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America making things

American Life, Economy, Made in USA, Working Comments Off

Apr 292012

About two years ago I decided to build a web site that featured 100 companies that make things in the USA. By “things” I mean consumer goods since that’s what American seem to complain about most (…everything for sale in big box stores is made in China, India, etc.). Since I had never built a web site before, I also had to teach myself HTML. Also, in the middle of all this I decided to start this blog. My attention span isn’t all that great and I wandered off to do other things from time to time, but the good news is I’m almost done. See Visible Country

That said, what I’ll start doing now is revising the website and do everything the way it should have been done if I’d known what I was doing in the first place.

A great benefit of the time spent is that I now understand and have opinions on several things that I didn’t know about two years ago.

What I have learned about companies making consumer goods in the USA.

1. Some of these companies are hard to find.

You just can’t Google “made in USA” and expect to come up with a respectable list of manufacturers. First you’ll get pages and pages of directories of websites with lists of things made in the USA. Not what I wanted. I wanted to discover companies that might not be on the usual “buy American” lists. So you have to do some harder work, like searching the internet by state and manufacturing groups, and then back checking and verifying.

2. We make more things than you think.

Those people who say “we don’t make things anymore” are wrong. For example, home audio and watches. I thought we stopped making that stuff years ago. Turns our I was wrong. We make lots of high end audio components. We just about did stop making watches, but that’s begun to change. Stylish clothing, expertly made home furnishings, sports and outdoors equipment, we make it all.

3. We don’t make some things that we should make.

Computer electronics for example. You can’t buy any wireless routers made in the USA…I know, I tried. It’s also very hard to find any computers even assembled in the USA. It seems to me we may be losing the ability to build factories to make electronic components. This is something we need to work on.

Another thing is sailplanes (gliders). OK, not something everyone wants in their garage, but I have a category on the site called “flying”, and I planned to add a company making sailplanes. Imagine my surprise, you would think at least one company would build sailplanes here.

4. Some things will be made elsewhere.

China and India have 2.5 billion people between them. The US has about 310 million. It seems reasonable that other countries in the world are going to get good at making certain things. Factories are becoming more automated. This started a long time ago and is more responsible for the fall off in manufacturing jobs in the US, than all the off-shoring combined. Other countries have become way more capable at making textiles that we are here. Making towels and carpets and t-shirts is no longer in our wheelhouse. That’s just going to happen. Americans need to concentrate on their strengths.

5. Even if we don’t make it here we often own the company.

American companies are often criticized for making products elsewhere. Goods that American companies make for sale in other places frequently cannot be manufactured competitively in the United States. American global companies both make and sell their products internationally. If they didn’t make the products overseas, they would not even be in the marketplace. As a result, the company prospers, its shareholders (often Americans) prosper and eventually when earned profits are repatriated to the states, the international American corporations pay their taxes on it.

6. We need to re-think the “made in USA” trope.

When Americans (especially politicians) talk about the manufacturing jobs that have been lost, they are frequently referred to as: “good high paying manufacturing jobs”. The media asks the politicians about how they would create “good high paying manufacturing jobs” and the politicians respond with various schemes, as if they could wave a magic wand and make it happen. The reality is that many of those “good high paying manufacturing jobs” were hard, dirty, tedious and sometimes dangerous jobs that have been replaced by foreign manufacturers and by automation. Many of those jobs aren’t coming back.

When you go through the 100 companies at Visible Country most of what you’ll see is how Americans are creating jobs by starting their own companies to make things. This together with taking advantage of the educational opportunities that are available to all American is how “made in the USA” will make a comeback.

SRBAC

Visit Visible Country for products made in the USA

China building American bridges

Economy, Made in USA, Working 1 Response »

Jun 272011

A report in the New York Times today, said that a Chinese company is building much of the new San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge. This is probably old news to many since the project has been several years in process already, but it was the first I heard about it.

It always seemed to me there is something distinctly American about building big things. Highways, railroads, skyscrapers, dams, shopping malls and most of all, bridges. Bridges have names and purposes. Bridges identify cities and excite travelers (“We crossed the GW at night and we could see all the city lights”). Bridges are our gateways and part of our heritage and pride.

Pittsburgh bridge

Between 1849 and 1964 twelve new bridges in the United States extended the world record lengths for suspension bridges from 1,010 ft to 4,259 ft. Americans built all of them. Starting with the Wheeling, WV bridge finished in 1849 and measuring 1,010 ft. and ending with the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, which was the longest suspension bridge until 1981. It measured 4,259 ft. Some of these iconic twelve bridges include the Brooklyn Bridge over Manhattan’s East River, the Ben Franklin connecting Philadelphia and New Jersey over the Delaware River. the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the George Washington Bridge spanning the Hudson.

Imagine that! For 132 years, without interruption, we built the longest most beautiful bridges in the world. But since then…not so much. The Bay Bridge is not kid stuff. The costs are over 7 billion dollars, its really two bridges a viaduct and a tunnel. It’s big, it’s complicated and it’s here. Why aren’t Americans building all of it?

Well from what I’ve read of the history of the Bay Bridge project there’s a host of reasons. The estimated costs were always too low and a constant moving target. The design spec got input from everyone and everywhere and became a beauty contest, and the politics, as you might expect were the usual snake pit. The one thing that did not seem to be on anyone’s mind was employing American workers to build it. The two American companies who were the prime contractor dismissed the capacity of domestic steel industry to fabricate the bridge. This even though the Chinese company had yet to build a bridge or use the technology that was contemplated by the design.

Cost seemed to be the over riding issue for California. The NYT states that California decided not to apply for federal funds since they would then have had to purchase from US manufacturers. This is a muddy area since other accounts indicate that they could forego that requirement if the foreign bid were more than 25% cheaper than the domestic costs. The NYT also quoted a Chinese steel polisher working on a section of the bridge as saying he is paid $12 per day.

If we could build new bridges for 150 years, why did we stop? Did we forget how? The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel was built in less than four years with no federal, state or local governmant money. It’s almost 20 miles long and includes bridges, tunnels and four man made islands. The first two lanes cost less than $200 million and were completed in 1964. Two additional lanes were open in 1999. They cost less than $250 million. No tax dollars were used.

By now we’re use to the fact that manufacturing costs are lower in most of the world. We’re use to buying t-shirts, electronics, kitchen items, shoes, tires, just about any consumer goods from anywhere in the world. But bridges?

I’m not a protectionist. I’ve always been for free trade and against tariffs. They just don’t make sense. But bridges…OUR BRIDGES. And one of the guys building it makes 12 dollars a DAY!

I might have to re-think some of this.

SRBAC

VISIT VISIBLE COUNTRY FOR AMERICAN MADE PRODUCTS

The government doesn’t create jobs…even when the politicians take credit for them.

Economy, Made in USA, Working Comments Off

Jun 142011

The June 14th headline on the business page on the USA Today said “Obama presses to create 1M jobs.” Sometime ago the President was taking credit for his administration creating or saving 4 million jobs. I still don’t know how you measure “saved jobs”, but that’s another topic. A lot of politicians of both parties like to take credit for creating jobs. Of course they do no such thing. Except for providing GM, AIG and Chrysler with bail out money the Unites States is not in the business of running corporations. The government doesn’t hire and fire in the private sector.

That’s why the President and the Congress need to get out of the habit of promising to address the unemployment problem by creating jobs. They can’t do it, it’s simply not the business of government to create jobs in the private sector. Why not? Because government doesn’t make things, sell things, fix things, grow things, service things….or in any way engage in commerce.

Likewise American voters also need to understand that no matter what politicians say, they can’t create jobs unless they are public sector jobs, of which we already have enough. State and local governments may encourage busineses to locate within their borders, but they do not create private sector jobs because they are governments and are not engaged in private commerce

When I first read of the Presidents Job and Competitive Council, I thought the purpose was to bring business people together to focus on what business could do to to create jobs. From the White House website:

“The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness (Jobs Council) was created to provide non-partisan advice to the President on continuing to strengthen the Nation’s economy and ensure the competitiveness of the United States and on ways to create jobs, opportunity, and prosperity for the American people.”

The response President Obama got back from his Job Council (Jeffrey Immelt, et al.) was pretty funny. All five recommendations by the council involve either the government spending more money or changing the way government does things. Hey guys…I don’t think that’s what he meant. What they offered is:

1. Training workers for new job skills. How many political speeches has that been part of? (maybe divert money from other government programs…good luck to that).
2. Eliminate bureaucracy that bogs down infrastructure projects. Not sure how that can happen since the environmental groups will just take it to court.
3. Streamline visa process so we get more tourists. Doesn’t it seem like The State Department has long resisted all attempts to drag it out of the 19th century?
4. Make the SBA work faster (huh?)
5. Use federal funding to employ laid off construction workers to do “green” projects on commercial buildings.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this stuff, there’s just nothing new. To paraphrase an old Red Smith baseball analogy, telling the government that it should eliminate bureaucracy, streamline processes and work faster is like telling an 8 year old about sex. No matter what you say, the response is “But why?”

SRBAC

VISIT VISIBLE COUNTRY FOR AMERICAN MADE PRODUCTS

Linkedin Value Missing?

Consumers, Made in USA, Working Comments Off

May 252011

According to the first day stock price, Linkedin is worth 9 billion dollars or about 600 times last years earnings (15 million dollars). Pretty good for a company that is at best hard to describe (job board? social site? self promotion engine for members?). Linkedin’s first day results outperformed the opening day numbers of the likes of Google and Amazon. The comparison is likely to end there.

With earnings of $15,000,000 last year and 8 million shares trading at over $120 per share, that makes the earnings per share less than two bucks. It also means that the P/E ratio is about 65.

Okay, I know this is a tech company and we’re talking about growth prospects, but that’s just the point. What are the growth prospects? Google and Amazon have some pretty well defined business’s and they weren’t mysteries when the companys went public. What exactly is Linkedin’s business and where does the revenue come from?

Take Google and Amazon for example: Google has about 19 billion dollars in revenue and more than 8 billion dollars in earnings. Basically they sell ads, while people like me give them free content everyday. Amazon has revenue of 34 billion dollars and is one of the largest retailers in the internet world, selling every kind of consumer goods.

Linkedin has about 100 million members and they sell ads, premium memberships (most are free) and something called hiring solutions.

Ads we know about and they can certainly make some money there. Premium memberships means some members get special treatment, and they have a lot on members, so this could mean some good revenue. Hiring solutions means they work out deals with corporate management and that’s a quality over quantity business.

So can they get the revenue up and the P/E down? If they can it’ll be a big bang for the social network segment.

100 million members and $100 stock price is pretty impressive.

SRBAC

VISIT VISIBLE COUNTRY FOR AMERICAN MADE PRODUCTS

We’ll pass on this war

Made in USA Comments Off

Mar 132011

No trouble counting the number of times I’ve agreed with the NYT op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd (you wouldn’t need all the fingers of one hand). But today she has got it right. Her Column about some “experts” favoring US intervention in Lybia is worth reading.

How many times do we need to be hit over the head? We are going to suffer if we continue to try to solve other countries problems, particularly in that part of the world. We really don’t know why they are protesting, or what they want if the protests are successful. I wonder if they know what they want. Is it really about freedom and democracy? Maybe they’re just hungry. Maybe they want a faster internet connection.

Iraq and Afghanistan are enough for right now. We just don’t have another war in the budget for this year. Next year, if we get these public union problems sorted out maybe we could go for a surgical strike, but that’s all.

Seriously, we should leave it to the UN.

They’ve been sitting there up on that expensive property in New York since 1945 and nobody can figure out what they’ve done in all that time. Here’s their big chance. C’mon UN get involved.

Wouldn’t it be tasty to pick up the newspaper one morning or log on to CNN and see the UN being roasted for intervening where their not wanted? Big headlines in Islamabad, “Great Satan UN blows up wrong village”. Okay, not great for the villagers but you see what I mean. All those important guys on the security council from Moldavia, Bolivia, and East Timor would be looking around and saying “hey, wait a minute…I didn’t order that”. “Who gave that order?”

Nevermind. I’m just daydreaming. Obviously the UN would never get involved like that. Why start now?

Back to Maureen’s column. It pains me to say it, but she’s dead right. I just don’t know what’s going to happen if I start agreeing with op-ed columnists in the New York Times. Hopefully this is just an anomaly, and I’m not losing my mind.

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What we don’t like

Made in USA Comments Off

Mar 052011

It came to me this morning that there are really a lot of things Americans don’t like. For example; banks, politicians (particularly congressmen), insurance companies, consumer goods made in China (although that’s all we buy), immigrants, politicians (did I say that? ), rich people, teachers, wall street bonuses, unions, etc, etc, etc.

How did I know this? Why I found out from the media. You can depend on all types of media: TV, internet, newspapers, whatever, to tell you who or what not to like. Its a pretty strange phenomena when you think about it because you didn’t always know that you hated banks. You just wake up one morning and there you are, hating banks. It wasn’t always like that, I can even remember a time the guy who managed the local bank was my friend (or he claimed he was). But that was back in the day when people actually went into banks to make deposits and withdrawals. Today of course most people have no idea what’s inside a bank (well money maybe).

Banks got into trouble with the media during this big housing bubble crash. I’m not sure how they slipped up, but one day BOOM (as John Madden would say). And the media was all over the banks. First they were too big, then they started losing mortgage paperwork, then the government was giving them all our money. Before you knew it the banks were toast (Personally, I never invite bankers to my home anymore).

As for politicians, well, what can I say? Politicians don’t have much going for them. First of all most of them are lawyers (don’t get me started on them). Then they seem to have this problem with “spin”. Politicians say “spin” has to do with defining the issues, but most people know its just lying to avoid losing votes. If politicians were forced to stop using spin you would never hear from most of then again (a good thing). Jim Carrey made a movie about 15 years ago called LIAR, LIAR, about a lawyer who had to tell the truth for 24 hours. Very funny movie.

Also I’ve noticed that politicians never really answer questions. On television I’ve watched them listen carefully to a question (and even say “gee, that’s a good question”), but then they give you an answer to a totally different question. People watching are kinda looking at each other saying “What…did I hear that right”? Politicians have their own little scripts they follow. If someone backs them into a corner they say “c’mon, an answer’s an answer. Don’t be so picky”. Really slippery little guys.

Now the media isn’t totally one sided. Besides telling us who we don’t like they also tell us who we do like. This is a shorter list because Americans can only take so much “like”. Really we want “don’t like” more. It gets the adrenalin going. As of today the only person that Americans “like” is Warren Buffett. (Until last year it was Warren and Tiger Woods, but Tiger ran into a rough patch, so now its just Warren). I hope Warren’s not fooling around.

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Visible Country Comments

America making things

China building American bridges

The government doesn’t create jobs…even when the politicians take credit for them.

We’ll pass on this war

What we don’t like

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