Who or what is primarily responsible for the loss of our manufacturing jobs?

	Who or what is primarily responsible for the loss of our manufacturing jobs? Asked By: different drummer - 8/10/2012

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker
There was a really good book evaluating this very thing that came about during the Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle years, "America, What Went Wrong?" by Donald Bartlett and James Steele (available on amazon.com). The problem of bottomless-pit GREED for corporate CEOs and the ALL-OUT WAR on America's full-time workers (spreading eventually to even the minimum-wage part-time permanent replacement workers) began with the Reagan administration's abrupt firing of PATCO, the Air Traffic Controllers' Union, without once hearing why the union was striking (dangerous working conditions, outdated equipment). As soon as this firing occurred, it was the GREEN LIGHT nation-wide for greed-driven CEOs and corporate owners to INCREASE PROFIT MARGINS by getting rid of any workers with benefits, by hook or crook, and this culminated in OUTSOURCING to third-world nations where the average annual wage is $300/year. We lost our MANUFACTURING JOBS BASE during the Reagan/Bush-Bush/Quayle years, so I sent that book to then-Candidate Bill Clinton with the hope that he could prevent the practice of making workers strike in order to bring in permanent part-time replacement workers with no health care, no retirement plan, no benefits. President Clinton made it illegal to use permanent part-time replacements for full-time public service employees, and he then worked to bring back our manufacturing jobs, with some success. President Obama has also focused on rebuilding or rebirthing our manufacturing jobs with his "green energy" technologies initiative that has more than 30 states with new or rebuilt manufacturing plants for alternative energy products (see whitehouse.gov and recovery.gov). There are also incentives in place now for companies to return home to American soil, and the Obama administration has had several seminars for "Insourcing" that try to set up a path for companies to come home. EXPANDING PROFIT MARGINS is the excuse most often given by for-profit American companies, and is usually related to Wall Street (market manipulations). Removing the GOP-awarded SUBSIDIES for companies that do choose to leave American soil and set up operations elsewhere, thus depriving American workers of jobs and our economy of revenues is one step forward, in my opinion, even though the CORPORATE-COLLUDING and INSIDER-TRADING money-grubbing right-wing Republicans fight every single effort being made to put an end to massive outsourcing. Answered By: Armchair Goddess #1 - 8/10/2012

Additional Answers ()

We are. Because we only buy the lowest priced items. We don't even care about quality. Answered By: Misty - 8/10/2012

Bill Clinton Answered By: Jesus Was a Troll - 8/10/2012

The various government and union policies and roadblocks that make manufacturing unprofitable and unrealistic in the US. Answered By: Shovel Ready - 8/10/2012

Bill clinton, he brought china into the WTO. and he signed NAFTA. george soros have a big hand in making this happen. the unions are also at fault, they made it expensive for companies to manufacture products locally. Answered By: black leopard - 8/10/2012

Democrats. Literally ALL of them DEMAND policy long-proved to drive-out productivity and ALMOST all of them OPENLY BOAST they do so. Answered By: Peace through blinding force - 8/10/2012

Decades of bad policy, by just about everyone. Answered By: Seven In One Stroke - 8/10/2012

As our standard of living increased, we developed a labor pool that demanded wages too high to make most manufacturing a cost-effective proposition. That's not actually a bad thing. It's not bad to lose a "job" that doesn't create a maximal amount of wealth. That's why no one really frets that all the blacksmiths lost their jobs a couple hundred years ago. Answered By: AyeHye - 8/10/2012

Biog government interference and bone- headed regulations. Answered By: AverageJoe - 8/10/2012

Coal- gone. Iron ore- gone. Steel-basically gone. Cars-government owned. Cell phones- China. Must be Hitlers fault. Answered By: The One - 8/10/2012

Phil Gramm is the man most responsible for the 2008 economic meltdown. In fact, Time magazine described him as one of the 25 most responsible, literally. Back in 2001 - as a Senator from Texas - Phil Gramm slipped the Commodity Futures Modernization Act passed through Congress where the last Texas Governor to be President - George W. Bush - happily signed it into law. What this act did is keep the government from regulating derivatives markets - which allowed banksters to create all sorts of complex financial instruments like credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations that inflated the housing bubble - made them all tons of money - basically creating things that were bets and then bets on those bets and then bets on those bets on those bets until we ended up with hundreds, literally hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of these bets out there that never existed before Phil Gramm created this law that made them possible, that made them legal, that made it possible for the banksters to get, and in addition to that blowing up Glass-Steagall and then what happened? Some of the underlying mortgages started falling apart - as could have been predicted - and the bets went bad, the insurance went bad, and then the bets on the bets went bad, and the bets on the bets on the bets went bad, and it all crashed our economy. If there’s one piece of legislation responsible for this crisis we’re in today - it’s the Commodity Futures Modernization Act - and Phil Gramm is the guy who wrote it. Phil Gramm who called unemployed people "whiners". Answered By: whoyeah - 8/10/2012

The high cost of energy and labor in the USA (think utilities and unions) driving out jobs. Answered By: BigBill - 8/10/2012

The over all profit. If is carefully calculated based on the cost of unit produced against how many units can be sold at any given price. When profit for domestic production exceede foreign production and is deemed to be stable. The production and jobs will come back. There is no simple answer. Unions are part of but not nearly all of the problem. Answered By: Brutally Honest - 8/10/2012

Me and you.We did not support American made products and supported companies based on price.Well guess who won that price war. Answered By: . Smith - 8/10/2012

Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Through NAFTA and GATT. Search for "al gore ross perot debates" on you tube and watch Al Gore lie through his teeth about how great a deal NAFTA is for America. They also destroyed all the farm jobs in Mexico which forced all the people to come looking for jobs in America. Answered By: Tringle - 8/10/2012

1. "free trade" 2. Politicians who take money from corporations who want "free trade" 3. Consumers who would rather save 19 cents on a mop from China at Wal-Mart then make sure their neighbor has a job at the local mop factory. Answered By: Ped0phile Pastors Aren't Cool - 8/10/2012

The profit motive carred to obscene extremes. Suppress workers' wages/benefits/rights or move jobs to where those things are not a consideration. If we think the gap between the lifestyles of those at the top and those at the bottom in the US are amoral, imagine what the gap looks like between the workers in third world countries compared to those gaining the profit. Do I want everyone to have equal income? No. Do I want everyone to earn enough at one job to have basic necessities at a reasonable standard with a bit left over fro savings, etc.? Yes. Answered By: abitleftofcenter - 8/10/2012

We are. We priced and regulated ourselves right out of our own jobs. The rest of the world does not play by the rules that we impose on ourselves. They are instead using the rules that we used originally to become prosperous, because they know they work. Our competitors are both stunned by our gullibility, and thankful for their good fortune. The universal assumption is, that sooner or later we will figure this out, and the party will be over. But until then, they will continue to make hay while the sun shines, and at the same time, get in a good chuckle at our expense. Answered By: righteousjohnson - 8/10/2012

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