Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam 107 Replies latest social current

• 

  Anony Mous

  @joey: name me an example of a product that is absolutely not at all manufacturable or being manufactured in the US today.

  TAA compliance requires most goods the government buys are manufactured or substantially modified in the US. Expand that base.

  There are loads of things that without China subsidizing their exports would be too expensive to ship across the oceans. Placing a reciprocal tariff on those things is going to reduce that heavy, unnecessary shipping which is a large cause of carbon emissions.

  People have long complained that certain products are being sourced in the US, shipped to China, assembled, shipped back to the US where the US then pays China through their tariffs. And there is plenty of that going on around the world to evade taxes and export controls.

  What will end is being able to get the cheap junk from China that fills up our landfills. I don’t know why one of the richest countries per capita should not get more durable products.
• 

  Rivergang

  What many people don’t understand is that the “good” jobs aren’t coming back.

  Very good point, and one which seems to be entirely missed during this entire exchange. The process actually began some 60 years ago with the introduction of the Programmable Logic Controller (or PLC), and has only intensified ever since.

  As Hoser points out, it has now got to the stage where even the service industries are affected.

  Any production facility that is not now fully automated is as good as dead in the water, and automation has even progressed into the stores and transport side of operations. (Gone are the days of having to "wake up the storeman" every time your needed to requisition parts or materials!)

  Driverless haul trucks have been a reality in the mining industry for over ten years now, thus eliminating what used to be a small army of highly paid heavy equipment operators. And the list goes on!
• 

  AnnaNana

  Two things to keep in mind: (1) the law of diminishing returns and, (2) inaccurate reporting.

  Rivergang said: "Any production facility that is not now fully automated is as good as dead in the water, and automation has even progressed into the stores and transport side of operations."
  

  Someone with "boots on the ground" may not agree with you.

  Compare the parts made by the same company at a plant in the US to a plant overseas. Compare the detail work by a skilled laborer on a specialty part to that of a mass output facility. Compare the fail rates, the rejects, the returns. Just because one facility with fully automated production has a high output rate does not mean those goods produced are 100% useful. The numbers can be manipulated to show a false impression.

  A more useful analysis will include a broader outlook.

  Tech is limited and becoming overly reliant on it is unwise. The human component of life and work is integral to success of the earth. This "blossom" of tech will not last. It is not sustainable, just like the various government decrees are not sustainable.
• 

  Rivergang

  AnnaNana,

  Someone with "boots on the ground" may not agree with you.

  Despite what you are there insinuating, I, too, speak from first-hand experience (or "boots on the ground", as you put it).

  During the 47 years I was involved with electrical power generation, I saw firsthand how automation transformed that industry by an astonishing degree. When I first entered it back in 1978, power station control rooms had to be manned continuously. This required three 8-hour shifts, each with at least three operating personnel, just to get through a single 24-hour period. In fact, becoming a power station operator was an attractive career choice for electricians, fitters or instrument technicians who wanted to progress "off the tools".

  However, well before the year 2000, these same power stations had become totally deserted for 16 hours of the day; and with only maintenance staff being present during the remainder of the time. Almost all the production operator jobs had been eliminated by "Tech" (in the form of PLCs, Distributed Control Systems and SCADA).

  Tech is limited and becoming overly reliant on it is unwise. The human component of life and work is integral to success of the earth

  Not so, it gets rid of the most unreliable part of the entire process - the error prone human operator.

  This "blossom" of tech will not last. It is not sustainable

  Back in the day, there was plenty of that sort of talk going on, too! None of it, though, proved to be correct.
• 

  truthlover123

  Table of Contents

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    • Understanding the Basics of Cross-Border Healthcare
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• 

  Anony Mous

  @truthlover: Please note that what you are proposing here is illegal and risky and you would not be covered under Canadian healthcare cost. Additionally you would not have any recourse against either your provider or the pharmacy or the pharmaceutical company for ANY issues that crop up (wrong dose, wrong product, manufacturing defects etc).

  Unlike Canadians on public healthcare, you would pay full non-insurance price for those medications which between that and the travel and the fact you're facing thousands of dollars in fines and court costs, is unlikely to make it worth the trip - I've just reviewed some common medication and sometimes it's slightly more expensive, sometimes slightly less expensive than the non-insured cost in the US, but in the US you would still be covered by insurance or some discount program like GoodRx.
• 

  AnnaNana

  Rivergang said:

  Despite what you are there insinuating, I, too, speak from first-hand experience (or "boots on the ground", as you put it).

  During the 47 years I was involved with electrical power generation, I saw firsthand how automation transformed that industry by an astonishing degree. When I first entered it back in 1978, power station control rooms had to be manned continuously. This required three 8-hour shifts, each with at least three operating personnel, just to get through a single 24-hour period. In fact, becoming a power station operator was an attractive career choice for electricians, fitters or instrument technicians who wanted to progress "off the tools".

  However, well before the year 2000, these same power stations had become totally deserted for 16 hours of the day; and with only maintenance staff being present during the remainder of the time. Almost all the production operator jobs had been eliminated by "Tech" (in the form of PLCs, Distributed Control Systems and SCADA).

  AnnaNana said:

  Tech is limited and becoming overly reliant on it is unwise. The human component of life and work is integral to success of the earth

  Rivergang said:

  Not so, it gets rid of the most unreliable part of the entire process - the error prone human operator.

  AnnaNana said:

  This "blossom" of tech will not last. It is not sustainable

  Rivergang said:

  Back in the day, there was plenty of that sort of talk going on, too! None of it, though, proved to be correct.

  I appreciate your viewpoint, and I am thankful that you explained it. I do not doubt that your understanding of industry is valid as far as your experience goes, especially when viewed from the decades of change you have witnessed firsthand.

  My comment is more from the point of view of hearing managers at GE complain about how parts from one plant compared to another overseas are completely different, and they still get sent out because of corruption in the industry, then the next plant has to send things back, or people look the other way while less-than-ideal final products are pushed out despite knowing the part is not up to standard. Then multiply that kind of thing by a zillion.

  When you have people working on opposite sides of the earth making different pieces of parts for some project that those people will never get to be a part of, there is a lack of "heart" put into it. Whether a person is a tech or a machine operator or a middle manager or something else is not what I am trying to highlight here. It's the lack of joy that a person finds in their work when they are not working for themself, to enjoy the fruit of their own labors.

  It's not sustainable for the human family to live that way. To live that way is a form of tyranny or slavery. It's not how we're meant to live.

  I am trying to explain this while not taking a short-sighted view. I am not talking about several decades or several hundred years. I'm stepping back and looking at this from the point of view of eternity.

  The tech industry does not consider the "human" side of people. The heart, the inner person, the soft areas, the desires and goals of families and societies.

  Various "reports" can be generated to make numbers look appealing for those who want to try and twist things and say "oh, tech is the answer to everything!" But tech has just become another idol, a false god, a cold piece of glass/plastic/element that cannot save anyone.

  Commercialism is a form of rape. It rapes the planet and disregards her children. Tech is part of commercialism, and as such it will be ended by the Redeemer of earth's kids.

  He has a better way, and it is coming.
• 

  Balaamsass2

  ""Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana. "

  "The Tariff Act of 1930, also known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, was a protectionist trade measure signed into law in the United States by President Herbert Hoover on June 17, 1930. Named after its chief congressional sponsors, Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley, the act raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods in an effort to shield American industries from foreign competition during the onset of the Great Depression, which had started in October 1929.[1]

  Hoover signed the bill against the advice of many senior economists, yielding to pressure from his party and business leaders. Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.'s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to U.S. exports and global trade plummeting. Economists and historians widely regard the act as a policy misstep, and it remains a cautionary example of protectionist policy in modern economic debates.[2] It was followed by more liberal trade agreements, such as the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act
• 

  Rivergang

  He has a better way, and it is coming.

  Well that, of course, takes the discussion off in an entirely different direction - and is a dialogue which I would prefer not to engage in! (Not right now, anyway).

  Certainly, mechanisation of industry has always brought with it certain social dislocations. However, in the past, these have been more than offset by its benefits.

  For example, when mechanisation of the textile industry began in the 18th century, traditional crafts such as hand-weaving became obsolete. Persons who previously worked in those now obsolete hand crafts, though, could quickly be retrained as factory workers. The result was a much greater output of textiles, which made clothing much more affordable.

  Another case is the mechanisation of civil engineering activities, which took place between the two world wars. The question was back then raised "You have introduced one bulldozer, which does the work of at least 100 men. What now happens to the other 99 workers?" The answer was "We obtain another 99 bulldozers". Most former labourers could easily be retrained to operate such earthmoving plant as a bulldozer, and the result was a spectacular increase in output. This made possible such activities as the open cut mining of very low-grade mineral deposits. (One example of that being some of the world's largest gold mines, where the ore yields just 0.3 grams of gold per ton. To recover just one ounce of gold, they have to process some 16 tons of ore. A person using hand tools would be there a long, long time trying to win their single ounce of gold!)

  It would have to be admitted, though, that the social problems resulting from the present level of industrial automation are a much harder nut to crack. Not every redundant factory hand has the makings of an IT specialist!

  That being said, you will never, ever stem the tide of progress:

  • In 18th Century England, saboteurs ("Luddites", they were known as) attempted to do that by destroying the new weaving machines.
  • At the start of the railway era, a race was organised between a train and a horse. The horse came out the winner, but the result changed nothing.
  • Similarly, when the first chainsaws were introduced into the timber industry, another race was organised; this time between a chainsaw and a handsaw. The result was an even draw. Set against a log of four feet in diameter, the two-man team with the newfangled chainsaw took just as long as the two men on the end of the handsaw. Again, that result changed nothing in the longer term. The clumsy IEL chainsaw of 1953 was by 1960 superseded by the single-handed McCullough - and crosscut saws disappeared from the shelves of hardware stores.
  • In the district where I grew up, coal mining was once the principal employer. However, that industry was killed off almost entirely because the all-powerful mining union refused to countenance any form of mechanisation. Even by the early 1970s, those mines were still being worked by hand labour. Hardly surprising, then, that they have long since gone the way of the dinosaur!

  Progress will never be halted, but the present unresolved social issues that have resulted could easily leave a person hoping for that man on a white horse to step in and rescue us all!
• 

  blondie

  Thanks, Balaamass2 for posting that about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Not alive then :) but required study in my econ history class. Seems some missed that event. Doomed to be repeated because people have convenient memories or know little about their own country's history.