I was walking my dog . .

[Mark Bolton]

This isn't entirely true at all. I work for an high end building/ remodeling company in Massachusetts, have for twenty years. I think this is more of an exaggerated generalization than it is reality. I've worked with more hard working white people than lazy white people. There are lazy workers from everywhere. This screams of white guilt to me. In my experience, lazy or complaining people just don't last on constriction sites, no matter of race. Not saying there are no lazy white workers, I'm just saying in my experience, it's pretty proportional. I work on the north shore and in high end residential construction here, it's still much more white workers. Roofing and landscaping are a different story but that's just my experience.

I live in Gloucester, almost the entire fishing industry here is white workers and those men work hard, thankless jobs. I don't know, I just don't see what you're seeing.

Are you hiring them or "working with them"? If your hiring them then I can understand your point. If your "working with them" you are in a deferred state of delusion where a tier below you is doing the hard work and putting a pretty smile on your interaction (as the issuing party of the check).

If your sentiment were overarchingly true, I wouldn't be hearing the same drum beat for years and hearing it louder and louder. We all choose what we want to hear, but again, I'm the first one to be willing to hire the down and out, newly released felon, right on down the line to the individual with a degree in design from RISD...

[Malcolm McLeod]

.... I don't know, I just don't see what you're seeing.

David, you just need proper perspective.

Y'all aren't painting with a 6" white-wash brush. You're using a 747 crop duster!

I think people only see what they want to anymore. They just find a 'news' outlet that spoons them endless reinforcement of their perceptions; and there is such 'news' for everyone, no matter the validity.

Almighty dollar? ... or should that be Dollar? I seek relentlessly for Them. I trade Them for food, a roof, transportation, even an education for my children. (...even trade some for WOOD!) Man, am I evil or what!?!

Rich people? All to be decried as well? ...Get the pitchforks; we'll show them and their BIG boats and fancy cars what-for.

Reality? Perhaps no audience for it in this thread, but I get to attend a fund-raiser here and there. I see people being so incredibly generous with their Almighty Dollars it would make many of your heads spin. None named Gates or Buffet; just faces in the crowd to you - wanting to make the world a better place. Shhhh, don't tell anyone, but some are white. And I'd bet a few of my Dollars there's SMC'ers who've directly benefited. (And I'd win 'cuz I've read about your doctor visits.)

Edit: And to maintain topic, lots of 'em walk their dog!

[David E. Hutchins]

Are you hiring them or "working with them"? If your hiring them then I can understand your point. If your "working with them" you are in a deferred state of delusion where a tier below you is doing the hard work and putting a pretty smile on your interaction (as the issuing party of the check).

If your sentiment were overarchingly true, I wouldn't be hearing the same drum beat for years and hearing it louder and louder. We all choose what we want to hear, but again, I'm the first one to be willing to hire the down and out, newly released felon, right on down the line to the individual with a degree in design from RISD...

I honestly don't care what drum you hear being beaten, I am just sharing what I have seen in my twenty years on the job. I am not delusional at all about it. I'm not talking about sentiment, I'm talking about what I actually see. I have seen and worked with more hard working white people than lazy white people, that's all my point was. There are lazy white workers and there are lazy foreign born workers, just like there are hard working white people and hard working foreign born people.

It's also the sentiment that young people don't want to work but when I do encounter the "chip on their shoulder" workers, they are almost always older workers.

I'm not trying to be combative, maybe it's different where you live, but I'm certainly not delusional about it and I'm not sitting there with a smile while someone else does the hard work for me.

[Patrick Walsh]

David,

I want to make clear in not questioning or doubting your experience.

By sharing mine I’m in no way trying to do strep to yours.

As you said below in the last 20 years it your area it has been your experience. As had mine been I’m not working overtime trying to paint any picture. Homes,y I wouldn’t get so worked up and passed about all this is what I say my experience has been has not directly fueled my fore and shaped my perspective.

I honestly don't care what drum you hear being beaten, I am just sharing what I have seen in my twenty years on the job. I am not delusional at all about it. I'm not talking about sentiment, I'm talking about what I actually see. I have seen and worked with more hard working white people than lazy white people, that's all my point was. There are lazy white workers and there are lazy foreign born workers, just like there are hard working white people and hard working foreign born people.

It's also the sentiment that young people don't want to work but when I do encounter the "chip on their shoulder" workers, they are almost always older workers.

I'm not trying to be combative, maybe it's different where you live, but I'm certainly not delusional about it and I'm not sitting there with a smile while someone else does the hard work for me.

[Kev Williams]

One of my customers said (yelled?) in an email the other day, "WE NEED TO BRING BACK MANUFACTURING IN THIS COUNTRY!!" -- Like with the OP's 'garbage can'. So, I'll cut to the chase: Personally, I get tired of hearing/reading how China and Mexico "stole" all of our manufacturing secrets in order to run us the hell outta business.
While I'm sure that's true to a certain extent, I still have to raise the flag to a certain other extent.... as in, why steal something when some geedy 'merican will give it to you for free in order to ultimately pad his own wallet..? I have personally witnessed a friend of mine, who spent countless hours testing and fabricating certain "exclusive" one-of-a-kind 'things', have no less than 3 of these unique items (that I know of) purchased from him, then immediately taken to China, by people I know-!- for the express purpose of having them copy his product and make a few hundred of them to ship back home and sell at an 80% discount. One of these guys sent me an order for 100 "MADE IN USA" labels. I was in the middle of making them when someone else I know who'd been a 'gone to China' victim, got in touch with me and said "you DO know these tags will be going on ___'s parts that ____ had made in China, right?" Gaaahh... Needless to say ____ didn't get his tags.

And off the top of my head, I know of at least 3 other similar instances of this crap, ALL pretty much involving people I know screwing other people I know...

The scary part? I'm just a low-level uneducated untraveled working guy who survives in his own teensy universe, who hardly knows anyone! And yet a good percentage of those I DO know are greedy, unethical thieves who've stolen other people's work and idea's to profit off them via cheap Chinese labor... Now, if little old nothingburger me has seen this much crap going on in such a small sector of business, I can only imagine how much crap is REALLY going on in the BIG world! Ergo, I'm not so quick to blame JUST China, Mexico, etc. for our current state of trade imbalances...

Just sayin'...

[Wade Lippman]

It is very simple.
Things are made in Mexico or China because it is cheaper to do it there.
If we brought it back to the US, it would have to go up in price.
And... workers would be necessary to make it.
The only way to get workers would be to take them away from something they are doing now, which produces more value than the new job.
And you would have to pay them more to get them.
So you would be getting very expensive trash cans, and damaging the economy because the companies that should have the workers can't get them.
So, it is a lose/lose. Well, a lose/lose/lose/lose because you would also be damaging the Mexican economy so they can't buy our exports which would damage our economy further.

It all sounds nice as long as you don't understand it.

[Pete Costa]

This thread brought up two thoughts/memories. First, the talk of hardworking immigrants reminded me of my grandfather who came here from Italy to escape the fascists in the1930s Started with nothing and built up a good middle class life through lots of hard work, work he took pride in. I'm pretty sure people back in those days were complaining about immigrants like him taking their jobs. Funny thing about immigrants is that, in general, only the hard working ones take the risk and effort to get here. Those of us born here don't go through that difficult selection process.

Fast forward to this century. I wanted to put a retaining wall in at my house, and was pretty sure I had inherited my grandfather's masonry skills. Ordered a few pallets of stone and went down to the labor pickup point to get some guys to help out. I figured I'd have them do the hard stuff while I explored my artistic abilities at stacking rocks. I asked one guy to dig out a footing trench while I started Building the wall. After about an hour, he had finished the trench and asked if he could help me stack rocks. I was feeling pretty good about what I'd done so far but told him to go ahead on one side while I continued on mine. 15 minutes later I glanced over to check on his work. He'd already built more than I had in the past hour and a quarter, and it made my section look like a bad impression of a rock slide. I went to my section, pulled down all the rocks I'd stacked, and asked him to finish up the wall. I also asked him how he liked his coffee. I count that as one of my better decisions.

[Robert Hazelwood]

When we got into a trade war with China, there was a report on NPR about some businessman who figured it was a good time to bring his manufacturing back to the US so he could avoid the tariffs. He was dismayed to find that the machinery he would need to make his widgets are made in China. That concerned him because support would have to come from China as would parts, etc.

I think we have a long way to go.

So who do I blame? Harvard MBAs.
Another report on NPR some time ago talked about MBA's back in the '70s classifying businesses as dogs, cows, and stars.

Dogs are businesses that don't make money and never will.

Cows are businesses that make plenty of money but don't show a lot of growth potential. These were things like appliances and TVs.

Stars are the businesses that are sexy new things and show tremendous growth potential. Hi tech. nuff said.

The MBA's said liquidate the dogs, outsource or sell off the cows overseas and plow money into the stars. Of course they also raided the 'overfunded' pension funds and other shady stuff. But the core strategy for dogs, cows and stars kind of describes what's been happening.

Good post. I was thinking about this in light of the recent bailouts and economic crash. We used to have a lot of "cows", conservatively run businesses that from a finance guy's perspective were worth less than the sum of their parts. These were the kind of businesses that might have been able to withstand a quarantine shutdown for more than a week or two. Instead we have moved towards total optimization of everything, making everything efficient as possible. Global supply chain, JIT, debt leverage, etc. Efficiency necessarily comes at the expense of resiliency, though it increases stock prices.

A really good book about the US machine tool industry, using Burgmaster as a case study, is https://www.amazon.com/When-machine-.../dp/0875842089.

[Robert Hazelwood]

It is very simple.
Things are made in Mexico or China because it is cheaper to do it there.
If we brought it back to the US, it would have to go up in price.
And... workers would be necessary to make it.
The only way to get workers would be to take them away from something they are doing now, which produces more value than the new job.
And you would have to pay them more to get them.
So you would be getting very expensive trash cans, and damaging the economy because the companies that should have the workers can't get them.
So, it is a lose/lose. Well, a lose/lose/lose/lose because you would also be damaging the Mexican economy so they can't buy our exports which would damage our economy further.

It all sounds nice as long as you don't understand it.

What do you think the former manufacturing workers and their descendants (take, for example, the guys who were doing casting and machining for Powermatic in McMinnville or their counterparts working for Delta in Tupelo) are doing now that produces more value? For most the option is to drop out of the workforce or take some crap retail job. I'm sure a few of the most intelligent and enterprising ones could move to a big city and get a "knowledge economy" job manipulating spreadsheets, but over time this just kills the social capital of those towns and you are left with the situation Mark Bolton describes.

Yes you have to pay more for manufactured goods in order to fix this. And you will have to accept that Dollar General will be deprived of some employees who are now making something useful. Somehow we managed this a few decades ago.

I cannot stand this inclination to elevate econ 101 into a religious cargo cult. I blame the spread of 401k's and getting the average white collar worker's primary investment vehicle to be the stock market. Allows them to buy into the asset-stripping of America and motivates them to rationalize throwing the wage classes under the bus as creating more value.

[Patrick Walsh]

I have been thinking quite a bit as I work away in my home sho through this.

Or rather a feeling/serious of thoughts a gut instinct has been overcoming me forcing me to reflect on things I normally just go about ignoring feeling they way out of my hands.

Now I’m not educated nor do I claim to be the authority these are just my thoughts. And no I’m not trying to impose them on anyone.

The thought process may be heightened by all that’s going on in the world right but it’s not a new thought to me. The thought my gut feeling my instinct “again what do I know” is that our government in the United States coupled with our world economy is built much like a uber high efficiency machine. It relies on all its cards being stacked exactly in order all built to a very high tolerance and only able to do this job so long as it tolerance is maintained to very high spec. They have to all be doing exactly thief job, if one part goes the machine can’t do its job. Further much like if a uber high effienct machine was built with a shelf like as trade of for one less productive but that could sustain working with simple easy maintenance from time to time.

I don’t see the system we have subscribed to as humans not just American as sustainable. Imop the whole thing is a giant deck of cards.

I do think us humans “some of us” are pretty smart. So I just don’t get the choices we end up making as a whole.

However if you look at this situation and the vast population of people not adhering to basic requests to shelter in place and scocial distancing. How so many I talk to idea of social distancing greatly varies from day mine. For instance most of my extended family. Grandma still insists on going to the grocery store. She also still insists on her daily walks with friends. Uncles still going to work, till a week ago sending their kids to horseback riding lessons. In the same breath these are the choices they are making they are badmouthing the whole basketball zipp tie thing making comment like “how stupid are people”

In general I have decided that people “well not decided long have felt actually” selfish to their core. Sure we step outside ourself and do altruistic deeds. But at our core it’s self preservation. It has to be or life halts quickly.

My long is none of us thinks our crap stinks, we all fell we are doing our best. But imop best does have a benchmark a bar.

How do I wrap all this together and back to our US economy/world economy to ones perspective that their choice to walk with fiends continue sending children to activities grocery shop when ther are other alternative readily availible. Well I bring it all back around to us being inherently selfish beings.

What else would be the explanation.

And how to I tie that to the conversation above about jobs going abroad or coming home. Again I’m not merca first guy clearly. But we sent those jobs away to grow and feed this machine. It was short sighted foolish selfish and greedy. But some things in this life you just can’t take back and again what do I know but my gut tells me this is one of those things that “poof” the opportunity is gone we missed the mark and now we have to own it.

[michael langman]

I honestly don't care what drum you hear being beaten, I am just sharing what I have seen in my twenty years on the job. I am not delusional at all about it. I'm not talking about sentiment, I'm talking about what I actually see. I have seen and worked with more hard working white people than lazy white people, that's all my point was. There are lazy white workers and there are lazy foreign born workers, just like there are hard working white people and hard working foreign born people.

It's also the sentiment that young people don't want to work but when I do encounter the "chip on their shoulder" workers, they are almost always older workers.

I'm not trying to be combative, maybe it's different where you live, but I'm certainly not delusional about it and I'm not sitting there with a smile while someone else does the hard work for me.

David, I know what you are saying. New Englanders were always known for their hard working ethics.

Years ago a company, American Optical, moved down south from Brattleboro,Vt. to save money. Theyended up moving back after a few years because the workers down south did not know what a good days work meant.

There are good and bad workers everywhere, but there are also areas of the country where workers work.

When I was 18 I traveled out west with a friend. Ended up getting a job in Tyrone Oklahoma as a construction laborer and welders helper. Now I always believed in working my hardest and trying to do a good job. Well I worked alongside some illegal alien, wetbacks as they were called. These were some of the nicest people I had ever met and worked alongside. Rugged and hard working doesn't begin to describe those fellas.
They ended up making me a welders helper because I sure wasn't a laborer and never would be alongside these guys.
One of the Mexicans name was Alvanez, he was over 40 years old. And I watched him chase down a rabbit and catch it by hand in the brush nearby one day while eating my lunch in the shade of 110 degrees . Amazeed does not even describe what I felt at the time.
You should have seen the smile on Alvarez's face walking back with that rabbit.

[Patrick Walsh]

See this put a smile on my face.

These are the experiences I’m talking about. Be they legal illegal whatever I could give a rats. This is America, go ahead give me yeah in years gone past immigrant came in through legal changes through Ellis Island yada yada.

You really think everything was above the table back when you all walked both ways to school in 3’ of snow uphill Lol.... I don’t think so. There have always been crooks and there have always has been Robinhood’s that’s the nature of us humans regardless of demographic origin.

I take more pride in sharing this country with hard working guys like the above story than those whom were raised pampered and or whom have become soft as a result of a system that groomed people such...

David, I know what you are saying. New Englanders were always known for their hard working ethics.

Years ago a company, American Optical, moved down south from Brattleboro,Vt. to save money. Theyended up moving back after a few years because the workers down south did not know what a good days work meant.

There are good and bad workers everywhere, but there are also areas of the country where workers work.

When I was 18 I traveled out west with a friend. Ended up getting a job in Tyrone Oklahoma as a construction laborer and welders helper. Now I always believed in working my hardest and trying to do a good job. Well I worked alongside some illegal alien, wetbacks as they were called. These were some of the nicest people I had ever met and worked alongside. Rugged and hard working doesn't begin to describe those fellas.
They ended up making me a welders helper because I sure wasn't a laborer and never would be alongside these guys.
One of the Mexicans name was Alvanez, he was over 40 years old. And I watched him chase down a rabbit and catch it by hand in the brush nearby one day while eating my lunch in the shade of 110 degrees . Amazeed does not even describe what I felt at the time.
You should have seen the smile on Alvarez's face walking back with that rabbit.

[Mark Bolton]

This thread brought up two thoughts/memories. First, the talk of hardworking immigrants reminded me of my grandfather who came here from Italy to escape the fascists in the1930s Started with nothing and built up a good middle class life through lots of hard work, work he took pride in. I'm pretty sure people back in those days were complaining about immigrants like him taking their jobs. Funny thing about immigrants is that, in general, only the hard working ones take the risk and effort to get here. Those of us born here don't go through that difficult selection process.

Fast forward to this century. I wanted to put a retaining wall in at my house, and was pretty sure I had inherited my grandfather's masonry skills. Ordered a few pallets of stone and went down to the labor pickup point to get some guys to help out. I figured I'd have them do the hard stuff while I explored my artistic abilities at stacking rocks. I asked one guy to dig out a footing trench while I started Building the wall. After about an hour, he had finished the trench and asked if he could help me stack rocks. I was feeling pretty good about what I'd done so far but told him to go ahead on one side while I continued on mine. 15 minutes later I glanced over to check on his work. He'd already built more than I had in the past hour and a quarter, and it made my section look like a bad impression of a rock slide. I went to my section, pulled down all the rocks I'd stacked, and asked him to finish up the wall. I also asked him how he liked his coffee. I count that as one of my better decisions.

This actually made my day.. as I was reading through it I could feel my face and then realized I was giggling. Too funny. Really great post.

[Bob Glenn]

A couple things to add. Bringing back manufacturing to the US wouldn't be all bad. Prices would go up, but hopefully, we would stop buying cheap plastic stuff that now goes into our oceans, waterways and dumps. The greatgrandkids have so many plastic toys, they don't know what they have and don't have. I will all end up polluting our world.

As far work ethic goes, I used to tell new hires that to work here, you had to be worth more than what you cost.

Great thread. Thanks for starting it. We have some soul searching to do.