Post by fiddling on Apr 24, 2020 20:02:21 GMT -5
Since I was talking about people in my industry being priced out of business by China, there used to be several thousand jobs in this industry within 50 miles of me. There's 3 of us left and we are all small. The other 2 are lamp makers and I make what shades they don't import. I used to buy styrene (petroleum product) monthly a truck load at a time (30,000 pounds). Bought truckloads of dulkote 3 or 4 times a year. Now I buy a pallet at a time 3 times a month before the virus. Multiply that by people like me over the rest of the country. The cloth on lamp shades came from the mills in the Carolinas. I use/used wire (steel) in my shades. People drove their trucks all the way from Mass, Florida, Minnesota, Texas to come here and buy lamps and shades-buying gas, trucks, truck repairs, eating at restaurants, staying in motels, then going home to peddle on the road. That's a lot of jobs gone. To be fair, with a style change in shades to a type that doesn't ship efficiently and Trump's tariffs, some business has come back, but the big box stores look for the imported stuff because it's still cheaper and they dominate the market.
It's a trade off and we as a country decided years ago. A combination of consumers, workers/unions, politicians, and corporate made that decision. It's the pieces of the pie I always talk about. I'm old enough that it's no big deal to me financially.