35 Facts About The Gutting Of America’s Industrial Might That Should Make You Very Angry

Did you know that an average of 23 manufacturing facilities were shut down every single day in the United States last year?  As World War II ended, the United States emerged as the greatest industrial power that the world has ever seen.  But now America’s industrial might is being gutted like a fish and both political parties seem totally unconcerned.  Yes, we will always need trading relationships that are fair and balanced with other countries that have economic systems that are similar to our own.  However, the truth is that most of our trading relationships are neither “fair” nor balanced.  For example, China manipulates currency rates so that Chinese products are much cheaper than they should be, they brazenly steal our technology and we let them get away with it, they deeply subsidize their most important industries and they exploit their citizens by allowing them to be paid slave labor wages.  How in the world does that resemble the “free market” at work?  Predatory nations such as China do everything that they can to distort the free market.  So why in the world would any rational economist ever recommend that we should keep trading with other countries that are cheating us blind?  After you read the facts in this article about the gutting of America’s industrial might, hopefully you will get very angry.  We need the American people to start getting very upset about these very important issues.

Both major political parties promised us that globalization would be wonderful for the U.S. economy.  Well, in the first decade of this century less net jobs were created than in any other decade since the Great Depression.

The “free trade” polices of the globalists have been an abysmal failure.  Tens of thousands of factories, millions of jobs, and hundreds of billions of dollars of our national wealth have gone to countries that engage in predatory trade practices and that exploit slave labor pools.

How in the world are American workers supposed to compete against workers that make less than a dollar an hour (with no benefits) on the other side of the globe?

If you support the version of “free trade” that most of our politicians are promoting, then you are supporting the one world economic system that the global elite are trying to establish.  In this one world economic system, American workers will increasingly be forced to compete for jobs with the cheapest labor on the planet.  This will continue to force the standard of living of American workers way, way down and it will continue to absolutely destroy the middle class.

The following are 35 facts about the gutting of America’s industrial might that should make you very angry….

#1 According to U.S. Representative Betty Sutton, America has lost an average of 15 manufacturing facilities a day over the last 10 years.

#2 Sadly, it looks like this trend is picking up momentum.  During 2010, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities a day were shut down in the United States.

#3 Since 2001, the U.S. has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities.

#4 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every $1 billion of goods that are imported from overseas.

#5 The United States has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976, and since that time the United States has run a total trade deficit of more than 7.5 trillion dollars with the rest of the world.

#6 Back in 1979, there were 19.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States.  Today, there are 11.6 million.  That represents a decline of 40 percent during a time period when our overall population experienced tremendous growth.

#7 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 38 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Ohio were lost, 42 percent of the manufacturing jobs in North Carolina were lost and 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in Michigan were lost.

#8 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of all jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#9 The United States has lost an average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

#10 The Economic Policy Institute says that since 2001 America has lost approximately 2.8 million jobs due to our trade deficit with China alone.

#11 All over the United States, road and bridge projects are being outsourced to Chinese firms.  Just check out the following excerpt from a recent ABC News article….

In New York there is a $400 million renovation project on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge.

In California, there is a $7.2 billion project to rebuild the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland.

In Alaska, there is a proposal for a $190 million bridge project.

These projects sound like steps in the right direction, but much of the work is going to Chinese government-owned firms.

“When we subsidize jobs in China, we’re not creating any wealth in the United States,” said Scott Paul, executive director for the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

#12 If you can believe it, the United States spends about 4 dollars on goods and services from China for every one dollar that China spends on goods and services from the United States.

#13 The U.S. trade deficit with China rose to an all-time record of 273.1 billion dollars in 2010.  This is the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.

#14 The U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.

#15 The new World Trade Center tower is going to be made with imported glass from China and imported steel from Germany.

#16 The new MLK memorial on the National Mall was made in China.

#17 Do you remember when the United States was the dominant manufacturer of automobiles and trucks on the globe?  Well, in 2010 the U.S. ran a trade deficit in automobiles, trucks and parts of $110 billion.

#18 In 2010, South Korea exported 12 times as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them.

#19 Even in high technology products we are being destroyed.  In 2002, the United States had a trade deficit in “advanced technology products” of $16 billion with the rest of the world.  In 2010, that number skyrocketed to $82 billion.

#20 China has now become the world’s largest exporter of high technology products.

#21 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China’s share had soared to 20 percent.

#22 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry was actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

#23 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide.  So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States?  Zero.

#24 The United States now has 10 percent fewer “middle class jobs” than it did just ten years ago.

#25 Today, American workers are bringing home a much smaller share of economic pie.  Over the past decade, the ratio of wages to GDP has been declining very steadily.

#26 Now that millions of our jobs have been exported, there aren’t nearly enough jobs left for all of us.  Right now, the average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the United States is approximately 39 weeks.

#27 There are fewer payroll jobs in the United States today than there were back in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.

#28 If you gathered together all of the workers that are “officially” unemployed in the United States today, they would constitute the 68th largest country in the world.

#29 According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

#30 As the number of good paying jobs declines, America’s middle class is rapidly shrinking.  In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.  By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in “middle class neighborhoods”.

#31 In the United States today, corporate profits are at a record high, and yet employment numbers have still not rebounded.  Obviously something is structurally wrong.

#32 The Obama administration says that there are certain things that “we don’t want to make in America” anymore.  If you don’t believe this, just check out what U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk recently told Tim Robertson of the Huffington Post about the Obama administration’s attitude toward keeping manufacturing jobs in America….

Let’s increase our competitiveness… the reality is about half of our imports, our trade deficit is because of how much oil [we import], so you take that out of the equation, you look at what percentage of it are things that frankly, we don’t want to make in America, you know, cheaper products, low-skill jobs that frankly college kids that are graduating from, you know, UC Cal and Hastings [don’t want], but what we do want is to capture those next generation jobs and build on our investments in our young people, our education infrastructure.

#33 Jeffrey Immelt, the head of Barack Obama’s highly touted “Jobs Council”, has shipped tens of thousands of good jobs out of the United States.

#34 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades.

#35 One recent poll found that 41 percent of all Americans believe that “the American Dream has been lost”.

Yes, it is fun to go out and fill up our shopping carts with “cheap products” from the other side of the world, but when we do that it destroys our jobs, our businesses and our communities.

Our addiction to cheap foreign products is incredibly self-destructive.  Essentially what we are doing is that we are ripping apart pieces of our own home and throwing them into the fire in an attempt to keep it going.  Eventually we will cannibalize our entire home.

And we never really think about what it is like for the slave laborers that make all these cheap products for us.  The following is from an article in the Telegraph about what conditions at one major Chinese manufacturing facility are like….

So far, at least 16 people have jumped from high buildings at the factory so far this year, with 12 deaths. A further 20 people were stopped by the company before they could attempt to kill themselves.

The hysteria at Longhua, where between 300,000 and 400,000 employees eat, work and sleep, has grown to such a pitch that workers have twisted Foxconn’s Chinese name so that it now sounds like: “Run to your Death”.

If we stay on this current path, even more of our formerly great manufacturing cities will turn into post-industrial hellholes.

Once upon a time, I also bought the “free trade” propaganda hook, line and sinker.  But then I opened up my mind and I learned the truth.

This nation is losing jobs, factories and wealth at a pace that is almost unbelievable.

Something desperately needs to be done.

Is there anyone out there that is willing to defend the emerging one world economic system that is stealing our jobs and killing the middle class?

If so, I challenge you to take your best shot.  Leave a comment below and explain to the rest of us why we are wrong.

We need to debate these issues because the myth of “free trade” is absolutely killing us.

Please wake up and get angry about these issues America.

How Is The Central Economic Planning That The Federal Reserve Does Different From The Central Economic Planning That Communist China Does?

Most Americans believe that we still live in a capitalist system and that free markets primarily determine the growth and development of our economy.  But is that really the case?  No, sadly it is not.  The truth is that the U.S. Federal Reserve does a tremendous amount of central economic planning.  So what makes the central economic planning that the Federal Reserve does different from the central economic planning that communist China does?  Yes, in China it is the government that does the central planning and in the United States it is a private central bank that does the central planning, but other than that are there any huge differences?  And if our economy is centrally planned, then how can we continue to claim that we still have a free market capitalist system?

Certainly China goes into greater detail in their economic planning, but that does not mean that the economic planning that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government do is not similar.

After all, free markets do not set interest rates in this country – the Federal Reserve does.

The Federal Reserve also determines what the money supply will be.

The Federal Reserve is the one that decides if inflation is too high or too low.

The Federal Reserve is the one that decides if unemployment is too high or too low.

In addition, the Federal Reserve has a tremendous amount of regulatory power over U.S. banks and the entire financial system.  Most Americans simply do not realize how much power the Federal Reserve has over our banks.  Just last year Federal Reserve officials walked into one bank in Oklahoma and demanded that they take down all the Bible verses and the Christmas buttons that the bank had been displaying.

Like the communist Chinese, the Federal Reserve is not elected and it is essentially accountable to nobody.

Like the communist Chinese, the Federal Reserve also picks winners and losers.  You see, not all financial institutions are treated equally by the Fed.  For example, some have access to the Fed’s discount window and others do not.

How is that fair?

Certainly the Federal Reserve does not do all of the central economic planning in this country.  The U.S. government loves to get involved in economic planning as well.  For example, the U.S. government has decided that there are certain types of light bulbs that we are allowed to buy and certain types of light bulbs that we are no longer going to be allowed to buy.  It doesn’t matter that the new light bulbs are far more dangerous to children or that most of us would still like to have the choice to buy the old light bulbs.

But getting back to the Federal Reserve, how “democratic” or how “capitalist” is it to have 12 unelected people sitting around a table deciding the economic direction of this country?

The truth is that we live in a system that simply does not trust free markets and that believes that our economy needs to be “managed”.

I have to admit that my thinking on these issues was stimulated when I recently read an excellent article by Vitaliy Katsenelson in which he asked the following question….

It is a fundamental tenant of American capitalism that central planning of economies doesn’t work in the long term, whether in Soviet Union historically or in China today. But I often wonder: How is the Fed’s Board of Governors – the proverbial 12 guys in a room – any different than the 24 guys in a room who make up the Chinese politburo?

Is Katsenelson not right about this?

How in the world is the Fed’s Board of Governors all that much different from the Chinese Politburo?

In both cases, a group of unelected elitists makes the major economic decisions for all the rest of us.

That certainly does not sound like “capitalism” to me.

Would the free markets really produce worse results for our economy than the Federal Reserve does?

Would America ever have gone through the Great Depression if the Federal Reserve had not been created in 1913?

Would we have experienced the financial crash of 2008 if the policies of Greenspan and Bernanke had not created tremendous bubbles in the financial system?

Would the U.S. dollar have lost over 95 percent of its value since 1913 if the Federal Reserve was not around to constantly inflate our currency?

Would the U.S. government have the largest debt in the history of the world if we were not using the debt-based monetary system imposed upon us by the elite international bankers?

Now that the total debt of the U.S. government is $14,228,193,126,138.72, it is getting really hard to deny that the federal government is drowning in debt.

Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher unknowingly indicted the very system he serves when he recently made the following statement….

“If we continue down on the path on which the fiscal authorities put us, we will become insolvent, the question is when.”

If the Federal Reserve had never been created, and the U.S. government had been issuing debt-free currency all this time, it is entirely conceivable that we would have absolutely no federal government debt at this point.

But defenders of the Federal Reserve tell us that if not for the brilliant people over at the Fed, America would be an economic basket case by now.

Oh really?

In case anyone has not noticed, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a very long track record of incompetence.  Nearly every major judgment that he has made since taking over that position has been wrong.  If one of us could go down the street and appoint the manager of our local Dairy Queen as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, it is very doubtful that person could do a worse job than Bernanke has done.

Unfortunately, most Americans do not understand this.  Most Americans are still convinced that “the greatest economy on earth” will just keep roaring along forever.  Most Americans are spending and partying as if everything is going to be just fine.

Sadly, as Richard Daughty recently pointed out, most Americans will not wake up and realize just how bad our economic problems really are until it is too late….

In fact, to use an analogy, the economy is like a group of overpaid people, milking the government for every dollar and benefit they can get, on a chartered airplane that has been certified as “unsafe,” where one minute everybody is having fun, drunk as skunks, laughing and telling dirty jokes, and the next minute the plane is plunging out of the sky, out of fuel, one wing is in flames, the engines are dead, the entire electrical system is kaput, and, worst of all, the beverage cart is completely empty of cold beer and those little bottles of different kinds of tasty liquors. Uh-oh!

Most Americans have become so “dumbed down” that they still won’t even understand what is happening even after the economy has collapsed.  Newsweek recently found that 63 percent of Americans do not know how many justices are on the Supreme Court and 29 percent of Americans cannot even name the current Vice-President.

America today is rapidly degenerating in many of the same ways that the Roman Empire once did.  Tens of millions of Americans are lazy, slothful and absolutely addicted to entertainment.  It is frightening to see just how many Americans did not show any empathy during the recent crisis in Japan or when we started launching missiles on Libya.  The following mini-documentary that was recently posted on YouTube does a beautiful job of making this point….

So is there any hope for America?

Let us hope that people wake up, because there are going to be even more economic disasters coming our way.  Right now a large percentage of the American people don’t even know enough to realize what the real problems are, much less what the solutions may be.

When most Americans talk about economics, they instantly start blaming “Obama” or “Bush” and a lot of them never even bring up the Federal Reserve.

But it is the Federal Reserve that has the most power over our economy.

If Americans want to blame someone in Washington D.C. for the economic mess that we are in, the number one culprit is the Federal Reserve.

Yes, Obama, Bush and virtually every member of Congress has played a role in our economic nightmare as well.  But it is the Federal Reserve that is actually “managing” our economy.

We would have been much better off if we had allowed free markets to “manage” our economy all this time, but very few Americans actually seem to still believe in free markets anymore.