I run a business flipping houses and remodeling rental properties. I was talking to the owner of the electrical supply house in our county yesterday and he told me they sold the last 200 amp meter base they had in stock the day before. They were probably one of the last stores in Tennessee that had any in stock. You can't build a house without one.
He also told me our power company has been removing transformers that are feeding barns or workshops. They don't have any spares to fix broken transformers in residential areas so they are stealing them from places that affect the fewest people. They haven't received any new transformers in several months.
The areas affected by the tornados last week are calling utility companies everywhere trying to find transformers and poles to repair the damage but there are very many spares left. He said if that storm had hit our county, he didn't think we would have the parts to get the power turned back on any time soon.
Crazy times ahead.
Seems like we are completely severing trade with China, and it’s gonna be weird for awhile. How do you get America to start building shit again? You make it profitable and attractive. How do you do that? You cut off the supply coming from foreign slave labor and commie China government subsidizing.
We are paying the price of decades of our government selling out our businesses to the Chinese. All of that shit we gotta start making again.
I wish there was a way to track all of this down to its root manufacturing points and see where the bottlenecks are. My hunch is that we are at war with China and the EO kicked in and now we are punishing them economically.
You pay more in the long run when you purchase poorly made products from Chyna at a cheap price and then have to replace them very frequently. By quality and the product will last.
I can't see how making cheap shit here isn't a viable alternative. "Cheap" as recent as 30 years ago (for tools at least) meant that you'll get at least 10 years out of it.
The first ratchet I ever broke in my life was a Harbor Freight one ... I impulse bought something there that I thought was well built. It wasn't their bottom of the barrel no-name stuff, but the crap that's slightly better than their "Pittsburgh" line of tools. I went to use it to remove some bolts on a timing chain cover ... it wasn't anything crazy and the ratchet was sold as something that could easily handle that kind of torque. It frigging broke after the third bolt was removed.
They only offered me an exchange or store credit. I no longer buy anything there. It's hot garbage.
The chinese can make solid products. However, their good stuff rarely makes it to the USA ... the only things companies import from China to sell are garbage so that their bottom line looks great. Most of these companies that have their product manufactured in China deal with places that are run by idiots. Since they "save" so much in labor, they can handle yields in the 70% range and profit off them like mad.
You'd think that they'd have things done right the first time, but when you show some cash obsessed piece of shit that labor costs will be lower, they'll sign off on production ... if you use a better company to fabricate something, the cost is higher. Since the bean counter only counts on the bottom line, they'll only sign off on the shitty version since consumers are trained to expect everything to break in a year or two. Some of these companies would have been out of business in the 50s/60s ... people were far less tolerant of garbage products back then.
People here want cheap but also want the workers who make it to be paid top dollar. Can't have it both ways
I agree. There used to be companies in the US who made products that were high quality, medium quality, or low quality, and they were affordable. There is no reason it can't be done again. Tariffs work great to stop the products made with cheap slave labor from flooding and dominating the market. Unfortunately, politicians were asleep at the wheel while the Chynees did just that. It was only when President Trump slapped the tariffs on the imported garbage did some manufacturing start a comeback.
Yes. Like the coffeemaker and the chainsaw and furniture. It all has to come home and be produced here so we're independent.
God I love your username!
As I college kid I knew Wild Bill Clinton was damaging America when he welcomed China into the WTO. I buy American every chance I get, and have never owned a foreign car and never will.
The return to American manufacturing will be very innovative and glorious. It will be a long struggle to return my industry here, but certainly attainable. Hopefully the millennials can learn from the experienced folk that used to run the industries and carry the torch onward.
As a college kid, I marveled at how all the MSM could talk about was Bill's saxophone and the Republicans trying to impeach him because he got a blow job.
Meanwhile, we knew he was taking money from the Chinese if we were paying attention.
"Just a blow job" angers me. It had nothing to do with that. It was the lying under oath that enraged the right.
Clinton got a slap on the wrist for a crime that ~ 200 people in the USA were in jail for at that time. The media all but gave the signal that lying is OK now if you're a Democrat.
If any normal person would have done what he did, they would have been in jail for at least 5 years. It was nice of the media to explain that.
It wasn't even about the lying under oath.
It was about burying the shady Whitewater real estate deal, and the $1,000 Hillary invested in cattle futures that magically turned into nearly $100,000 in under a year.
New York Times - Hillary Clinton Turned $1,000 Into $99,540, White House Says
By Stephen Labaton
March 30, 1994
https://archive.md/pioXU
The blowie was a felony itself
at least he didn't have sex.
No. He saved that for the minors.
Also, I'm pretty sure Bill was blackmailed over that whole incident. That fucker and his cunt wife wanted to look squeaky clean. I have little doubt the prick would have done anything to prevent that story from coming out.
100% on board with this.
Only problem is that we don't know how to make alot of stuff anymore. It's going to be a steep steeo learning curve if they can e en get employees and start up money in this environment. If you go too far back into the stone ages you can't really rebuild