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Yes, I completely agree with you and considering Citigroup and the financial sector also offshore outsource jobs in droves, I think we need to tie taxpayer money to jobs in the U.S. for U.S. citizens, perm residents.
I'm only advocating for an immediate short term fix but they need to do so much more and not just for the auto industry, for state, local government jobs.
I notice a lot of people don't see over to the right, in the upper right hand column is a place to register and log in.
The anonymous or not logged in comments are just a convenience, but for those posting comments quite a bit, if you create an account and then log in, you will have your own account and you can also track your own comments.
That makes it much easier for you to see who replied to your comment so you can respond.
There is a host of features that will appear when are not available to those users who do not have an account and are not logged in.
After watching the "Big 3" U.S. automakers (Ford, GM & Chrysler) offshore outsource and even utilize foreign replacement workers in the U.S. as a result of outsourcing deals with companies like TATA/TCS, I am more than a bit cynical when the execs, pols and union leaders wave the American flag and urge us to support "American companies" and "American jobs". It's not as simple as that.
I want to know if GM, Ford & Chrysler will commit to keeping middle class jobs in the U.S. Or, do they plan to *continue* to follow the paradigm of Honda and Toyota whose U.S. "assembly plants" put together parts manufactured offshore by foreign workers? If that's the case, the Big 3 are "American" only in their nation of incorporation and corporate history: I really don't care where their headquarters offices are.
In fact, if the "Big 3" are going to move most manufacturing/production/engineering out of the U.S. or into the hands of imported "guest workers", I hope they move their headquarters offshore to make it abundantly clear to all Americans they aren't *American* -- just foreigners who want to exploit the American market.
Yes, the imperative of keeping jobs in the U.S. and forestalling the end of a real industrial/manufacturing/engineering base is compelling.
Yet, I weary of the lies and distortions the free traders and labor arbitrage propagandists have sold Americans since Bill Clinton's administration. (Yes, Democrat politicians and their allies in the DLC bear tremendous responsibility for this present mess; it isn't just the creation George Bush. That myth needs to be stamped out for us to get on with *real change*.)
At times I really do wonder if perhaps Americans would finally awaken to the lies of the political, academic, media and business classes if they had to endure the pain and devastation of a gut wrenching depression...
Please don't misunderstand me: I am neither advocating a "bailout" nor opposition to a "bailout". I am presenting the view of a frustrated citizen who has sought constructive political change and seen first-hand the grotesque hypocrisy of both Democrat and Republican politicians. I have ceased to believe that the majority of elected politicians will act in the best interests of nation and citizenry. And, I am not in the least impressed by most in the management classes where patriotism is used as a subterfuge to gain money and advantage.
Rural communities, farmers, a lot of them really do need trucks.
So, I wouldn't blast the Rav4 or the smaller trucks and they need to make a natural gas powered trucks and 18 wheelers because there are many jobs and places you plain need that level of power.
and now someone doesn't need a monstrosity to go to the grocery but they also do not need a monstrosity house.
There is more than out person absolutely outraged because (and this is true) GM has been building billion dollar plants in both China and India, offshore outsourcing more and more (has been for years) but including R&D and selling AEROS for $1200USD (how can you not lose money even in the Chinese currency?)
So, there is also bad trade deals to blame and I'm beginning to suspect these companies destroyed job security careers so badly with offshore outsourcing, we are now basically imploding like a hollowed shell.
I still do not have an answer how GM could be in the state it is in, with so many plants, each over a 1 billion dollar investment, being built overseas and other facilities.
That is pure bad management and that's just for starters.
I agree but you would be surprised who reads this blog, very surprised. Just yesterday CBS News referenced the site and frankly people need to sound off, we're all about sounding off and trying to turn this economic insanity around.
BTW...Yes, I might register. I just don't know how much I will post in the future. I am just angry and sounding off. I am not a pessimist by nature, but false optimism will only hurt the unaware even more, if the truth is ignored.
One of the major reasons why this "recession" is totally different than 2001 is because:
1- We can't lower interest rates to spur on housing. There are very few qualified buyers. Many have ruined credit due to walking away from their old home.
2- The housing market is already saturated with vacant homes. There is no reason that homebuilders will substantial increase housing starts with the glut we currently have.
3- Even for the lucky ones who have good credit and didn't walk away from their home, the lending is very tight. Many qualified people are being turned away.
4- Loss of retirement and stock money will restrict spending.
5- Personal debt and debt to equity ratio are the worse since the 1940. People are strapped for cash.
6- As you said, outsourcing has destroyed all chances of a healthy job market.
7- We don't produce anything like we used to. That is done in Japan, China, Mexico, etc.
We are in deep poop. No recovery for years to come.
This could be a little bit OT, but I was just wasting my time over at ALFRED (I'm a geek, I like numbers), where I discovered that NFORBRES has undergone a rather remarkable transformation. It's been mired in negative numbers since last December. At the beginning of November it was -$150. Today its +$250 billion. Talk about being whipsawed! That's a $400 billion swing happening almost instantaneously. Like the banks all of a sudden have excess money to lend? (we won't mention the TAF, or Maiden Lanes I or III. Shshsh, that's a secret). The monkeys have the key to the treasury and they're throwing stuff everywhere, hoping something will stick. I'd say this was inflationary, but the size of the move is huge. They're really try to prop this thing up...and failing miserably. Looks broken to me.
No doubt! The middle class is up the creek without a paddle. The majority of the middle class has the bulk of their wealth in 401K (stocks) and in their home equity. Both have gone down substantially for most. The outsourcing is way out of control. Unfortunately, those job will be gone forever, unless legislation is pass to curb this destructive practice. The fact is...greed will keep such legislation from happening.
Here is a little fact on outsourcing. Yes, my blood boils over this. A few company execs get rich, while the average guy trying to feed his family gets laid off.
To build adequate urban rail transit systems in the 39 largest U.S. cities, where nearly half of all Americans live, is going to require $4.433 trillion. That is just the construction costs – it does not even include the cost of new rolling stock and maintenance rail vehicles.
It is a project that will create over 100 million new jobs.
I began by assuming a desideratum of having a rail transit line no more than 2.5 miles from any point in an urban area. That is, if you took a square of urban area five miles on each side, we want to have a rail transit line running directly across the middle of that square. Slice that 25 square mile area into one mile strips, and you get one mile of rail transit line for every five square miles of urban area, or a density of 0.2 mile of rail transit line for every square mile.
Converting square miles to square kilometers, and miles to kilometers, what we are looking for is a density of 0.124 mi of rail transit line for every square kilometer of urban area. I needed to convert to metric because I wanted to be able to compare U.S. cities with cities in Europe and elsewhere, and for the more basic reason that the statistics available for urban rail transit systems, at both Wikipedia’s List of Urban Rail Systems by Length and at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_rail_systems_by_length amazing www.urbanrail.net provides statistics in kilometers. www.urbanrail.net
The statistics for land area for major cities in the U.S. is found at http://factfinder.census.gov Also, the primary Wikipedia entry for each city provides the population and land area, including for cities around the world.
My theory was that in order to achieve the same proportional levels of transit rail ridership you find in the great European cities, you need to provide similar densities of transit service and infrastructure. I was surprised to find that my desired density is met by New York City, which has 368 kilometers of rail transit line for a land area of 1,141.64 square kilometers, or a density of exactly 0.1245 kilometers of rail transit line per square kilometer. Perhaps I have stumbled upon a statistical artifact of some competent city planning authority for New York from a by-gone era? Someone with some knowledge of the history of New York urban rail transit might be able to provide an answer.
Finding that New York City meets the desired rail transit density is also a confirmation of the validity of the desideratum because New York City is unique among American cities in the high percentage of its population that uses its urban rail transit system. Over 80 of the passenger route miles in New York City are carried by the rail transit system. These numbers do not include bus ridership.
The case of New York City also presents what is probably the most significant problem with my study: the lack of a clear definition of what is included within an urban area. At first I began by using the population and area statistics provided in the Wikipedia profiles of each city, which usually include population and area for both the core city, and the urban area. The amount of rail kilometers of new line required for each city is based on land area, not total area, which includes water. For some cities, such as New York City or Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Virginia, the amount of total city area under water is very significant. For many of these, it appears to be because the municipal boundaries are extended into neighboring bodies of water. For example, the Milwaukee-Waukesha, Wisc., PMSA is listed as having a total area of 3,322.27, of which 1,862.38 square miles are water, or 56.1 percent, the highest percentage of the 29 cities. The Cleveland-Lorain-Elyria, Ohio PMSA has a total area of 5,347.31 square miles, of which 2,640.47 square miles are water, or 49.4 percent, the second highest percentage. The city with the third largest percentage of water area is Norfolk--Virginia Beach--Newport News, VA--NC MSA, which has a total area of 3,586.20 square miles, of which 1,237.71 are water, or 34.5%. The next largest water areas by percent are Chicago, IL PMSA at 24.6 percent; Tampa--St. Petersburg--Clearwater, FL MSA at 23.3 percent; New York City at 19.3 percent; Baltimore, Md. and the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA CMSA both at 16.0 percent; and Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA MSA at 15.9 percent. Boston, MA-NH PMSA is 14.7% water; Los Angeles--Long Beach, CA PMSA is 14.5 percent; Orlando, FL MSA is 13.0 percent; and Seattle--Bellevue--Everett, WA PMSA is 11.9 percent. All the rest are ten percent or less of water area. The city with the smallest percentage of water area is Phoenix-Mesa, Arizona, which has 14,598.36 square miles of which only 25.63 are water, or 0.2 percent. The next two lowest are Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif. PMSA and Denver, Col., which both have 0.5 percent of their total area listed as water.
This table http://www.apta.com/research/stats/ridership/uzapmiles.cfm Annual Unlinked Passenger Trips and Passenger Miles for Urbanized Areas Over 1,000,000 Population, Fiscal Year 2004, shows that the more dense a rail transit system is, the more it will be used. For example, passenger miles in Chicago are some 30 percent higher than Los Angeles, despite the larger population in L.A. Particularly telling is a comparison of Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC – each with relatively much more developed rail transit systems – with Miami, Dallas, and Houston.
What I found is we need to build 70,926.7 km of lines at a total cost of $4.433 trillion. This is based on $62.5 million for the 2004 Metro Gold line 9.6 km extension in Los Angeles, which used 2,604 tons of steel per km. That means my program requires 184,704,995 tons of steel, or about two years of U.S. steel shipments, probably about THREE years of U.S. steel production.
If anyone would like to do similar studies for other infrastructure needs, or know of such studies, please let me know.
I think the reality of squeezing the middle class bone dry is coming home to roost.
Will, why not just register (upper right hand column) and log in? I notice you are posting a lot of comments and all of those letters you have to type and so on go away when you're logged in.
Create an Account and Log in. All sorts of features appear including a comment tracker so you can easily find the replies to your comments.
You also don't go to a moderation queue.
Yes, I completely agree with you and considering Citigroup and the financial sector also offshore outsource jobs in droves, I think we need to tie taxpayer money to jobs in the U.S. for U.S. citizens, perm residents.
I'm only advocating for an immediate short term fix but they need to do so much more and not just for the auto industry, for state, local government jobs.
I agree with you and to me, the financial sector bail out is pure stealing from the taxpayer at this point.
There are so many things that need to change with corporations and this is a golden opportunity to pass those changes.
I also think since they won't give any money from this to the auto bail out, it should just how badly it stinks.
Then on who gets the money on that one I completely agree.
They had better weed out the speculators, the irresponsible from the predatory lenders and ARM option mortgages.
I notice a lot of people don't see over to the right, in the upper right hand column is a place to register and log in.
The anonymous or not logged in comments are just a convenience, but for those posting comments quite a bit, if you create an account and then log in, you will have your own account and you can also track your own comments.
That makes it much easier for you to see who replied to your comment so you can respond.
There is a host of features that will appear when are not available to those users who do not have an account and are not logged in.
I highly recommend it!
No surprise. I never believed Obama was anything more than another bought politician. The only change coming in January is a change of faces.
After watching the "Big 3" U.S. automakers (Ford, GM & Chrysler) offshore outsource and even utilize foreign replacement workers in the U.S. as a result of outsourcing deals with companies like TATA/TCS, I am more than a bit cynical when the execs, pols and union leaders wave the American flag and urge us to support "American companies" and "American jobs". It's not as simple as that.
I want to know if GM, Ford & Chrysler will commit to keeping middle class jobs in the U.S. Or, do they plan to *continue* to follow the paradigm of Honda and Toyota whose U.S. "assembly plants" put together parts manufactured offshore by foreign workers? If that's the case, the Big 3 are "American" only in their nation of incorporation and corporate history: I really don't care where their headquarters offices are.
In fact, if the "Big 3" are going to move most manufacturing/production/engineering out of the U.S. or into the hands of imported "guest workers", I hope they move their headquarters offshore to make it abundantly clear to all Americans they aren't *American* -- just foreigners who want to exploit the American market.
Yes, the imperative of keeping jobs in the U.S. and forestalling the end of a real industrial/manufacturing/engineering base is compelling.
Yet, I weary of the lies and distortions the free traders and labor arbitrage propagandists have sold Americans since Bill Clinton's administration. (Yes, Democrat politicians and their allies in the DLC bear tremendous responsibility for this present mess; it isn't just the creation George Bush. That myth needs to be stamped out for us to get on with *real change*.)
At times I really do wonder if perhaps Americans would finally awaken to the lies of the political, academic, media and business classes if they had to endure the pain and devastation of a gut wrenching depression...
Please don't misunderstand me: I am neither advocating a "bailout" nor opposition to a "bailout". I am presenting the view of a frustrated citizen who has sought constructive political change and seen first-hand the grotesque hypocrisy of both Democrat and Republican politicians. I have ceased to believe that the majority of elected politicians will act in the best interests of nation and citizenry. And, I am not in the least impressed by most in the management classes where patriotism is used as a subterfuge to gain money and advantage.
Thanks for the suggestion. A South Florida Culinary Adventure is available at Amazon.com and through local bookstores. It can also be purchased directly from the publisher at
http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ASouthFloridaCulinaryAdventure
Alice Shapiro
Last thing I want is my tax dollars propping up foreign plants. The UAW President said something similar to what you just said during his testimony.
I meant to say I live in Chicago, not I like in Chicago.
Rural communities, farmers, a lot of them really do need trucks.
So, I wouldn't blast the Rav4 or the smaller trucks and they need to make a natural gas powered trucks and 18 wheelers because there are many jobs and places you plain need that level of power.
and now someone doesn't need a monstrosity to go to the grocery but they also do not need a monstrosity house.
There is more than out person absolutely outraged because (and this is true) GM has been building billion dollar plants in both China and India, offshore outsourcing more and more (has been for years) but including R&D and selling AEROS for $1200USD (how can you not lose money even in the Chinese currency?)
So, there is also bad trade deals to blame and I'm beginning to suspect these companies destroyed job security careers so badly with offshore outsourcing, we are now basically imploding like a hollowed shell.
I still do not have an answer how GM could be in the state it is in, with so many plants, each over a 1 billion dollar investment, being built overseas and other facilities.
That is pure bad management and that's just for starters.
I agree but you would be surprised who reads this blog, very surprised. Just yesterday CBS News referenced the site and frankly people need to sound off, we're all about sounding off and trying to turn this economic insanity around.
NFORBRES for those who don't know.
Hey man, we do numbers here.
I'll even add LaTex if people will use it.
BTW...Yes, I might register. I just don't know how much I will post in the future. I am just angry and sounding off. I am not a pessimist by nature, but false optimism will only hurt the unaware even more, if the truth is ignored.
One of the major reasons why this "recession" is totally different than 2001 is because:
1- We can't lower interest rates to spur on housing. There are very few qualified buyers. Many have ruined credit due to walking away from their old home.
2- The housing market is already saturated with vacant homes. There is no reason that homebuilders will substantial increase housing starts with the glut we currently have.
3- Even for the lucky ones who have good credit and didn't walk away from their home, the lending is very tight. Many qualified people are being turned away.
4- Loss of retirement and stock money will restrict spending.
5- Personal debt and debt to equity ratio are the worse since the 1940. People are strapped for cash.
6- As you said, outsourcing has destroyed all chances of a healthy job market.
7- We don't produce anything like we used to. That is done in Japan, China, Mexico, etc.
We are in deep poop. No recovery for years to come.
This could be a little bit OT, but I was just wasting my time over at ALFRED (I'm a geek, I like numbers), where I discovered that NFORBRES has undergone a rather remarkable transformation. It's been mired in negative numbers since last December. At the beginning of November it was -$150. Today its +$250 billion. Talk about being whipsawed! That's a $400 billion swing happening almost instantaneously. Like the banks all of a sudden have excess money to lend? (we won't mention the TAF, or Maiden Lanes I or III. Shshsh, that's a secret). The monkeys have the key to the treasury and they're throwing stuff everywhere, hoping something will stick. I'd say this was inflationary, but the size of the move is huge. They're really try to prop this thing up...and failing miserably. Looks broken to me.
No doubt! The middle class is up the creek without a paddle. The majority of the middle class has the bulk of their wealth in 401K (stocks) and in their home equity. Both have gone down substantially for most. The outsourcing is way out of control. Unfortunately, those job will be gone forever, unless legislation is pass to curb this destructive practice. The fact is...greed will keep such legislation from happening.
Here is a little fact on outsourcing. Yes, my blood boils over this. A few company execs get rich, while the average guy trying to feed his family gets laid off.
<<>>
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_701702628_2/Outsourcing.html
To build adequate urban rail transit systems in the 39 largest U.S. cities, where nearly half of all Americans live, is going to require $4.433 trillion. That is just the construction costs – it does not even include the cost of new rolling stock and maintenance rail vehicles.
It is a project that will create over 100 million new jobs.
I began by assuming a desideratum of having a rail transit line no more than 2.5 miles from any point in an urban area. That is, if you took a square of urban area five miles on each side, we want to have a rail transit line running directly across the middle of that square. Slice that 25 square mile area into one mile strips, and you get one mile of rail transit line for every five square miles of urban area, or a density of 0.2 mile of rail transit line for every square mile.
Converting square miles to square kilometers, and miles to kilometers, what we are looking for is a density of 0.124 mi of rail transit line for every square kilometer of urban area. I needed to convert to metric because I wanted to be able to compare U.S. cities with cities in Europe and elsewhere, and for the more basic reason that the statistics available for urban rail transit systems, at both Wikipedia’s List of Urban Rail Systems by Length and at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_rail_systems_by_length amazing www.urbanrail.net provides statistics in kilometers. www.urbanrail.net
The statistics for land area for major cities in the U.S. is found at http://factfinder.census.gov Also, the primary Wikipedia entry for each city provides the population and land area, including for cities around the world.
My theory was that in order to achieve the same proportional levels of transit rail ridership you find in the great European cities, you need to provide similar densities of transit service and infrastructure. I was surprised to find that my desired density is met by New York City, which has 368 kilometers of rail transit line for a land area of 1,141.64 square kilometers, or a density of exactly 0.1245 kilometers of rail transit line per square kilometer. Perhaps I have stumbled upon a statistical artifact of some competent city planning authority for New York from a by-gone era? Someone with some knowledge of the history of New York urban rail transit might be able to provide an answer.
Finding that New York City meets the desired rail transit density is also a confirmation of the validity of the desideratum because New York City is unique among American cities in the high percentage of its population that uses its urban rail transit system. Over 80 of the passenger route miles in New York City are carried by the rail transit system. These numbers do not include bus ridership.
The case of New York City also presents what is probably the most significant problem with my study: the lack of a clear definition of what is included within an urban area. At first I began by using the population and area statistics provided in the Wikipedia profiles of each city, which usually include population and area for both the core city, and the urban area. The amount of rail kilometers of new line required for each city is based on land area, not total area, which includes water. For some cities, such as New York City or Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Virginia, the amount of total city area under water is very significant. For many of these, it appears to be because the municipal boundaries are extended into neighboring bodies of water. For example, the Milwaukee-Waukesha, Wisc., PMSA is listed as having a total area of 3,322.27, of which 1,862.38 square miles are water, or 56.1 percent, the highest percentage of the 29 cities. The Cleveland-Lorain-Elyria, Ohio PMSA has a total area of 5,347.31 square miles, of which 2,640.47 square miles are water, or 49.4 percent, the second highest percentage. The city with the third largest percentage of water area is Norfolk--Virginia Beach--Newport News, VA--NC MSA, which has a total area of 3,586.20 square miles, of which 1,237.71 are water, or 34.5%. The next largest water areas by percent are Chicago, IL PMSA at 24.6 percent; Tampa--St. Petersburg--Clearwater, FL MSA at 23.3 percent; New York City at 19.3 percent; Baltimore, Md. and the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA CMSA both at 16.0 percent; and Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA MSA at 15.9 percent. Boston, MA-NH PMSA is 14.7% water; Los Angeles--Long Beach, CA PMSA is 14.5 percent; Orlando, FL MSA is 13.0 percent; and Seattle--Bellevue--Everett, WA PMSA is 11.9 percent. All the rest are ten percent or less of water area. The city with the smallest percentage of water area is Phoenix-Mesa, Arizona, which has 14,598.36 square miles of which only 25.63 are water, or 0.2 percent. The next two lowest are Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif. PMSA and Denver, Col., which both have 0.5 percent of their total area listed as water.
This table http://www.apta.com/research/stats/ridership/uzapmiles.cfm Annual Unlinked Passenger Trips and Passenger Miles for Urbanized Areas Over 1,000,000 Population, Fiscal Year 2004, shows that the more dense a rail transit system is, the more it will be used. For example, passenger miles in Chicago are some 30 percent higher than Los Angeles, despite the larger population in L.A. Particularly telling is a comparison of Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC – each with relatively much more developed rail transit systems – with Miami, Dallas, and Houston.
Here is another source for costs, but for light rail only: http://www.publicpurpose.com/ut-lrt2001.htm Light Rail Costs Approach $70 Million per Mile in 2000
What I found is we need to build 70,926.7 km of lines at a total cost of $4.433 trillion. This is based on $62.5 million for the 2004 Metro Gold line 9.6 km extension in Los Angeles, which used 2,604 tons of steel per km. That means my program requires 184,704,995 tons of steel, or about two years of U.S. steel shipments, probably about THREE years of U.S. steel production.
If anyone would like to do similar studies for other infrastructure needs, or know of such studies, please let me know.
Has some great research in this area. I listed his papers on our studies page.
What I especially like about him is he sticks to the real statistics in his analysis.
One of those truly innovative policy, analysis people who of course gets ignored in D.C. and who should not be ignored!
Why am I not surprised with no restructuring, no change in management, just propping up a failed business model as if there is nothing wrong.
This is good news. Could Biden be the new Angler. Joe Biden the reconstructive capitilist. Dick Cheney - the disaster capitalist.
Freedom is not free. Freedom requires responsibility.
Phil
I think the reality of squeezing the middle class bone dry is coming home to roost.
Will, why not just register (upper right hand column) and log in? I notice you are posting a lot of comments and all of those letters you have to type and so on go away when you're logged in.
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