Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ford to move all small car production to Mexico

Did the article say anyone would be losing their job in the U.S.? No, it didn't. That's because this move will pave the way for production of the new Ford Bronco and Ford Ranger in the U.S.

I'll probably get tarred and feathered for saying this but:
Americans are going to have to down grade our way of life if we expect to keep up with the rest of the world. It's a global economy and a global market. It's far too easy to manufacture things in other countries and ship them here to be sold. It's just not realistic anymore for the average worker to expect that they are going to live in a 4000sqft house with 4 cars and a boat and 4 wheelers and go skiing in Jackson Hole every year with a family of 4. Janitors can't expect to live in a single family home in the suburbs. Same with McDonalds workers. They CAN expect to have the opportunity to better themselves to EARN a position in the company that will allow them those things however.

At any rate I just think the "american dream" needs to be re-evaluated.

Taxes need to be lowered as well.

I also think that corporations need to get leaner and less top heavy. Less white collar types and more blue collar types. The folks at the top need to make less in salaries and bonuses, and more of that money needs to be plowed back into the business or stored away for a rainy day.

No tar and feathers here. But not only is there a world of cheap labor out there, here come the robots.

Folks might not all agree with Fred's conclusions but he brings up some good topics to ponder. A bit of a read here but not too long. For the internet attention spans, his points are:
- Manufacturers love robots, they're cheaper in the long run and more reliable than humans.
- Ergo, more and more robots replace more and more human workers.
- Ergo, more goods are produced more cheaply.
- However, more humans are out of work.
- Without working humans, who buys the stuff robots make?

http://fredoneverything.org/ready-new-rossiters-universal-robots-toward-a-most-minimal-wage/



"Being as I am a curmudgeon, and delight in human folly and thoughts of huge asteroids, tsunamis, incurable plagues, continent-shattering volcanoes, and the Hillary administration, I follow the advance of robots with hope. They may finally end civilization as we know it. Currently they spread like kudzu. Herewith a few notes from my favorite technical publication, the Drudge Report. It may convince you that the robots are upon us like ants on a sandwich.

Navy building autonomous sub-hunting submarine. Robots deliver food to your door. China’s use of robots set to surge. Amazon uses 30,000 robots in warehouses. AMBER lab robot jogs like human. Japanese farming robots. Burger-flipping robot. World’s first sex-robot. China’s robot cop. China’s road to self-driving cars. Bloomberg uses robot story-writers. In theme park, robots make food and drinks. SCHAFT unveils new robot in Japan. Boston Dynamics has several ominous robots paid for by the Pentagon. Robot does soft-tissue surgery better than humans. Robotic KFC outlet in Shanghai. And of course everybody and his dog are working on self-driving vehicles.

People seldom click on links. This one, Atlas, from Boston Dynamics, is truly worth a click. Think of him coming through your door by night. Many similar critters exist, often in Asia.

These machines either work well or come very close, and impinge on manufacturing, delivery, war, policing, the restaurant industry, journalism, and service industries perhaps soon to include prostitution. We ought to think forethoughtedly about what to do with these machines. We won’t.

Amazon Robot

Photo: Amazon’s robots. Video. These orange devils carry heavy racks to humans who pick ordered goods from them for shipment. Amazon is working on robots that can do the picking. Who will be left? In principle, 30,000 robots can work 90,000 shifts, plus weekends. With a predictability that makes sunrise look like a long shot, the company says that the robots do not replace but “help” humans. If you believe this, I’d like to sell you stock in my venture to make radioactive dog-food on Mars.

Automation of course means more than robots. As newspaper after newspaper goes all-digital, less pulpwood will be needed to make less newsprint, pressmen will be fired, delivery trucks will no longer needed, and so on. Such ripple effects get little attention. They should.

The capitalist paradigm in which companies think only about themselves, seeking to increase productivity and reduce costs, is going to work decreasingly well. Replacing well-paid workers with robots means replacing customers with a lot of money with customers with little money. People who are not paid much do not buy much. Robots buy even less.

The first crucial question of coming decades: Who is going to buy the stuff pouring from robotic factories?

The current notion is that when a yoyo factory automates and lays off most of its workers, they will find other well-paid jobs and continue to buy yoyos. But as well-paid jobs everywhere go automated, where will the money come from to buy yoyos? Today participation in the work force is at all- time lows and we have a large and growing number of young who, unable to find good jobs, live with their parents. They are not buying houses or renting apartments. (They may, given the intellectual level of today’s young, be buying yoyos.)

Enthusiasts of the free market say that I do not understand economics, that there will always be work for people who want to work. But there isn’t. There won’t be. There is less all the time. Again, look at the falling participation in the work force, the growing numbers in part-time badly paid jobs. Short of governmentally imposed minimums, wages are determined by the market, meaning that if a robot works for a dollar an hour, a human will have to work for ninety-five cents an hour to compete , or find a job a robot can’t do–and these get scarcer.

From a businessman’s point of view, robots are superb employees. They don’t strike, demand raises, call in sick, get disgruntled and do a sloppy job, or require benefits. Building factories that are robotic from the gitgo means not having to lay workers off, which is politically easier than firing existing workers. Using robots obviates the Chinese advantage in wages, especially if America can make better robots–good for companies, but not for workers in either country. That is, production may return to the US, but jobs will not. In countries with declining populations, having robots do the work may reduce the attractiveness of importing uncivilizable bomb-chucking morons from the bush world.

A second crucial question: What will we do with people who have nothing to do? This has been a hidden problem for a long time, solved to date by child-labor laws, compulsory attendance in high school, the growth of universities as holding tanks, welfare populations, and vast bureaucracies of people who pretend to be employed. Few of these do anything productive, but are supported and kept off the job market by the rest of us. But there are limits to the capacity of Starbuck’s to soak up college graduates. (The economic fate of America may depend on our consumption of overpriced coffee.)

As time goes on and fewer and fewer people can find work, and particularly the less intelligent, something will have to give. We won’t see it coming. We never see anything coming. Businessmen will observe productivity going up and labor costs going down. What could be wrong with that? Businessmen do not concern themselves with social questions. Methinks, however, that social questions are about to concern themselves with businessmen.

As standards of living decrease, unrest will come. I will guess that much of Donald Trump’s popularity arises from the sending of factories to China by the corporations that rule America. Now the robots are going to take the remaining jobs. Economists will chatter of this principle and that curve and what Aristotle said about Veblen, but in a free market for labor, robots will win. If we have a high minimum wage, business will automate. If we have a low minimum wage, they will automate, but a few years later.

The obvious solution, one I think inevitable within a few decades unless we want a revolution, is a guaranteed minimum income, enough to live on comfortably, for everyone. Whether this is a good idea can be debated, but it seems likely to be the only idea. Capitalists will tell me that I do not understand markets, or capital flows or pricing mechanisms, and that I am against freedom. I will respond that they need to wake up and look around. And I will point out that economics has become a tedious form of Left-Right metaphysics, Keynes versus the Austrian School, capitalism versus socialism, all unconnected to onrushing reality.

What would be the effects of a guaranteed income? Godawful, I would guess. Some people, probably including those who read columns on the web, would read, listen to music, drink wine and talk with friends, hike in the Himalayas, scuba dive, and earn doctorates in physics. But most would get up every morning, bored, without purpose, anticipating just another of unending days of television, beer, tedium, no driving desire to do anything but discontent with nothing to do. Would the young even go to school? They would have no need. What has happened among the welfare populations that in effect have a guaranteed minimum income?

See? We are doomed. It warms the cockles of a curmudgeon’s heart. Whatever a cockle is."

The ford fusion I bought couple yrs ago was made in Mexico and the motor was made in Romania. I still kick myself in the ass for not buying a Toyota camry.

Meanwhile Toyota seems to be doing just fine building their cars here in the united states makes no sense at all.

So what? Does anybody have a choice anymore? All the Union workers (who drove the businesses overseas) are Democrats and all the people who own the businesses (including Trump) are Republicans.

I have a cousin that works in the body shop at Toyota's Georgetown Ky plant....According to Him Toyota uses the cheapest Chinese steel they can get to build there Cars....Pure Junk...He drives a New Chevy..

Just makes me think of when people talk [bleep] about Toyota saying "buy American." Well my Japanese truck was built in Texas. Your American car/truck was built in Mexico

You bet,

I just brought our 2003 Matrix over here from my wife's place. It's such a piece of junk. Can you believe it, we actually had to replace the clutch with only 198000 miles on it.

Oh, My '01 Tacoma only has 230000 on the odometer, I just replaced the shocks and inner tie rod ends. I get the oil analyzed every year after about 4 oil changes. It keeps coming back as "normal". Junk, I'm thinking it should come back excellent or something, normal's not good is it?

Our 86 Toyota Pick up ONLY got 250000 miles on it before I decided to rebuild the motor because the head gasket was finally going. Sure was a POS truck, that one was. I even had to change the springs and shocks at almost 300K miles. I sold it at close to 325K and it was still running a year later as I saw it in town. What a crappy truck.

Dam n, those Toyotas suck so much we just went out and bought a brand new RAV4 for my wife. I hope that one gets way more than 200000 miles before we have issues with it. I'm tired of not getting my money's worth.

Geno

Very good point!

You may want to check the RItz cracker box too, maybe the graham crackers, and a few other "goodies".

Or not, .......................you sound like you're ready to start the next Mexican-American war!

Geno

PS, Bugs me a bit, or maybe more than a bit too.

That's a popular belief, but it ain't necessarily so. Firstly, most corporations are publicly owned, by investors, various investment funds, non-profits, retirement funds, etc. Lots of old money people are big Dems as evidenced by the contributions they make as are most of the big money Wall Streeters and banking executives. Union organizations almost always endorse Democrats and funnel lots of money that they've sweated from their membership (75% of the dues I paid when I was a union member went to political contributions) to them, but the rank and file don't always toe the line at election time. Union wages and benefits are a factor in driving work out of the country, but taxes, eco-rules, and government-mandated health care, safety regs, anti-discrimination training etc, are huge costs that go away when manufacturing crosses the border.

Something else to ponder is why foreign-manufactured products from American companies seem to cost just as much as the stuff made here. Could it be that the real purpose for going across the border is to maximize profit, not keep prices down?

Think about your statement carefully for a moment. With that statement, you scream at the top of your virtual lungs "I have never been a business owner" beyond a lemonade stand. The sole purpose of any business is to turn a profit. If you are not profitable, you are a charity.

Of course you want to maximize profit. Otherwise, you are a poor business leader. Jeez.

Rubbish. I have bought hundreds of thousands of tons of steel from China with perfect results. This in the oil and gas industry.

A CEO's role, every CEO, is to deliver value to the shareholder, nothing more. Oh, and yes we do live in a world, not just the US.

You make that sound like a bad thing. Unless you work at The People's Tractor Factory #2 that is indeed the purpose of a business.

Own your own business and you can decide how magnanimous to be with your profits and big car manufactures are hostage to many interests, although Ford is still majority owned by the Ford family. For a fascinating read of how Ford made it's way through the period of automotive meltdown I suggest Saving the Icon I learned a tremendous amount about the auto industry, how Detroit works and how evil the Democrats are.

Companies move out of the US to avoid the EPA, Unions, taxes, and business regulations.

So for all you long headed pards who hammered GMC for accepting bailouts and swearing never to buy another GMC product. Which is worse?

Moving production across the border or taking .gov money?

Based on previous posts everyone should now be buying a Toyota!! Right!!??

Taking .gov money is far worse. I bought a Toyota 4Runner (in 08) and it's been a great vehicle with zero defects but my next truck will be an F-150. I will never buy another GM or Dodge/Jeep vehicle (and I have had several).

The American industrial dream is built on building (and selling) a "better" mouse trap. That trap may be more effective or cheaper. The use of .gov to create an unfair playing field in an industry as punishment for not "taking the soup" as it were isn't what I can support.

Here is the Oreo replacement: hydrox are back