Revenge of the Rust Belt

So now that US Industries have woken up – and finally started realizing that producing many products is cheaper in America…

Where are the new factories going?

Turns out, a majority of them are moving right back where they came from…

The Rust Belt.

During the 80′s and 90′s a lot of American business followed the cattle herd mentality in migrating manufacturing to China – or the next “best” onshore location – the American South. Now I don’t know if it was because at the time, Wall Street was sucking up all the smart MBAs with promises of making millions – or a failure in groupthink…

But a whole bunch of somebodies forgot to put the ancillary costs of offshoring into the equation. From lead laced toys damaging babies, to diaphanous intellectual property protections, to drywall which killed people because of the use of cheaper – poisonous chemicals… The real cost of manufacturing in China is much higher than the wage level would indicate. Thank goodness some folks finally got a clue.

The issue in the South is productivity. American productivity far surpasses that of any other country – and is significantly higher than Chinas. So while the payroll part of manufacturing in China is cheaper – the cost per completed piece is actually higher. Same issue in the South. When you start looking at where your educated workforce is…

It isn’t by and large …There. Meaning productivity is again higher in those old tried and true rust belt states. Further is the cost of conservatives. That is – as long as southern conservatives are dedicated to fighting the Civil War – the number of discrimination lawsuits, and level of employee friction is going to be through the roof, hampering full productivity. Lastly – as recent laws introduced and passed by conservative red state legislatures – such as the anti-immigrant legislation in Georgia where the state’s agricultural workforce was decimated…

You don’t know what stupid, business killing thing they are going to come up with next. Like declaring war on your largest foreign customer.

It’s early – but the “Rust Belt” right about now is looking pretty damn good.

The Revenge of the Rust Belt: How the Midwest Got Its Groove Back

We’re not used to thinking of the old industrial Midwest as a beacon of good news. Just the opposite. It’s Exhibit A in the story of America’s economic decline — a land of hollowed-out factory towns and shrinking cities. There’s an entire genre of photography dedicated to Detroit’s decaying cityscape alone.

Yet, it may be time to rethink that view. Because there are signs that the heart of the rust belt may be finally shaking off its rust.

For the past thirty years or so, there have been two great running narratives about American manufacturing, both of which have been disastrous for the Midwest’s economy. The first has been about the disappearing factory worker — how by shipping some jobs abroad and replacing others with machines, companies have figured out ways to produce more goods with millions of fewer employees on their assembly lines. The second narrative has been about migration — the decision by companies to move production away from once-booming industrial centers of the north, to southern states with weaker unions and lower wages.

Both of those trends, it appears, may have drawn to an end. 

Best Educated Janitors…

Fresh on news that there are 21 million Americans out of work – there is the question of the undremployed–

Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College?

Two sets of information were presented to me in the last 24 hours that have dramatically reinforced my feeling that diminishing returns have set in to investments in higher education, with increasing evidence suggesting that we are in one respect “overinvesting” in the field. First, following up on information provided by former student Douglas Himes at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), my sidekick Chris Matgouranis showed me the table reproduced below (And for more see this).

Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000parking lot attendants. All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.

Now I’ve said for a while that one the the great myths of the new depression is the existence of high tech jobs needing high education. At this point there are millions of college educated out of work or substantially underemployed. You cannot fix the roots of the current economic malaise by by generating more job seekers - no matter how well educated or qualified. The brutal fact is, very little of our current economy is actually dependent on new technology. Think of it this way – the leading cell phone platform is dependent on thinking and aa technology concept first developed in Xerox Labs in the 70′s. Very little of the development today of “new technology” is actually “development’ = it is actually execution against old technology. So if you trin them – what would this new legion of scientists and engineers do?

And there is the crux of the problem.

What Not to Get That Degree In

Used to be, a college degree was a reasonably sure fire ticket to employment. Not in today’s America. Here are some numbers which are scary…

Interestingly enough – there are several engineering fields on this list. So much for “rebuilding” America. The majority of these are services oriented.

A Tin Cup, Instead of a job

25 college majors with the highest unemployment rates

The worst nightmare of a college student has got to be graduating without a job. And the college major that a student selects can actually increase his or her chances of getting stuck in an unemployment line.

College majors that are hampered by highunemployment rates include a variety of psychology degrees, fine arts and architecture. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce delved into U.S. Census Bureau statistics to determine the employment rates of 173 college majors; I crossed them against a list of the most popular college majors.

College majors with the highest unemployment

• 1. Clinical psychology 19.5%
• 2. Miscellaneous fine arts 16.2%
• 3. United States history 15.1%
• 4. Library science 15.0%
• 5. (tie) Military technologies; educational psychology 10.9%
• 6. Architecture 10.6%
• 7. Industrial & organizational psychology 10.4%
• 8. Miscellaneous psychology 10.3%
• 9. Linguistics & comparative literature 10.2%
• 10. (tie) Visual & performing arts; engineering & industrial management 9.2%
• 11. Engineering & industrial management 9.2%
• 12. Social psychology 8.8%
• 13. International business 8.5%
• 14. Humanities 8.4%
• 15. General social sciences 8.2%
• 16. Commercial art & graphic design 8.1%
• 17. Studio art 8.0%
• 18. Pre-law & legal studies 7.9%
• 19. Materials engineering and materials science and composition & speech (tie) 7.7%
• 20. Liberal arts 7.6%
• 21. (tie) Fine arts and genetics 7.4%
• 22. Film video & photography arts and cosmetology services & culinary arts (tie) 7.3%
• 23. Philosophy & religious studies and neuroscience (tie) 7.2%
• 24. Biochemical sciences 7.1%
• 25. (tie) Journalism and sociology 7.0%

Unemployed “Occupy” Mitch McConnell’s Senate Office

They need to Occupy “C” Street where these Rethug scumbags live…Give them no lace to hide.

Jobless Protesters Occupy Mitch McConnell’s Office As Congress Dithers On Jobs

Protesters Sit in Waiting Room

Roughly 30 jobless protesters from D.C. neighborhoods occupied Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office in the Russell Senate Office Building Thursday, saying they wanted to talk to him about jobs.

But McConnell was busy at the Capitol Building, where he led Republicans in blocking a $60 billion infrastructure bill. The protesters said they supported the measure.

McConnell’s legislative director offered to sit down with the group, but they declined, saying they’d rather wait for the senator himself. So they sat in his office, taking up every chair and lots of floor space while McConnell’s staff went about its business. A Capitol Police officer scoped the situation and said her heart went out to them for losing their jobs.

The protesters, most of whom said they lived in the poorest part of Southeast D.C., had no affiliation with the Occupy Wall Street movement. They’d been organized by a community group called OurDC, which has been hectoring Congress about jobs since it launched with SEIU seed money earlier this year. The protesters remained in the office as of Thursday afternoon as of 3 p.m. and said they wouldn’t leave before meeting the senator.

“Hopefully we can all get together with the senator today before time is up,” said Ted Black, a 58-year-old resident of Southeast D.C. Black said he is a Vietnam-era veteran and that he lost his job as a radiologist tech three months ago. He supports President Obama’s jobs package, he said, including the blocked infrastructure bill.

“I’m here supporting the cause for veterans and also for teachers and children and schools and residents who are unemployed or underemployed or homeless,” Black said.

McConnell’s office declined to comment on the protesters.

 

It’s Not the Education System That’s Broke

You hear this refrain frequently – that American companies can’t find qualified or educated workers. With the recent exposure that many companies automatically exclude the unemployed as potential employees – it’s becomming incresingly obvious that it is not the education system that is the problem…

It’s the companies themselves.

Some years ago many companies started using automated search engines which sorted resumes looking for keywords. The growth of the Internet has also meant the growth of potential resumes which a company can choose from. Keyword searches are based on the faulty idea that someone who is qualified for a potential position will include those words in the resume. So for instance, a candidate with an ITIL, Six Sigma, or PMI certification would include those terms in the resume. Since real work skills, accomplishments, and experience don’t translate to such simpleminded analysis – the impact of this was to devalue the experience of anyone who could actually do the job, and raise the value of folks who became certification whores.

Leading to the surreal environment where the self proclaimed “father of the Internet” couldn’t get hired for a technical job in the industry he created – or a guy who had actually designed and built bridges over rivers for 25 years…

Is suddenly “unqualified” for a job to design and build bridges, because he hadn’t built a bridge over a creek.

Enabled by the power of the computer, Human Resources folks were able to get very precise in developing requirements for potential hires. This meant developing skills criteria where no one, who wasn’t already doing the job for the hiring company (and usually even the person in the job couldn’t qualify for), could ever fit. Years ago, I took a job with a company which had developed a proprietary technology which was only utilized at that time in 3 other places in the world, including DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – which is a small group of really smart guys working on super secret technology projects), and MIT being two of the three other places. My advantage? I had at least read about it in technical publications. Recognizing that the pool of folks who knew anything about the technology was exceedingly small – the company had an aggressive internal education program to bring employees up to speed.

Today, companies don’t want to invest in training employees – believing that the alphabet soup of outside certification agencies is somehow going to produce qualified employees. It doesn’t, what it produces is a lot of employees with the common toolkits to work – which is a large distance from having the real functional skills.

Being in the tech industry means getting approached by headhunters several times a week, sometimes on resumes that are 10 years or more old. My last name is the same as a company which produces a very sophisticated software system. For years I’d get calls from breathless headhunters looking for programmers familiar with the system. Never occurred to these folks that if I was the guy who had created the system, and CEO of the company bearing my last name…

WTF would I be looking for a junior or mid-level programming job?

Rising Like a Phoenix? US Economy…

This may well just continue to work and turn the US economy around…

As long as conservatives don’t get elected to screw it up.

The fact is, it has now become cheaper to manufacture many products in the US than in China. Those companies who haven’t made plans to “inshore” yet may well be holding losing cards. This could have a net impact on the US economy of over 3 million new jobs in 3 years. Foreign based companies have figured it out, with both Asian and European companies flocking to build plants in America. You add that to the two major “bleeding edge” chip foundries being built right here in America – and there are some fundamental economic changes afoot.

No small contributor to this shift is that energy independence thing. The US isn’t very far from being able to be self-sufficient. There are humongous reserves of Natural Gas in the Midwest, and oil reserves beggaring those in the Middle East in the Gulf of Mexico. This should mean stabilized energy costs, no longer at the whim of some crackpot oil-can Dictator.

China’s counterfeiting and Intellectual theft issues are huge for tech industries, it is also impacting firm’s brand names. I for one, have never been convinced it was ultimately profitable to move any high tech or leading edge product production to China because of the theft issue. It really doesn’t matter if you can make a big screen TV 15 cents cheaper – if the manufacturer is making knockoffs, using your logo, and selling them $100.00 cheaper. I think it’s time to cut the George Bush (pick one) support system for China. They have a huge internal market, and there is no reason their economy should not be strong once the necessary changes are made in how their government works, and business is conducted are made.

World power swings back to America

The American phoenix is slowly rising again. Within five years or so, the US will be well on its way to self-sufficiency in fuel and energy. Manufacturing will have closed the labour gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus.

Assumptions that the Great Republic must inevitably spiral into economic and strategic decline – so like the chatter of the late 1980s, when Japan was in vogue – will seem wildly off the mark by then.

Telegraph readers already know about the “shale gas revolution” that has turned America into the world’s number one producer of natural gas, ahead of Russia.

Less known is that the technology of hydraulic fracturing – breaking rocks with jets of water – will also bring a quantum leap in shale oil supply, mostly from the Bakken fields in North Dakota, Eagle Ford in Texas, and other reserves across the Mid-West.

“The US was the single largest contributor to global oil supply growth last year, with a net 395,000 barrels per day (b/d),” said Francisco Blanch from Bank of America, comparing the Dakota fields to a new North Sea.

Total US shale output is “set to expand dramatically” as fresh sources come on stream, possibly reaching 5.5m b/d by mid-decade. This is a tenfold rise since 2009.

The US already meets 72pc of its own oil needs, up from around 50pc a decade ago.

Save America – Deport a Conservative! Cain and the Unemployed…

Notice the crowd reaction to this one …

“I Don’t Think They Know What They Dealing With!” Dick Gregory

Discovered “I Don’t Think They Know What They Dealing With… via dandelionsalad
Follow my videos on vodpod

 

Hispanic Children Now Largest Number of Poor in America

One is six American children are now living in poverty…

Isn’t it time to raise some hell in this country?

Hispanic Children Make Up Largest Share Of Poor Children In U.S.

The largest group of poor children isn’t white for the first time in U.S. history, according to a Pew report released Wednesday.

There were 6.1 million Latino children living in poverty in 2010, that’s 37.3 percent of all of the nation’s poor children, compared with 30.5 percent who were white and 26.2 percent who were black, according to the report. The Great Recession, which pushed increasing numbers of American children into poverty, hit Latino families especially hard, the report found.

The unemployment rate among Latinos is currently 11.1 percent, significantly higher than the national rate of 9.1 percent. And the high jobless rate is affecting their kids; twenty-five percent of children in black and Hispanic families had one unemployed or underemployed parent last year, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Hispanic households were also devastated by the foreclosure crisis; almost half of the victims of loan modification scams were Hispanic, African American or Asian, according to a report from the Homeownership Preservation Foundation.

The pain has yet to end. Seventeen percent of Latinos lost their home or were at risk of losing it in June 2010, according to a CNN Money analysis of Center for Responsible Lending Data. That’s compared to 11 percent of African American homeowners and 7 percent of white homeowners, according to CNN Money.

The foreclosure and jobs crisis exacerbated Hispanic child poverty rates, according to the Pew report. An additional 1.6 million Latino children were pushed into poverty between 2007 and 2010, a boost of 36.3 percent. By comparison, the ranks of white children living in poverty swelled by 17.6 percent, while the number of black children living in poverty grew by 11.7 percent.

In addition to economic woes, high birth rates among Hispanics living in the U.S. may also explain why Hispanic children make up the largest share of children living in poverty, the Pew report found. Hispanic children make up 23.1 percent of the nation’s children, due mostly to their high birther rates, according to the Pew report.

The rise in Hispanic children living in poverty is part of a larger trend of a rise in child poverty since the recession. One in four U.S. children under six are living in poverty, according to the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. And that rise isn’t limited to pockets of the country.Child poverty rose in 38 states in the last decade, a report released last month by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found.

The boost in child poverty is indicative of the rise in poverty in the nation as a whole. The U.S. poverty rate increased last year to 15.1 percent, according to Census data released earlier this month. The ranks of the nation’s poor swelled to 46.2 million, the most since the agency began keeping track.

Cornel West Interview By Martin Bashir – “Wall Street Greed”

I am coming to feel that Martin Bashir is by far, MSNBC’s best interviewer. Bashir is on point, is aware of the facts, and is willing to confront bull.

In this clip, Cornel West discusses Obama’s recent discovery of a spine (the verdict is still out on that one), the vast wealth and income disparity that is a legacy of Raygun, and the need for Civil Disobedience to fight back …

American Tent Cities

What is the difference between Picture 1 and Picture 2?

Picture 1

 

Picture 2

 

Picture 1 is in America – right here in New Jersey. It, and the “Tent City” it is in, are all some luckless Americans have to live in anymore.  Picture 2 is of a Tent City in Haiti.

They, a poor country to begin with,  suffered a massive earthquake, destroying tens of thousands of homes and villages… These Americans are trying to survive the impact of conservatism in America, where our country’s jobs and manufacturing have been sold to the lowest bidder, and 28% of the Middle Class has fallen into poverty. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, with no chance of getting them back anytime soon. Millions of Americans have lost their homes due to predatory lending and the bust of the Credit bubble. Millions try and survive without Healthcare.

It is the Second Great Depression.

I see Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas leading in the Republican Primaries bragging on his Texas Economic Miracle…

Except it seems that the Texas Economic Miracle is about as fake as the Texas Education Miracle under the last Texas Governor to run for the Presidency.

Texas ranks 6th in terms of people living in poverty. Some 18.4% of Texans were impoverished in 2010, up from 17.3% a year earlier, according to Census Bureau data released this week. The national average is 15.1%.

And being poor in Texas isn’t easy. The state has one of the lowest rates of spending on its citizens per capita and the highest share of those lacking health insurance. It doesn’t provide a lot of support services to those in need: Relatively few collect food stamps and qualifying for cash assistance is particularly tough.

Lot of folks figured out former Governor, former President Bush was “all hat an no cattle” to borrow a Texas phrase. Seems that Governor Perry doesn’t even have the “hat” part right.

Which is why the Tea Party Republicans are trying so hard to sell racism against the nation’s first black President…

Instead of politics.

 

 

Moodys – Obama Plan Grows US Economy and Adds Jobs

Well, the first of the Credit Ratings Companies has stepped in with basically an AAA rating…

My only real complaint about the speech is WTF is it proposed to spend $140 Billion in putting construction workers to work?

Seems to me that money would be better spent on putting unemployed college grads back to work on something like the Kennedy Space Program, which drove economic growth in the world based on technological advances for 40 years.

Moody’s: Obama plan would add 1.9M jobs

President Barack Obama’s $447 billion job-creation plan would likely add 1.9 million payroll jobs and grow the U.S. economy 2 percent, a leading economist said.

The plan, which Obama outlined before a joint session of Congress Thursday, would likely cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point, Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi said as Obama prepared to tout the plan at Virginia’s University of Richmond.

Obama is scheduled to speak at the university’s 9,000-seat Robins Center arena, home to the university’s Spiders basketball, at 11:35 a.m. EDT, the White House said.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. — who criticized the tone of Obama’s Thursday address but told CNBC he applauded some proposals, including “business tax relief, reducing red tape, working to try and streamline the infrastructure spending in this country” — will be in Richmond Friday holding his own jobs event.

More than half of Obama’s proposal consists of payroll-tax cuts for employees and employers — an idea the White House said it hoped would appeal to Republican lawmakers.

Advisers told The Washington Post Obama would blame Republicans for the jobs crisis if they don’t accept his proposal.

The proposal would cut in half the employers’ payroll tax for businesses’ first $5 million of wages. Businesses adding new workers or increasing wages up to $50 million would have payroll taxes completely eliminated.

The plan would expand the payroll tax cut passed last year to cut workers’ payroll taxes in half in 2012 — a tax cut of $1,500 to the typical family earning $50,000 a year. This would not hurt Social Security funding, Obama said.

The plan further calls for more than $62 billion in spending to extend unemployment insurance benefits through 2012 and let people unemployed for six months or more work for up to eight weeks while also receiving unemployment benefits.

About 14 million Americans are unemployed and the jobless rate, currently 9.1 percent, is widely expected to be above 8 percent in late 2012.

Obama also proposed $140 billion in infrastructure spending and aid to states — including cash for hiring teachers and refurbishing schools — as well as a $10 billion infrastructure bank and $50 billion for transportation projects.

White House officials said the proposed plan, known as the American Jobs Act, was deliberately constructed from policies that previously won bipartisan support.

“The purpose of the American Jobs Act is simple — to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working,” Obama said in his 32-minute speech.

“It will create more jobs for construction workers, more jobs for teachers, more jobs for veterans and more jobs for long-term unemployed,” he said.

World Stocks Fall On Fears Tea Baggers Will Kill Jobs Bill

Now looking to do for the world what they have done for the US in damaging US creditworthiness…

Foreign Investors join their American counterparts in  no longer believing Tea Party majority US Congress will do the right things for the US or World economy.

The Tea Baggers are idealoges, clinging to a thoroughly discredited mantra bent on destroying the Governemnt – and who are doing, and have done more damage to the United States…

Than Al Quaeda.

That “credible terrorist threat” reported by Law Enforcement on the 10th anniversay of 9-11 isn’t radicalized Muslims…

It’s radicalized Republicans.

World Stocks Fall On Fears That U.S. Jobs Plan Will Stall In Congress

World stocks fell Friday on investor worries that a U.S. plan to stimulate jobs and growth will be held up in Congress and may not be followed fast enough by action from the Federal Reserve.

The euro hit six-month lows against the dollar and the yen with more falls likely after the European Central Bank shifted away from further rises in interest rates, a key driver in the single currency’s rally this year.

U.S. shares were poised for a weaker open, extending Thursday’s falls after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke left the door open for new stimulus measures but stopped short of signaling the central bank would take the plunge.

Markets are concerned that President Barack Obama’s proposed $447 billion package of tax cuts and spending plans aimed at boosting growth and job creation could be hamstrung by political wrangling.

“Investors are holding back…There isn’t any reason to commit until you can see credible policies,” Justin Urquhart Stewart, director at Seven Investment Management, said.

“Bernanke was never going to say anything. He made it clear at Jackson Hole he was pushing it back to the politicians. Obama has come up with this stimulus package. We now have to digest what effect this will have, assuming it is passed.”

European shares fell as much as 1.1 percent, pulling down the MSCI world equity index 0.7 percent. S&P index futures were last down 0.6 percent, pointing to a lower start on Wall Street.

Market confidence has been fragile this week due to growing concerns over the global economy and Europe’s debt crisis, with Friday’s deadline for bond holders to decide on Greece’s swap offer adding to the nervousness.

Pass This Bill. NOW!

Great speech as usual last night by the President. Once again he is trying to thread a path though a minefield by appeasing Republicans, and trying to shame them into doing something positive for the country.

He still doesn’t “Get It”.

Insofar as creating jobs, the payroll tax reduction is a joke. The Bush tax giveaways got us into this mess in the first place.

You raise taxes, including on the wealthy. You raise taxes on companies offshoring. And you eliminate loopholes which allow corporations and over half the American public to avoid paying any tax – especially any loophole that allows corporations not to invest in American job growth. That is the prescription Reagan followed to get the country back on its feet.

We are a tech and services economy. While the country’s infrastructure is crumbling and needs a serious repair -more construction jobs don’t either build or help the economy. What I had hoped for as a bold vision like Kennedy’s “put a man on the moon” which would drive tech and scientific development for the next 30 years and put our economic core back to work.

 

 

Elijah Cummings Adds Voice Urging Obama to Move

Black folks have about had t with Obama’s “Cowardly Lion” trick with Republicans…

Elijah Cummings: Obama Needs To ‘Fight Harder,’ African-Americans ‘Totally Frustrated’

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), responding to the high unemployment rates in the black community, said that African-Americans feel President Barack Obama “needs to fight, and fight harder.”

“We are totally frustrated, and people need to know that the president feels their pain,” Cummings, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, toldCNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union” Sunday.

“Almost every African-American person I spoke to said he needs to fight, and fight harder,” Cummings said.

Last week, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) blasted Obama for ignoring the black community during his bus tour through the midwest.