05-16-2015, 05:37 PM
(05-16-2015, 09:31 AM)gstanford Wrote: Our car plants are shutting down here, too small a market. Will be gone altogether by 2017. We don't manufacture a lot anymore. We are blessed with abundant mineral resources, natural gas and coal resources though, which china is hungry for and have many fine foods Asians desire though. Not to mention our universities and tourism.
We NEED to manufacture because our middle class is shrinking.
There was a time when I was young a lot of what we consumed was made here by Americans. People who didn't have specialized training (most people) could work for a living wage and their kids could choose whether they wanted the same or to get the training. People bought homes and cars, kids grew up with a sense of security that the system worked and they would have a good life no matter what path they chose.
Not so much in the aftermath of trade agreements and outsourcing. There are still opportunities here, but very few for the a middle class life for the HS grad only.
So I will NEVER drive a Toyota, I don't care if they beat GM in every metric and cost $5000 less. The country has been good to me and my family, the very least I can do is support the country's businesses. Don't care if those Toyotas are built here, if people stopped buying them the demand would shift to American firms and the wealth would stay in America. Kids would have the choice of "I can go to work at the car factory and have a middle class life, or be a gang banger" not "I can make sandwiches for those rich f*ckers and starve or be a gang banger and make some real bank".
I can't change the market myself, but I can be an example and a daily advertisement.
Works to some extent.
Just last night I was driving my son to golf team practice and he said, "I did a project for money class today where we had to budget for buying our "dream car". I picked a GMC Sierra as my dream car, these things cost fifty thousand dollars with good options?!" Every time some kid/person tells me how cool the Challenger or my truck is that is a person who might buy one some day and support American industry like me.