$15 Billion And Climbing: Trump’s Tariffs Deliver Record High Revenue

[roamer_1]

We're not cutting wages to pennies per hour. You cannot outcompete sweatshops.

Yes you can.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

We're not cutting wages to pennies per hour. You cannot outcompete sweatshops.

No but clothes made for by cheaper workers can benefit consumers when priced low. All workers are consumers and vice versa, mostly true. So free-r trade, is like a pay raise for all consumers... we all benefit, basically.

[jmyrlefuller]

Yes you can.

How so? Child labor??

[roamer_1]

How so? Child labor??

Mechanization, production, quality control, the inbuilt lack of cost in shipping, both on the supply side and in the warehouse/retail product...

Labor is not the only quotient in the sum total of profit.

By the same token, our labor costs are way, way too high. And it is in the way of getting those jobs back here. Another very important delimiter is regulation - If you want those jobs back here, you have to make it a hell of a lot easier to be in business, with a whole lot less of the artificial responsibilities that are foisted upon our entrepreneurial class.

[Timber Rattler]

Mechanization, production, quality control, the inbuilt lack of cost in shipping, both on the supply side and in the warehouse/retail product...

Labor is not the only quotient in the sum total of profit.

By the same token, our labor costs are way, way too high. And it is in the way of getting those jobs back here. Another very important delimiter is regulation - If you want those jobs back here, you have to make it a hell of a lot easier to be in business, with a whole lot less of the artificial responsibilities that are foisted upon our entrepreneurial class.

And all the environmental nonsense too that causes projects to drag on indefinitely.

[roamer_1]

And all the environmental nonsense too that causes projects to drag on indefinitely.

And the whipsaw effect.. What's right this month might be totally different next month. When I was in business, my long term planning was years out there... My paint shop was regularly booking years out. If something changes all those contracts are already let - I can't get more money out of it... I just have to take the hit.

So an unpredictable environment is another big mark against doing business here.

[roamer_1]

Think of where I'd be right now... two years ago, paint was 30 bucks a gallon... now it can be double that. Solvents are clean through the roof. Hardeners are through the roof...

I would have been around a year and a half booked, with all the pricing based on those old numbers, and contractually bound. I'd have been working terribly tight margins to make that up, and still wouldn't be realizing normalcy even yet.

I don't know how these kids could do it. 

[roamer_1]

How so? Child labor??

And by the way... What's wrong with child labor? Farm kids work as a matter of course, and I grew up working from the time I could reach the pedals on a tractor. I was driving farm vehicles including tractors, swathers, combines, and 2 and 5 ton trucks before I got my license at 14.

One of my worst troubles came from hiring a local kid cash money to sweep floors at my shop. His mamma was a single parent, and they were hard up and he wanted to help her out. So I let him sweep up every night...

That turned into him helping to package and bind loads, and learn shipping and other roustabout things... Boy did I get in trouble for that one. Because he wasn't on the payroll and because he was under age, it cost me thousands in fines and thousands more in lawyers... All for being a good guy and trying to teach a kid, and help him out. If the bastards had left me be, he had a shoo-in for a job, having grown up with the way I do things. As it was, that hurt so damn bad I never hired a lad again.