Learning from the Great Depression

[AllanY2525]

You also have to consider that many jobs in manufacturing have been eliminated by modern technology.

Take automobile manufacturing, for example:  Robotics have played an ever-increasing role in their
production.  They use robots to paint the bodies of cars, assemble various components, etc.  All of
this robotic technology increases productivity, but it reduces the need for human workers in the plants
that use it.

There is no one solution to our economic woes, but I feel that we should be exporting more, and importing
less... this would definitely help.  Cheap goods from places like China, etc are killing us.  The outsourcing
of jobs to India is also hurting us in a major way, as many of those jobs are hi-tech (ie: white collar) jobs
that paid above-middle-class wages, in many cases.

I worked in the I.T. industry for seventeen years, only to have my job sent to India in 2004, along with
one thousand of my co-workers' jobs.  Now, some 20 year old kid in Bangalor is making about $10K a year
to do the same job I used to do in Northern Virginia - for about $80K a year.

And, worst of all, people in India pay NO taxes in the United States, obviously.  This means that the tax
revenues from these higher paying jobs are leaving the country along with them, thereby eroding the
tax base in this country.

[Dan Moadus]

The so called Green jobs that the left is so fond of will not contribute anything more to help our economy than did the building of the great hydro electric dams out west, or the rural electrification programs did. To predict that alternate energy production will save our economy is simply a fabrication.

There is so much misinformation regarding topics such as this. Statements such as, "One of the stark lessons from the "Great Recession" has been that we must start making things in America again." makes no sense at all if one takes the time to learn a little bit about manufacturing in America.  Contrary to what most people believe, manufacturing is nearly at an all time high. In fact, 2007 saw the most U.S. manufacturing in the past 40 years. (see here  http://www.uschina.org/public/documents/2006/09/us-manufacturing.pdf  ) What has occurred though is a dramatic drop in manufacturing jobs. People tend to equate the loss of manufacturing jobs with the loss of manufacturing, which is simply not true.

And more importantly, it is not accurate to judge the health of U.S. manufacturing by how many people are employed in it. If the health of industries was judged by the increase or decrease of its employees, the farming industry would be the sickest of all, because at the turn of the century farming took the participation of nearly 80 percent of our population, while today farm output is vastly greater with a fraction of the employees. Why this is a good thing is a topic for another day. I point it out simply to help prevent people from being misled by more of Dennis's drivel.

[sfc_oliver]

My son wouldn't have been laid off if the USA would build a Nuclear power plant or two.

[Towntalk]

Northeast Ohio is one of the nations leaders in high tech medical equipment.

[irishbobcat]

Learning from the Great Depression

One of the stark lessons from the "Great Recession" has been that we must start making things in America again.  An economy that is fueled by consumer spending and based too much on debt simply does not work.  To build a long-term, sustainable economy that delivers family-supporting jobs, we must rebuild our manufacturing base.

Fortunately, manufacturing the components of the clean energy economy can lead to a resurgence in American manufacturing.  The Apollo Alliance supports public policies that deliver targeted aid to manufacturers who want to make the parts that go into renewable power systems, be they gears for wind turbines, photovoltaic cells for solar arrays, or buoys for tidal power. Companies in Ohio and across the U.S. are doing just that.

In addition, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown's Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act would help small and mid-sized manufacturers access or expand into the clean energy marketplace.  The IMPACT Act will create or retain an estimated 2.6 million American jobs.


Dennis Spisak
Mahoning Valley Greens
Ohio Greens
www.ohiogreens.org
www.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/