Wichita, Kansas is the capital of civilian aviation in the US. Cessna, Beechcraft, Learjet, all are made in Wichita. But the recession, tight credit and popular outrage at executives traveling on private planes brought the airplane business in Wichita to a halt.
Further west in Long Beach, California, Boeing is fighting for new orders to keep their C17 heavy lifter cargo jet manufacturing plant open. Congress is currently debating a new military procurement bill that includes 10 new C17s. If the order is not forthcoming, production will end in two years, the plant will close and jobs will disappear.
What kind of jobs? Jobs that drove the American economy in the 20th century! The Wall Street Journal reports today that $30 an hour jobs are going away in Wichita and workers worry that even with two jobs they will not make what they make now. What we are seeing today, looms on the horizon in Long Beach. These jobs, when they go, will not be back in the USA. They will be in China, Mexico, or elsewhere, but not here.
This is a sad thing. Business schools have been teaching globalization for a generation. As a result companies have been exporting jobs so Americans can buy cheaper toasters, coffee makers, and refrigerators. Foreign auto makers building plants in America may have offset the sting of these lost manufacturing jobs for a time. It appears the information age, the age of virtual manufacturing is here. The time when we all ‘flip hamburgers’ for a living appears to be closer than we thought.
In a capitalist economy progress comes at the cost of the destruction of older enterprises. The well used example of buggy whip manufacturers and candle makers dying to make way for the automobile makers, or light bulb makers are familiar to all.
However, we do not live in a capitalist economy anymore, rather a government managed one. As we watch the decline of America’s aircraft manufacturing infrastructure, one wonders what will take it’s place?
While this is deeply worrisome on many levels, one has to believe there is something out there that will be the new ‘airplane’ manufactured in America with $30 an hour jobs and exported around the world.
American citizens ought to be cheering him on. He’s shining a very bright light on all the awful, and disgraceful things our government has done and continues to do, all around the World!! Things, that may end up biting us regular folk in the ass, while others hide safely in their undisclosed locations, sitting atop piles of cash!! We scream and shout about how awesome we are….looks like our shine, is looking a little dull, right now! We behave like a kid who got his hand caught in the cookie jar, with that “what…what did i do?” look on our face. We all shout about wanting the truth, about what our “leaders,” are up to in our name….but when it’s laid out in front of us, we refuse read, see or believe it. Yes, there’s a country that’s a laughing stock around the World, and it’s not Sweden!!
The Rs were ready for Hillary in 2008. Every slanderous accusation that they accumulated for over 15 years would have been thrown at her and would still be reverberating courtesy of FNC. She might still have won, but assuming that she would now be in better shape than Obama is speculation. Would HillaryCare The Sequel fare any better than ObamaCare in the Fox driven cesspool that passes for political debate? And without the votes on Election Day, how would she be stronger?
The FCC sold out to the big corporations a few days ago with their new Internet policy decision that effectively kills net neutrality, so why not this too? It’s such a spineless FCC. I wish it was a GOP run FCC cause at least these decisions would be expected. It hurts more when it’s a democratic FCC, and they get pushed around easier than a feather in the wind.
Perhaps he can “Compromise” away something else important to us
People will differ with me, but I think that the President is trying to look out for least of us here at the expense of fiscal discipline. You can armchair quarterback about how this fight should’ve gone down, but the GOP has made clear that they don’t care about spending has long as they get their goodies. I’m keeping the faith for now and I predict you will see the fight renewed in 2012.
Well, sure, some kind of legislation is needed, but it’s the kind that involves asking the rich to pay more to support the stable, educated, free society that allowed them to make all that money in a genteel fashion. And that takes more guts than I’ve seen from anyone in Washington, except maybe Bernie Sanders.