Golden Jubilee
Posts: 8937
Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:45 pm
Location: Canada's left Coast
Re: politic on the board
I am including a link to the companies producing steel in 2017. https://www.worldsteel.org/steel-by-top ... ucers.html
https://www.worldsteel.org/media-centre ... -2017.html Please note. Chins produces 808.4 million tons of new steel ever year as compared to the USA producing 76.5 million tons. Canada produces a 14.5 million tons.
How did this happen, you might ask? Well, greedy investors and politicians in combination sold our companies and shipped the production and the jobs out of North America.
One of the impacts of sending our jobs and recourses off shore is the money returning to North America in the hands of persons made wealthy by doing our work. Here in The Vancouver area we have seen our housing prices go from affordable to forget it. My wife and I bought our home in a good neighbourhood in 1978. We paid about $70,000 and a few months later the identical house next door sold for a few thousand dollars more. On today's inflated real-estate market, pushed by speculators, this pair of houses would sell for $5,000,000 and that is land value, only.
So, what to do and where to go if we were to sell? the mass exodus of persons selling and moving did not start yesterday or last year. The persons leaving this area with their no tax on capital gains from their home sales have taken their new-found wealth and paid inflated prices for places to live east of here and onto Vancouver Island. The property values have increased thousands of kilometers to east of here.
The number of exotic cars on the roads here, on The Lower Mainland can be alarming to visitors. On one morning when I was eating my Sausage and egg McMuffin, I counted 11 Porsches, 6 Lexus and more than 40 Mercedes in the parking are where I was. There are always a red Ferrari or two. The guy who owns a local Mediterranean restaurant shops at Canadian Tire for restaurant supplies, he drives a Ferrari.
Only a few days ago I was in my Ram 2500 Diesel and in the drive-through at McD's Over the Diesel I could hear the distinctive whine of a Lamborghini, but I could not see the car. AS it turned out, the car was directly behind my truck and below my line of sight. The driver of the Lamborghini and I exchanged thumbs up because we were parked next to each other in the parking lot. I had to ask, Have you ever sat in a big Dodge 4X4? He responded, "Have you ever sat in a Lamborghini?" We changed places and for a minute I was in automotive heaven. The painful part was extracting my big butt from the Lambo before the tow truck arrived. It was the fear of where the tow hook was going to be placed that motivated me to get out. One of my new neighbors drives a Bentley which he leaves on the street. He has Porsches and a Lambo in his garage. And so it goes.
We know how the money got here and that is the painful part. I am not angry with the wealthy speculators doing what they do. I am angry with our politicians who have lost control and allowed Canadian jobs to be lost. WE the consumers may not be able to afford to return to the good old days. We may never be great again, like the good old days.
An example of what happened can be illustrated by something that is happening to me right now. I want to buy a four post lift for my garage. I find it is nearly impossible to buy a lift made in North America unless I am prepared to spend 50% to 100% more for that privilege. So what am I going to do while trying to remain close to my Buy USA principles. I am going to buy Bendpac. American owned in California, made in China by a Bendpac owned company so they are able to control the quality. The hydraulic power unit is made in USA in Illinois. I really tried and this is as good as it gets in 2017.
Thinking risks being controversial and possibly being offensive