one via FedEx!
Sorry ’bout the hand.
El Cid
I remember being told in the 1990s that that sort of thing was the old and outmoded economy and the concern of protectionist luddites and now we would specialize in the knowledge economy and, erm, the financial industry.
Napoleon
@El Cid:
That has always been a pile of BS.
TenguPhule
Fast Food.
Thanks to reclassification.
El Cid
@Napoleon: Yes, because it was all about making sure that the rhetoric supported whatever reforms were desired by investors seeking to maximize their advantages vis a vis other classes of citizens, such as workers and stakeholders.
TenguPhule
That would be because you literally can’t survive at rock bottom wages in major metropolitan areas unless you’re homeless, have a strong support network, or are making money under the table.
Brachiator
@evinfuilt:
Good one! I imagine that it is the female pornstars who have the big, uh, SuVs.
Actually, Tata is running into trouble, and may not be able to deliver the Nano for its promised low price. Ironically, they are running short of revenues after trying to digest Jaquar Land Rover, which they acquired from Ford.
But it makes you wonder why GM or Chrysler didn’t go for a co-operative agreement with Tata to build vehicles there.
Wile E. Quixote
@Short Bus Bully
Yes, why not have some tariffs? If you manufacture in the US you have to obey US environmental and labor laws, if you manufacture in a shithole like China there aren’t any environmental laws to worry about, or at least none that can’t be circumvented by paying off the party bosses and labor laws, well for a country founded upon the idea of proletarian ownership of the means of production China does a good job looking like Manchester, England, ca 1847.
Even if companies want to do the right thing and employ Americans they’re placed at a disadvantage by those companies who are out to make a buck and who will outsource their labor to the cheapest shithole they can find, environmental law and workers rights be damned. Why not just abolish the current protectionist regime of tariffs and quotas and instead impose a flat 15 percent tariff on all imported goods? I’d like to see the US Government do something to actually protect American workers and please, I don’t want to hear about how horrible this would be and how many trade wars this would cause because if you accept the unhindered flow of capital across national borders then you are implicitly accepting that there will be a global race to the bottom as companies seek to maximize their profits by moving their operations to whatever pesthole is offering the least amount of regulation and oversight of their operations.
From a standpoint of protecting American workers or ensuring a sound footing for our economy the current “free” trade regime that we operate under seems to have done about as well as the whole “we don’t need regulators, the bankers can figure it all out” regime did for our banking system.
The Chinese are attempting to reform their labor laws, but the usual suspects are objecting.
The American Chamber of Commerce in China, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Jager
The business changed, consumers are changing and GM management didn’t see it. Never the less, Chevrolet has 2 cars and a pickup in the the top ten selling vehicles.
p.a.
I believe what has been defined by the USGvt as manufacturing has declined from about 35% of GDP to about 22% of GDP over the last generation; a considerable drop but still a considerable part of the economy. Manufacturing jobs however is a different ball of wax; mechanization. This is top-of-the-head stuff. I don’t have time to site real info as I’m at work.
If you have a kid who doesn’t look college bound, get him trained on a backhoe. You can’t dig holes from Bangalore and the best excavators I know live in gated communities next to lawyers and doctors!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
As events in KS this past weekend show, we’re great at manufacturing willing Talibangalist terrorists who use hand guns made here in the good ole USofA.
Yup, white, right-wing turrists and guns, dems our major manufacturing thingies.
Too bad we can’t figure out a way to export em.
hoi polloi
I’m reading about the Great Depression these days and I was struck last night by the similarity of changes that U.S. agriculture underwent in the 20’s and 30’s to what has been happening to the manufacturing sector over the last 20-30 years.
U.S. agriculture was in depression throughout the 20’s while the rest of the economy was booming. Rapidly growing industrialization of agriculture coupled with war-time productivity gains were keeping prices down. Small farmers were going bankrupt and responding to the shrinking labor market the workforce was migrating to the cities.
Manufacturing has faced massive, systemic changes led by globalization that have resulted in far fewer jobs available in the sector domestically. And while ag workers moved into the factories 100 years ago, there is no comparable labor market to absorb displaced manufacturing workers today.
ET
I saw a article link on TPM that effective June 8, the Dow removed both Citi and GM while Cisco and Travelers will replace them.
MNPundit
Uh nothing. Other countries do it better than us and so we lose. What’s so surprising about that?
Wile E. Quixote
@That One – Cain
Fuck you, you punk-ass bitch, and fuck the stupid, conservative bullshit that you’re regurgitating. You know, the people I’ve known who had the biggest sense of entitlement weren’t the product of public education or middle class backgrounds, those people expect to work, to work hard and they do. No, the douchebags with the biggest sense of entitlement, the ones who “…expect instant gratification” and “…want the corner office in a few years” are the ones who got into an Ivy League school on a legacy admission, coasted through four years on Daddy’s money, used Daddy’s connections to get a job outside of college, went off and got an MBA (which can’t be a hard thing to do given the utter stupidity of most of the MBAs I’ve met) and then have coasted through life from one company to another fucking things up along the way and leaving a trail of wreckage behind them. Of course these lazy, useless fuckups are the first ones to bitch about how everyone else is lazy and isn’t willing to “…start from rock bottom and work their way up.” They’re like George Bush, born on third base and thought that they had hit a triple.
Anyone who isn’t a lazy bastard, i.e, anyone who doesn’t spew mindless nonsense and say idiotic things like “…we have lost that ‘can-do’ mentality we used to have”, can easily see that American productivity is among the best in the world, this despite those damned lazy kids you’re bitching about. From 1980 to 2005. the average annual rate of American productivity growth was 1.7 percent per annum, whether measured by total hours worked or by hour, pretty good for a nation that you seem to think is full of lazy bastards with a massive sense of entitlement (Yes, worthless bastards with a massive sense of entitlement do exist but they have names like Cheney, Bush, Thain, Killinger, Blankfein and Paulson.)
So American productivity has been the among the best in the world since the 1980s, but what has the American worker gotten for that? Job protections have eroded, benefits have been cut and salaries have not kept up with inflation. But in that period American CEOs have become the most obscenely overpaid parasites on the planet, demanding huge amounts of compensation regardless of their performance or the damage they ultimately cause and they’ve been cheered on by cretins like you who are stupid enough to have bought into their “Murkins are lazy” bullshit.
You and the conservative lies you’re repeating are worthy of nothing more than the most abject contempt. American workers aren’t lazy bastards and they don’t suffer from the sense of entitlement that you describe, but they aren’t willing to work for shit wages in environments where they don’t have any protection from rapacious employers, and do you know what, they shouldn’t have to because we’re a civilized country. Immigrants are filling the void because they come from stinking pestholes where you work harder with a gun at your back for a bowl of rice a day, so getting paid 4 dollars an hour to do dangerous shit jobs and living twelve to a room is an improvement over their circumstances at home. Guess what dickhead, that doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing, or right.
tc125231
@NonyNony:
Jager
The farming analogy is a pretty good one. Those changes are driven by technology more than anything else. My farmer Uncle operates on land that at one time supported 11 farm families, now it suppports only one (rich) family. As he explained it to me one night; “when this land was homesteaded there were only one bottom plows, now we have 32 bottom plows, that means way less farmers.”
The technical sophistication of todays farmer is the only thing that keeps them afloat in a world where the rules are against them and written for Agri-Business. As farmer Uncle says, “I either want the god damned federal government all the way in or all the way out of agriculture, I’ll take my chances either way as long as it not the half-assed way it is now!”
BTW, years ago, my Uncle was at a farm meeting in DC, the speaker was Nixon’s Ag Secretary Earl Butz (Former president of Purdue, big agri-biz guy) during the question and answer session my Uncle asked Secretary Butz, “Just when was the last time you were on a fucking family farm anyway?”
Little Dreamer
Well, for all of my future vehicle purchases, the American auto makers are going to have to produce a car that would make me turn my head away from Mitsubishi products, because I’ve grown very fond of Mitsubishi products.
Calouste
It would help if America tried to manufacture stuff that people in other countries would be interested to buy. Compared to European and Asian consumer goods for example, American ones are 2-3 decades behind in design, quality and efficiency. Just walk into your local appliance retailer and compare a GE dishwasher to a Bosch or a Miele. I wouldn’t be surprised if American appliances weren’t even allowed on the European markets because they don’t meet recycling standards.
Matthew
So let me get this straight….we’re creating a new GM which will buy all it’s parts and transfer over all it’s labor from the old GM. Was it too complicated to move GM one town over so as to hide from creditors?
ThymeZoneThePlumber
@Wile E. Quixote:
Damn, another greeting I can’t use any more.
henqiguai
@PeakVT (#21):
Um, nope. The Chinese government has the yuan’s value keyed to the dollar. Now, any more turmoil in the US economy and they may well cut loose. But until then, the dollar will never fall relative to the yuan.
Kirk Spencer
A counterpoint. We’re losing a lot of ‘big shop’ manufacturing. We’re also losing a lot of manufacturing of things that are ‘make a billion at bottom cost’. In the latter case I’m going to add “for now”.
Around here, carpet manufacturing is the big thing – and for a variety of reasons that’s competitive with overseas production. One of the big reasons is NOT what the locals like to claim (that they hire illegals in droves), but rather the fact the companies spent some serious money in the past on automation. It takes one person and a bunch of machines to do what used to take almost a hundred people (and a bunch of ‘stupider’ machines). A machine works for less than even the cheapest overseas labor. If the job can be done by that machine, the overseas spot is eventually going away.
As to the former, there are a lot of ‘small specialty’ manufacturers around. Many are doing all right despite the economy.
For a variety of reasons many of the monstrous manufacturers are going away. Not all, though, and don’t forget to look for the hundreds (or thousands) of ‘small shops’ that are doing fine.
Mack
@Wile E. Quixote:
Bravo.
I was born middle-class, worked two jobs to get through a tough private college (bouncing at night and school during the day), and now I’m working on MBA (and I’m not stupid, thanks). I work 45 hours a week plus school, and just bought a house with my effort.
Anyone who calls me lazy can stick it up their ass.
Francis
Amazing. This blog has a diverse, thoughtful and engaged readership, and no one has any idea how people are employed in the US economy.
I don’t know if I’m reassured or appalled. Sometimes, the fact that this country runs at all amazes me. Talk about spontaneous organization.
(And since I’m at work, futzing around, I’ll wait until I get home to look up some summaries at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unless someone else wants to beat me to it.)
Elie
We seek good paying jobs but good paying jobs that can give us quality of life. Too many times we have received the first without the second. You can’t tell me that flattening our buts for hours in traffic on the way to our remote suburban enclaves where no one walks anywhere and the only place groups of us congregate is the mall — is quality of life.
We have to get our heads and hearts straight about what matters and how to get there. Yes, there are many other people in the world who make less than we do but in many (I know, not all), there is rich community life and people walk or take public transportation a lot more. We, many times, barely know our neighbors. Our kids are becoming obese from sitting in front of computer screens and tvs because we are afraid of letting them play outside in their communities because someone is going to rape or kidnap them — we think (even though there is no evidence that the rate of that is any higher than it was in the 50’s or 60’s.
I cringe at the thought of getting salaries high enough to continue to foster our alienation from each other, although I know that lowering them will not necessarily makes us grow closer. In fact, I am sure the stress of lowered financial expectations would exacerbate our divisions before bringing us together. Still — I long for a simpler way to think about what we want to value and achieve in our personal and community lives. While I know we do not want to race to the bottom in terms of salaries and pay, I do not think that sticking with the old concept of making a lot of money or as much as possible is the only frame we must use…How many would give up some salary dollars for more time off with families or volunteer work with the community. How can we make our lives have meaning beyond the rat race of more and more money to buy more and more empty THINGS.
D-Chance.
What major manufacturing do we have left in the United States?
Outrage.
BTW, Drudge has had the GM story as his lead all day long… where’s the Dow chart, Matt?
+221.11… if this had been a -221.11, do you think he’d have posted that handy little daily tracking as his splash photo?
john b
someone on marketplace today was saying that we are continually manufacturing more in this country. it just takes less jobs to do so.