On 10/15/15 3:06 PM, Califbill wrote:
Keyser Söze wrote:
On 10/15/15 12:49 PM, Califbill wrote:
Mr. Luddite wrote:
I watched a report on MSNBC earlier today that blew my mind.

It focused on a port in California that handles 40 percent of
our import and export shipments to and from China.

First item of surprise:

60 percent of the containers loaded with merchandise imported from
China are returned to China ... empty.

But the biggest surprise is what we are exporting *to* China in huge
qualities.

Trash.

The report showed mountains of recyclable plastic bottles, cardboard,
scrap metal and other trash items that are loaded up and set to China.
China's workers recycle it, making insulated clothing items from the
plastic bottles and cardboard and items like smartphones from the scrap
aluminum and metals, then ship them back to the USA for sale back to us.



Back in the 50's we loaded our scrap steel on scrap ships, and they towed
them to Japan for processing. I guess we are to expensive to do do any
real labor. My dad's company did a lot of the work of cutting huge holes
in the decks of ships, which was filled with scrap and then welding the
deck section back in. As well,as welding the rudder straight and the prop
shaft from turning. Seems as will be even better economically for other
countries if we keep raising minimum wages.



We always had three small "dumpster" like containers behind the boat
shop, one for iron and steel, one for aluminum, and one for
brass-bronze-copper, and these were for the busted parts of boats,
motors, scooters, trailers, et cetera, and were "saved" for the monthly
pickup by a local scrap dealer, who would take them to his yard and then
send my dad a check for whatever the agreed-upon value per pound was.
These weren't the huge dumpsters you see nowadays, but maybe a third as
big. Pistons, blocks, drive shafts, broken "pot metal", busted props not
worth repairing, fasteners, control wires stripped out of their covers,
busted wheels. In those days, the scrap metal was then loaded onto rail
cars and shipped off to smelters in the USA to be reprocessed for
materials for new parts "made in the USA." I'm sure some of it was also
shipped to foreign countries.


Maybe east coast processed scrap in the USA. But Learners and Snitzers
scrap metals filled lots of ships. Snitzers I think has dedicated scrap
ships now. But we are a rather dumb country when it comes to spending
money. The new Bay Bridge deck sections were built in China by a company
that had never built a bridge before. governor Brown stated we would save
$300 million on a $6 billion project. How much would we have saved if that
$300 million was spent here in the state, providing jobs? Would have saved
a lot of welfare and unemployment money! And the bridge decks have
problems the Chinese will not fix.



I vaguely recall my dad saying the scrap he sold to the local guy ended
up in Pittsburgh. This was in the 1950s and 1960s and early 1970s. When
my dad died, the boat store had, literally, hundreds of parts bins where
new parts for engines dating back to the late 1940s were kept. Mostly
metal parts, but some electrical, some rubber, et cetera. A friend of
the family who was the owner of a New England boat accessories and parts
operation arranged for the sale of all this stuff to a handful of active
boat dealers in Connecticut and Rhode Island and my mother ended up with
a substantial check as the proceeds. Too bad there was no eBay back
then!