Caturday
1 hour ago
Friday, May 4, 2012
When factories close
Reading the local mullet wrapper, there was an article about a local business being sold. As they recently closed, I was excited at first. Perhaps those good jobs would be coming back. Alas, that was not the case. The business was being sold all right, but to a dismantler. All the equipment will be sold off and the building torn down for scrap. That’s one more business that’s never going to open its doors again.
It’s not the first and will not be the last. That seems to be a new trend. Factories used to close, but often other companies would take over and run the business. The jobs would have fewer benefits and lower wages, but there were still jobs. Now those jobs have left the area for good and it would not surprise me if they left the country. When other factories closed, their equipment got shipped to Brazil or China.
Years used to pass before a factory was completely dismantled. No longer. In a matter of months, the places get scrapped. For me, this is what collapse looks like. It’s here, but it’s slow and not evenly distributed.
Has it come to your town yet?
-Sixbears
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It's happening just about everywhere in this country. Won't be long and all our "salvage" will have built new factories, cars, appliances, etc. in other countries and we'll be more of a broken, dependent society than we are now.
ReplyDeleteI've seen it in my travels. Can't believe how fast the pace has picked up.
DeleteSame over here in the UK. Only yesterday it was annonced that Wheetabix, a old British company making breakfast wheat cereal) was sold to a chinese company. That's another one down. Nothing much remains British anymore, the electricty company around my neck of the wood is French, the train company is Dutch, I think the steel making plant, one of the very few left in the UK has been recently bought by India...etc. I am not english but I think this is sad to see a once proud country being "dismantled" and sold off. Of course, ordinary people are not asked and they suffer. Industries that produced good are mostly all gone, replace by what's called "service" industries, whatever that means.
ReplyDeleteActually, following the same practice, I think they should get rid of the British governement and replace it by a chinese call centre in the middle of the Chinese countryside. That would save the taxpayer money!
England used to make just about everything it needed -and much of what the world needed.
DeleteHow the mighty have fallen.
The big factory in the county seat is still going strong, as far as I can tell. What do they do? Melt down scrap metal....
ReplyDeleteCatabolism at work....
Expect to get another load of scrap from my town soon. Of course, once all the scrap is gone . . .
DeleteAt the same time as the South has been grabbing factories from other areas of the country and overseas, we loose them in some other area (textiles, furniture).
ReplyDeleteThe single biggest shift, to my mind, was the shift of manufacturing away from the cities starting in the 1960s. It is the primary cause of the blight of (many of) our inner cities.
It has been noted, that rural america is now going through the same collapse of work, and that it is starting to get (a more spread out version) the same problems that the inner cities have.
Our industrial parts out in the hinterland are standing empty. One factory that closed said transportation costs are too high.
DeleteYes, sad but true. North Carolina's population is growing, but there are still rural counties that are losing people.
DeleteMost of our growth is along what they call the I-85 corridor. In South Carolina it is along I-85 and I-90 mostly, although Columbia which is at the intersection of I-77, I-20, and I-26 does allright.
Access to the interstate, and access to a fast air hub I gather are critical.
Due to our location near Mexican border, NAFTA is still keeping us alive, but I've noticed quite a bit of brand new empty commercial buildings, sales and rentals are slowing down.
ReplyDeleteI don't have much faith in the present Washington crowd changing anything soon either, they seem more content feathering their own nests rather than doing their job.
Politics and big business are so interwoven that nothing will change until the whole model breaks. With approval of congress in the single digits, people are catching on.
ReplyDeleteNot here, not yet, but this is a Navy and insurance and medical business city. I'm afraid my friend this country's best days are far behind it.
ReplyDeleteLike I said, not evenly distributed. I don't expect the Navy to go out of business soon.
DeleteNot yet. They're building strip malls as fast as they can, just to sit empty, all while the older ones are losing their tenants. This during an "oil boom"... Building houses too, while scores of foreclosures sit empty. The Ponzi scheme on parade...
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the signs. Might take a few years for everyone else to notice that the boom isn't lifting all ships.
DeleteWe better wake up soon. It may already be too late. All the wars were won by the most industrialized nations.
ReplyDeletegood point Dizzy.
Delete