Body Parts

The Issues About Industrial Manufacturing in the US

The issue is not how productive US manufacturing has become; the issue is how it became productive, whether lowering labor inputs by reducing labor employment, or by installation of labor-saving machinery, or by other means. The issue is not how large American manufacturing is, whether measured by value-added, or sales, or units produced, compared to the GDP or manufacturing sectors of other countires; the issue is vitality of American manufacturing.The issue is not the education of the labor class; beyond the need for reading and math literacy, the companies train their own workers to meet their own manufacturing needs. The issue is not whether traditional manufacturing industries--textiles, shoes, steel, auto, computers, phones, etc.--can be competitive with foreign competitors or must have protection to survive; the issue is whether new manufacturing industries can be and are being invented to replace the traditional industries and can grow the manufacturing sector of the economy.

The issue is not, to say it again, the survival of traditional, legacy, and existing manufacturing industries and their workers. The single key issue regarding industrial manufacturing is:  how do we restructure our economy, our government regulatory frameworks, our tax policies, and our labor policies to create the environment in which new industries will be invented and grow? As a society and political body, we have become blind to the extraordinary obstacles we place in the way of creating new manufacturing industries. If we can successfully invent new manufacturing industries, our labor class problems will be solved. Companies in the new industries will create demand for their products. They will train and educate their own workers. The size and wage levels of the labor class in the new industries will increase. The labor class will step back onto the escalator of upward mobility.

There's A Hugo Boss Suit-making Factory in Cleveland!?

And soon won't be. Color me astounded. I had no idea that the German designer and manufacturer of high-end, fashionable men's suits had a factory in Cleveland. Employing 300 workers. But Boss is going to shut it down. It won't renew its collective bargaining agreement with the garment workers. Says the factory isn't working at capacity and isn't globally competitive. (Corporate Watch: Clothing Maker to Close Its Plant in Cleveland," The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2009, B3.) I'll bet not. My guess, Boss suits will soon be made in South Korea or Vietnam by non-unionized cutters, seamsters, and tailors. Maybe the City of Cleveland could turn the old Boss plant into a museum, as that seems to be Cleveland's urban renewal strategy, to memorialized, explain, and celebrate another fragment of its industrial history that has floated to oblivion down the Cuyahoga River.

Ooops. Fraction of CO2 in Atmosphere Has Not Increased in Past 150 Years.

Research reported in ScienceDaily.com. Hmmm: anthropogenic forcing of supposed global warming can't be true. (H/T Astute Bloggers.)

Flt 253: Pop, Flames, Smoke; Later, Second Passenger Was Arrested On Plane

A passenger gives a vivid account of the events on the plane from the detonation of the bomb through the disembarcation of passengers into (a gate area?). He mentions that a second passenger was arrested after bomb-sniffing dogs stopped at his carry-on baggage. The passenger was led off the plane in handcuffs. The other passengers were told that the bag was a security risk and were moved from the (unclear, gate area?) to which they had walked, off the plane, to another area further away. The description of the explosion was striking and clear--the detonation might have failed, but there was a loud pop, like a fire cracker, then flames, then smoke. This terrorist strike on a US plane was much closer to being successful than the government agencies have hinted. The placement of the bomber on the plane in Amsterdam by an unidentified man and the arrest of another, a second, passenger, indicate pretty clearly that a well-planned conspiracy of a network was involved. Al Qaeda's involvement is quite plausible, as this kind of well planned attack, involving coordination of multiple parties, is their trademark. We will see this kind of attack again; eventually we won't be lucky, as we were this time. See the 3-minutes interview on Fox News at Jawa Report.

Flight 253's Lesson: Obama's Lack of Interest in Terrorism Harms America

Two stories reveal the confusion afflicting our national security programs and the source of the confusion. The confusion over the new TSA air flight security rules is merely indicative of deeper institutional confusion. One source of the confusion is failure to appoint leaders for the Transportation Security Administration and for the Customs and Border Protection Agency. But the real source of the confusion is the vacuum in Obama's brain. He did not think the national security from terrorism was a national priority and let intelligence and security agencies and programs drift. The only attention he gave them was to attack them and let the Justice Department begin suing security advisors and terrorist interrogators. Obama's basic indifference to terrorism as a national security concern is revealed by his months of indecision on Afghanistan, his initial ho-hum reaction to the Hasan terror strike at Ft. Hood, and his boredom, so amply revealed in his press conference, with the Flight 253 event. That he did anything about these three issues indicates only that his political advisors panicked over the hostile public reaction to his evasion of them and pressed him to show some engagement. Well, the effort to show engagement failed. Basically, Obama doesn't care about Americans being killed.

Umar Abdulmutallab--Boarding a Plane in Amsterdam Without a Passport

Here is the Haskells' account of what they witnessed--a well-dressed Nigerian man trying to get Abulmutallab on board the plane (that he eventually successfully boarded of course) without a passport.

Has Israel Made the Decision to Bomb Iranian Nuke Facilities?

There are signs that Netanyahu is preparing the political and state ground for an attack early next year on Iran. He is talking with Livni about her joining his coalition government. She is the major politician on the outside; Netanyahu undoubtedly wants her inside for a national decision such as bombing Iran. Israel has brought all its foreign mission heads home for a conference, ostensibly about integrating Israel's diplomatic activity on environmental and similar issues. Nonsense; you don't bring all foreign mission heads home for such trivial matters, that could be handled in some memos. You bring them home for the big existential issue--the threat to Israel from Iran, destroying Iran's nukes, dealing with blowback from Iran's agents, the Hez, and opportunists, such as Hamas, who would take advantage of a crisis, and dealing with the US and Obama. Obama has failed; it's up to Netanyahu. 

Legalizing Marijuana Would Only Increase Social and Medical Ill Health With No Compensatory Benefits

The notion that legalizing marijuana would solve most of the drug problem in the US is nonsense. It would eliminate the problem of illegal sales and purchases and much consumption of marijuana as an illegal drug--that would be true by definition; but it would increase other problems.

(1) Legalization would expand the pool of users who are vulnerable to addiction and pass to heavier drug use. This effect is no different from the effect of legalization of alcohol on alcoholism rates. When several states lowered the legal age of alcohol consumption from 21 years to 18 years, the extent of drinking to intoxication, binge drinking,  alcoholism, and alcohol-related deaths (suicide, automobile, violence) greatly increased. Legalization of general marijuana consumption would greatly increase the "stoned rate", automobile deaths due to driving while intoxicated on marijuana, and psychological illnesses especially on young users. It would encourage more underage teens to try marijuana. As contemporary marijuana is a much stronger drug than the 1960s marijuana (comparison of hard liquor to wine is appropriate), it's consumption would encourage users to try heavier illegal drugs in an effort to increase the effectiveness of drug intoxication.

Marijuana and heavier drug addiction lead to crime. Users are not reliable employees. They have difficulty finding and holding jobs, eventually leading them to robbery to obtain the money to purchase their drugs to feed their addictions.

(2) Marijuana smoking is more toxic than conventional tobacco smoking. Legalization of marijuana would dramatically increase the rates of smoking related illnesses and cancers. This would come just at the moment that long years of efforts to reduce tobacco smoking in the US are paying off, with lowered rates of lung and mouth cancers and vascular diseases. Marijuana smoking is no more socially legitimate than tobacco smoking. And its legalization might even encourage a return to tobacco smoking, as marijuana users turn to tobacco to break from marijuana smoking.

(3) Legalization would lead to corporate control of production and distribution of marijuana. No doubt, this would be a benefit, in that corporations would take control out from the Mexican cartels who now control its distribution in the US. But this benefit would be short lived. "Corporationization" would have an unhappy effect. It would create a vast industry with a vested interest in encouraging marijuana use, with the attendant social effects and ill health (see 1 and 2). It would raise the cost of marijuana, because corporate revenue would be taxed. It would not take long for legislators to impose the tobacco paradigm onto marijuana. As soon as marijuana use increases ill health, taxes would be imposed to be used to fund medical care for users. As the price of marijuana increases, a market for cheap, illegally sold marijuana is created. For the effect of this, see 4 below.

(4) The demand for cheap contraband marijuana would be great, simply because legalization of marijuana would create a much larger demand for a marijuana cheaper than the legal corporate marijuana. The effect of high tobacco prices on creating a market for contraband tobacco is instructive here. The demand for cheap illegal marijuana would continue to stimulate illegal growth of marijuana. Marijuana is commercially a gateway drug for farmers in Mexico and other Latin American countries. It requires little money and is easy to grow. It brings a large profit. With the profit, the Latin marijuana growers would turn to manufacture of heavier drugs. The Mexican cartels would have new illegal products and illegal markets in the US and would quickly rebound, after a brief period of adjustment to the new economics of legalized marijuana use.

Historically, from earliest recorded time, intoxicating and addictive drug use, distinguished from alcohol, has been discouraged or proscribed in nearly all societies, or its use has been confined to ritual use by a priest and/or warrior caste. This proscription stemmed from the experience of those societies that the social and personal ill effects of their use far outweighed the putative benefits. That wisdom remains valid today.

The California High-Speed Rail Project: Another Socialist State Boondoggle

California is doing manly iron pumping on behalf of the state high-speed rail project foolishly approved by voters in 2008. The state hopes to receive billions of federal dollars for the huge project that would run high-speed trains (150 to 200 mph) from San Diego in the South to Sacramento and San Francisco in the North. The project is now being heralded as a huge works progress project, that will directly or indirectly create 600,000+ new construction jobs (the refurbishment of rail stations, new rail stations, the rail lines itself, probably some kind of sharing of rail car construction), and 450,000 permanent jobs once the project is completed. It's a socialist's wet dream. 

What is lost in all of this hoopla is the rationale for such a transportation system. Huge numbers of riders are projected--67 million annual riders by 2030. 1.4 millon cars taken off the road.  The feasibility study done in 2007 determined that in year 2000, some 546,725,105 inter-regional trips (more than 100 miles) were made by automobile and airplane in California (see table 5.1 previous link). This number is used as the basis of the ridership estimations.

These numbers are a fantasy based on unempirical political hype. In Europe, with its well-developed high speed train systems, only 8% of inter-regional trips were made by any kind of train service. If we apply that number to California, we would estimate (on the basis of year 2000 travel) 43,738,008 trips--not the 67 million trips estimated in the feasibility study.

Even our estimation of 44 million annual trips is gloriously optimistic, for the plans include rail lines and stops that certainly will not be built. In the initial rail routes, a long rail loop from San Diego to the inland region east of Los Angeles (Riverside and San Bernardino Counties and eastern Los Angeles County) was plotted. This is political nonsense, included only to get Inland Empire voters to vote for the 2008 project proposition. When the routes are finally selected, the SoCal route will run from San Diego along the coast through Orange County into Los Angeles Union Station. Cost re-estimations and budget over-runs will "compel" re-routing that eliminates the Inland Empire loop. In addition, there are so many station stops listed on the projected routes, even after the Inland Empire routes are eliminated, the trains would never reach their maximum high speed, except for a few minutes in the Central Valley.

Furthermore, there is almost certainly going to be a terrorist attack on the train--what a target! Once that happens, security considerations at the stations will further increase the length of train stops at stations. The result of realistic scheduling will be that trip times from SoCal to NoCal destinations (Sacramento and San Francisco) will be so long that nearly everybody will fly in the well-developed air transportation system. Here is the reality. A commercial air flight from SoCal to NoCal is 1 hour. The train will take 3 hours at best.

Who would choose to travel for 3 hours when they could travel for 1 hour to the same destination? Legislators and business people? They'd be too busy. Movie stars. Don't make me laugh. Middle class Californians? Why would middle class families spending 1/5 of their income on two or three cars for their household and 1/5 of their income on health care and health care premiums, lay out big dollars for regular travel on high-speed trains? Blue collar folks? They won't have the money. Illegal immigrants, farm workers, and casual laborers? They won't have the money either. Nope, there is no demographic that could be expected to be heavy users of the trains.

Here's the main likely ridership: highly paid unionized high-speed railroad workers and retired workers who travel for free on the trains. Don't laugh. Ride Amtrak and inquire of your fellow passengers who they are and how they happen to be on the train.

So inter-regional ridership almost certainly will fall below 8%. If we guess at 5% of inter-regional trips on the new high-speed rail system, we get only 27,336,255 annual trips. This is a tiny ridership. California will see its shiny new trains zooming by largely empty.

And who will pay for this vast system? Taxpayers. And taxes will be required to subsidize each and every rail trip. If the riders were compelled to pay fares that would pay for the system, there would be zero riders.

Couldn't you think of better things to do with the billions of dollars needed to construct this monstrosity and to subsidize its tiny ridership? How about: new freeways, improved freeways, improved secondary roads, better intra-regional commuter rail, lower public school class size, subsidized professional performance arts, better public hospitals, a new state water system; or better yet, how about the state and federal government don't make obligations like this boondoggle and raise our taxes to pay for it and pay for it. Let us have lower taxes and decide ourselves what to do with our money. You get the idea. Oh, just what was the rationale for the high speed rail anyway?

Revised. December 28, 2009.

Obama Appears To Have Discovered That the War on Terror Is Not Over

The failed attack on the Northwest Detroit flight 253 appears to have awoken Obama from his anti-American, post-modern, interfaith, international socialist dream that terrorism does not exist and (here's that cognitive dissonance again) wouldn't exist if the US would extend an open hand to the world. There are indications in the White House's pronouncements that the President and the political appointees in the intelligence agencies did not see this coming: that now they have indications that much more is coming our way, that their attack on the CIA and dismantling of intelligence agencies contributed to their blindness, and that they don't know how to proceed. Belmont Club connects the dots.