All Forum Posts by: Eric Bilderback

Quote from @Eric Bilderback:

Quote from @Marcus Auerbach:

We don't have the labor to make more things in the US. 

We still have about 7.4 million open jobs and vs 7 million unemployed. You can't drive unemployment to zero. Anything under 5% is considered full employment. And we are at 4.1%. So while it sounds great to "bring jobs back" - who is going to do them?

And we also have a qualification problem. A modern auto factory does not require much unskilled labor. Material is moved by automated forklifts, and assembly is either done or assisted by robots to meet TQM standards. Much of what you need are engineers and highly skilled workers. We are already short on both.

I doubt that most of the 40% unemployed men of the inner city of Detroit are a good fit for a modern day manufacturing plant.

The Apple CEO Tim Cook said famously: people think we manufacture in China because labor is cheap. The real reason is they have a vast pool of HIGHLY qualified skilled labor.  Video.

I have spent almost 20 years working for a global manufacturer. For any machine that was produced in our US factory and the components needed to assemble the decision was to either fully automate the process to 24/7 production here in the US - or offshore to MX or CHN, the difference being the response time to change orders (6 months vs 6 weeks) due to geographic distance. MX kept us more flexible.

Here is a picture of the BMW plant in Spartenburg, SC and if you want to see the list of jobs they have it's here https://www.bmwgroup.jobs/us/en/location/location-spartanbur...

Why should we care about Apples phones etc.  If they aren't going to bring opportunity to Americans to buy a house, provide for a family then they are not a priority, if they go broke "thems the breaks".  They can take all the money they are spending sending missiles and weapons all across the world and get the folks in Detroit up to speed for those good jobs Apple has.  Americans don't need more technology, we need some good jobs that can create strong communities, towns, neighborhoods etc.  And if your business doesn't provide that then your business is not a priority.  Am I missing something?

Yes, I think you missed my point. It's not about Apple. The issue is: we have more open jobs than people looking for jobs. In other words: we don't need more jobs. And if we create more jobs, who is going to take them?

And a large portion of the people unemployed today have a qualification problem. Simple manual labor is not a thing anymore. You need automation engineers who can troubleshoot a FANUC 6-axis robot - and not a grunt to do heavy manual labor.

And you are not going to train a 40 year old unskilled laborer to become an engineer. Heck, who would even make the investment to pay for college with only 20 working years left to retirement?

Good jobs to create strong communities" sounds really great, we all want that, I am all for it. But the definition of what a good job looks like has changed. Give it another 3 or 5 years. Machines will be picking your strawberries, because they will do it cheaper, better and also at night.

We can recreate an economy like it was in the 80s with "Good jobs for hard working Americans". Tune back the technology. But the world will move on and the ones who say America is a dying empire will have been right.

 I don't disagree with any of that. The bigger problem is that Americans at the bottom want to start at at-the-top wages and do half the work. Before I retired we struggled to give away public sector jobs that could only be held by US citizens (state law), at more than livable entry level wages ($20+) with outstanding benefits. When I did get someone hired, we were lucky if the guy made it 3 months before just not showing up any more. The last guy I hired - the best of the lot, since half of them either had criminal records or couldn't pass a drug test - burned through an entire year's worth of leave and sick time in less than 3 months, then after being told he didn't have any more time off left called in sick Thursday and Friday w/o pay and quit on Monday. And it was like this for about the last 10 years before I retired, or close to it. Bad enough that the guys we did have on crews preferred to work short handed and get some OT than be constantly saddled with slackers and bums that didn't know anything and barely worked when they were there. 

I don't think we can change this until we release the cradle-to-grave cushion underneath most of these people. Humans are naturally lazy, and a large percentage will default to the least amount of effort require to avoid starving on the street. Maybe if this were more of a distinct possibility in this country there would be an improved work ethic. I see opportunities everywhere I look, more than I could ever possibly take advantage of myself, and I'm often sharing them with people I know. Almost no one ever takes advantage of any of them, looks into anything or takes action of any kind. Hell, I counsel my tenants (the ones that want to listen) on the wiseness of owning property instead of being a lifelong tenant. Virtually none of them are interested. 

I'm a huge proponent of "Made in America" - I was boycotting foreign made crap way before it was popular (hell, I even wrote a song about it). I went out of my way to spend extra money on tools and parts and cars and equipment that was made here, because I believe that you are the strongest as a community if you try your best to act in concentric circles when it comes to buying decisions - local, then regional, then state, then federal, then foreign friends and allies. I also support the idea of having a healthy manufacturing base just in the idea of general national defense, besides providing jobs. But I also believe that we have had it too good for too long in this country and too many people want to live like kings, be paid like kings, and work like kings. We aren't hungry any more and anyone who comes here from somewhere else sees it and knows it. The very idea that we need tariffs from other high standard countries like Canada and Japan demonstrates this perfectly. 

 🤣 No doubt James; Mr. Bilderback has a personal grudge with me which is why such claims are made. He wants to complain about the very guys he hired working like hell, saving all their money and then going back to Mexico to live large. Why hire them at all then? The worst kept secret in the world is that immigrants work 10x harder than any of our entitled citizens want to work. You think the roofers and lawn care guys around me hire Mexicans because they like them? 😂 I live where people would love to see everyone from Central and South America deported - except when they need to have some labor work done. 

We don't have the labor to make more things in the US. 

We still have about 7.4 million open jobs and vs 7 million unemployed. You can't drive unemployment to zero. Anything under 5% is considered full employment. And we are at 4.1%. So while it sounds great to "bring jobs back" - who is going to do them?

And we also have a qualification problem. A modern auto factory does not require much unskilled labor. Material is moved by automated forklifts, and assembly is either done or assisted by robots to meet TQM standards. Much of what you need are engineers and highly skilled workers. We are already short on both.

I doubt that most of the 40% unemployed men of the inner city of Detroit are a good fit for a modern day manufacturing plant.

The Apple CEO Tim Cook said famously: people think we manufacture in China because labor is cheap. The real reason is they have a vast pool of HIGHLY qualified skilled labor.  Video.

I have spent almost 20 years working for a global manufacturer. For any machine that was produced in our US factory and the components needed to assemble the decision was to either fully automate the process to 24/7 production here in the US - or offshore to MX or CHN, the difference being the response time to change orders (6 months vs 6 weeks) due to geographic distance. MX kept us more flexible.

Here is a picture of the BMW plant in Spartenburg, SC and if you want to see the list of jobs they have it's here https://www.bmwgroup.jobs/us/en/location/location-spartanbur...

 50 acres of oceanfront land, lol?.....C'mon now.

My cousin lives in Lansing and works in the automotive industry. He works on automation (robotics). He has been traveling a lot more for work recently because most of the new plants that build cars are not in Michigan anymore. The last time we spoke about it which was awhile ago, he said that 10% of the car-building process was done by robots already and that it would probably be close to 100% within a few years. The big manufacturing plants that once employed lots of people to build cars with assembly lines of humans physically putting cars together by hand are a thing of the past. 

I'd be shocked if it made any difference. Any car maker coming back to the US to start production is going to be somewhere in the South where unions are weak and right to work laws are everywhere. The old factories are dinosaurs and factory legacy is one of our huge disadvantages compared to China et al. I agree we need to make things here, but we don't need to make everything here and would be better served applying limited labor to future tech than making wagon wheels. It may sound harsh to say it but non-tech American workers are pathetic compared to the rest of the developing world. In my area Mexicans and other Central Americans that do "labor" work - construction, landscaping, basic factory work, etc - run circles around the natives. Americans have had it too good for too long and at the bottom rungs are not hungry, they're bitter, resentful and expect others to take care of them. We need good jobs here for sure for people who are not college educated, and we shouldn't be sending everyone to college anyway as it's a waste of time and money, but we also need a total reset of the working labor force ethos. Before I retired, you couldn't give away entry level water system jobs despite the great benefits; these guys wouldn't do the jobs for $20/hr even with no experience required. I hired a lot of people in my career and my favorite part about retiring was not having to find one decent warm body to fill important jobs among a thousand deadbeats. Maybe if we started letting people starve in the street again the hunger ethos would return.