idamtnboy wrote:MrGrumpy wrote:Bannon simply wants to do things like, bring manufacturing jobs back to the USA. Manufacturing jobs pay more than low skill, low wage, high stress service jobs that America has so many of now.
88% of jobs lost in manufacturing in this country in the last 50 years were lost due to technology and other home grown reasons. That means no more than 12% have gone overseas. Look up the recent study by Ball State University.
Bannon also wants to put stiff tarriffs on imports from places like Mexico and China, which will then allow the federal government to reduce taxes on Americans across the board, from the lower middle class all the way up to the corporate levels. Thats how America used to be at the federal government level, the federal government used to pay for most of its stuff from import tariffs.
And just who do think will pay those tariffs? It sure as hell ain't gonna be the guys shipping the stuff here. There will be no net cost reduction for Americans from higher tariffs, only a cost shift. We'll pay less in taxes and more for imported goods. And then of course there will be all those jobs lost due to the recession caused by the trade wars. You have heard of the Great Depression of 1929, right? One of its causes was tariff wars.
Figures lie and liars figure (not saying you are lying, it is just pretty hard to place an actual number on this. ) I have found a few references to a little over 7,000,000 manufacturing jobs are cut from 1970 and have found others that say about 5,000,000 jobs have been lost to overseas labor. This also does not take into account our increase in population and how, if we hadn't lost jobs, the number of jobs would actually have increased if jobs have not been shipped overseas. So, I am not going to defend these numbers since the numbers seem to be all over the place.
As to the tariffs, it is not a given that the price will be passed on to the consumer. The company I work for closed a 100 year old factory in Erie, PA and moved it to Mexico (the factory itself was not that old, that is when it was founded, it was a modern facility with lots of automation) Their costs were reduced by about 35%. Do you think they lowered the cost to the customer? Not a penny, they just make more profits and I am very much for profits but not when they come at the expense of the very people who built the company and the product for over a hundred years. I hear people saying slavery built America, I don't think they get all the credit but there is certainly truth to the statement. At the same time, I don't think you can give factory workers all the credit for growing a business, but they absolutely played a part in it. Sorry, tangent, back to my point - due to the law of supply and demand, companies will only charge what they can sell the product for. Do you not think if the companies could sell their product for an additional 35% the "greedy" CEOs would have already done so. Take cars for example, if ford sells a car made in Mexico for 35K and Subaru sells a similar car made in Lafayette, IN for 35K, Ford is making a lot more profit on that car than Subaru. If Ford now gets a 35% tax and they tack it on as you say, what chance would they have of selling it against cars made in the USA going for the original 35K. Nobody gets to sell in a mall while paying nothing for the privilege, the USA is the worlds largest mall and I personally don't think it is right to take business built in the USA, fire the workers, move it to Mexico and pay nothing for the privilege of selling here. I thought it was pretty ballsie of Mexico to complain that Trump stole Mexican jobs when Ford decided to keep some of the manufacturing in the USA
Time to put the mask on and go to sleep, rambling on...
