Whirlpool vs Samsung, LG

[vacerator]

Ohio also

made dietician's be not only registered, but licensed, where as Michigan did not.
By 1996, Michigan clinical dietician's were mostly part time, per diem, and or had their perks and benefits slashed. Many were bachelor of science degreed.

Richard, back in the 80's some Sony, Sanyo, Sharp, etc. televisons were assembled in California.

 

[speedqueen]

...Assembled in California

That only furthers my point and proves that the last bits of protectionism created jobs here. When the tariffs fell and the slanted trade deals came, those manufacturers moved production back to their home countries or China.

When a forign manufacturer has factories here, we get jobs. When a US company outsources labor we still get the profits(US shareholders) and tax dollars. When a forign manufacturer sells goods here we get NOTHING but the overpriced, cheaply made goods.

As to my age, were any historians around during the Roman Empire? I suggest that they be discredited as well, based on the same logic. I'm one of the sore few of my generation that laments the replacement of documentaries with reality TV on The History Channel. Don't even get me started on "Ancient Aliens"!!!

 

[vacerator]

Yes Richard, perhaps

and there are and were other factors besides that, and always the lowest cost to produce.
As factories built through the 1960's had asbestos, and other hazardous materials used in manufacturing, along with very old plants, it was also cheaper to open new ones elsewhere. Even the land had to be remediated of toxins. These are called EPA superfund sites. Heard of Love Canal where Hooker Chemical was near Niagra Falls NY? Another in our own backyard was Carboloy carbide tool at 8 mile and Hoover.
California too saw many close, not only in the rust belt. As avaiation declined after WW2 there, some remained open until the push for cleaner air, water, and land impacted them. The Ford plant in Pico Rivera closed in 1981, which was in part due to that and slower sales of full size cars. So production was consolidated between Hapeville Ga., and Oakville Ontario for both the east and west coasts.
Maybe one reason California has so many high tech jobs today, and is one of the worlds largest economies is that two years of college is paid for by the state.
Even those in agriculture graduate from USC, and other univeristies.
Not very many want monotonous factory production work these days. I never did.
My grandfather used to ask us, do you want to be smart, or be garbage man in his native Italian accent. He was a steel mill foreman. My dad used to tell us also "if you don't use your head, you use your feet, or hands." Even garbage collectors do better today than most small factory workers.

 

[speedqueen]

My mother used to work at former Carboloy which was once a division of General Electric. She worked in the office starting in the late 1970s as a PBX switchboard operator and worked up to being an inside sales representative, which, at the time, was the most coveted position in the office as corporate paid for travel expenses and work was like a perennial vacation. By the time she left to become a stay at home mother in 1999 all perks of the job were gone and "College Educated" employees were being hired that knew nothing real about their job.

As to Hooker Chemical, an often forgotten bit of history is that Hooker actually sealed in the waste site better than most were at the time. They lined and capped Love Canal with thick walls of clay, a practice still used today. They also didn't even want to sell the property as they thought it was a liability to do so, but the city begged them and eventually they decided to sell for $1 but included a disclaimer telling what the site was and that all responsibility was to the new owner, the City of Niagara Falls. It was the city who drew up the property boundaries, sold some land to a developer, and put the school dead center of the dump. They destroyed the clay cap during construction and the rest as we shall say is history.

An interesting fact is that during longitudinal studies of the cancer rate at Love Canal they determined that there wasn't an elevated occurrence.

 

[johnrk]

Washer Prices

Fortunately, whoever sells pdf's of ephemera on here has sold me the 1954 Cooper Supply Catalog, which appears to be a very comprehensive distributor of TV's, radios, and major appliances.

Looking in there at washers, the automatics that would compare to our machines today average $300, with GE's best at $350. Maytag isn't distributed by them, but every other major and minor brand appears to be there (except Sears and Wards, of course).

The exchange rate between 1954 and today is $ 1:8.98. So, basically all the major washers brands for automatics would be roughly $2700 in today's money. And remember, their salaries were lower than today's, even though the average annual income in this country hasn't gone up since 1973, in constant money.

So, if I paid a little under $900 for the SQ 432 that I bought a couple of months ago, dividing it by 9 would mean that it would've cost only $100 in 1954. One hundred Dollars then would only buy an off-brand, probably crappy wringer washer.

So what can we expect? If Whirlpool, SQ, GE, etc., could build and sell their machines for $2700 I expect we'd get a lot better and more durable machines. As my local appliance dealer told me when I bought that w/d pair, the margins for manufacturers of washers in particular has gotten so slim that they just aren't that interested in them any more. It's worth thinking about.

 

[speedqueen]

1954 Prices...

John, could you tell me what the price of my 1954 Bendix Duomatic(electric) was? Sorry to bother you with the request.

Thanks, in advance.
-Richard

 

[vacerator]

Richard;

My friend (not college degreed) worked at Carboloy from 1994 through 2005. Seco Tools of Sweden already owned it. He also worked in the office building as a c.a.d. designer. His boss, and several others died of cancer. By 2006, most of the staff and shop floor had been laid off. The Tennessee plant remained open. A few transferred there. None of the displaced qualified for retraining under the TRA act because their jobs weren't auto industry direct related, even though they supplied the cutting bits that made drive axles for the auto industry.
Back in the GE days, or before, the facility had a bank, and a pharmacy for workers he told me.