Economy Getting Better?

[Charolais]

I've been away for a while with a health problem. Haven't read every post in this thread and what I'll write may have been covered. I did read several pages and didn't see this covered.

Housing bubble was bad and still is but if this economy is to come back we must have jobs for folks to work at. I see all kinds of blame in the post I did read about folks out of work and getting the check for being unemployed.

I watch closely from 2000 on and can say what I saw. The first gulf war was paid for by Germany and Japan. That worked out well as we the US furnished everything and it was paid for by other countries. The invasion of Iraq was sold to us and also was "go it alone". Go it alone is fine if you have the money to pay for that type thing. We didn't and then had a tax cut at the same time we were going to war. How do you increase spending and cut taxes and make this work? You borrow money from China. In order to borrow that much money from China you have to give China something they want. That's where the jobs come in. By 2003 China had exceeded the trade agreement by over 600 times that year just in jobs from the US. Our then leader could have stopped this but couldn't because the money from China was needed to fight this war alone. Soooo the jobs were sucked out of the US much faster than the trade agreement allowed but no one would try and stop it.

If you want an economy to work then folks must work. They can't work when the plants are closed and will never open again. So every time we spend money now China's economy grows and ours gets smaller.

If a war tax had been imposed we would have been out of Iraq in less than 3 years. We're about to learn a very hard lesson. We will change the way we live as our life styles will change. It's a new day for America. Many won't like it.

 

[BeeferMan]

Here's a chart showing a bit of good news... the number of US manufacturing jobs actually rose last year. Rose from the basement, yes, but hey, any upward trend is good...


US manufacturing employment and output totals

 

[Stormtruck2]

I live in a town of 800. We have one little lumberyard/hardware store.Been in town since the first tree was invented. He is a touch pricer than Menards, HD,and Lowes, but not when you add in the cost of a trip to town 30 miles away. Fuel, time lost, and the dinner the wife expects on a trip to town, his cost is actually lower. Poorer hours? Well, a few weeks ago the exhaust blower went on on my furnace, and it was -20 outside. We knew it had gone **** up when the bearing failed by the horrendous squeal it made. This was at 1100 at night. I bought the furnace from Tom in 1978. So I called him at home and told him my fan had failed. Did he have any electric heaters I could buy till I got the part. He said just a minute let me check my inventory. A couple minutes later he said" I have that fan in stock. Meet me at the store." I met him there, he found it, way in the back. He asked "You want me to throw it in for you?" I said "nah, I can handle it." Literally 20 minutes later it was back on line. About one hour of down time for the furnace in -20 degree weather. Could I have saved money over the years by buying from the BB stores? Maybe, but every penny that I may have over paid through the years was worth their weight in gold that cold cold night. YMMV

 

[BeeferMan]

I live in a town of 800. We have one little lumberyard/hardware store.Been in town since the first tree was invented. He is a touch pricer than Menards, HD,and Lowes, but not when you add in the cost of a trip to town 30 miles away. Fuel, time lost, and the dinner the wife expects on a trip to town, his cost is actually lower. Poorer hours? Well, a few weeks ago the exhaust blower went on on my furnace, and it was -20 outside. We knew it had gone **** up when the bearing failed by the horrendous squeal it made. This was at 1100 at night. I bought the furnace from Tom in 1978. So I called him at home and told him my fan had failed. Did he have any electric heaters I could buy till I got the part. He said just a minute let me check my inventory. A couple minutes later he said" I have that fan in stock. Meet me at the store." I met him there, he found it, way in the back. He asked "You want me to throw it in for you?" I said "nah, I can handle it." Literally 20 minutes later it was back on line. About one hour of down time for the furnace in -20 degree weather. Could I have saved money over the years by buying from the BB stores? Maybe, but every penny that I may have over paid through the years was worth their weight in gold that cold cold night. YMMV

I agree 100%. If we had such a place in town owned by such a person, I'd shop there all the time too, but... MMDefinitelyV's...

 

[simonds]

Exactly why I do business locally. They are closed on Sunday, but If I need something badly, all I have to do is call the owner and he would be very happy to go to the store and help me out. He also donates a lot of money each year to local functions. Come the forth of July he will pay for the fireworks at the local stock car race track. This is just one of many things that he does. I have never heard of Home Depot or Lowes doing anything for our local area. I buy my building materials at the local building supply, auto parts at my local NAPA, farming supplies at my local Agway farm store. In turn if any of these owners need carpenter, electrical or plumbing jobs they will call me or another local contractor in the area. Neighbors have to stick together during these hard times. Try not to send your money to China.

 

[BeeferMan]

We had a couple such hardware stores in town at one time way back. I remember going into Bob's Hardware as a kid with my grandfather, there were a couple arms chairs where the old folks used to sit and take bets on what color the river would be today - Red? Blue? Orange? Green? (This was pre-Clean Water Act days)

He had a basement full of anything - but that doesn't mean he'd sell it to you. One of my Bob's stories was told by my good friend Art. He says his wife went in one day and asked for six foot piece of one inch black iron pipe. Bob went down in the basement and after a bit came back with the pipe. He asked what she wanted it for, she replied it was for a bird feeder. Bob snatched the pipe back from her and said "I'm not selling you new pipe for that! Art would kill me if he found out! You go pick the dump for that!"

Now we got only one, a Tru Value. Locally owned, but not the same as the old ones...

 

[ultrarunner]

Not to go off on a tangent from the economy...

I was working in Olympia WA doing a remodel and time was tight... several weeks worth of work to do in 10 days.

The difference between Home Depot and Lowes in Olympia/Lacey WA and the SF Bay Area in California was night and day... not one time but many times the stores went out of their way to get me what I needed... never had that happen in CA.

Not knowing closing times, I arrived about 15 minutes after closing... went to get in and found the door locked... a security guard told me the store was closed and asked what I needed... told him that I had a plumbing problem and was hoping to get the water on... he opened the door, told the manager I needed some plumbing parts and the manager said he would keep a register open...

 

[EddieWalker]

The difference between Home Depot and Lowes in Olympia/Lacey WA and the SF Bay Area in California was night and day... not one time but many times the stores went out of their way to get me what I needed... never had that happen in CA.

Same here in TX, and not just Home Depot and Lowes. I've found it to better at every store that I've been to.

Eddie

 

[D7E]

heres something to think about.most of us here are looking at new tractors an equipment.an yes the prices go up from year to year.but if the economy in a tailspin the dealers arnt moving much new equipment.so when you make them an offer on a tractor most will jump on it.so they can move the equipment.

I've been driving all over the place trying to buy tractors for weeks, Auction prices are through the roof at the moment . Almost matching dealer prices !

 

[memman]

Your small local stores will most always be slightly higher priced than BB stores. They also, almost always carry a better line of product. How many times have you gone to Wally World and bought something because it was cheap only to find out it was a cheap piece of crap. You don't hear many on this site endorse a Chinese knockoff tractor do you? so isn't it logical that this goes for other products as well. I'm not saying that you always have to buy American, but don't buy Chinese and disillusion yourself into thinking that it's the same thing. It isn't.
You want to fix the economy. Two words: Port Tax
A 1% port tax would pay off our debt and fix health care, and won't break any of us. If you can't afford to pay 1% more for something, then you probably can't afford it in the first place.