Unions

Recently I got into a fight over China getting all this money and how much they import here.

Two reasons keep popping up as to why we are exporting all our manufacturing jobs.

Envronmental Compliance and Labor Costs.

I like clean air, but I am concerned that the people pushing it are not using anything resembling science to make their conclusions. I started noticing this with car emissions stuff. Look up what platinum is used for sometime. Catalytic converters, corrosion protection and as a catalyst for making acids. Notice that catalyst is used twice, they are related. What a catalytic converter does is take the gasses emitted by the exaust and causes them to react into chemicals that the EPA doesn't measure. The only effective means of reducing emissions is to USE LESS gas. There are several effective methods of doing this, and because most of the emission devices reduce efficency (and are required to be there by law) we don't get better efficiency. And here is a news flash for the envirowienies, while a car that gets 30 miles per gallon does make 1/3 the emissions of a 10 mpg SUV; if you drive it three times as far, the net emissions result is the same. Also note that acid rain is a phenomenon that starts after widespread adoption of catalytic scrubbers in factories.

Labor? Hey UAW, does it help if I mention that the people who are taking your jobs would not be able to pass a GED with an answer key? What does that say about the skills and knowledge required to do the job of putting cars together? Need more time? What keeps the price of labor artifically high? Unions. And the threat of striking when the company has moved the plant to Mexico, or China is hollow. And the UAW can't explain why their members should get more money. I love my Caprice, but when I am hot rodding I see mistakes. My Caprice was made in a UAW plant in Willow Run, Michigan. I talk to other B-Body owners and have even talked to some of the people who worked the lines for my car, the same mistakes over and over. Like the exhaust bolts on the driver's side that were never tight because the girl who tightened them was too short to reach them with any leverage. People who have cars where the exhaust was installed near closing time have had it fall off because she was tired and wasn't putting them on more than finger tight. On a Civic, a robot does that process, the same way every time. If the skill set required from the worker can be obtained from a Chinese rice farmer and can be taught those skills in an afternoon, how valuable are they?

The price of labor also has to be balanced against the price the consumer is willing to pay for the product. Notice the price of cars (union labor) against the price of new housing (illegal immigrants). Now compare the rate of increase against inflation. It's pretty telling, especially since the price of real estate has gone up obscenely.