From a post on the death toll from WWII at Bookworm…
Danny Lemieux:
But let’s call that “Long Peace” following WWII by its real name: “Pax Americana”, which is presently in the state of being systematically unraveled by our current White House occupant and his minions.
Michael Hiteshew:
They had plenty of help.
The Europeans have been keen to dismantle American hegemony since they recovered from WWII, while getting ‘stupid Americans!’ to defend them. The EU, the single currency and single labor market was supposed to make them the dominant power on the planet. By the late 90’s they made no secret of the fact they fully intended to replace us and demonstrate how a world dominant civilization should be run. I’m still waiting for the demonstration to begin.
When the Russians aren’t taking aid from us, they are fully devoted to destroying us, using every means possible.
Meanwhile, between taxes, unions and regulation, virtually all American manufacturing has been driven offshore, mostly to China. The Chinese are using their newfound wealth to build a modern society and also fully intend to replace us as the dominant world power.
Islam is a backward, barbaric, totalitarian ideology that spends half its energy fighting each other and the other half attacking its neighbors. It should be destroyed and its practice outlawed. It’s worse than nazi-ism or communism and is wholly incompatible with any form of modern civilization. We are in its sights because we are still seen as the dominant power that must be defeated for islam to expand.
The last remnants of the communists, both in Venezuela and the university lounge, also want the American Idea destroyed because freedom and capitalism are the polar opposites of what they wish to impose.
So it’s been tough going. Only time will tell if we survive it.
It’s not true that virtually all US manufacturing has been driven offshore…manufacturing output in the US is quite considerable:
https://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-china-is-now-worlds-no-1-manufacturer/
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.CD
Manufacturing is never going to represent the share of US employment that it once did, but it should be a lot higher than it is, having been greatly harmed not only by bad public policy but also by some negative cultural stereotypes. See my post Faux Manufacturing Nostalgia:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/11680.html
One real problem is that in certain segments, infrastructure and knowledge based required to support manufacturing has disappeared or is disappearing. I was talking recently with a woman who has started a consumer electronics business. She is a member of an American Indian tribe, and I suggested that it would be good from a marketing standpoint, as well as simply good, to have the product manufactured on the reservation, where jobs are badly needed. She said she would love to do this, but that RF testing rooms and other needed test facilities are readily available at Chinese electronics manufacturers, but in the US, not so much.
Early in the Obama administration, when the “stimulus bill” was being debated, the feminist lobbies opposed construction as being beneficial to “burly men.”
In a country where working men once voted Democrat, the Democratic Party now represents those who create no wealth and are totally service focused. Public employee unions, service unions, feminists, and financial service workers are their constituents.
The fracking industry was providing very high paying jobs for those doing manual work. I advised a young man, a friend’s son who was majoring in chemical engineering at U of Arizona, to consider Petroleum Engineering and he did so. I think he will be OK as productivity from fracking is going to be the big focus now that oil prices are soft. Engineering is about improving productivity, if anything.
Perhaps, 3 D printing will bring some manufacturing back.
“Burly men”…the guys who work construction around here are almost all Hispanics, they are no doubt pretty strong, but “wiry” rather than “burly.”
Do “progressives” ever look at the actual world?
All Empires expire. Yours was built on the back of a virgin continent and the Europeans exhausting themselves after a millennia of conflict.
None of this applies now, and your attempts to put it back like it was is dumb, not going to happen. There will be a lot of blood spilled as you go down and it won’t be pretty.
Next up is a world state led by China, for the first part anyway. Looks good in the longer term.
“Islam is a backward, barbaric, totalitarian ideology that spends half its energy fighting each other and the other half attacking its neighbors. It should be destroyed and its practice outlawed.”
Awesome, we will be well rid of your influence. You do understand, I hope, you attacked Islam, well pretty well everyone in the area, and they are fighting back.
Pengun, thank you. You’re always a good example for the thinking of a brain addled, historically, socially, economically and politically ignorant progressive idiot. You serve a useful purpose in that respect.
PenGun, no doubt, believes that the 7th century Christians and Jews attacked Muslims and incited all that rape and pillage.
To paraphrase Oberst von Scherbach in Stalag XVII, “History would do wonders for your mind. You will not get it. “
“the guys who work construction around here are almost all Hispanics”
Maybe they are referring to prior to illegal immigration. I’m sure they have no acquaintance with anything to do with construction.
>>It’s not true that virtually all US manufacturing has been driven offshore”¦manufacturing output in the US is quite considerable:
In defense, I would hold up the manufacturing base in Baltimore and Maryland today as compared to the 1950’s. In the 1950’s the southwestern side of Baltimore harbor was a shipyard. Directly across the harbor was the enormous Bethlehem Steel mill:
Steel was first made at Sparrow’s Point in 1889, by the Pennsylvania Steel Company. By the mid-20th century, the Sparrow’s Point plant was the world’s largest steel mill, stretching 4 miles (6.4 km) from end to end and employing tens of thousands of workers.
General motors built Chevrolets in Baltimore. Western Electric built communications electronics.
The port itself brought in raw material from all over the world, including iron ore from South America. Steel, chromium, sugar from the Domino Sugar plant, automobiles and electronics were shipped out. The Pennsylvania Railroad brought down coal to the steel mill and the port and returned with steel and finished goods.
The shipyard is gone, closed in the 1970’s. Bethlehem Steel at Sparrow’s Point is gone. The GM Chevrolet plant is closed. Western Electric is closed. When I was at Waters Corp about ten years ago they had just started outsourcing all their circuit board assembly to Mexico and Vietnam. I could go on.
If we want to improve our economy, we need to start with basics. We need wealth creation industries like taking raw material and manufacturing goods from them. We have structured our economy in ways that make it impossible for us to compete.
“We have structured our economy in ways that make it impossible for us to compete.”
Some of it is simply labor costs but some manufacturing is coming back. If only our schools could teach kids to read and do simple math, we would have a better chance.
I think education, especially literacy and innumeracy are handicapping any attempt to restore manufacturing. I remember a few years ago that machine shops could not find workers who could do simple trigonometry. It is not just the US that is having trouble.
We can get manufacturing back – and given energy costs bending down already are – we can get manufacturing back.
You *might* be having trouble finding the machinists from 15-25 years ago.
Well they and these code friendly kids are still around.
However if we think we get or keep anything without fighting for it then ah no. If we do nothing we’ll not only get nothing we’ll be nothing – and we deserve it.
Manufacturing was destroyed as surely as Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Ruhr valley. They were just allowed to rebuild. We are allowed nothing. They want us gone, we’re the New Indians.
We’re not talking our way out of this, but we have America and indeed New Worlds above us to fight for and not just our own survival. {== we don’t survive without fighting however.
Merry Christmas.
PS – cuz I can’t resist. Maybe “we aren’t talking our way out of this” is a good comeback for any family so tragically afflicted as to have a SJW following the ruin the Holidays script.
Interesting related post (by Claire Berlinski) and discussion thread, at Ricochet:
https://ricochet.com/globalization-and-the-elite-chasm/
The Berlinski essay is interesting, as are the comments.
Illegal immigration is the big issue because, as one commenters said, we don’t have a country if we have no borders.
Two centuries ago, immigration was a plus because there was no welfare state and there was open land. We still have a low population density compared to Europe but the welfare state cancels any benefit of immigration. California tried to limit the benefits for illegals 20 years ago and the courts, not the voters, rejected the rule. It passed with nearly 60% of the vote and was ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court. The state AG, who is now governor, refused to pursue a USSC appeal. California is now a sea of poor immigrants with no skills and couple of islands of rich leftists.
A federal court made it worse by stopping irrigation of the central valley where many Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, live. Unemployment is sky high there. The irrigation was stopped because a tiny fish was going into the pumps. Most of the problems in California could be solved by voters but courts have blocked needed reforms. The gay marriage was one more issue where courts cancelled voter initiatives.
But let’s call that “Long Peace” following WWII by its real name: “Pax Americana”,
A nation is it’s people. When America was engaged in WWII, America’s population was 90% white, 10% black and Hispanics and Asians were essentially rounding errors. As we changed the people, (presently there are now 5 whites for every 1 black, the Hispanic population is skyrocketing, Asians are making their presence felt) we changed the nation. When we import people from cultures where socialism is respected, from failed societies, where class inequality was devastating, then these habits of mind and culture come to nest here and they change us too. Look at the coalition that the Democrats have assembled and look at how much emphasis they place on the belief that redistribution is what leads to national success.
The people who made America great during Pax Americana are being replaced by others and as the people of America change, so too does America. There is no policy fix for this.
” There is no policy fix for this.” except for curtailing and/or being more judgmental WRT immigration.
” There is no policy fix for this.” except for curtailing and/or being more judgmental WRT immigration.
We already have problems. Curtailing immigration simply arrests the change, it doesn’t reverse what we are today.
I read the Berlinski essay, and it was interesting, but her essays usually are. She touches on the economics of global integration but there’s too much going on there that I don’t understand for me to comment.
On immigration, the Democratic Party leadership encourages illegal immigration, not out of some altruistic sense that we need to help whatever random group of people manage to evade the border guards, although altruism is their cover story. It’s from the realistic assessment that low skilled people from collectivist societies – especially fast reproducing demographics like Hispanics and muslims, create a power base for long term Democratic Party power. It’s that simple. This is exactly why the Euro Leftists want to bring in more muslims, even as they destroy the social fabric of Europe. Guaranteed long term political power for the left. Claire seems incapable of seeing that.
I agree that the country is changing. I am no white supremacist but we are seeing the meritocracy displaced by a system of equal outcomes by fiddling the results of testing and the education system is being destroyed by a philosophy of “feelings” above accomplishment.
I see no real opportunity of reversing this as non-whites seem satisfied with redistribution of assets they did not create.
I know blacks who are comfortable with middle class values but they, in turn, will be overwhelmed by the ghetto blacks who want only what they want and are not prepared to wait for accomplishment.
My generation, white and black, is moving from the scene and we are willing to do so as we see chaos coming.
I wish I could see the solution.
I see no real opportunity of reversing this as non-whites seem satisfied with redistribution of assets they did not create.
As always with unpleasant realities in life, they continue to do damage and people adjust their lives to live with the damage until such time as the damage is so great that they no longer find it beneficial to maintain the status quo and thus embark on a high risk endeavor to resolve the source of their problems. Physicians will tell their patients, “stop smoking” and “lose weight” and “exercise more” and lots of patients will simply adjust their lifestyles to accommodate life with lowered stamina, lowered lung capacity, reduced sex life due to fatigue issues, as they become more overweight and sedentary. Then they have a heart attack and get slapped in the face with reality that they can’t continue overeating and being sedentary and so launch themselves on a painful road of getting back into shape.
Wealth redistribution from whites to minorities will be accepted by whites until the cost of rebellion, and attendant risks, is the better deal than continuing to be tax farmed. That’s when violence erupts.
We’re definitely getting closer to that trigger point, look at Fisher vs. University of Texas where the central issue is that UT wants sanction to grant affirmative action to the children of Hispanic physicians, lawyers, judges, etc who are outcompeted by the children of white janitors and maids. The minority children of privilege are thought to deserve special lowered standards compared to the white children of middle and lower class parents. What does that white parent tell his kid to explain why favoritism is being extended to the child of a Hispanic physician or judge who the white child out-performed?
I see no real opportunity of reversing this as non-whites seem satisfied with redistribution of assets they did not create.
I already defend white privilege whenever I meet a real-world leftist spouting off about it. White privilege is no different than children expecting to be the beneficiaries of their parents’ estate and we’d think it daft that a stranger walking by the lawyer’s office could just show up at the reading of the will and expect to be cut in for an equal share of the estate. It’s ludicrous that a Hispanic student gets affirmative action over a white student when the white student’s ancestors sacrificed to build up the commons in America to the point that it was a desirable society for immigrants. That immigrant has no rational argument that he could put forth to justify his sharing in the commons.
I know blacks who are comfortable with middle class values but they, in turn, will be overwhelmed by the ghetto blacks who want only what they want and are not prepared to wait for accomplishment.
The multiculturalism of Beaver Cleaver America was essentially a 9/10th white America and a 1/10th black America and the uplift and equality project could be managed by putting the cost of uplifting 10% of the population onto the backs of the remaining 90% of the population. The burden was small and manageable and, in terms of history, a strong case could be made that such a burden was morally defensible. All of this comes tumbling down when the cost of equal outcomes for 1/2 the population is placed on the shoulders of the other half of the population. What was a 9:1 ratio for uplift reduces to a 1:1 ratio and thus becomes too burdensome and too expensive, both in cost and lost, or curtailed, opportunity.
Much of the black middle class is an artificial creation produced by putting a discriminatory thumb on the jobs scales and favoring blacks for government employment, where blacks are vastly over-represented when compared against their proportion of the population and even more so when judged against objective measures of merit/performance/skills/qualification, see the abandonment of civil service exams, the rise of disparate impact tests, the mandates to hire failed black candidates for police and fire departments over more highly qualified white applicants in order to create a diverse workforce. These government jobs are solidly middle class.
I wish I could see the solution.
The solution is going to be awful and the tragedy of this future is that this awful resolution could have been entirely avoided by making different CHOICES in the past.
Not all middle class blacks are government workers but that is a huge share and the resistance of blacks to Republican candidates is often pure self interest as Republicans talk about cutting government. I see no solution as government has become a huge anchor holding back economic progress which, in turn, affects blacks more than whites.
“I remember a few years ago that machine shops could not find workers who could do simple trigonometry.”
Soh Cah Toa
Do they still teach that in schools? I here a lot about kids coding but I don’t here about math very often.
I have read a great deal on the politics of the 3rd Reich, as I’m sure many here have. One thing that struck me was the continued jockeying for power and authority in ’44 and ’45 even as it was clear to all that Germany was going to lose and be physically destroyed in the process. The defeat of the armed forces and of the nation was significantly less important to the elite than gaining a new title or a better residence with more access to Hitler. While that is not a remarkable thing in a historical context perhaps, reading about it in such dire circumstances for the participants in a modern setting gave me an appreciation that when regimes are crumbling, we should never expect those who have profited thus far to come to their senses and act for the common good. They would rather rule a rubble pile than step down in shame, or admit fault. If the nation is ever going to be repaired, it will be done with revolution, or not at all. There are too many hogs at the trough to do it via democratic means.
Grurray, I was taught that. But I’m an old guy.
Mr Black, I haven’t read on the politics of the 3rd Reich, and what you wrote is sobering. Not surprising though, unfortunately.
A succinct summary of the problem was stated by Howard Jarvis, co-author of Prop 13 in California, who said “You can’t ask pigs to step away from the trough. You have to kick it away from them.”
Regarding American manufacturing, I was meaning to write up a post about this but couldn’t get it all together and find enough time. There were several confluences that caused it to turn a corner and move back towards North America.
It seemed a big part of it was the 2011 Japanese tsunami that disrupted global supply chains. Many companies started taking a closer look at their logistics and shipping costs and how it fit into the entire production system.
Then the price of energy stagnated and domestic fracking wells came on line. There was a certain serendipitous ‘Goldilocks/Yankee Ingenuity’ level that kept things stable enough for things to take off.
The dollar then rose and oil dropped. The Chinese collective Potemkin Village started toppling at the same time their labor costs started rising. All this combined to stem the tide of outsourcing and bring back manufacturing to our shores.
Or at least close to our shores. While some dribs and drabs of “onshoring” pop up here and there in the good old Rust Belt, in the last 3 years over $10 billion dollars in capital investment has poured into Mexico. The border area is booming. Labor costs now lower than China, lower shipping costs, and NAFTA duty reductions all make Mexico far more attractive for locating production.
Now advances in technology like 3D printing but also more advanced high speed machining has allowed for more regional hubs to spring up instead of just locating in one centralized place like Detroit or Szechwan or the Rurh.
The one notable wildcard now is the Trans Pacific Partnership. Free trade usually only brings good things for the free market and innovation, but the secretive and suspicious nature of this agreement is worrisome. Individual trade deals always seem to work out well. Mano-a-mano, we can usually both hammer out the best deal.
Conversely, trade zones have overly centralized power and too often separated stake holders from the risk takers.