Transformation

I may have mentioned how SMUD is now buying bulk transformers from China. The big multi-million dollar power transformers, mind you. It is my belief that it is only a matter of time before every bulk power transformer manufacturer in the U.S. is gone. Today we have Delta Star, General Electric, and Federal Pacific that build high voltage transformers in the U.S. -- but over the past 5 years my utility has only purchased one domestically built unit. The rest were from South Korea (Hyundai) and most recently, China (JSHP).


(This is a Mitsubishi Japanese transformer, by the way...)



This video shows the manufacturing of JSHP bulk transformers in Jiangsu Province. They are now at the quality and price point where they are competitive with other global manufacturers.

Now, I've bitched incessantly about the terribly quality of Chinese made products here on my Franklin Monologues, but I'll tell you -- I won't take anything away from these Chinese workers. I've ridiculed the quality of everything that ever came out of that country...but to see their bulk transformer installed in midtown Sacramento, feeding the electrical needs of 3,100 customers, well, it's easy to see why we will soon [in my estimation] be losing hundreds of well-paid manufacturing jobs at the Lynchburg, PA Delta Star factory. It is only a matter of time before every resident in Sacramento will flip on their switch and be powered through a foreign transformer shipped in from overseas. Repeat this for a hundred other industries, five hundred times over and you get the bigger picture.

Welders, shot blasters, laminate engineers, painters, steel fabricators...all these jobs will be [or already have been] outsourced. Compare that JSHP factory to these factories in Anytown USA:


A neutral observer might assume that our U.S. led wars for democracy and freedom were actually conducted here, in our own cities. In our own towns. Bombed out by robotic rocket-firing drone aircraft, attack aircraft and heavy bombers, fixed-wing and helicopter gunships, mortars and long range artillery, anti-personnel flechettes, land mines, M-60s and bayonettes.

Here's how I see this all worked over the past decade: we intentionally undercut these working and professional class jobs by shipping them overseas so corporations could profit by paying Chinese and South Korean workers 35% of what they pay American workers, and then sent the finished products back to the U.S and sold them to the former workers with now-downsized jobs. You know, our 'new economy' service jobs like sales associate positions at Costco and Asian foot parlor masseuses. The only way Americans could do this was to take on onerous levels of private debt; when this was still not enough to keep the economy afloat we had our government increase its debt, and in the process we bound all of these now-downsized workers with government debts that they will carry and pay back for the rest of their careers.

Of course, those with the really good jobs in the U.S were involved in the FIRE economy (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) and worked to launder this whole 'economy' through big banks who created nothing, but who took their own slices of that economic pie with every transaction. With big banks too big to fail, the downsized indebted workers were separated from their remaining assets through deferred taxation to pay back TARP, TALF and the $1.2 trillion yearly deficits so that these banks and many of their shareholders didn't suffer any losses on their predatory investments that, somehow, turned up bad.

The Chinese workers? Shit, at 35% of American pay they are doing just fine, thank you very much, and very happy to have good paying jobs. They are sitting atop a mountain of U.S. debt and are becoming serious competitors for the world's dwindling petroleum reserves. Even at 35% they take their paychecks home and salt away about 40% of it, while our downsized American consumers are only willing to store less than 4% for tomorrow. Yet why would they? They are exeptional and entitled. With the Federal Reserve allowing banks to loan unlimited amounts at near zero interest while turning around and re-loaning that money to Americans at 19% on maxed-out credit cards while offering 0.57% interest on a savings account, well, no point in saving it. Besides, we are consumers Americans...being perpetually hooked on debt is our calling. We are exceptional. We are entitled.

We are exceptional to the point that the operation of our two police stations in the Middle East to ensure the liberal supplies of cheap oil keep flowi...er...to promote democracy in foreign lands is paid for by our future generations of downsized Americans who will clearly benefit from our actions today. They will have to pay for it, yes, but they will also reap the special benefits of a peaceful, globalized alternative-powered world due to the actions we're taking today. We are the one's taking it for the team, so to speak.

The transformation of our manufacturing jobs overseas and the prosecution of two wars today will only benefit our children tomorrow. Don't you see?