We are now getting down to basics; Hershey's Chocolate in Hershey, Pennsylvania just announced that it is laying off 10% of its employees and shipping the work to Mexico.
(EUGENE, Ore.) - As you know, much of the work to produce our products is done by foreign countries. For example, 30% of US appliances are built ironically by the world's largest Communist country, China, who also produces most of our other products.
There is no backing out of this deal, for we must keep them in money so we can borrow it back to pay our national debt. Alienate them and they could break us anytime they want.
Many cars and trucks that we think of as American, Ford, Chevy, etc., are built in Canada, while the US produces most of what we think of as Japanese cars, Honda, Toyota, etc.
Most product technical support is provided by foreign countries. IBM's Lenovo computer support, however, comes mostly from the US.
One might think that this export of all our work, which forced many talented people into meaningless low paying jobs, virtually wiping out the middle class, was due to the search for cheap labor, thus saving the remaining consumers lots of money. This really doesn't make sense in the long run, for when you eliminate good paying jobs and don't replace them you also eliminate consumers.
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There are studies that reveal how greatly the US male ego has suffered from this uncontrolled effort to automate their jobs and ship the rest overseas--destroying their opportunity to make a decent living and a way of life in America.
We are now getting down to basics; Hershey's Chocolate in Hershey, Pennsylvania just announced that it is laying off 10% of its employees and shipping the work to Mexico.
Some corporations are now making the case that, because they can't find enough qualified workers in the US, they want to establish offices in Canada where they can bring in foreign contract workers to do these jobs. Of course, no unions, no healthcare, no pensions.
They will probably be able to buy into Canada's healthcare which I just read was far superior to that of the US at about half the price. (See AARP) This is a clever way of also providing quick access to engineers, programmers, etc., that are now working for US corporations in far off lands. It is interesting that these corporations helped create an environment friendly to their plans by laying off all their "older" workers, meaning anyone over 55, and then complain that there aren't enough talented people to do their work, which is a recent theme.
Some years after IBM laid off most their people over 55, which included many professional people, they started complaining about the shortage of experienced workers. This didn't make sense at the time, however, here we are.
So what's going on? For one thing, the US Military is larger than that of all other countries in the world combined. And the US has created a huge military economy that is totally controlled by politicians and the government. The military has its contractors and subcontractors and bases scattered all over the world.
The US still maintains a base with 50,000 people in Japan alone. Think about how many young men who can't afford college and can't find decent jobs turn to the US Military for an opportunity to make a life for themselves. Could this be intentional? Of course, because we were tricked into getting rid of the draft, the rich folks can now sit and watch all the destruction and killing from their easy chairs.
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Ref: The Sorrows of Empire, by Chalmers JohnsonHe discusses the enormous size of the US Military and how it will one day bring us down
Also: Freeing the World to Death, by William Blum
Blum discusses the nasty methods used by the US to take control of smaller countries. It is tough reading William Blum without having some Rolaids handy.
Previous articles by Wayne Pierce on Salem-News.com
Jan-12-2010 : Healthcare Costs and Billing: Health Insurance Plans - Wayne Pierce for Salem-News.comJan-08-2010: American Healthcare is Becoming a Dangerous Practice - Wayne Pierce for Salem-News.comDec-26-2009: Is it Too Late for the U.S. Economy? - Wayne Pierce for Salem-News.com
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Wayne was born in a small farm town in California's San Joaquin Valley. At age ten, he moved with his family to San Jose, California, which at the time had a population of 50,000 and was surrounded by orchards--mostly prunes. At age twenty, he joined IBM, one of the first electronic plants that would evolve into what we know today as Silicon Valley. Most of his college education was acquired through part-time classes while sometimes working ten hours a day. Wayne started on the bottom in the magnetic disk manufacturing facility, which produced the large disks for the earlier IBM computer systems. These magnetically coated disks would evolve into what we know today as hard drives. Wayne's last assignment with IBM was setting up their first inkjet printer lab that became what we know today as the Lexmark printer business. After his retirement from IBM, he wrote human interest stories for a small town newspaper.
You can write to Wayne Pierce at: bus215@aeolusblue.com
Outsourcing A Nation's WorkforceSalem-News.com