New Mexico Liberty

Life, Liberty, Politics and Policy in the Land of Enchantment!

Lee Kershner

It's not just about losing manufacturing jobs.

You may not be prepared to accept the dire consequences of globalization upon the economic future of our country.  The combination of big business and big government sold us out  completely in order to access the Chinese and Indian labor and consumer markets.  Unless you are satisfied that the U.S. cannot or even should not maintain its world dominance. 


The Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts these 10 US industries will face the biggest job losses, in terms of number of jobs, from 2008 to 2018. 

1. Department stores: 159,000 jobs, or 10.2% of its workforce.
2. Semiconductor and other electronic component makers: 146,000 jobs, or 33.7% of its workforce.
3. Auto parts manufacturers: 101,000 jobs, or 18.6% of its workforce.
4. US Postal Service: 98,000 jobs, or 13% of its workforce.
5. Printing businesses: 95,000 jobs, or 16% of its workforce.
6. Cut and sew apparel makers: 95,000 jobs, or 57% of its workforce.
7. Newspaper publishers: 81,000 jobs, or 24.8% of its workforce. 
8. Support businesses for mining: 76,000 jobs, or 23.2% of its workforce.
9. Gas stations: 75,000 jobs, or 8.9% of its workforce.
10. Wired telecom businesses: 73,000 jobs, or 11% of its workforce.

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, December 2009


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Mike BlessingPermalink Reply by Mike Blessing on January 28, 2010 at 7:43pm
4. US Postal Service: 98,000 jobs, or 13% of its workforce.

Oh no, can't let the posties go out of business!
Paul GriffinPermalink Reply by Paul Griffin on January 31, 2010 at 6:25pm
The old "Post Office billing us for email" is a longstanding urban legend. False.

And I hope you enjoy mailing your Christmas cards by UPS or FedEx. Get ready for the $2.50 stamp.
Paul GriffinPermalink Reply by Paul Griffin on February 1, 2010 at 7:52am
Fine, if you live in a rural community (hypothetically) the no more mail for you, because it's not profitable for a business to provide that service anymore. That's the way the market works, bub.

In a civilized society, a SMALL amount of subsidization makes perfect sense.

But not to libertarian, of course. That's the price you pay for being a slave to an ideology.
Paul GriffinPermalink Reply by Paul Griffin on February 1, 2010 at 1:37pm
"Small" is never small enough for the "Let's drown gub-mint in the bathtub" crowd. But whatever.

"Civilized" seems to need no definition except by those who have no idea what it means. It's one of those self-evident things the Founders felt it unnecessary to describe.

And you earned the label. Live with it. Your view (presumably) is the simplistic, static one that seems to want to reflexively revert back to the "good old days" and dismantle all things you don't understand with the ax of a madman.

Ironically, the USPS has always existed since the Constitution of 1787 (actually, since the 1781 Articles of Confederation, IX, para. 4) so I'm not sure to what Utopian Ideal we're supposed to revert back to. 1750? 1620?

Speaking of straw men, I never said "the ONLY way to deliver mail" was through the USPS. Although it's correct that it's the only legal (and cheapest, and for now, the best) way to deliver papers in small envelopes.
Mike BlessingPermalink Reply by Mike Blessing on February 2, 2010 at 4:32pm
"Civilized" in this context means the people who agree with him on taxing the rest of us to pay for his goodies.

"SMALL" — why are we complaining about subsidization for his benefit? It's only our money we're talking about here. Why should we care?

Who it makes sense to — Paul Griffin, of course.
Paul GriffinPermalink Reply by Paul Griffin on February 3, 2010 at 2:46pm
They're not "my" goodies, they are OUR benefits as a Nation. We all benefit from not having to pay outrageous fees to send cards and letters.

Folks like you have a lot of trouble with words and sentences the founders would understand perfectly. Something like: "Public post office, with rules established by congress," elude your understanding completely, but they are PERFECTLY CONSTITUTIONAL, despite delusional rhetoric from the Anarchist crowd.

Put your extremist ideology to a vote and see where that gets you. It will get the 2-3% you folks always get when you explain clearly what you're going to do to Society if you ever got the chance.
Mike BlessingPermalink Reply by Mike Blessing on February 4, 2010 at 12:41pm
As with the word "we," the word "our" means a group with common interests and causes. Mine are all about individual liberty. Yours? Irrelevant to me.

As for "not having to pay outrageous fees to send cards and letters," I do almost all of my correspondence online. On those rare occasions when I actually do send a hardcopy letter, I can and will do it through FedEx.

Just because something's Constitutional doesn't mean that it makes sense — case in point, Congress using the postal cause in Article I, Section 8 as an excuse to give the Posties a legal monopoly on that segment of the market.

If it wasn't for the Posties having that monopoly, competition between FedEx, UPS, etc., would drive the price down, just like with VCRs. In the 1980s a VCR cost around Ø300-400. Now they're down to Ø50-100, if a store bothers to carry them at all, what with DVDs and Blu-Ray systems, which will get cheaper and then get pushed off the market by flash-memory devices.

Hey, Paul, it's not personal — you're just the latest pop-up target on the debate range here.
Paul GriffinPermalink Reply by Paul Griffin on February 10, 2010 at 2:42pm
"Just because something's Constitutional doesn't mean that it makes sense" That's the most reasonable thing I've heard you say.

Is the USPS indispensable? Not in the grand scheme of things, no. I'm sure something better could replace it. But my assessment of it TODAY is correct. I'm glad you're willing to pay $4. to send a Christmas card. Most are not. But yes, competition would indeed bring that down. Not much though.

You do realize that the USPS is semi-private, right?

Philosophical detour: You may think everyone else's views are irrelevant, but that's simply not so. Despite what the B**** Ayn Rand preached, you and me and all others live in a society. Get used to that. Unless you go live in a hidden compound or an island by yourself, you must live with others and decide amongst them how to govern yourself.

And the Founders very well understood this, and believed in a common government for all the States. I suspect you would have been strongly against the Constitution's passage because folks like you are more in tune with the weak Articles of Confederation than the strong Constitution.

And VCRs and DVD player are extremely cheap because near-slave labor builds them, and frankly, their real cost, minus the markup, is close to nothing. Why? Because Americans don't build things anymore because the elites and Multinationals (should I dub them "Multis" to fit with the theme here?) colluded with both parties to make it that way.

Not offended by Internet banter. You're one of many pop-up libertines I've foolishly, pointlessly engaged with.
Mike BlessingPermalink Reply by Mike Blessing on February 1, 2010 at 1:25am
I never said that the "Posties billing us for email" ("Bill 602P") story was true. The author wrote the story around the idea of the Posties actually trying to do that.

And to quote from the snopes.com article that I linked to above —

The "5¢ e-mail surcharge" hoax presents us with a new economic villain in the form of the United States Postal Service. Beset by falling revenues now that people are sending more and more e-mail (and consequently less and less real mail), the USPS is supposedly going to impose a 5¢ surcharge on every e-mail message to recoup the lost postage

First, the USPS isn't a new economic villain — it's one of the oldest in the nation, being founded in 1775 by Benjamin Franklin. While Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes the Congress to create a postal service, where does it authorize them to give that service a legal monopoly?

Second, Lysander Spooner succeeded in delivering mail for less than the Posties charged with his American Letter Mail Company in 1844, but the Posties ran him out of business not by running a better business, but with legal action.

Third, with a net income of US$ (really "Ø" for Federal Reserve Notes) −3.79 billion (2009), it's safe to say that they're losing money like the rest of the Obama Administration, and the Bush Administration before it. It's way past time to bring in private-sector competitors.
Paul GriffinPermalink Reply by Paul Griffin on February 1, 2010 at 7:50am
If it's not true, stop linking to lying stories that stoke paranoia about it.

Can you cite another success story that isn't over 150 years old?

The Postal Service isn't perfect (and isn't even the best in the world) but the USPS already directly competes with UPS and FedEx for package delivery and holds its own. In fact, it beats them on every occasion I've done a comparison.

If UPS and FedEx want to deliver letters, they have a funny way of showing it, since I'm not aware of them ever lobbying Congress for the right to do so. (If they have, correct me.)
Paul GriffinPermalink Reply by Paul Griffin on February 1, 2010 at 1:22pm
Um, yeah. That's why I said they have shown no inclination to lobby Congress ... to change those rules.

The ruling you cite seems to be geared at disallowing people simply throwing paper into other people's mailboxes. Something that is highly undesirable and frankly, stamped mail seems to thankfully discourage.
Mike BlessingPermalink Reply by Mike Blessing on February 2, 2010 at 4:06pm
f it's not true, stop linking to lying stories that stoke paranoia about it.

Feel free to stop me if you can.

Can you cite another success story that isn't over 150 years old?

Being Ø3,790,000,000 in the hole and shutting down 800 local offices last year is a success story? How's that again?

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