[quote]Mufasa wrote:
Wal-Mart has collectivized most of Americas main street shopping districts into one low paying corporate entity that takes all of the profits out of town. This has been devastating to American small towns. Wal-Mart’s monopoly has made it impossible for retailers to sell American made goods which has killed off manufacturing.
America was the wealthiest country on the planet with the highest wages. Signing on to a Global Marketplace of labor that included impoverished third world countries has been very beneficial for consumers of labor. But is has reduced wages to third world levels.
When Henry Ford opened his fourth Model T factory in Highland Park he paid $5.00 a day. Which was an incredible wage for that time. Almost single handedly Henry Ford created Americas middle class. He did it because he cared about America. Todays corporate leaders do not care about Americans making a decent wage and our politicians do not care about protecting American jobs.
Sifu:
You really usually have some insightful things to say and write…but I don’t even know where to start with this one… [/quote]
Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate them.
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- Comparing the marketplace and world that Henry Ford had to operate in to today’s Global marketplace blows me away. Ford didn’t even have much competition from other AMERICAN manufacturers; and his biggest competitors overseas were Horse Breeders. [/quote]
The so called “global marketplace” is a big a lie. In this world there were the haves America, Western Europe, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the have nots, China, India, Korea, Indonesia Etc…
The only market place to sell our manufactured goods was the haves. But our politicians signed up to trade deals with the have nots telling us they were going to expand the marketplace for our manufactured goods because we were going to enter a “global marketplace”.
Because it was going to be a “global marketplace” we were going to enhance our sales to the have nots because they made a deal where we would drop importation tariffs. Those tariffs protected American workers from having to directly compete with the third world wages of the have nots. That is why all of our good paying manufacturing jobs went to those countries so we don’t sell to those countries anywhere as much as we buy from them.
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2) Henry Ford caring about anything but Henry Ford is as revisionist and “pie-in-the-sky” as it gets. Ford had “Goon Squads” that beat the livin’ shit out of, and even killed, anyone who opposed him, his wages and working conditions; and lastly ANY semblance of Organized Labor. [/quote]
My history of Henry Ford was not revisionist, it was minimal. That is why I didn’t get into a comprehensive history of all the bad he did. When Henry Ford moved to his Highland Park complex in 1910 he was paying $5.00 a day which was an unheard of amount of money.
Highland Park became the wealthiest city in America. Woodward avenue between 6 mile and 8 mile roads was the first stretch of paved roadway in the world. It is a ghetto today but there are mansions and beautiful homes built in the 1910’s and 20’s all around that area.
Henry Ford may have been a dictatorial bastard but he paid well and shared the wealth. His sharing the wealth enabled his workers to become consumers which had a knock on effect for the rest of the economy. Between 1910 and 1928 America became very wealthy and America’s middle class was born out of that era. Henry Ford paying good wages was very much responsible for that.
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3) The American Middle Class was created by young Americans coming home from WW-II to a manufacturing base that was in place from War Production; was ready, willing and ABLE to employ them in large numbers; and one that was virtually unopposed by any other World Market. [/quote]
You are wrong about the middle class. The middle class was born in Highland Park before world war one. After WW1 the economy greatly expanded because of profits from American arms sales during the war along with expansions of industrial capacity. That was the pre-depression Great Gatsby era.
Before lend lease in 1941 Britain had essentially bankrupted itself buying arms from America. This massive transfer of wealth along with the end of the dust bowl in 1939 did a lot to get America growing again.
Incidentally a very important historical fact that Americans tend to be extremely ignorant of is the role the British arms purchases and lend lease played in getting American arms manufacturers tooled up and producing weapons BEFORE Pearl Harbor.
The myth most Americans believe today is the Japs hit Pearl then American industry so rapidly mobilized that six months later we were producing massive amounts of weapons. It was American know how and American industriousness that saved the day, with an industrial miracle. What is not mentioned is the 18 months before Pearl Harbor where the British ministry of defense was getting production lines started.
This myth gives Americans a false impression of what America is capable of.
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The portions of the World that weren’t in ruins at that time were barely coming out of the 15th Century, much less the 20th. [/quote]
There are some myths of the post war era as well. Ie the German economic miracle where they quickly recovered from having half of their industry laying in ruins. During the war they doubled their industrial capacity. When they surrendered in 1945 they still had as much industrial capacity as they had in 1938.
But America had no ruins and a lot of armaments workers who had made a lot of money during the war were able to start buying new consumer goods that had not been in production during the war and were not easily affordable during the prewar depression. This caused a self sustaining era of domestic consumption and growth.
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The World was America’s Buffet. We had jobs. We had work. We had cheap, affordable houses and education…
And we had babies… [/quote]
Now you sound like a documentary.
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4) A little about Sam Walton. The guy was a nobody, driving around in a beat-up car with goods (and eventually a beat up old prop plane) with a business model that the large retailers at that time laughed at him about; sell things that people need and want; buy them in volume; and sell them for less. He was as much the epitome of the American Dream and work ethic as you can get, in that he succeeded against a LOT of odds…many more odds than Henry Ford ever went against.
Wal-Mart today?
You would think that we would celebrate an American Company that is at least surviving in a Global Marketplace (their unit profits are down, like the rest of the economy). [/quote]
You should watch is walmart good for america
Is Wal-Mart Good For America? | FRONTLINE | PBS
They have ruthlessly driven manufacturing jobs to China. It has been a few years since I watched so I am doing this from memory. But they said that Walmart purchases $200 Billion a year from China and our trade deficit is $300 Billion. Or it may have been the other way around, the deficit was $200 Billion and Walmart bought $300 Billion.
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But instead we make them Satan Incarnate because of some far-fetched FantasyLand we have full of mom-and-pop lined main-streets with bubble-gum machines outside and ice-cream soda machines and jukeboxes awaiting us inside, ready to flip the latest '45.
“Mom-and-Pop” RARELY added millions to the tax base of a town; employed hundreds; and yes, provided them with Work and Health Care Benefits. [/quote]
No Walmart takes millions of tax base away from a towns inhabitants and makes it out of town shareholder property. They destroy all the small locally owned retail businesses and turn the business owners into minimum wage stock boys who if they are lucky they might move up to department head or even assistant manager.
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Sorry…its December 2008…not December 1945…
Mufasa[/quote]
