So, yesterday, I spoke about how taxes make a difference to the various folks in America.  From the working poor to the middle class, to the rich and super-rich.

Today, we’ll talk about our manufacturing base.  You know, the one that everyone was saying was going overseas because our labor costs are too high.  Yup.   That’s why China and India are opening textile plants here.  Because electricity is cheaper- AND reliable here.  Instead of having it cut off for hours a day- at random.  Because our labor is skilled and things can be made better here.

Just so you know, manufacturing in the US is going gangbusters.   Yup- 2012 profits set an all-time record.   $ 289 billion.  But, those profits have been garnered at the expense of wages.  Since 2009, the average manufacturing wages have dropped 3%- and that does not include the decimation of the workforce that occurred at the start of the recession.  (By the way, during this same time frame, the average wages in the US has dropped 1%- while the average CEO pay rose by more than 30%!)

Let’s examine but one case that’s been in the news.  One that Dennis Mullenberg, the soon-to-be newly minted CEO of Boeing will have to solve- differently than it seems to have been done up to now.  Boeing resents having to pay their workers $ 28 an hour.  Yup- that’s what “old” workers manufacturing the most sophisticated airplane in the air, the 777X are paid.  At the same time, the “newbies” are only paid $ 17 an hour.

Boeing wanted those wages to stay low for 15 years, not the 6 years they and the union negotiated.  (After all, negotiation results should only apply to workers and should never apply to the company.)  And, should they not have accepted this blackmail, it would move the plane’s production elsewhere.  Like South Carolina, where they pay their employees the whopping sum of $ 10 an hour.   And, if this person is the sole wage earner for the family, then you and I need to provide assistance to that person- because s/he is considered the working poor and can receive Medicaid, food stamps (oh, wait, the Republicans aver that it’s only lazy, non-working souls get this assistance), among other subsidies you and I are forced to pay because Boeing is ‘special’.

Wait- it gets better. The 777X costs between $ 300 and $ 350 million each.  Not exactly chicken feed.  And, the 777 production lines provide 25% (1/4) of all of Boeing’s profits. (That’s Boeing’s statements, not my guesses.)  Which ain’t chicken feed, either.  $ 4 billion.  So, with 100 planes produced a year, that works out to $ 10 million per plane delivered.  And, here’s the punch line….

That works out to $ 5000 per man-hour.  Yup.  And, that’s why Boeing doesn’t want to pay reasonable wages.  Because it can’t afford to do so???

Did you sign up to buy my bridge in the Sahara Desert yet?

Do you like what you are reading?   You can get a complete analysis of how life in America (and the world) has changed, now that the business compact with its employees and its community has been abrogated.  Why folks are not paid fair wages (leaving the rest of the US citizens to pay the difference between fair and minimum wages with our subsidizing their corporate profits with EITC, welfare, food stamps, and the like. 

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