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Calif Bill Calif Bill is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jul 2006
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Default More Nukes on the Bay?


"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
ps.com...
On Oct 11, 7:44?am, wrote:
On Oct 11, 10:26 am, HK wrote:

especially since the jobs created will be union jobs.


Yeah, we need unions to do to the nuke industry what they have done to
the Grocery, Airline, Auto, Manufacturing, and so many other
industries who have been driven over the borders, and into
bankruptcy...


One batch of *******s steals for one group of special interests, and
the other batch of *******s steals for the other.

Industries haven't been "driven over the borders", they have moved to
where socialist economies, substandard "standards" of living, and very
little expectation of property ownership or wealth accumulation among
the working class provide unlimited numbers of people willing to work
for
$50-$100 US per week.

I'm sure that if there were enough people in the US willing to sleep
in cardboard boxes along side the road, eat 600 calories a day, die of
simple diseases before age 45 and therefore able to work for that same
$50-$100 a week the industries that have been "driven away" would come
back in a heartbeat.

But we can't simply blame the industrialists. (On topic, here..).
Certain products wouldn't even exist if they had to be built in the
US. Sure, when WalMart dictates to an appliance company that it will
only pay $6 for a waffle iron (but will buy a million of them a year)
a lot of companies are forced to move offshore to compete. That $6
wholesale allows Walmart to sell that waffle iron for $19.99 and come
out OK.
If Walmart would pay $10 for the same waffle iron, consumers might
have to pay $25, but there would be a waffle iron factory in Chicago
rather than in Shanghai..... but that's waffle irons, and not what I'm
referring to.

When it comes to boats it's not so simple. Even manufacturing in China
results in 7-figure price tages on 55-60 foot boats. Having $1-million
puts you somewhere near upper-middle class these days, (70,000
families in my home county are reputed to have $1 million or more in
net financial assets *excluding* equity in a home), but still there
are a limited number of people who have the means and will so
prioritize their spending to sink $1,2, or 3 million into a boat.
Manufacturing some of the larger yacts in the US, even in a "right to
work (for less)" environment would probably double the pricing on many
large yachts.

Case in point: Recently compared two very nice boats. One built in the
US selling for just under $900,000 and one bult in China selling for
just over $1mm. The US boat is a 42-footer, the boat built in China is
59 feet.



You should travel more. Lots of home ownership in those foreign countries.
May not be the 2000+ sq ft McMansions, but homes are owned. The people buy
food, cost is less than here, and may be different, but the hours worked per
loaf of bread may be very similar. Due to exorbitant contracts and over
spending by the Federal Government over the last 50 years (both parties) we
have priced ourselves out of a lot of the global markets. 25 years ago a
good white collar engineering job was in the $20-30k range. Due to big
inflation that same job is a $100-140k job. 5x or so increase. 25 years
ago, the US worker did not make 10-20x the wage of an overseas worker.
Maybe a 2x amount. We need to vote out almost all the leaders we now have
and make it more of a people run government. Now it is life time employment
with fantastic perks and full salary for life after about 2 terms. We are
being controlled by an elitest group who basically let us vote for a couple
of stooges running for office. Closest we got to breaking that cycle is
when Perot made a 3rd party run. Unfortunately, that has also given us a
couple of real Bozos as leaders and looks like the next POTUS will also be
either a Bozo or Bozette.