Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Hindsight

If American workers would have done this 20 years ago this country would still have an industrial infrastructure and millions of manufacturing jobs. I really like the way they think.

Mob beats Chinese steel factory executive to death

Thousands of workers had gathered in northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua to protest the takeover of their company and threatened layoffs.

July 27, 2009

Chinese state media confirmed Monday that a steel factory executive was beaten to death after thousands of workers gathered to protest the takeover of their company.

Chen Guojun, an executive at Jianlong Steel Holding Co., died Friday after an angry mob in the northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua beat him and then blocked ambulances from reaching him, according to the China Daily.

The protesters worked at the state-owned Tonghua Iron and Steel Group, which was going to be sold to Chen's privately owned Jianlong Steel. Chen sparked the riot by announcing 30,000 workers would be laid off, the newspaper said.

They dispersed later only after they were assured by authorities the sale would not go through.

5 comments:

nathan said...

Bear,
I'll be the first to agree that the U.S. needs more manufactureing jobs. But until we stop importing finished products in from China and such, that will never happen. In the story the workers killed the executive of the privatly owned company. The workers want the state to stay the owner of the company. That will be Americas future when we become more and more dependant on Goverment to run our lives. Every American needs to decide what they want freedom or contol by the government. You can not have both. I don't want to get to long winded, but i don't want the nanny government telling me where i have to work, what foods i can eat, what property i must live on, etc, etc. Up next Health care, then more unemployment, then more goverment programs designed to take away more freedoms. Then all along the way taxes to pay for it all with just enough controversy to keep us distracted. Only the few elitist will have a good lifestyle filled with lies and crookedness.
Nathan

BigBear said...

Nathan I agree completely I just think it is to late. There is no way to stop the complete collapse of our economy and way of life. We just have to wait it out then come back with smaller localized economies.

This type of resistance was needed back in the 70's and 80's to late now.

Western Mass. Man said...

Unfortunately, the only thing that will save us now is a world war where we are attacked.
Not one the gov't manufactures.
It would/may be the same as 1941 all over again.

BigBear said...

There is no reason for anyone to attack us. All a foreign power needs to do is sit back and watch the United States destroy itself from within.

A civil war or massive social upheaval are more likely but neither one of those will create jobs.

Anonymous said...

America needs to change from an anti-business climate to one that is friendly to business. The unions and legislators are the ones forcing jobs overseas. This country is in trouble because some people believe you can take from others what you refuse to earn on your own. -- We live in a constitutional democratic republic. Our constitution gives us rights and freedoms. How would you stop Nike from moving their manufacturing to China (or any company)? What we need to do is make this country attractive to businesses (that means corporations!) not make it more unfriendly. I see one legitimate way the government could improve the situation and that is to require a certain level of manufacturing to be done in the U.S. by citizens and with U.S. owned companies for the purpose of retaining a minimum level of capacity in the event of war or disaster. For example we could require that 10% of all ships coming into this country should be built here and 10% of all employees of those ships be American citizens. Then increase the requirement to 20% after a few years and perhaps 30% eventually. Ditto for truck, busses, cars and trains; perhaps 50% of those should be made here. The same would be true for solar, wind and other forms of power generation. Another simple requirement would be to require that every country that trades with us also buy from us. Perhaps a simple ratio of 2:1 for a start, i.e. if they sell us 2 billion a year in goods and servies they must buy 1 billion a year from us. Then after a few years began changing the ratio towards parity (1:1). Not a very onerous requirement for any country who wishes to enjoy trading with us.