The news is reporting the new manufacturing numbers from the Institute of Supply Management. Once again, it shows how manufacturing is taking a hit in this Republican economy. Personally, manufacturing has been a big deal for me. My family worked in a factory at one time or another, sometimes for a union sometimes not (unless the option was available). You can tell me all you want about the "new economy," but these union jobs always moved America forward.
Fall to 48.3, the ISM survey was slightly better than the forcasted 48.0, but that's no relief. Anything below a 50 mark means a reduction of activity versus overall growth. This report comes off the back of other similar regional economic feedback from places like Chicago and Philadelphia.
Now I could throw up a bunch of charts to show how bad things have gotten, but something tells me you smart folks already know that. Since the 1980s, we're been stripping this nation of its industrial heritage, and it looks as if we may never go back to that. Now I grant you, those factory jobs were "dirty jobs," what with the pollution and such. But there isn't a reason why we couldn't have a new industrial economy that is also green. The technology is there, my friends.
But getting back at the present, it isn't only me that thinks that the muck days of the 1970s stagflation is coming back. Kossaks everywhere have seen this coming. It doesn't take the Christian Science Monitor to proclaim such things. The good folks on here have essentially warned us that Bush was the new Nixon (only worse), and that his economic policies of guns and butter would lead to such things. Many times I would gleam more from Bonddador Jerome a Paris than I would even the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal!
One thing hitting manufacturing, that the ISM survey brought up, that was a stagflation flashback, was that inflationary pressures were raising costs. The price of copper to corn have skyrocketed. Petroleum's boom times have also escalated the cost of transportation. Small time manufacturers don't have the same access to cost savings that bigger domestic ones do. And even the big guys who decided to keep the work here are finding it harder and harder to compete against what is essentially the new slave labor coming from China.
Unemployment is supposedly at 5% while inflation is at 4%, but can we really believe those numbers? Recently, my old man and I went to the retirement party of one of his co-workers who was employed at a laminating company in Skokie. The company had seen better times, but it was obvious that they were not only losing out to Asian competitors (often American companies making their goods overseas), but also that business had dropped significantly from last year. The daughter of the founder of the company, had said that she may have to lay off half the crew next year. Now here is a person who has gone out of her way to keep the work here, yet she says it's almost impossible now. Even the government, who she had a contract with, she says is opting for laminators made in Asia.
What the ISM numbers really tells me is that it's a fact that free trade isn't free trade. That this government refuses to do anything but pay lip service on the jobs front. But it also tells me that if the Democrats win the White House and (hopefully maintain the Congress), that they had better do something about manufacturing in this country.
(UPDATE)
Looks like these ISM numbers, well the story behind them is going to be a major play on tomorrow's primary. USA Today has an interesting story on the closure of a plant which had been a major steel maker for decades. Now, though, the work is being shipped to Mexico.
After more than 60 years in business, their employer, Amweld Building Products, announced in October that it was closing two local plants and shipping the work to Monterrey, Mexico. Some workers got the news when armed security guards swarmed the assembly line and ordered them away from their machines. Many who had worked at the plant for decades mourn the loss of good-paying jobs, which around here are about as common as icebergs in the Sahara. "Some of the best-paying jobs in the United States aren't in the United States anymore," says Bob Ulrich, 58, idled after working at the plant since 1969.
- excerpt from Manufacturing losses weigh heavily on Ohio
By David J. Lynch, USA TODAY
In the last debate, both Clinton and Obama attacked NAFTA. It remains to be seen if they will actually do something about the trade agreement or make moves to stem the tide of manufacturing jobs leaving the country. Expect those areas affected by a plant closure to have the higher turn out.