Submitted by R. Neal on Tue, 2007/06/19 - 11:05am.
Today's KNS business section has an article about a new Steve and Barry's store (not to be confused with Ben and Jerry's) coming soon to the former Wal*Mart location in South Knoxville.
I hadn't heard of this company, but I was intrigued by their line of $15 sneakers and the fact that most apparel items are $10 or so. This is a great concept, and somewhat socially responsible, too (except maybe for the sources of their goods, which isn't mentioned). They aren't publicly traded. Which is too bad, but probably part of their success.
The sports shoes were designed by an NBA player who actually wears them on the court. According to their website, Stephon Marbury grew up in a large family and "knows first-hand the pressure that kids and parents feel to spend top dollar on the latest merchandise from the top brands," and wants to "help eliminate that pressure by bringing high quality jeans, jackets, hoodies, t-shirts, hats, sneakers and more to shoppers at astonishing low prices." According to a "professor of footwear design," the shoes are no different from $150 shoes in the quality of design and materials.
And for the ladies (and fans of Sex in the City), Steve and Barry's is rolling out an exclusive new line of women's apparel by Sarah Jessica Parker ("fashion is not a luxury, it's a right!"), with every item in the collection priced under $20.
I predict this store will have great success in South Knoxville. Folks will be driving over from Farragut right past Turkey Creek to shop there.
And wouldn't it be great if kids started bragging about how inexpensive their clothes were, and competing to have the cheapest cool sneakers?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 2007/11/09 - 2:42pm.
I would like to see stores like Steve & Barry's and Walmart step up to the plate and re-invest in the country that made them rich and successful in the first place. The United States of America. Why don't they start having their products made in the USA and start giving people here jobs so they don't have to be forced to buy cheap crap made in China and other sub-environmental-standard, sub-human-standard countries! (not to mention Communist! - hello! Are we all forgetting that China is STILL a communist nation and treats its citizens like cattle or worse?) By continuing product production in those countries, stores like this are ultimately putting our nation into further debt with countries that pollute the environment with abandon and suck up the world's resources faster than ever before in their ever growing industrial appetites. I, personally, as an American do NOT enjoy seeing labels with the "made in China" phrase on it. I'd be really happy to see "made in the USA" and I would buy those goods first. I doubt very much that stores like these truly care about the American consumer. They care about their profit margins and have no conscience about this nation's issues, or the world's for that matter. Bring production back to the US, keep environmental standards high, stop importing poisonous (in more ways than one) products and see this country grow strong again. I challenge those stores and companies like them! Step up! Do it!
Submitted by Somebody on Wed, 2007/06/20 - 9:12am.
It's all about externalization. When will we get it through our own thick heads that cheap, cheap goods do not help our own poor as much as they hurt them, plus hurting the folks who produce the goods overseas? Low skill/unskilled labor jobs that could pay decent wages here aren't available, making the need for cheap goods chronic, and the poor saps who make the cheap goods elsewhere do so for indecent wages in poor conditions at factories that no doubt have reprehensible environmental impact.
Add to that, why does it occur to no one that having huge portions of our own means of production moved offshore is a serious national security issue? Whether it's vulnerability to bad wheat gluten entering our food supply, or vulnerability to being cut off from major supplies of needed goods, we give up a lot just to have cheap things.
Submitted by Andy Axel on Wed, 2007/06/20 - 10:04am.
It's all about externalization. When will we get it through our own thick heads that cheap, cheap goods do not help our own poor as much as they hurt them, plus hurting the folks who produce the goods overseas?
Visit Gastonia, NC sometime.
Charlotte might be a booming center for banking these days, but that area was built on lint. Cotton mills.
I had the opportunity to wander around inside the old factories of Dixie Yarns for a week or so. Everywhere, there was improved space that lay idle. From water towers to gins to warehouses to looms to old IBM-mainframe rooms - much of the space just went to seed because so much of the business was gradually being sent offshore. We're talking about *millions* of square feet of excess capacity.
I mean, you see it everywhere. Factories get shut and the signs "for sale or lease" go up on the perimeter. Detroit is like that, too. Thousands of acres of idle land girded by block after block of company housing gone to ramshackles. And those soulless vampires abandoning our cities, and fleeing our country, and incorporating in PO boxes in Grand Cayman? They still have the temerity to blame the very victims of their "enterprise."
(I'm coming to believe that the bitter dystopian satire of Aldous Huxley was a trifle optimistic.)
Whether it's vulnerability to bad wheat gluten entering our food supply, or vulnerability to being cut off from major supplies of needed goods, we give up a lot just to have cheap things.
Just wait until it's too expensive to pay the freight to keep the ships of injection-molded plastic doodads moving between Hainan and Los Angeles.
____________________________
I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
I wonder what would happen if Steve and Barry charged twice what they charge now, i.e. $30 for the shoes and $40 for their most expensive apparel item, would they be able to get it Made in the USA?
If not, I wonder how much they would have to charge?
I've seen $1500+ "designer" t-shirts in NYC that were probably made in China, and probably for less than $1. You are paying for the name.
Nike sneakers that cost $100+ probably cost the same to make as the S&B $15 sneakers. So how does Nike get away with that?
I've been pricing labor in overseas markets for my wife. Dominican Republic: $1.00/hr. Costa Rica: $1.50-$2.00. Vietnam: $0.35-50/hr. Burma: Slave Labor or $0.10/hr. Next stop: Africa.
The real problem is this: Let's say you are making handbags. You want to make them in the US. You really, truly can't. Most of the skilled sewers are gone. The ones that exist only make samples (big bucks: $200-500 per bag for non-leather samples). Production pattern makers: gone. The only quality one we know is up to his ears in work. It takes YEARS to learn how to make proper patterns.
Project Alabama tried to make everything in Alabama. They've decamped to India. The margins in fashion are huge at the wholesale level, but labor is such a big part of the cost, that any pressure at the segment will put you out of business.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Submitted by Andy Axel on Wed, 2007/06/20 - 12:56pm.
The real problem is this: Let's say you are making handbags. You want to make them in the US. You really, truly can't. Most of the skilled sewers are gone. The ones that exist only make samples (big bucks: $200-500 per bag for non-leather samples). Production pattern makers: gone. The only quality one we know is up to his ears in work. It takes YEARS to learn how to make proper patterns.
Learning a trade used to be either a family affair or a matter of taking an apprenticeship. (I wonder how many "craft" jobs have simply evaporated over the years. With the drive to the bottom line being the order of the day, how can a "service economy" survive for long?)
How many schools still have vocational/technical training? Wood shop? Can you still learn a trade in public school?
____________________________
I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
They get away with it by creating demand (Marketing activities) such that consumers perceive Nike to be a better product (performance/quality) than what S&B's or other lesser brands can provide.
Submitted by Factchecker on Wed, 2007/06/20 - 11:56am.
I'm with you too, Somebody. Get a name or at least an avatar (--suggest one less pretentious sounding than mine! ;>) ).
I have $30 Chinese shoes and $60-90 Chinese shoes that don't seem to be any different in materials and workmanship. I would love to pay $100 for some decent shoes that don't come from so far and don't subsidize poor labor and enviro standards. But they don't seem to exist. I found one nice pair of shoes at Mast that came from Eastern Europe that were $160, I think. Didn't have my size, though.
Just wait until it's too expensive to pay the freight to keep the ships of injection-molded plastic doodads moving between Hainan and Los Angeles.
This is sad and it would finally wake us up, though it will come too late and put us in a world recession, if not deep depression.
Submitted by Factchecker on Wed, 2007/06/20 - 12:08pm.
I've been pricing labor in overseas markets for my wife. Dominican Republic: $1.00/hr. Costa Rica: $1.50-$2.00. Vietnam: $0.35-50/hr. Burma: Slave Labor or $0.10/hr. Next stop: Africa.
Don't forget Saipan, a U.S. territory that Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay worked to protect from labor laws any more stringent than those in the other regions cited.
I remember reading a story on the Nike factories in Vietnam a few years ago in the Christian Science Monitor.
While the workers said the work was hard, they said it was a lot better than working in the rice paddies, or not working at all. Do we want to return them to the rice paddies? I don't.
Sure, you can lament the loss of textile jobs in the South, but what is really lamentable is the fact that so many of the younger generations, whose parents and grandparents worked in the mills, thought they would continue working in the mills.
So, instead of taking full advantage of public education and gaining knowledge and skills that would prepare them for the future job market, they complain that it's not fair the mill jobs weren't reserved for them.
Remember, the South got the mills because the mill owners moved them from the North to take advantage of cheaper labor in the South. It's the way trade works. Surely, we understand that by now.
It's hard for us to understand that even a $1/hr wage, that you can count on, is a step up in a lot of countries. I for one, wish that the working class would take more advantage of the opportunities that public education gives them, rather than on focusing on what public assistance should do for them.
Submitted by Somebody on Wed, 2007/06/20 - 5:09pm.
I'm not just lamenting the loss of textile jobs in the South, I'm lamenting the loss of textiles and other manufacturing production nationwide.
Free trade and the fluidity of economies is all well and good if there's actually a level playing field. The problem is, these dollar-a-day labor costs offshore do not represent a level playing field. Some may say that they are grateful for the work, but these folks are likely working in conditions that would be completely illegal in a factory here. It could be working hours, it could be child labor laws, it could be ergonimics, it could be the right to collective bargaining, it could be pollution standards.
We adopted these labor standards in our country because they were a good idea (or at least most of them were...). Companies that go offshore for production are doing so because they don't want to pay for the costs of doing business. If they can get foreign labor markets and communities to absorb their costs through unregulated labor and environmental standards, they will. That's what I mean by externalization. That $4 T-shirt was subsidized by some Chinese community's willingness to let the factory dump bleach out the back door.
Saying that these folks are glad for the job and not to have to work in the rice paddies may or may not be a fair statement. Continuing to keep slaves in the 1850s was often similarly justified.
Again, because I just can't stop: this is a national security issue, not just a social issue. Our military foray into Iraq should be instructive enough. Not having the capacity to produce things we need here can be an ugly, expensive proposition in terms of dollars and human lives.
Submitted by Carole Borges on Wed, 2007/06/20 - 8:30pm.
The Massachusetts textile mills moved here after a big worker's strike. It was a way of showing workers in the NE that people elsewhere would be happy to work for less. It worked too because even years and years later the migration of the mills still comes up in conversations all the time. A lot of workers in the East are still afraid to ask for higher wages or join unions.
I know first-hand that many people who are unskilled and poor would rather work for low wages than have no jobs at all. Higher wages would of course sound more attractive. Who wouldn't want to make more money? But if your cost of living or your need is very low, sometimes low wages go far. When my first husband and I started out he worked in a real sweatshop, a leather factory that was horrible, but we needed to pay the rent and feed our kids. He got out of that hellish place by moonlighting in a sign shop where they taught him to fix and clean electrical signs. Within a few years, he became an IBEW union electrician.
The good thing is eventually low paid workers understand how essential they are and they begin to demand higher wages. Even in countries that oppress people eventually they refuse to produce a lot for bosses who are unwilling to share the profits. I heard many workers in India are no longer thrilled to work for less than we make here. Corporations who moved there are now facing having to pay higher wages.
Submitted by Andy Axel on Wed, 2007/06/20 - 1:22pm.
Remember, the South got the mills because the mill owners moved them from the North to take advantage of cheaper labor in the South. It's the way trade works.
Gee, I thought it had something to do with proximity to the raw material. Let's see... would you rather pay the tonnage from Dyersburg, TN to Chattanooga or to Chicago? Hm....
Sure, you can lament the loss of textile jobs in the South, but what is really lamentable is the fact that so many of the younger generations, whose parents and grandparents worked in the mills, thought they would continue working in the mills.
So, instead of taking full advantage of public education and gaining knowledge and skills that would prepare them for the future job market, they complain that it's not fair the mill jobs weren't reserved for them.
Yep, those goddamned workers just weren't prepared enough to take other menial jobs. Screw 'em.
Never mind that public schools are supported by the tax base of these same communities which are supported by fewer and fewer and fewer jobs over time. As major industries fold, people are put out of work and either (a) don't pay taxes since they make nothing, or (b) move away. Then there's the ripple effect of those businesses which depended on trade with the local industry having to fold up, since no one is around to frequent them anymore. All those community banks and plumbers and electricians and carpenters and insurance agents and corner groceries and hairdressers and restaurants just don't have anyone to do business with anymore.
Screw 'em. Screw 'em all. They should have been more prepared.
____________________________
I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
You know you've been away from Knoxville too long when you didn't even know the Wal-Mart in Chapman Ford Crossing had closed. I'm guessing everything is gravitating toward John Sevier Highway and Seymour these days.
Yep, those goddamned workers just weren't prepared enough to take other menial jobs. Screw 'em.
Never mind that public schools are supported by the tax base of these same communities which are supported by fewer and fewer and fewer jobs over time. As major industries fold, people are put out of work and either (a) don't pay taxes since they make nothing, or (b) move away. Then there's the ripple effect of those businesses which depended on trade with the local industry having to fold up, since no one is around to frequent them anymore. All those community banks and plumbers and electricians and carpenters and insurance agents and corner groceries and hairdressers and restaurants just don't have anyone to do business with anymore.
Screw 'em. Screw 'em all. They should have been more prepared.
Andy- Don't put words in my mouth. It's clear from your reliance on histironics you know very little about the subject you're talking about. If you can't base your argument on facts or reality, then my advice is not to argue among educated people.
Based on your protectionist argument, the textile mills should have stayed in the North, and the South's workforce should still be in the fields. Perhaps we should have exiled Henry Ford. Do you know how many blacksmiths those new fangled automobile contraptions have put out of work?
I'll be the first to admit that public education has failed miserably in preparing kids for the future. But alot of the problem is that parents and kids won't accept the fact that education is a two way street, and that you basically get out what you put into it.
I wasn't guranteed to have the same job that my father had, or his father had, and I don't know many kids who were guaranteed their parents' jobs.
I fail to understand why, for some reason, workers from the car factories of the Rust Belt to the steel mills of Pennsylvania and to the textile mills of the Carolinas believe that economic policy should guarantee them the same employment of their ancestors.
Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2007/06/21 - 12:30pm.
Don't put words in my mouth. It's clear from your reliance on histironics you know very little about the subject you're talking about. If you can't base your argument on facts or reality, then my advice is not to argue among educated people.
Shrill much?
Your failure of comprehension isn't my problem, nor is it for a lack of education on my part.
Still, I can't stop you from being a dick. Welcome to the forum.
____________________________
I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
You proved my point. Rather than argue my points, you personally attack me. I thought this forum was about debate and discussion. Apparently, both concepts are beyond you.
But I will say this, if I'm a d***, than you're clearly the opposite. You said it, I didn't.
Submitted by Andy Axel on Thu, 2007/06/21 - 2:32pm.
Rather than argue my points, you personally attack me. I thought this forum was about debate and discussion. Apparently, both concepts are beyond you.
Says the guy who wanders onto this forum a mere 2 weeks ago, then insists that I stay out of arguments "among educated people."
It is to larf.
I'll grant that you weren't exactly calling me a retard, but it's pretty much the same thing, innit? Be honest, now.
You may very well consider me an idiot for my beliefs, but trust me; I know when I'm being insulted. Do yourself a favor and leave aside the high hat and pearl-clutching over "lowering the tone" of the discourse when you've got your grasp firmly fixed on the lowered bar.
Besides, that "uncivilized liberal" meme is sooooooooooo 3Q06.
____________________________
I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
Sourcing: Vietnam and Burma and worse, but they insulate themselves by hiding it via subcontractors.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
I would like to see stores like Steve & Barry's and Walmart step up to the plate and re-invest in the country that made them rich and successful in the first place. The United States of America. Why don't they start having their products made in the USA and start giving people here jobs so they don't have to be forced to buy cheap crap made in China and other sub-environmental-standard, sub-human-standard countries! (not to mention Communist! - hello! Are we all forgetting that China is STILL a communist nation and treats its citizens like cattle or worse?) By continuing product production in those countries, stores like this are ultimately putting our nation into further debt with countries that pollute the environment with abandon and suck up the world's resources faster than ever before in their ever growing industrial appetites. I, personally, as an American do NOT enjoy seeing labels with the "made in China" phrase on it. I'd be really happy to see "made in the USA" and I would buy those goods first. I doubt very much that stores like these truly care about the American consumer. They care about their profit margins and have no conscience about this nation's issues, or the world's for that matter. Bring production back to the US, keep environmental standards high, stop importing poisonous (in more ways than one) products and see this country grow strong again. I challenge those stores and companies like them! Step up! Do it!
Some articles on their sourcing...
Link...
Link...
Link...
It's all about externalization. When will we get it through our own thick heads that cheap, cheap goods do not help our own poor as much as they hurt them, plus hurting the folks who produce the goods overseas? Low skill/unskilled labor jobs that could pay decent wages here aren't available, making the need for cheap goods chronic, and the poor saps who make the cheap goods elsewhere do so for indecent wages in poor conditions at factories that no doubt have reprehensible environmental impact.
Add to that, why does it occur to no one that having huge portions of our own means of production moved offshore is a serious national security issue? Whether it's vulnerability to bad wheat gluten entering our food supply, or vulnerability to being cut off from major supplies of needed goods, we give up a lot just to have cheap things.
Visit Gastonia, NC sometime.
Charlotte might be a booming center for banking these days, but that area was built on lint. Cotton mills.
I had the opportunity to wander around inside the old factories of Dixie Yarns for a week or so. Everywhere, there was improved space that lay idle. From water towers to gins to warehouses to looms to old IBM-mainframe rooms - much of the space just went to seed because so much of the business was gradually being sent offshore. We're talking about *millions* of square feet of excess capacity.
I mean, you see it everywhere. Factories get shut and the signs "for sale or lease" go up on the perimeter. Detroit is like that, too. Thousands of acres of idle land girded by block after block of company housing gone to ramshackles. And those soulless vampires abandoning our cities, and fleeing our country, and incorporating in PO boxes in Grand Cayman? They still have the temerity to blame the very victims of their "enterprise."
(I'm coming to believe that the bitter dystopian satire of Aldous Huxley was a trifle optimistic.)
Just wait until it's too expensive to pay the freight to keep the ships of injection-molded plastic doodads moving between Hainan and Los Angeles.
____________________________
I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
Good points, somebody.
I wonder what would happen if Steve and Barry charged twice what they charge now, i.e. $30 for the shoes and $40 for their most expensive apparel item, would they be able to get it Made in the USA?
If not, I wonder how much they would have to charge?
I've seen $1500+ "designer" t-shirts in NYC that were probably made in China, and probably for less than $1. You are paying for the name.
Nike sneakers that cost $100+ probably cost the same to make as the S&B $15 sneakers. So how does Nike get away with that?
I've been pricing labor in overseas markets for my wife. Dominican Republic: $1.00/hr. Costa Rica: $1.50-$2.00. Vietnam: $0.35-50/hr. Burma: Slave Labor or $0.10/hr. Next stop: Africa.
The real problem is this: Let's say you are making handbags. You want to make them in the US. You really, truly can't. Most of the skilled sewers are gone. The ones that exist only make samples (big bucks: $200-500 per bag for non-leather samples). Production pattern makers: gone. The only quality one we know is up to his ears in work. It takes YEARS to learn how to make proper patterns.
Project Alabama tried to make everything in Alabama. They've decamped to India. The margins in fashion are huge at the wholesale level, but labor is such a big part of the cost, that any pressure at the segment will put you out of business.
True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler
Learning a trade used to be either a family affair or a matter of taking an apprenticeship. (I wonder how many "craft" jobs have simply evaporated over the years. With the drive to the bottom line being the order of the day, how can a "service economy" survive for long?)
How many schools still have vocational/technical training? Wood shop? Can you still learn a trade in public school?
____________________________
I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
They get away with it by creating demand (Marketing activities) such that consumers perceive Nike to be a better product (performance/quality) than what S&B's or other lesser brands can provide.
I'm with you too, Somebody. Get a name or at least an avatar (--suggest one less pretentious sounding than mine! ;>) ).
I have $30 Chinese shoes and $60-90 Chinese shoes that don't seem to be any different in materials and workmanship. I would love to pay $100 for some decent shoes that don't come from so far and don't subsidize poor labor and enviro standards. But they don't seem to exist. I found one nice pair of shoes at Mast that came from Eastern Europe that were $160, I think. Didn't have my size, though.
This is sad and it would finally wake us up, though it will come too late and put us in a world recession, if not deep depression.
Don't forget Saipan, a U.S. territory that Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay worked to protect from labor laws any more stringent than those in the other regions cited.
I remember reading a story on the Nike factories in Vietnam a few years ago in the Christian Science Monitor.
While the workers said the work was hard, they said it was a lot better than working in the rice paddies, or not working at all. Do we want to return them to the rice paddies? I don't.
Sure, you can lament the loss of textile jobs in the South, but what is really lamentable is the fact that so many of the younger generations, whose parents and grandparents worked in the mills, thought they would continue working in the mills.
So, instead of taking full advantage of public education and gaining knowledge and skills that would prepare them for the future job market, they complain that it's not fair the mill jobs weren't reserved for them.
Remember, the South got the mills because the mill owners moved them from the North to take advantage of cheaper labor in the South. It's the way trade works. Surely, we understand that by now.
It's hard for us to understand that even a $1/hr wage, that you can count on, is a step up in a lot of countries. I for one, wish that the working class would take more advantage of the opportunities that public education gives them, rather than on focusing on what public assistance should do for them.
I'm not just lamenting the loss of textile jobs in the South, I'm lamenting the loss of textiles and other manufacturing production nationwide.
Free trade and the fluidity of economies is all well and good if there's actually a level playing field. The problem is, these dollar-a-day labor costs offshore do not represent a level playing field. Some may say that they are grateful for the work, but these folks are likely working in conditions that would be completely illegal in a factory here. It could be working hours, it could be child labor laws, it could be ergonimics, it could be the right to collective bargaining, it could be pollution standards.
We adopted these labor standards in our country because they were a good idea (or at least most of them were...). Companies that go offshore for production are doing so because they don't want to pay for the costs of doing business. If they can get foreign labor markets and communities to absorb their costs through unregulated labor and environmental standards, they will. That's what I mean by externalization. That $4 T-shirt was subsidized by some Chinese community's willingness to let the factory dump bleach out the back door.
Saying that these folks are glad for the job and not to have to work in the rice paddies may or may not be a fair statement. Continuing to keep slaves in the 1850s was often similarly justified.
Again, because I just can't stop: this is a national security issue, not just a social issue. Our military foray into Iraq should be instructive enough. Not having the capacity to produce things we need here can be an ugly, expensive proposition in terms of dollars and human lives.
The Massachusetts textile mills moved here after a big worker's strike. It was a way of showing workers in the NE that people elsewhere would be happy to work for less. It worked too because even years and years later the migration of the mills still comes up in conversations all the time. A lot of workers in the East are still afraid to ask for higher wages or join unions.
I know first-hand that many people who are unskilled and poor would rather work for low wages than have no jobs at all. Higher wages would of course sound more attractive. Who wouldn't want to make more money? But if your cost of living or your need is very low, sometimes low wages go far. When my first husband and I started out he worked in a real sweatshop, a leather factory that was horrible, but we needed to pay the rent and feed our kids. He got out of that hellish place by moonlighting in a sign shop where they taught him to fix and clean electrical signs. Within a few years, he became an IBEW union electrician.
The good thing is eventually low paid workers understand how essential they are and they begin to demand higher wages. Even in countries that oppress people eventually they refuse to produce a lot for bosses who are unwilling to share the profits. I heard many workers in India are no longer thrilled to work for less than we make here. Corporations who moved there are now facing having to pay higher wages.
Gee, I thought it had something to do with proximity to the raw material. Let's see... would you rather pay the tonnage from Dyersburg, TN to Chattanooga or to Chicago? Hm....
Yep, those goddamned workers just weren't prepared enough to take other menial jobs. Screw 'em.
Never mind that public schools are supported by the tax base of these same communities which are supported by fewer and fewer and fewer jobs over time. As major industries fold, people are put out of work and either (a) don't pay taxes since they make nothing, or (b) move away. Then there's the ripple effect of those businesses which depended on trade with the local industry having to fold up, since no one is around to frequent them anymore. All those community banks and plumbers and electricians and carpenters and insurance agents and corner groceries and hairdressers and restaurants just don't have anyone to do business with anymore.
Screw 'em. Screw 'em all. They should have been more prepared.
____________________________
I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
You know you've been away from Knoxville too long when you didn't even know the Wal-Mart in Chapman Ford Crossing had closed. I'm guessing everything is gravitating toward John Sevier Highway and Seymour these days.
Yep, those goddamned workers just weren't prepared enough to take other menial jobs. Screw 'em.
Never mind that public schools are supported by the tax base of these same communities which are supported by fewer and fewer and fewer jobs over time. As major industries fold, people are put out of work and either (a) don't pay taxes since they make nothing, or (b) move away. Then there's the ripple effect of those businesses which depended on trade with the local industry having to fold up, since no one is around to frequent them anymore. All those community banks and plumbers and electricians and carpenters and insurance agents and corner groceries and hairdressers and restaurants just don't have anyone to do business with anymore.
Screw 'em. Screw 'em all. They should have been more prepared.
Andy- Don't put words in my mouth. It's clear from your reliance on histironics you know very little about the subject you're talking about. If you can't base your argument on facts or reality, then my advice is not to argue among educated people.
Based on your protectionist argument, the textile mills should have stayed in the North, and the South's workforce should still be in the fields. Perhaps we should have exiled Henry Ford. Do you know how many blacksmiths those new fangled automobile contraptions have put out of work?
I'll be the first to admit that public education has failed miserably in preparing kids for the future. But alot of the problem is that parents and kids won't accept the fact that education is a two way street, and that you basically get out what you put into it.
I wasn't guranteed to have the same job that my father had, or his father had, and I don't know many kids who were guaranteed their parents' jobs.
I fail to understand why, for some reason, workers from the car factories of the Rust Belt to the steel mills of Pennsylvania and to the textile mills of the Carolinas believe that economic policy should guarantee them the same employment of their ancestors.
Shrill much?
Your failure of comprehension isn't my problem, nor is it for a lack of education on my part.
Still, I can't stop you from being a dick. Welcome to the forum.
____________________________
I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
Now, as for the rest of it? I got nothin'.
Asking a Randian conservative to understand populism is like showing a dog a card trick.
____________________________
I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
Asking a Randian conservative to understand populism is like showing a dog a card trick.
In my experience, dogs drool a bit less.
Andy-
You proved my point. Rather than argue my points, you personally attack me. I thought this forum was about debate and discussion. Apparently, both concepts are beyond you.
But I will say this, if I'm a d***, than you're clearly the opposite. You said it, I didn't.
Says the guy who wanders onto this forum a mere 2 weeks ago, then insists that I stay out of arguments "among educated people."
It is to larf.
I'll grant that you weren't exactly calling me a retard, but it's pretty much the same thing, innit? Be honest, now.
You may very well consider me an idiot for my beliefs, but trust me; I know when I'm being insulted. Do yourself a favor and leave aside the high hat and pearl-clutching over "lowering the tone" of the discourse when you've got your grasp firmly fixed on the lowered bar.
Besides, that "uncivilized liberal" meme is sooooooooooo 3Q06.
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I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!
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