Little victories in the Big Picture

[ksdaddy]

I've had my bad experiences with US companies too. From 1987 to 1992 I worked for a company that manufactured spikes for golf shoes and other sport shoe hardware. Part of a large corporation based in Massachussetts. Our factory in Maine was about 60 employees in a converted potato packing shed. We had our own 18 wheeler and two trailers, one old Clark forklift, and anywhere from 8 to 15 injection molding machines, depending on the timeline. We re-ground our plastic runners and mixed it in with virgin plastic to save money. We had a small machine shop and made and/or repaired most of our own molds and such. Think of any brand of golf hardware or shoes from that era. Bear tracks, Dexter, Etonic, Nike, Fuzzy Zoeller, Ajay, Spalding, Nike, Reebok, Stylo, Champ... any of them except Footjoy. If it was a colored plastic/metal golf spike, chances are I had a hand in it in some fashion, either mixing the plastic or anything to do with inventory control or shipping. And my wife ran one of the machines and also worked in blister packing for the stores. Footjoy had a different thread system altogether and we didn't make them. But we packaged them for the retail market under contract! You Aussie guys, ever see a Niblick golf spike? We made 'em.

 

On more than one occasion the owner told us (in effect) he had no problem with kicking each and every one of us to the ground and sh__ing on us, because he could get the Chinese to make them for 6 cents a day. The raises will be small this year, boo - hoo, as he tries to find a place to park his Pace Arrow motor home in our gravel parking lot.

 

September 11, 1992, the bosses came up from MA and shut us down. No notice. Come gather 'round folks, informal meeting in the shipping area, won't take more than five or ten minutes. As of now the factory is closed. The machines are shut down and they will remain shut down until they start up again in the new factory. Armed Sherriff's deputies at the exit doors, five 18 wheelers in the parking lot and a crew of workers to disassemble the factory and move it to Laconia NH where the worker's comp was cheaper.

 

They've since moved production someplace overseas.... can ya guess?

 

In '91 we made a very short run of "President Bush" golf spikes. We made a few thousand of each in red, white, and blue. I think we shipped a box of 3000 of each color to Bush Senior. I still have a handful of them around here somewhere. They weren't put out to the public, it was for Mr. Read my Lips only.

 

So now if I disappear from the forum, you'll know I was rubbed out by some MA company rep as payback for besmirching their name. Which I haven't mentioned, by the way.

[zigzag]

dad, it's interesting how little things like golf spikes can have such a profound effect on so many people. Makes you realize how much money there is in the world.

[markrhofman]

"Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing......" My company moved it's production back to the US from Italy and France - more for control than cost savings. I can't express enough how important I think it is to "Buy American" although that is getting tougher and tougher - hell even most of the seafood in the grocery stores is coming from China or someplace else now! It's going to take a grass roots consumer movement to change it......the more folks we can get to look at the labels the better. The corporate fat cats have the law on their side with all this "globalization" - I think a swing towards - not all the way to - isolationism would do a lot to help us all!

[ksdaddy]

dad' date=' it's interesting how little things like golf spikes can have such a profound effect on so many people. Makes you realize how much money there is in the world.[/quote']

 

 

When I started there, we had six machines, all of which produced, on average, 24,000 spikes per shift (could run 30,000). So that's 72,000 per machine, per day, times six machines, times at least five days a week and often seven days. Production went up from there due to more machines being added. I don't think the factory ever stopped in the five years I was there, except for major renovation time. Every piece we made was sold; nothing sat on the shelf, and we were never 100% caught up.

 

And we sold TO the Japanese!

[retrosurfer1959]

It doesn't take much though to really help if you buy a cotton t-shirt from a company that has a Made in America business model and is conscientious about, it your not just helping that clothing company your supporting

 

- The farmer who grows the cotton

- The mill that processes the cotton

- The people who ship the cotton

- The people that design the product

- The people that market the product

- The people who take your orders

- The warehouse that stores the product

- The person who packs the orders

- The people who make the box to ship the product

- The company that hosts there website

- All the Management and Customer Service people

- AND MORE...

[TommyK]

...

 

We're toast' date=' and we put ourselves in the toaster while begging other nations to push the lever....[/quote']

 

Let's just hope it's a MIC toaster sold at WalMerts. It'll only be hot for a little while.

[TommyK]

...It may be an unAmerican suggestion but we need to lower our expectations for what we really need. ....

 

Ouch! The truth hurts... but it is still the truth. Well spoken grampa.

[milod]

Actually on one point I'd disagree in terms of "free trade."

 

The U.S., Canada and Mexico functionally are a single marketplace. My understanding is that even "low-cost labor" in Mexico is losing to less expensive regions of the world. Right now, in spite of federal law, you can't tell if your hamburger in the U.S. originated in the U.S., Canada or Mexico - or a combination of the three.

 

As the Europeans learned, you can't be next door without a closely-linked economy. Questions of immigration are virtually unheard of between the US and Canada because... heck the economies and cultures are so similar, why move unless there's some specific personal factor involved? I know of ranchers who work both sides of the border.

 

Mexico... until the economy there is in a similar situation there will continue to be problems.

 

It's the same deal as the Europeans cutting purchases of U.S. grain not so much because it cost more or was not better quality, but because if Polish or Ukrainian farmers couldn't survive economically, they could walk on foot into Germany, France or Austria to take advantage of those welfare systems and jobs.

 

Africa was mentioned as the next place to do such growth. I dunno. Japanese, Chinese and Koreans had literate cultures with essentially the same language, etc., over a very long time, and have feelings of cultural unity. They made economic growth because of underlying national consensus regardless of "style" of government.

 

Not really true in sub-Sahara Africa. At one time Rhodesia - oops, Zimbabwe - had a chance but it was blown in ways by all involved. South Africa? I dunno. I'm not saying Africa can't do it, I'm saying it ain't likely before I'm long gone.

 

I find South America the really interesting place. Unique, but I ain't going there in this discussion.

 

But I do wonder whether all "European" nations might aid themselves by a bit more groupthink without others calling them "racist." Ain't race and it ain't "politics," it's culture and economics. Problem is that nobody's thinking long term.

 

I'm personally convinced that the more guitar playing in a culture, the easier it is for them to work together.

 

m

[grampa]

Actually on one point I'd disagree in terms of "free trade."

 

.

 

I'm personally convinced that the more guitar playing in a culture' date=' the easier it is for them to work together.

 

m

[/quote']

 

 

That is THE absolute and indisputable truth.

[NeoConMan]

Does buying a foreign make of vehicle that is made in the States count as an "American " car?

Where do the profits go?

That's how I solve that one.

 

 

And Milod is right on Africa.

Cradle of the human race, and they've never really managed to get out of the starting blocks.

 

Oh, capitalism still tries to catch on here and there but I think the imperialism and meddling from the past century

left a really bad taste in their mouth. They want to control their own destiny, so they fight to control each other.

 

My Dad has a phrase for situations like that - crabs in a bucket.

 

Put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, and don't worry about them climbing out.

As soon as one gets partway up to the rim and stands a chance of getting over the top, another one grabs him.

Trying to pull himself up results in pulling the other one down on top of him, so nobody gets out.

 

 

Africa has a ways to go before they can manage any sort of wealth, be it money or natural resources.

As soon as somebody gets something going, everybody comes to rape, pillage, slash and burn it out of existence.

 

As bad as they seem sometimes, South America and even Mexico are miles ahead of them in that regard.

[TommyK]

You said a mouthful Neo.

 

It seems that some cultures just can't handle wealth. The entire horn of Africa area on into Chad, and Uganda. There is still so much tribal in-fighting that dates back centuries, possibly millennia, to the point no one knows what the real cause was, that their economies cannot seem to gain any traction.

 

"Bucket of Crabs". Good analogy. Trouble is the crabs are getting their claws out of the bucket and are trying to drag us in. In some respects..... with our help.

[grampa]

The Africans had their own wealth before the European colonists showed up and tried to convert them to European "christian" ways. It was the foreign values colliding with theirs that led to their troubles. That is pretty much what happened in all the places the Europeans "conquered".

[NeoConMan]

Yep, which is why I posted this on the previous page;

 

I think the imperialism and meddling from the past century left a really bad taste in their mouth

Like indigenous folks most anywhere, many of them had created a system of value for what they owned.

Their trade was done as they saw best and they were happy with it. If not, they killed each other 'til they were.

 

To say Africans had their own wealth is fair.

It's when the Europeans showed up and discovered things they could export and sell like mineral wealth and

various crops - compared to beads, horns, trinkets and hooved beasts - that the game changed.

 

North Africa and the Saudi peninsula would still be right there with them if not for incredible oil wealth.

Turn the clock back 100 years and compare them to the rest of the African continent.

[milod]

I may be full of prune juice or the results thereof, but... Seriously, certain concepts are part of how children are brought into any given culture that nobody "thinks about." Those concepts seem self-evident to those in the culture.

 

For example, we here can imagine a world without "money," perhaps, but not a world without trade and barter. Many tribal cultures see exchange of goods quite differently. Do "we" see giving our relatives gifts as a form of barter? Nope. Imagine a culture where everybody in your "tribe" is considered a close relative and everybody else is seen as a more or less uncivilized potential enemy who is not to be trusted.

 

The Northern hemisphere gave birth to cultures that began farming and created "cities" which then brought greater specialization of work. Some interesting observations on that might be found in the oldest "saga" we know of, the Gilgamesh epic. (Noah has a different name in the Mesopotamian epic, but is a long-lived flood survivor. <grin>) "Tribe" lost out to identification with a city-nation state. Note also that even cultures in the Americas hadn't quite made the full shift beyond religion and into being a "nation" in the sense of that seen in the northern hemisphere.

 

Bottom line is that without having made those shifts, it's difficult to transition from values well-suited to that cultural environment into a "national culture" that embraces a number of subcultures that know they must more or less get along with each other as well as with other "national" cultures. "Civis" as in "civilized," basically means city/citizen - not "blood relative."

 

I'll never forget a transfer student from sub-Sahara Africa (I won't be specific on nation) I knew in high school. He normally was pretty outgoing. Suddenly for weeks he wasn't. Bright, multi-lingual and talented in many ways... His mother was killed in a tribe-vs-tribe issue.

 

Another difficulty there, and in other economically-isolated areas, is a combination of infrastructure for trade and sufficient stability to allow trade for the benefit of everyone both in that area and the outside world.

 

Heck, that's hard enough in some sections of North America. Part of the problem with the end of the "colonial era" is that economic as well as political ties ended up broken; incentive to develop various areas was lost. Without a cohesive culture, it's hard to maintain stability necessary for economic growth across a broad population. In Africa, artificial "national" lines and being pawns in an irrelevant argument of "capitalist" and "socialist/communist" didn't help. "Irrelevant?" Yup. How relevant are those terms when tribal cultural values don't fit either concept?

 

m