The "Buy American" Campaign and the Age of Global Trade

I was recently having a little dialog, via email, with a friend about Americans' buying products made in other countries. The ultimate inspiration behind this was a series on ABC TV news called "Made in America," which aims to make us Americans aware of how much imported merchandise we are buying and, presumably, stimulate us to look for domestically produced alternatives; that is, "buy American" and help the American economy.

There are a lot of reasons why so much of what Americans are buying and consuming is not domestically produced. Much of it comes from China these days, so we talk about the value of China's currency, which the government of China keeps artificially low, and low wages in China—both of which result in China being able to produce and sell its goods very cheaply.

But there is one reason that's possibly overlooked. At least I do not hear it mentioned. But I have occasion to see evidence of it.

If you look at freight trains, freight yards, or those yards where shipping containers are transferred from trains to trucks, you see just how wide-spread containerized shipping is these days. And the names on many of the containers show they're involved in the China trade.

Here is a quote from a Wikipedia article on "containerization":

The system, developed after World War II, led to greatly reduced transport costs, and supported a vast increase in international trade.

Therefore, items made in China (or in many other countries) can be shipped cheaply. Thus, starting with the items' original low cost and adding (as businesses must do) the cost of shipping and any tariffs, the items can still be sold cheaply because per-item shipping costs are low. Without this cheap means of shipping, it might not be profitable to sell much of the imported merchandise that we buy.

So a revolution in shipping has caused much more globalization and internationalization. No doubt it's not only Americans who are buying a lot of imported stuff of all kinds. In Europe, there is now more international trade: trade moves more freely within the "Eurozone" because of the removal of tariffs and other trade barriers, plus improved highways, tunnels, and bridges.

But to get back to the "Made in America" campaign: Actually, the whole idea that consumers need to go out of their way to support domestic manufacturing because American manufacturing has declined or is threatened is false. In fact, American manufacturing is thriving.* The value of American manufactures currently is greater than it ever has been, and is greater than that of any other country.
______________
*This information and the statements in the following sentence are based on assertions in an installment of the PBS television series "America Revealed."

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

How You Can Help Reduce Insurance Premiums

A lot of the United States has been experiencing successive bouts of violent thunderstorms. These storms have included so-called microbursts and derechos; but, bottom-line, they've been severe storms, with high winds and often hail.

The hail no doubt has damaged a lot of cars. The high winds have uprooted trees, which in turn have often damaged cars as well as houses by falling on them.

This damage to cars and houses must have resulted in a large number of claims to insurance companies—which in turn will raise insurance premiums for all of us.

Many of these cars were located in suburban and small-town locations. They belong to people who live in houses, not apartments. Therefore, the car owners have garages. I'll bet the insurance companies wish that the cars had been safely parked in their owners' garages.

Of course the original purpose of garages was to house cars (and carriages, before people started owning cars). But cars today often do not spend most of their time in garages. Why?

I can only judge from what I observe in my own area. (I live in an area technically suburban, but I like to describe it as edge-of-city.) Nearly everyone here has a two-car garage. Yet, their vehicles sit in front of their garages or on the street. Again—why?

There are several answers. One is that families actually own too many vehicles to keep all of them in their garage. There might be a sedan, an SUV, maybe a pickup used for business.

And nowadays the garage has myriad uses aside from parking your car. A garage may be holding a boat or a lot of family "junk." A garage might be used to hold merchandise used in a business (I believe some of my neighbors do this). Garages even may be used as exercise rooms, or for entertaining. (A neighbor of mine apparently used their garage, not long ago, for a wedding reception—presumably theirs!)

So, folks, protect your car and other vehicles from hail and storm damage. Make room for your car. Get the garage cleared out and park your car where it belongs.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

The Caliber of Right-Wing Thought--on Gay Matters, on Guns

Unfortunately I often spend--quite possibly I should say waste--time reading articles on HuffPost (Huffington Post) on AOL; and further, reading and replying to the comments that other readers/users post.

I get saddened and frustrated by all the comments by homophobes, every time there's an article even remotely having to do with anything gay. They make the same tired, old comments--homosexuality is unnatural, it's a sin--and they point to their Bibles as telling them so. Never mind that they choose to pay attention to only some parts of the Bible and ignore others.

I argue with these people, by way of my comments on what they say and then their attempts at refuting me--etc., etc.

It's futile. As I said in a previous posting here, their logic is typically faulty, and you can't get them to understand that because they have little or no notion of logic, or of what is or is not faulty reasoning.

Then, in light of the recent shootings in Aurora, Colorado, I wrote that the United States has a problem with the wide and easy availability of guns and ammunition. To me the situation is quite clear--but not so to the gun-rights boys.

I provoked the argument they have used so many times in the past: cars can kill people, too, so would you ban cars?

I tried to point out that this is a faulty analogy. There is this important and fundamental difference between cars and guns: Cars do not have the primary purpose of killing people, but guns do.

So that is what I replied to the person who tried to make the comparison with cars. But he denies that his analogy is faulty.

As is so often the case with Right-wing types, they use faulty arguments and false "facts"; and their minds are so closed (not that closed minds are the sole property of those on the Right) that they cannot or will not acknowledge when their arguments are shown to be flawed.

You can get some really absurd and nonsensical comments out of them. One, recently, was writing about the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution. There is no 28th Amendment. The moral here is not about the general level of intelligence (low!) but how people can think and believe really wacky things.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Stein

The Penn State Scandal: The Perspective of an Alumnus

People in the US who follow the news have certainly heard about the ongoing scandal involving Pennsylvania State University (called "Penn State" for short). For those who for whatever reason have not, briefly it involves allegations of child abuse by Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach, and allegations of a cover-up of those actions by university officials including the well-loved (and very successful) Head Football Coach, Joe Paterno (who has died since this scandal first broke). It's a bit like the priest child sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church where, similarly, it's alleged that bishops knew about the actions of priests and ignored the problem or merely transferred the priests. The similarity lies both in the abuse and in the charges of inaction or improper action on the part of higher-ups.

I happen to be an alumnus of Penn State. Even though I may feel a limited connection with Penn State—for one thing, I have degrees from two other schools so my alma mater loyalties are sort of divided up—still, I have to feel affected by this whole mess. Who would want the name of their alma mater to be synonymous with scandal, shame, and disgrace?

I think that, if I were still in the job market, I might even consider lying on my resume about what college I had attended. Meanwhile I find myself sort of wishing that the whole thing would blow over but it will not; the news involving Penn State just goes on and on, with the latest being sanctions--monetary and otherwise--against the school and its football program by the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). I am sure that many football fans as well as those sympathetic to Penn State consider the sanctions excessive or undeserved.

One result of all this I might not mind: At Penn State, as at many American colleges, there is too much emphasis on football, and having winning sports teams sometimes seems like a higher priority than education of the students. Maybe in the new environment, as forced on Penn State by the NCAA, emphases and priorities will return to what they ought to be and football will revert to being a secondary purpose of the school.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

And Still Another Gun Massacre

America is currently reeling from yet another massacre by gun.

Readers of my blog know where I stand on gun control. There has been jurisprudence that has affirmed government's right or power to place some limits on so-called "Second Amendment rights" (gun ownership). But, with the current conservative Supreme Court, and enormous lobbying power by the NRA (National Rifle Association), enacting any meaningful gun control--even over assault weapons, which are certainly not needed or used by hunters--is extremely unlikely.

At this moment I don't intend to take on the arguments of the pro-gun segment of the population. I have done so numerous times, in various places. I just want to point out one effect of this most recent event on the collective consciousness of Americans, which is that now people can no longer feel safe even going to the movies.

There are more and more places where we can no longer feel safe. When I was in school, some 55 years ago, there was no such thing as school shootings. Lockdown was not a word in our vocabularies, back then. We may legitimately wonder what has happened, what is going on with our society.

Is this the kind of America that we want?

It should be clear enough what the problem is: guns, and even assault weapons, are too readily available and can get into the hands of mentally unstable people who will use them to create havoc. The American people must cry out, and cry out loudly.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Stein

Liberals and Conservatives (Again)

For those conservatives who complain about liberals: If you appreciate having clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, thank the liberals. If you appreciate having food and medicine that are safe, thank liberals. It's conservatives who want to gut the government's (the FDA's and EPA's) ability to ensure the safety of our food, medicines, water, and air. But public health is one of the major government success stories.

Ronald Reagan convinced much of the country that the government is the problem. But, if you think it through: Who do you want to provide you with police and fire protection? To build and repair highways? To put up traffic signals, or control air traffic? Are you going to get together with your neighbors to create organizations to provide these things? Then you've created a government!

Conservatives have also persuaded people that the government takes too much from them in the form of taxes, usually with the further thought that their taxes go to support no-good people who don't want to work--actually an appeal to racial prejudice and racial stereotypes.

But really, those who say these things are the wealthy whose motivation is to avoid paying tax themselves. If you are not also one of the 1%, they don't care what you pay. If you look at the facts (which seem to get overlooked in these arguments): the top income tax bracket under Eisenhower it was 91%. Under Nixon it was 70%. Under Ronald Reagan it was 50%. So it's been steadily going down for decades. It's currently 35%. (And since the top tax rate on capital gains is only 15%, the rich get a real break, and that is why billionaire Warren Buffet has told us that his secretary pays more tax than he does!)

Yet the super-rich are still not satisfied. Some conservatives go so far as to claim that if they've earned their money, they have the right to keep it. But court decisions have repeatedly upheld the government's right to tax its citizens, and anyone who rejects that is not just a conservative but an anarchist.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Stein

A Few (Silly) Thoughts

I saw a witch. Yes, a real honest-to-goodness witch and not one of those wannabe witches who call themselves wiccans.

Well, I said to her, "Aroint thee, witch," which, as anyone who knows their Shakespeare knows, is what you say to a witch.

Well, she said, "I don't know how to aroint. I flunked Arointing 101 in witch college."

So I asked her, "You went to witch college? Where was that?"

And, naturally, she said "Witchita."

********
A Little Dialog

A: I let my tomatoes sit and ripen after I buy them.

B: Makes sense. How long do you let them ripen?

A: About a week. I fatten up my bagels before I use them, too.

B: You do? How do you fatten up bagels?

A: Well, naturally you have to feed them.

B: What do you feed bagels to fatten them up?

A: Just cold air. You see, I let them sit in the refrigerator and then the cold air fattens them up.

B: They feed on cold air?

A: Yes. Well, you have to let the cold air get to them, but it just needs to get down into the hole in the middle.

B: So they feed through the hole in the center?

A: Yeah, you know, they're like an octopus or a starfish or something that has its mouth in the center.

B: Who knew?

Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Stein

The US and the Metric System

. . .or, more correctly, the SI or Système international d'unités, the International System of Weights and Measures.

Officially, the US has been on the "metric system" for many years. However, this country has made only limited progress in converting to the international units.

We have in fact become used to describing the displacement of our car engines in liters rather than cubic inches, and I believe all the measurements on our car engines are metric, but I am not sure that metric screw threads are used.

But we put into those cars motor oil that comes in quarts and gasoline that is measured in gallons. (Note: The US gallon is not the same at the British Imperial gallon, nor are other units with the same names—the quart and so on—precisely equivalent between US and British Imperial systems.)

We buy wine and whiskey in 750 ml bottles, and soda in liter or 2-liter bottles; but soda also comes in six-packs of 12-ounce cans, and beer is sold in 12-ounce cans.

In cooking, all our recipes are given in teaspoons and tablespoons and cups. But it's probably in the building trades where there has been the greatest resistance to change. In spite of the fact that it's ridiculously hard to calculate the area of the floor of a room (for example, when supplying flooring) when you have to start with feet and inches and end up with square feet or square yards, American architects and carpenters still use feet and inches, and so do plumbers. And these guys are extremely unwilling to change. Not to mention that there's the more general resistance from various sorts of conservatives, who have even been known to assert that the metric system is a "communist conspiracy."

And America is the only country in the world to use the Fahrenheit temperature scale. When I was first in Europe, in 1970, and was talking to people, the weather or climate where I come from came up in conversation. When I was asked, "How cold is it?" I had to reply that I would need to do a bit of difficult mental math to answer that, because we used a different temperature scale and I'd need to convert to the units that they were acquainted with. That was met with incredulity.

So we measure our personal height in feet and inches; weigh our ever-swelling persons in pounds; and post highway speed limits in miles per hour. The last of these facts, incidentally, implies just one minor way--the units of the speedometer and the odometer--in which cars for sale in the US must be modified; another is climate controls, which for the US must read degrees Fahrenheit instead of Celsius.

There's mainly been change where international trade is involved. Since a car engine might be used in cars made and sold in multiple countries, it was important that car engines be built using an international standard of measurement. But it matters much less how our carpenters measure the wood they cut as they build our houses.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein

Of Hats and Undershirts

Do you remember when all men wore hats? You probably don't actually remember but you can see the old fashion in old movies and TV shows. When I was a kid I think it was just when hats were going out of style. I remember having a hat, but that would have been just one of many ways in which I was not cool as a kid (that's another story).

So I'm not sure just when or why hats began to go out of style. I do remember President John F. Kennedy riding in the presidential limo, on the day he was shot, with no hat, but that was 1963 and I think hats went out of style before then.

Now there is a new fashion for hats. However, the hats that men are wearing have small brims, and they perch atop the head, which makes them look as though they are too small. I personally don't find the look becoming--but, being an old fart, I'm naturally and almost inevitably not likely to approve of the fashions of young people.

I have a hat which I bought some years ago. Sad to say, I never wear it because, in windy Chicago, it tends to blow right off. Women (who I guess also wear hats less often these days) have an advantage there because they use (or I guess, used to use) hatpins to hold their hats on.

Hats serve a practical function, keeping us warm in winter and keeping the sun off in summer, thus protecting sensitive noses, the tops of our ears, and perhaps also the backs of our necks from sunburn. Baseball caps may be the chief head covering that has continually been popular with American males, and I in fact often wear a baseball-cap-style cap in winter and a different one in summer.

All men in America wore undershirts until one movie in which (I believe) Gary Cooper removed his shirt and--had nothing on under it! This may have been a bit startling at the time but evidently men (or women) liked the look, and, as the story goes, the very next day the sale of undershirts took a bit plunge!

So the modern look, definitely fostered by Hollywood, has been for men to wear no undershirts and to show a little skin, or chest hair, at the neck above their shirts (or even leave their shirts unbuttoned part-way down to show still more). But now it looks as though the newest fashion is again to wear an undershirt, often a colored T-shirt. (This is best done, in my opinion, when the color of the T-shirt coordinates with other clothing items being worn.) As for me, I've always worn white T-shirts in the winter, to have another layer of clothing for warmth. And I've got quite a few colored T-shirts, so now I can wear those and feel like I'm in fashion!

So, as we ought to know by now, fashion is continually changing. It's been said that if you just hang on to old clothes long enough, they will come back into fashion.

Update. Expanded July 9, 2012.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Richard Stein