Fun things comcast reps say - was Re: comcast alert

[Daniel Fussell]

On 01/25/2013 04:31 PM, Michael Torrie wrote:
> <offtopic><philosophicalrant> All that said, and this is now firmly 
> off-topic, I've come to believe the old story of the man telling his 
> kids, you get an education so you don't have to dig ditches like I do, 
> is ultimately harming our society irreparably. We need ditches dug. We 
> need cars built, we need food. We need truck drivers. We need someone 
> to call the cable internet service is out, or when a device needs 
> warranty service. Work is a good thing. I'm not sure our society has 
> been well served by the focus on a knowledge economy (though we need 
> programmers and sysadmins for sure!) at the expense of an economy that 
> creates products and goods. </philosophicalrant></offtopic>

I've had the same thought cross my mind a time or two.  Like why is it 
that we have so many educated people (be it business, technology, etc), 
rising consumer prices, and so many people out of work, yet no savvy 
Schindler has stepped in to put it all together and get those 
out-of-work people making pots and door hinges.  Theres a need for 
product, as seen by the rising consumer prices, and a surplus of 
employables; this has the potential for profit.  Unless the potential 
fails to consider other conditions.

I'd have to say that the public policy environment is most likely the 
problem.  Otherwise, we'd have never started off-shoring things in the 
first place.  It's cheaper to let somebody else somewhere else do the 
production than deal with the lawyering, and bureaucratic pontificating 
about the color of one's carbon footprint, and the smell of the minimum 
wage and benefits packages.

Not to mention dealing with the revolving door of people that just don't 
want to stay in one type of ditch-digging, or that want to get paid for 
ditch-digging, but don't want to do the digging part.  For instance, my 
extended family owns a drywall company.  They have several teams, some 
Americans, some Mexican immigrants (legal ones).  The last recession we 
had, the home-grown Americans would whine and complain about the work 
they had to do.  It was too hard to sheetrock one house a week.  The 
Mexican immigrants would do the whole house, in half a day, with better 
quality work, and be asking for another house to do.  What's the 
difference?  I don't think it's that we have overstressed a knowledge 
economy over blood-sweat-and-tears.  I think it's that our people 
haven't worked hard in their lives, and they aren't about to start now.

When I was growing up, you'd flip your matchbox cars over, and they 
would be made in Mexico, or Taiwan.  Every now and again, you'd see one 
made in the USA.  Now it seems the majority of products are coming from 
China.  The factories there have a government quota they have to meet, 
and anything extra they are allowed to sell to market countries.  Rumor 
I'm hearing is that the Chinese people are tired of factory 
work/conditions, and are heading back to family farms instead, with the 
result being a shift in manual labor to Vietnam.  Once Vietnam wises up, 
we'll shift production to some other country, and so on.  We'll hit rock 
bottom when it's finally cheaper to produce here.  When the policy 
climate is ready, and when the people are ready to work.  I don't know 
when that will be, but you'll be able to recognize when Wyoming starts 
exporting fireworks to China.