Manufacturing is not dead in the US

Manufacturing not dead in US:

I am working a temporary job for a manufacturing company in the US. We make machinery used by other manufacturers all over the world. In the time I have been here I have come to realize that manufacturing is not dead in the US. There is a lot of it still happening all over the US.

Manufacturers in the US are building/manufacturing machinery, equipment for the construction trades, automobiles and many other products. I am beginning to wonder if the appearance of a lack of manufacturing is being contrived by the government and media. I go through the list of customers this company has. The list amounts to thousands, not hundreds, of manufacturers that we work with just here in the US. They may not be huge manufactures like a G-M plant of the 70s and 80s. They may be small local mom and pop operations. But the point here is that they are here and they have people working for them in many capacities. Manufacturing in the US is not dead. Again, I have to ask, is the appearance of a lack of them hidden by our government and the media? I haven’t gotten past the letter “A” in our list of customers and I find customers in 34 of our 50 states plus Puerto Rico.

I am the backup to the main person answering phones here. I must take 50 calls a day at least. That is over and above the 100 or more she takes. Each one is usually from a different company. This is happening five days a week, 40 hours a week. Manufacturing is not dead in the US. This doesn’t include the calls that go directly to the Tech Support group here either.

We do not import everything we use in this country. We still manufacture here in the US. Someone has to make the parts that go in our machines that are parts we don’t make. Then someone is purchasing the machines we make to make parts that they sell to other manufacturers, suppliers, builders, and so on. All of these items do not get shipped overseas. They stay here being bought and sold by other manufacturers and vendors of parts.

Have we become so blind to what goes on in our country that we don’t notice these things? Have we let our government and media do so much of our thinking for us that we don’t put two and two together anymore on our own??

Look around you. Every steel door you open, your windows, your siding are all made using machinery most likely built in the US. In fact, most likely built by the company I am working for or built using a machine purchased from this company. The doors on your car, the side walls on your van are made here in the US on machines created by the company I am working for. Manufacturing is not dead in the US.

Not everything built in the US is so expensive people can’t afford it either. In a community near where I live there is a store where absolutely everything in the store is completely made in the US. If it even has parts made elsewhere the store does not purchase the item to sell. I bought a T-shirt there. It was $11.00, but it didn’t shrink when I washed and dried it, it has held the lettering on it in perfect condition and it hangs just as nicely as the day I bought it two years ago. The point here is the quality is excellent. I buy a T-shirt from Walmart, wear it a couple times, wash it, dry it and it hangs limp, out of shape and it shrunk. Was it made in the US? No it wasn’t. Do I now have to replace it? Yes, I do. In a two year time I have to replace nearly all my wardrobe when it is purchased from Walmart. I prefer purchasing something that I may spend a dollar or two more for, but two years later I still have it, it still fits right, it still looks great and it is because it was made here in the US. Are you getting my point here? Manufacturing isn’t dead in the US.

Do I think a person needs to be a college major or hold a degree or two to work in manufacturing? No. Should people who work in manufacturing be paid a decent living wage? Yes, I do. Do they need to be paid $42 an hour? No. Do we need to continue manufacturing in the US? Yes. It is well known that the quality in the US is superior. My son works for a US manufacturer who imports parts from Mexico. He tells me that 85% of the product sent to them from Mexico has to go back because it is defective. That means additional expenses that will be added onto the cost of the product my son’s company is building because they now have to pay to ship 85% of the parts back to Mexico to be remade correctly. That cost gets passed on to the American consumer. Was it the American worker who drove the price up? No, it was the cheap Mexican laborers who didn’t make the part right that did. Some could say yes, it is the American worker’s fault because they didn’t use that defective product. Ok, the next time your car is in an accident because the brakes failed think about it. You wanted that defective part so you could save money. Now you have to pay a deductible for the accident, an increase in your insurance premiums because you had an accident and your nice vehicle is now a repaired vehicle. All because you wanted to save money and not pay for a better built part that would have prevented that accident.

Did you know your local fire company purchases its fire trucks from US companies? Did you know the machinery to build that truck was probably made in the US? Would you want a cheap defective piece of junk used to put out your house fire or a quality made vehicle that will work properly and very possibly save your home?? How about the ambulance that picks up you or your loved ones from an accident or transports you to the hospital because you are too ill to drive yourself?? The parts for those vehicles were most likely built here in the US on machinery built by the company I am working for.

Are you getting the picture? It isn’t all about how much the item costs. It is also about the quality of that item, how long it will last and it was made by your own friends and neighbors here in the US. We used to be proud of who and what we are and proud of how outstanding the quality of what we made was. We surpassed the rest of the world and yet we allowed someone somewhere to convince us we couldn’t survive doing it that way and needed to do it elsewhere. Someone somewhere said we needed to support a global economy and that included stepping down the quality of what we enjoyed using and owning. Is that how we want it to be? Do we want to reduce the quality of our lives because someone somewhere says it is better for the rest of the world if we do??

All around the world people are taking back their lives, trying to bring their countries back to what once made those countries great. We shouldn’t be any different. We need to take control of our lives and country once again. It isn’t about the rest of the world. It is about us and the quality we choose for our lives. Do you really and truly need to have someone sitting in your local, state and federal government telling you how you want to live, where you want to live, how and where you want to work or have your children educated or what doctor you should see? Do you REALLY and TRULY want this?? Is life so much easier for you sitting back and letting all your life decisions being made for you? I prefer to decide for myself. I prefer to move forward in my life making my own decisions right and wrong. We learn from our mistakes. That is why we make mistakes. Do we continue to learn and grow as a person when someone else is doing it for us? If we continue letting others decide what happens when they get old and die? Who will be left to do the decision making that people no longer know how to do? It will leave a world society of zombies totally lost and confused. The human race will die off of starvation and illness because they don’t know how to use their brains anymore. I know that this sounds drastic but think about it. Ask your children about current events. Do they have a clue what is happening in the news and in the community around them? Ask them what they know about the Revolutionary War that shaped this country. I wager that they don’t have a clue.

We need to get our children educated properly, get off foreign fuel, bring down the cost of healthcare and bring America back to its greatness. The solution is not what we have now. It has to change. Lets get the right things happening. Lets bring back people to run this country who understand and cherish our Constitution.