Hey bds: About your claim that the loss of our country's manufacturing employment base has not contributed to decreased government revenues and increased borrowing and debt

Talking about loss of jobs, had someone call me the other day and her husband had just gotten laid off from a oil company out of Texas. In one swipe they laid off 10,000 last Friday. She told me in the past 3 months 3 or 4 company's had closed completely.

Bob wrote:

boards of FL wrote:

That's pretty funny Bob.

BTW I have liked werther's since before boards was born.

ppaca wrote:Talking about loss of jobs, had someone call me the other day and her husband had just gotten laid off from a oil company out of Texas. In one swipe they laid off 10,000 last Friday. She told me in the past 3 months 3 or 4 company's had closed completely.

Our great "ally" in the middle east,  the same dictatorship which financed the 9/11 hijackers,  has now pushed the price of oil so low that it is virtually destroying it's competition in the U.S.

Bob wrote:

ppaca wrote:Talking about loss of jobs, had someone call me the other day and her husband had just gotten laid off from a oil company out of Texas. In one swipe they laid off 10,000 last Friday. She told me in the past 3 months 3 or 4 company's had closed completely.

Our great "ally" in the middle east,  the same dictatorship which financed the 9/11 hijackers,  has now pushed the price of oil so low that it is virtually destroying it's competition in the U.S.

It's starting to creep up a little bit. History repeats itself, but in our life time doubt the price of oil will reach $100 barrel again.

ppaca wrote:
It's starting to creep up a little bit. History repeats itself, but in our life time doubt the price of oil will reach $100 barrel again.

Once the American oil is put out of business,  you can bet your bippy those Saudi ragheads are gonna make it creep back up again.  lol

Bob wrote:

boards of FL wrote:Your charts show us total manufacturing jobs whereas my chart shows us the much more important statistic of manufacturing jobs as a percentage of the overall workforce. 

Once again,  we've had a 30% decline in manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
It was the manufacturing jobs which provided middle class sustaining wages.  And it was those wages which gave the government enough income tax revenues to sustain itself.
Once those jobs have now been replaced with lower wage jobs,  our middle class is shrinking.  And the government has been forced to increase borrowing because the citizenry has demanded government services be maintained even when the revenues were diminishing. 

That is the point,  the whole point,  and nothing but the point.

Actually, this is the point:  "Hey bds: About your claim that America has no net loss of manufacturing jobs since the 1950's..."  

Bob, you agree that I have never made such a claim, don't you?  In fact, I actually said that our economy has steadily transitioned away from manufacturing for the last 70 years.

Bob wrote:

ppaca wrote:Talking about loss of jobs, had someone call me the other day and her husband had just gotten laid off from a oil company out of Texas. In one swipe they laid off 10,000 last Friday. She told me in the past 3 months 3 or 4 company's had closed completely.

Our great "ally" in the middle east,  the same dictatorship which financed the 9/11 hijackers,  has now pushed the price of oil so low that it is virtually destroying it's competition in the U.S.

More importantly, the price of oil is seriously damaging Russia.

Bob wrote:

ppaca wrote:Talking about loss of jobs, had someone call me the other day and her husband had just gotten laid off from a oil company out of Texas. In one swipe they laid off 10,000 last Friday. She told me in the past 3 months 3 or 4 company's had closed completely.

Our great "ally" in the middle east,  the same dictatorship which financed the 9/11 hijackers,  has now pushed the price of oil so low that it is virtually destroying it's competition in the U.S.

Bob I think that was their objective . . . . . . shut down the oil production through US fracking because it is so costly to produce using that method.

boards of FL wrote:

Bob, you agree that I have never made such a claim, don't you?  In fact, I actually said that our economy has steadily transitioned away from manufacturing for the last 70 years.

I agree.  It had been so long since you disputed me that I had forgotten exactly which ridiculous claim you had made.  You're right it was not that claim.  It was the claim that our economic decline and growing level of federal borrowing has nothing to do with the loss of our manufacturing base and the loss of the government revenues that provided.

knothead wrote:

Bob I think that was their objective . . . . . . shut down the oil production through US fracking because it is so costly to produce using that method.

True,  knothead,  that is their goal.

But I just learned something.  Even though it only cost those raghead dictators $4/barrel to get their oil out of the ground,  they have gotten use to such an insane level of government spending that,  get this,  they need the oil to be $100/barrel to be able to balance their national budget.  So now,  even though they have all that frigging oil,  they're now going to have to start borrowing money like a drunk sailor same as the U.S.  lol
One thing's for sure when that happens.  Old bds and sal and Paul Krugman and bds' college professors will ALL be congratulating those ragheads for their fiscal policy.  lol

Bob wrote:

boards of FL wrote:

Bob, you agree that I have never made such a claim, don't you?  In fact, I actually said that our economy has steadily transitioned away from manufacturing for the last 70 years.

I agree. 

Thank you for standing corrected.

boards of FL wrote:

Thank you for standing corrected.

You're very welcome.  In fact I went you even one better and have now corrected the thread title.

Bob wrote:

boards of FL wrote:

Thank you for standing corrected.

You're very welcome.  In fact I went you even one better and have now corrected the thread title.

I see. Well then I'll refer you back to this thread then.

Oh, and have this Werther's Original before reading the thread below. You're going to want to have your wits about you...lest I say something like "Manufacturing has decreased steadily over the last 70 years" and then you interpret that as "Manufacturing isn't in decline at all since the 1950s"






https://pensacoladiscussion.forumotion.com/t22327p15-congress-risks-manufacturing-crisis-by-prevaricating-over-raising-the-debt-ceiling#260358

bds, I already acknowledged that I had remembered wrong what you said but you can keep beating that dead horse over and over if it makes you feel smart.  lol

Try to get your head out of the sand and I'll explain it to you like I would a child and maybe that will work.

If you lost your current job,  and all that became available to you after that was a job clerking at Walmart,  your income would then be less.
If in the face of that,  you still wanted to maintain your current standard of living,  you would have to start borrowing because you no longer would have the income to balance your household budget.

Multiply that scenario by millions of people and that's what happened to the government.

I don't give a shit what Paul Krugman or Krug Paulman or anybody else says,  when your revenues go down,  you CANNOT maintain the same level of expenditures without resorting to borrowing.  Period.  It's called the law of arithmetic.

Additionally.  Donald Chump is not going to bring manufacturing back to the United States.   Because even if he was able to accomplish that,  it would trigger a revolution when the Dollar Tree and the Dollar General became the Ten Dollar Tree and the Ten Dollar General.
Once the masses have gotten used to buying cheap goods produced by 75 cent/hour labor,  THEY AINT GOING TO BE ABLE TO STOMACH BUYING GOODS PRODUCED BY AMERICAN WAGES.

Bob, do you accept these two charts as being accurate? The top is showing you debt accumulation, the bottom is showing you manufacturing jobs as a percentage of the total workforce.

Are we on the same page?

What about the other chart, Bob? Do you also accept the chart that I gave you that shows us manufacturing jobs as a percent of the overall labor force?

Oh I accept it allright but that chart is not relevant to the point I keep trying to get across to you.

Why?  Because in earlier decades the number of manufacturing jobs wasn't decreasing due to competition from Asian slave wage labor.  We had started to see imports begin to come in during that period,  but we still maintained our status as a manufacturing leader.  You're too young to know it but that was when Sam Walton had big banner signs on the interior front walls of his stores proclaiming "We Sell Goods Made In The USA".
At that time,  the decrease in manufacturing jobs was more due to other reasons like the gains made in productivity and the introduction of more and more automation.  And since our economic engine was still strong,  workers displaced from those jobs had other decent jobs available to them.
Just as one example,  the Carolinas still had a thriving textile manufacturing industry during that period.   

But then when BOTH political parties in concert with American industrialists decided to convert China from an agrarian economy to one providing an unlimited supply of 75 cent/hour factory workers,  that's when we lost the bulk of American factory jobs.  And that's when virtually the entire textile industry in the the Carolinas closed it's doors.  And when my cousin's car dealership went into bankruptcy.
And that's also when all those factory workers with factory wages went into the service industry or clerking at Walmart.  Which of course is also no coincidence since Walmart all of a sudden was able to supply us with the cheap China made goods which let Walmart open literally thousands of Walmart stores needing tens of thousands of employees being paid barely more than minimum wage.
And it was at that point that Sam had to take down the big MADE IN USA signs.  Not before that.

I lived through the whole fucking thing,  bds.  You didn't.

Bob wrote:Oh I accept it allright but that chart is not relevant to the point I keep trying to get across to you.

Why?  Because in earlier decades the number of manufacturing jobs wasn't decreasing due to competition from Asian slave wage labor.  We had started to see imports begin to come in during that period,  but we still maintained our status as a manufacturing leader.  You're too young to know it but that was when Sam Walton had big banner signs on the interior front walls of his stores proclaiming "We Sell Goods Made In The USA".
At that time,  the decrease in manufacturing jobs was more due to other reasons like the gains made in productivity and the introduction of more and more automation.  And since our economic engine was still strong,  workers displaced from those jobs had other decent jobs available to them.
Just as one example,  the Carolinas still had a thriving textile manufacturing industry during that period.   

But then when BOTH political parties in concert with American industrialists decided to convert China from an agrarian economy to one providing an unlimited supply of 75 cent/hour factory workers,  that's when we lost the bulk of American factory jobs.  And that's when virtually the entire textile industry in the the Carolinas closed it's doors.  And when my cousin's car dealership went into bankruptcy.
And that's also when all those factory workers with factory wages went into the service industry or clerking at Walmart.  Which of course is also no coincidence since Walmart all of a sudden was able to supply us with the cheap China made goods which let Walmart open literally thousands of Walmart stores needing tens of thousands of employees being paid barely more than minimum wage.
And it was at that point that Sam had to take down the big MADE IN USA signs.  Not before that.

I lived through the whole fucking thing,  bds.  You didn't.

Bob, if you accept the chart that I posted, then you accept the fact that manufacturing jobs as a % of the total workforce have steadily declined for over 70 years. This is the case regardless of how old you are and regardless of what success or failure you have experienced in your anecdotal career. These are objective statistics that carry no more or less weight based upon on the age of whoever wields them.

Moving beyond that, I also gave you a chart that shows us that debt is a relatively recent phenomenon, didn't I? When you look at the debt chart, doesn't it seem fairly obvious to you that debt began to really take off in the 1980s?

What this means is that your theory isn't supported by objective, empirical evidence. And do you know what that means, Bob?

boards of FL wrote: I also gave you a chart that shows us that debt is a relatively recent phenomenon, didn't I? When you look at the debt chart, doesn't it seem fairly obvious to you that debt began to really take off in the 1980s?

Ah yes,  that chart.  Here it is again.  Uncanny how it starts to go up when imports of manufactured goods begin to be significant.  And then almost follows the exact growth in the volume of those imports.
And of course that developing trade imbalance almost exactly correlates to the growth of that debt.
That's because every time one of those middle class wage sustaining American manufacturing jobs goes overseas,  and is replaced with a lesser paying job,  that worker pays less income tax to the federal government.
Again,  and for the third time now because this will probably never sink into your young mind for some reason,  it's the law of arithmetic.

bds,

I want to take a picture of something here and show it to you.  Give me about a half hour because I need to run to Richeys first.

Bob wrote:

boards of FL wrote: I also gave you a chart that shows us that debt is a relatively recent phenomenon, didn't I? When you look at the debt chart, doesn't it seem fairly obvious to you that debt began to really take off in the 1980s?

Ah yes,  that chart.  Here it is again.  Uncanny how it starts to go up when imports of manufactured goods begin to be significant.  And then almost follows the exact growth in the volume of those imports.
And of course that developing trade imbalance almost exactly correlates to the growth of that debt.

Sorry, Bob. I'm afraid we will have to agree to disagree. I can't make rational arguments about economics to someone who doesn't understand the basics of correlations between variables.

You must be correct, Ole' Man Bobby. The 70+ year gradual, linear trend in our transition away from manufacturing must be chiefly responsible for the sudden, exponential growth in debt that began to occur over four decades after the previous trend took hold. Brilliant analysis! And the sweeping tax cuts that line up precisely with our exploding debt and that directly influence our budget clearly have no impact.

Of course the tax cuts helped contribute to the decrease in revenues,  just like the lower wages resulting from the loss of good paying jobs have contributed to it. 
It's all simple arithmetic.  Less revenues coming in when expenditures remain the same creates deficit spending and debt.

Please note that the rapid increase in defense spending at WWII never stopped even though there NEVER was any real threat to America. 11 carrier groups and the costs associated with exporting war are the expenditures which have created debt in America. If we spent half of our Military budget since WWII, we would have a huge surplus of cash which could be piled up to cover the White House, but the Neocons have put cash into Rubio to continue the rich tradition of rewarding our Oligarchy and MIC with subsidy and debt for the American people. Many variables in our current economic model, but defense spending is the top GDP killer.......