I hadn’t realized how MUCH domestic manufacturing the socialists gutted.

[AJMD429]

.
Completely disgusting.

https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY

When the boomers who used to do the machining and tool and die stuff die off, will anyone have the skills to being back U.S. manufacturing…?

Our grill brush (probably the 10th one we’ve bought in the past 25 years) died, and so I think I will get one of their end-product, just because I’m sick of “donating to the Chinese Aircraft Carrier Fund” by buying so many things made in China.

https://www.jjgeorgestore.com/the-smarter-scrubber/

[OldWin]

I've been a machinist at a large company in the power industry for 38 years. In the late 80s they hired a lot of people and there was a lot of expansion through the mid 90s. Like today, there was a shortage of machinists coming out of tech schools. Things today, however, are very different.
Most of the guys from my time are gone or going soon. I have just 2 years left. The company is desperately trying to hire a ton of people, and it's not going well. When we were hired, it was like winning the lottery for people like me. Good pay, pensions, good benefits. If there was a rumor of them hiring, they would get thousands of applicants. Now they have TV adds, news specials, signs beside the road, walk in interviews......They will hire anything with a pulse. They hired a convicted rapist who did 10 years and a convicted armed robber. 90% of their hires are completely skilless with zero aptitude. Not only that, but there is now nobody left to train them. Management hires are no better.

Obviously, this is one example in my little corner of the world. But if this is how it is everywhere, this country is in serious trouble. The slide into third world status is picking up speed folks.

[piller]

Around here, no one is hiring. I know someone who works hard and wants a job, but needs more than minimum wage. She has been out of work for a year.

[rossim92]

I've been a machinist at a large company in the power industry for 38 years. In the late 80s they hired a lot of people and there was a lot of expansion through the mid 90s. Like today, there was a shortage of machinists coming out of tech schools. Things today, however, are very different.
Most of the guys from my time are gone or going soon. I have just 2 years left. The company is desperately trying to hire a ton of people, and it's not going well. When we were hired, it was like winning the lottery for people like me. Good pay, pensions, good benefits. If there was a rumor of them hiring, they would get thousands of applicants. Now they have TV adds, news specials, signs beside the road, walk in interviews......They will hire anything with a pulse. They hired a convicted rapist who did 10 years and a convicted armed robber. 90% of their hires are completely skilless with zero aptitude. Not only that, but there is now nobody left to train them. Management hires are no better.

Obviously, this is one example in my little corner of the world. But if this is how it is everywhere, this country is in serious trouble. The slide into third world status is picking up speed folks.

nows a good time to demand a raise!

[OldWin]

I've been a machinist at a large company in the power industry for 38 years. In the late 80s they hired a lot of people and there was a lot of expansion through the mid 90s. Like today, there was a shortage of machinists coming out of tech schools. Things today, however, are very different.
Most of the guys from my time are gone or going soon. I have just 2 years left. The company is desperately trying to hire a ton of people, and it's not going well. When we were hired, it was like winning the lottery for people like me. Good pay, pensions, good benefits. If there was a rumor of them hiring, they would get thousands of applicants. Now they have TV adds, news specials, signs beside the road, walk in interviews......They will hire anything with a pulse. They hired a convicted rapist who did 10 years and a convicted armed robber. 90% of their hires are completely skilless with zero aptitude. Not only that, but there is now nobody left to train them. Management hires are no better.

Obviously, this is one example in my little corner of the world. But if this is how it is everywhere, this country is in serious trouble. The slide into third world status is picking up speed folks.

nows a good time to demand a raise!

Nope. I don't want any excuse for them to want more out of me. Quite honestly, I'm coasting till retirement. I despise what the place has become. It doesn't even resemble the great company I went to work for. It's very disheartening to see, and I pray it's not like this all over the country.
I also worked in inspection and QC for many years, and am still a level 2 NDT. It's shocking to see what a joke quality has become in a product that has the potential to have catastrophic results with a failure. Everything is lies. It's appalling.

[stretch]

Yep - everything's been jobbed out overseas, "because it's cheaper."
And what do those low, low, prices buy us? A ruined economy for the
working classes, unemployment, and a lower standard of living for
my children's and their children's generation.

The quality of those imported goods is mainly, though not completely,
stuff. I bought 3 pairs of USA made Frye boots over 25 years ago, for instance.
They're getting worn, of course, but after several resoles they're still going.
Buy a pair of boots at WalMart for $100 and they last a year if you're lucky.
And they're not rebuildable. They're throwaway.

Corporations now exist for the shareholder. Most - over 90% - of the
people buying stocks and bonds are in the top 10% income bracket; the
vast majority in the top few percent. Corporations exist to make money
for the shareholders. And shareholders want only ONE thing: MORE!!!
They have no morals, they don't care about the working man, the
environment, slave labor, or anything else. Just themselves and their greed.
It's WAAAY cheaper to have Chinese slaves make stuff, import it with almost
no tariffs, charge many times what it cost to produce, and pocket the
difference. Both sides of the aisle at the Federal level have aided and
abetted that process in the last 50 years.

Everything in this country has been monetized. Corporations won't pay for training.
They expect people to show up knowing everything. I learned to run a metal lathe
in junior high school. (Earned my living at it for about 5 years after college, too.)
I learned I could ram up a mold, turn a bowl, (it's on my kitchen table as we speak), build a
bookcase, and fix a small engine; all in junior high school. When I started my IT career
at Central Maine Power, they trained me from the ground up, and the training was
superb. That's all gone now.

We have a crisis in this country. We've been sold the fantasy that we can job out all
of the hard work, do the easy stuff, and everybody will live high on the hog. Only
the wealthy will though; the rest of us will struggle to stay employed. Pensions are gone - into
the shareholders' pockets.

And now, the knowledge we NEED for manufacturing is dying in this country. Who's gonna
teach the new kids, and who's going to have the foresight to pay for such training up front?

We keep being sold this bill of goods by the plutocratic oligarchy. (Or is it the oilgarchic
plutocracy? (Discuss among yourselves.....) For darn sure it's of the rich, by the rich and for the rich
these days.

From the movie, "Monte Walsh:"

Colonel Wilson: "Machines do all the work. Another 20 years, we'll all be sitting around on cushions and eating ice cream."
Monte Walsh: "What's ice cream?

Rant off.......

(Man, but ya touched a nerve there..... )

-Stretch

[.45colt]

I'm entering my 54th year as a union Meat cutter. I retired six years ago but the company has a program for skilled retired people . I work one or two mornings a week ,they pay us top rate and are happy as the company doesn't pay us benefits. The top end of the company is "woke" and as Old Win said they will hire anyone with a pulse .All of the applications are online . Gay people, trans people, lazy scum bags who show up sometimes just enough to get a paycheck . tattoos, piercings, nose rings are common, the joke apprentice training provided is a total waste of time as none of the people in charge hold them to any kind of a standard. hired and fired after months of mollycoddling begging them to come to work.
The WILL to WORK for many in the Country is gone . what these people are going to do if they live to retirement age is unbelievable.

[stretch]

........total waste of time as none of the people in charge hold them to any kind of a standard.

Yeah, this is a problem we didn't have when we were starting out. My son works in a nursing home, and it's
a HUGE problem getting people to show up. And they don't get fired, because the home is so shorthanded.

-Stretch

[AJMD429]

.
This guy just gave-in to the patent-jumping Chinese - - - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiDhbZ8-BZI

Honestly I don't blame him though - I've had friends patent things only to have the big companies (in the US alone) start jumping the patent, and without huge lawyre bills that outstrip any profits you COULD be making (but aren't since the big guys stole your patent and are already making and marketing and selling to out-compete you), you are screwed.

It's even worse with the international patent-jumpers, and Amazon selling for them.

[OldWin]

.45 Colt said......
"The WILL TO WORK for many in this country is gone."
"What these people are going to do if they live to retirement age is unbelievable. "

These 2 things are a planned part of the roadmap to communism/totalitarianism.
Through crushing taxes and making it impossible for the average person to get ahead or buy a home, you remove the will to work or achieve attainable goals. It breeds widespread hopelessness. I see this in the younger people as newer hires at work. Where I bought a home within 3 years of starting my job, These young people will never be able to afford a house. So they figure "why bother". These are not kids with 300k in college debt, either. They are just doing the math.
They also can invision a lifetime of working mostly paycheck to paycheck, paying rent, with more crushing taxes, and a declining standard of living. All with no pensions and little to no savings.

Make no mistake, I'm all for hard work and financial responsibility, but I also would be on the list for not busting my hump for nothing. And this is all while watching illegals get endless freebees and Healthcare. Somalis and their supporters in power stealing billions of their tax dollars they worked for. And let's face it, nothing will happen to any of them.

Then everyone sits in bewilderment when Mondami gets voted in. Hopelessness and despair is the communists best friend. It doesn't "just happen". It's also not going to stop. The fact that everyone can see it now means it's too late. The truth is, it's been mostly a socialist country for a long time. Nikita Kruschev was right.

[AJMD429]

.45 Colt said......
"The WILL TO WORK for many in this country is gone."
"What these people are going to do if they live to retirement age is unbelievable. "

These 2 things are a planned part of the roadmap to communism/totalitarianism.
Through crushing taxes and making it impossible for the average person to get ahead or buy a home, you remove the will to work or achieve attainable goals. It breeds widespread hopelessness. I see this in the younger people as newer hires at work. Where I bought a home within 3 years of starting my job, These young people will never be able to afford a house. So they figure "why bother". These are not kids with 300k in college debt, either. They are just doing the math.
They also can invision a lifetime of working mostly paycheck to paycheck, paying rent, with more crushing taxes, and a declining standard of living. All with no pensions and little to no savings.

Make no mistake, I'm all for hard work and financial responsibility, but I also would be on the list for not busting my hump for nothing. And this is all while watching illegals get endless freebees and Healthcare. Somalis and their supporters in power stealing billions of their tax dollars they worked for. And let's face it, nothing will happen to any of them.

Then everyone sits in bewilderment when Mondami gets voted in. Hopelessness and despair is the communists best friend. It doesn't "just happen". It's also not going to stop. The fact that everyone can see it now means it's too late. The truth is, it's been mostly a socialist country for a long time. Nikita Kruschev was right.

VERY VERY VERY True...!

[AJMD429]

.
Even Lucas Botkin says it’s a problem…

https://youtu.be/Prg3jvnVx5U

[mickbr]

Its the same everywhere in the world. Most the 30 or so 1st world countries have sold off their manufacture. We exchanged sovereignty for cheap appliances and stock market returns. The china vs west thing is a total work too. Our leaders rattle sabres in the media but our billionaires still do the same business with theirs day in day out and thats the real problem here- The folks at the top of the food chain are taking all the money. They pretty much doubled their net worths during covid. We are tought that capitalism is preferred to socialism etc and this is true. But its still supposed to be kept in check. There are whole sections of law devoted to making sure the average fella doesnt get monopolised or price gouged out of existence and these laws are being subverted.

[stretch]

^^^

What mickbr said.

-Stretch

[oldebear1950]

Back in 2013/2014 I took a machine shop course thru the local community college/junior college here, and at the age of 63/64 then was impressed with the wage scale, but most of the shops then were working approx 12 hours a day 6 days a week.
There was a drastic shotage of machinest, I am retired from US COAST GUARD after 20 years, retired from the US POSTAL SERVICE, and drawing social securty, disability then because of my knees.
Did not need to work those kind of hours.
From what I hear is even worse today.

[Griff]

I'm not so sure it was "socialists" that gutted domestic manufacturing, so much as "accountants"! Okay, so those college educated "accountants" were probably indoctrinated by the socialist educators imported after WWII, turning our colleges into theoretical socialist boot camps, churning out like minded theorists. Saving a buck here or there by exporting our manufacturing certainly added to their employer's bottom line, making hundreds, maybe thousands of investors happy with a short term boon to their portfolios... it's certainly devastated our economy. When I started in the trucking industry in the mid '90s, I've helped move at least 100 manufacturing plants south of the border. One notable was Bausch & Lomb eyewear from New York to Mexico. Their glasses certainly have not decreased in price to the US consumer, nor have any of the other products made outside the US... maybe forestalled increases... but that's not easily proven.

The whole subject gives me a headache... I'm going to go investigate getting a suppressor for my AR! I'll feel better... and w/o the $200 tax stamp, so will my wallet!