Folks Of Interest Corporate Thieves....

Heck, we've got HAMB members selling parts that were copied directly from parts made by other HAMB members.

 

Sorry for the confusion. Both summit and jegs as separate en***ies no longer sell Speedmaster products

 

Are you ****ting me ?They’re still HAMB members?
Dan

 

Hasn't logged on since 2021, but not "BANNED".

 

Well, I flagged this for political content and it's still here, so I guess I can safely reply...

Been drinking the Koolaide I see... Let's break this down.

'Rule of business #1-You must make a profit to survive. All of our onshore manufacturing has been put into this position by our very own government.'

Really, you give the government too much credit. Our elected representatives mostly lack the imagination to do this. These policies are usually formulated by the industries being regulated via their armies of lobbyists with checkbooks full of campaign cash. There are exceptions of course...

'...crippling regulations...'

These are usually the results of somebody making a mess that can't be covered up anymore. A few examples just off the top of my head are tobacco, asbestos, groundwater contamination (PG&E/hexavalent chromium, DuPont/Teflon), and big pharma/opioids. In these cases the industries/companies involved were knowingly killing people but decided that profits came first. In some cases the government stepped in and went after them, but others were done by private lawsuits. It's particularly interesting that virtually no one went to jail. Sometimes it's impossible to find the responsible party or parties; think Superfund sites, or the most recent one I've seen, exploding abandoned oil wells in Texas that are killing livestock and destroying grazing land. I don't see the oil industry stepping up for this... which leads to...

'Increasing taxes...'

Whenever this comes up, I always think of companies like GE and E**on who report multi-billion dollar profits but somehow pay zero tax. When no one can be found responsible for a mess, it's the taxpayer who pays the bill. And somehow, it seems the bill for this stuff always ends up being paid by working-cl*** taxpayers. The 2017 'Tax Act' appears to be definitely skewed to benefit upper earners. I know my nephew (who makes a very good six-figure income) was pleased with it. Personally? I've been retired for 15 years and live on a fixed income (pension + SS) yet have seen my tax liability double, even though the only increase in my income has been bumps to my social security.

'The sad fact is you can never pay domestic wages high enough in most pro profit enterprises and still sell your product at a reasonable cost...'

Really? So we all have to work for third-world wages to ensure the corporations survive? That will be news to many small and medium size businesses. You can lay the blame for this at the feet of Wall Street. Their constant clamoring for 'profit' isn't so much that a company makes a profit, but that it increases profits continually. Failure to do so means it's not being run 'lean enough' and that will attract the corporate raiders. For a case study of this, look up the history of the Timkin Bearing Company. Once a well-respected manufacturer, well loved in and supportive of their community, they got bought out using 'leverage' (corporate debt), then promptly sent most manufacturing offshore, selling equipment and stripping it of any cash. The Timkin family recently bought back the shell that remained and is now facing a long slog to bring it back... if they can. I wish them luck. Multiply this by dozens if not hundreds. And the employees get caught in the crunch. Now out of work, and in many cases their pensions also disappear. My GF got caught in one of these. All she gets is SS, her pension (which was based on the stock price) went to zero when the company folded.

And for those of you feeling a pinch in your personal budget, think about this; in 1980, the top 20% of Americans controlled 80% of the nation's total wealth. By 2010, they had 90%. These are Congressional Budget Office numbers. If you're in the bottom 80%, you've taken a 50% cut. There's more. Look up which presidents since 1950 had balanced budgets, and when the federal deficit increased. There's a reckoning coming, and it won't be pretty.

I guess I'll see if this stays up...