Redstate

that in places like Ohio and here in western PA, support of free trade is a seriously damaging political position. Unless of course, one understands economics and is articulate enough to convince people of its benefits, and I don't think McCain is.

an articulate spokesman for capitalism.

Of course, neither was Bush You notice how President Bush tries to sell us on free trade---he focuses on how it helps Mexico instead of on how it helps the US.

I just wanted to say something nice about McCain since I am almost always on the side of saying something critical.

Part of it is that a lot of men just like doing things with their hands. We like machinery. We like jackhammers, welding, molten steel, dynamite. We like doing manly things and working hard. And then we like sitting around drinking beer in the American Legion hall talking with other men about our tough jobs.

I don't think that Joe Lunch Bucket is not retrainable. You could teach him IT or accounting, and he's smart enough to learn it. But he'd hate it. And you won't be good at something you don't like doing. Offer him a choice between working in a dirty, dangerous steel mill or working in a call center for the same pay, and I'll wager Joe takes the steel mill. Not because he's afraid of change or because the unions have brainwashed him, but because Joe knows he'd probably be ready to swallow the barrel of his gun after a few years in a call center.

So part of it is education. But a big part is manufacturing modernization, allowing heavy industry to remain competitive through robotics and advanced engineering. Companies like Caterpillar have thrived by going cutting edge, and provided plenty of good jobs for hard working men who at heart are still 4 year old boys driving big, noisy, yellow tonka trucks around the lot.

Not sure what the role of government is in all of this. Maybe it's just to get the hell out of the way.

"If all men were just, there would be no need of valor."
- Agesilaus

if you mean that many are attitudenally untrainable. There is little sense of individual responsibility to make yourself valuable to employers. Thus the complaint is about high paying jobs being replaced with low paying jobs. When you point out examples of new high paying jobs, or of entrepeneurs, their faces literally go blank and its as if they didn't hear you.

at least a man who thinks and acts like a man, in much of the modern workplace and the man's level of education and training isn't really the issue. Other than in the true skill trades, work is so highly incrementalized that a monkey could do it - or a robot, and the only reason a human might be preferred is that the capital cost is less for the human. In information, government and at any level of an industry where the product is process, the workplace, like the schools, is almost completely feminized. If you can't work well with and for women or can't supervise women, you're going to at best be very uncomfortable.

Despite the feminists best endeavors, men and women really are different; they approach problem solving differently, they make decisions differently, they approach their coworkers and subordinates differently. Especially, men and women deal with correction and criticism differently. Most men adopt a "do something even if it's wrong" attitude towards problem solving. Women go through all sorts of process and talking before even making a decision to decide something and half a meeting will be spent on just making sure everyone feels good about having the meeting and assuming a decision does get made, then there'll be endless discussion about whether the decision is the right one and how everyone feels about it. (The Democrats really have this figured out as a political strategy for reaching women and the castrati.) Some men just put their heads down and figure that crap is the price you pay for having the job and some run screaming from the room. There may be some, but I've never been in a mixed gender workplace that didn't divide straight along the girls and boys line but always with a boy or two that got along better with the girls and vice versa, so you had to use them as go-betweens but always be careful that they weren't using that status to cause trouble. Gay or effeminate guys, especially gay guys, were always handy in that role, but they can also out do the women at being intriguers.

For supervisors, correction, criticism, and discipline is a literal minefield. Men generally will either accept supervision and criticism or tell you to ****off and quit. Women on the other hand will either smile sweetly and ignore you, cry, or flirt; the "horizontal career move" instinct is still very powerful in lots of women. That isn't true of all women in the workplace, some, maybe most, "man up" and deal constructively with criticism, but enough don't to make it a real problem.

Other than "bright" young lads right out of college, most men will take the "it's your nickel" attitude about how the workplace runs or about changes in process or policy. There will sometimes be intriguers who'll backbite and sabotage, but in the main, men will either do what they're told or quit. If women don't like you or what your doing, they seek allies and before long you have some or even all of your workforce firmly committed to passive agression, all the while smiling sweetly and bringing food to work for everyone.

I spent the last decade or so of my career supervising a workforce that was usually about half men and half women and to make it more interesting about half lawyers. If I was physically there, I could keep them all in the traces. If I went out of town or on leave, I could count on coming back to a state of war. If I left one of the women in charge, the men would be in revolt and vice versa. It was so bad and so insoluable that I just quit leaving anyone in charge, delegating only signatory authority, and kept my cell on, and even who got the signatory authority would breed resentment.

In government, and in my observation in academia as well, there is a class of bureaucratic eunuchs who have learned to prosper in a "gender diverse" workplace, but to most men, the bureaucratic eunuch is a thoroughly destestable creature who on good days is referred to as a "weenie" or some such term of endearment. And when it comes to intrigue, the eunuch in todays workforce in every way lives up to the legacy established by his forebears in Turkish bordellos; if he comes up in an avuncular way and puts his arm around your shoulder, literally or figuratively, he isn't showing affection; he's feeling for the soft spot.

I got through a career without getting sued or charged with discrimination or harassment, though I got my share of formal grievances, but so long as I continue working, I don't want to ever have another subordinate, and especially not a female subordinate.

In Vino Veritas

It takes huge capital inputs as well. If you discount for the source, EADS senior management for months now have been saying that because of the over-strong euro, they are trying to transform their production capacity so that its costs are measured in dollars.

But why turn to open farmland rather than the Great Lakes region? Because they will have to build their own new capital stock, and train new workers on their own. They (and companies in other industries, like automobile final assembly) have decided that they'll come out ahead if they do it in the south. Much of the existing capital stock of the North and Northeast is outdated, and would need major upgrades before anyone can do anything with it. That becomes more true with each passing day.

It's the oddest thing. Two years ago, I figured that the age of manufacturing was over, and that most of the world's tradable value would take the form of information (including information inputs to value chains).

Now I'm completely of a different mind. What changed was that the emerging world (not just Asia but also the Middle East) has embarked on a construction and infrastructure buildout that is far bigger and faster than anything else before it in history.

There is a large but overlooked potential for American manufacturing, which is the most efficient in the world, to make a big comeback. But not the way the politicians are approaching the policy decisions.

While I have my differences with some of McCain's policies I sure do respect and admire him. What's more, I trust him. He's no wimp and not about to surrender to PC. He knows what he believes and believes what he knows and he's not afraid to spell it out for you. Take him or leave him-what you see is what you get. Period. And I like that.

If you're in Michigan (as it seems from your prior post), I'll bet he's a tier-one or tier-two provider to the auto industry.

How's his business these days? Any possibility that he can expand into export markets?

is actually providing parts to "foreign" auto companies producing vehicles in the US.

The domestic auto market has been growing (until very recently), its just that the domestic producers have been losing market share. The Tier 1's and 2's have been getting work from Toyota, Honda, Nissan, etc.

Of course, none of these companies actually assemble vehicles here in Michigan since they are smart enough to do that in right to work states.

I would guess that components, subassemblies and tooling manufactured in the US makes up a nice healthy chunk of the unit-value of a foreign-nameplate vehicle assembled in Kentucky or Tennessee. (Marketing, brand equity and design are obviously a different story.)

If the Tier ones, twos and threes are really competitive, then let's feed them and let the Big Two just fade away and not worry about it.

As I said upthread, there's a case to be made (but no one is making it) that we can seriously revive American manufacturing, just because manufacturing matters again in the global economy in ways that were not the case in the very recent past.

The American Axle strike is a good microcosm of the troubles faced by the 1s/2s. I think they are viable in the long term, but it takes time to get the new business from the new customers (auto industry programs take years to set up). Right now the entire auto industry (non-domestic included) is down, which doesn't help matters.

I think the Big Three will ultimately make it as well.

World demand for automobiles is only going to increase, and manufacturing cars is not easy to do (there are only a handful of countries in the business of exporting vehicles). Moreover, there are places in the world where a US car is a prestige item.

The real question is, will the Big Three ever get market share in the US again? Will the Big Three make money in North America? Or will the heart of Ford be in places like Latin America, Europe, and Asia?

North America is the most profitable auto market, so the inability to make money here is a bad sign.

Compared to Toyota Motor and some other companies, GM and Ford Motor really can't come up with the scratch to invest in new products. Their marketing is potentially the best in the world, but without the ability to take some risk, how can they make that pay out?

Two years ago, I started telling private-equity guys of my acquaintance that one of them would acquire GM for $40 billion, net of long-term debt. I guessed wrong on the company. Chrysler Group is the one that went private.

But while the name of the game for public automakers is cash flow, for a private one it's profitability. And in that regard, Chrysler isn't inspiring a lot of confidence, and I know some well-informed people who don't expect Chrysler Group to make it through the year in its current form.

Once we get past this recession, it's possible that the go-private model could yet work for the Big Two. It's also possible that they will become semi-nationalized in an upcoming Democratic Administration.

Ford has been accessing credit by taking mortgages on individual pieces of real property. This has never been done in the history of the company. It is evidence in support of the proposition that Ford is more valuable in its various pieces than it is as an ongoing enterprise. My dad is a Ford retiree, and I have driven Ford cars my entire life. The white collar workers at Ford that I know are all hoping that Ford is taken private. They were also hoping that the Delphi bankruptcy would break the UAW, but Delphi ultimately backed down.

The American Axle strike is interesting. It is shutting down GM plants, but AA doesn't seem to waivering.

I believe the Big Three are spending less on product innovation at this point than the competition. This is the result of the lack of capital.

This reply should be to a different comment earlier in the post. Sorry.

This reply should be to a different comment earlier in the post. Sorry.

I'm just gonna give up and take a nap.