Is it too late to turn it around?

It happened again in my area. Two more printers, and I’m not talking micro-shops, but printers with 40″ multi-color presses, full binderies, etc. closed their doors. These were plants that just a couple of years ago were thriving, hiring people, buying equipment, and taking care of business.

What happened?

We all know what happened.

1. The US economy tanked. The US government, Banking, Financial interests, and Real Estate speculators combined to nearly drive us into full-blown depression.  The harm dealt to the printing business was both instantaneous and long-term. The instant effect was that companies, all kinds of companies, got scared. They pulled back their printing orders because that was the perceived easiest way to cut expense.
2. The banks got scared. They decided to circle their wagons and cut off loans to the printers. The printers, that are generally small businesses, have shallow pockets. In an economy of falling sales they needed the banks more than ever. Help didn’t come.
3. Direct mail campaigns were scrapped or delayed by marketers who turned to the Internet for cheaper CPM. Was this a wise move? We’ll see. Early wisdom points to DM as still a very viable tool. In comparison to the Internet, DM yields higher response numbers. Will enough customers return to save printing?

Is Printing a Bellwether Industry?

The United States IS heading toward becoming a third world economy.  If anyone wants to know what living in America will be like in fifty years, all they have to do is look at how the Chinese live now. This is the legacy we are leaving to our grandchildren. Think about it, manufacturing jobs have been fleeing our shores faster than a cat with its tail on fire. Our country has huge balance of trade deficits, and enormous national debts. It doesn’t take a genius to see that if you aren’t making any products, there aren’t any products to sell. Apparently the only products we can produce and sell are hamburgers and fries, and they don’t export very well. How long will it be before our citizens will have to go to other countries to seek employment?

This Brings Us to the China Question

What happens when we chose to buy from China, India, Mexico, or Pakistan?

1. We put American citizens out of work. I had a very kind, considerate person whom I have known for a quarter century, or more, say to me that Americans can find other jobs. Even if they have to work for minimum wage there are other opportunities. Maybe they are just lazy. Maybe they could. Just maybe they could go to work for minimum wage when they used to earn much more. What will they be able to spend their minimum wage salary on? A home — nope. A new car — nope. How about college education — no way. Minimum wage isn’t even enough to survive on, and barely surviving is what they do in third world economies. Every well-paying job that is eliminated hurts the entire economy and drags us step-by-step into inevitable decline. If you think Katrina was a disaster, just wait and see what a US economy will be like without a middle class.
2. What about Chinese families don’t they need to be employed too? Sure they do, and we all feel for them, but if we take the food out of the mouths of our children to feed theirs, our children will starve. Can you visualize it, a neighbor, or a relative’s children dying because the work they could have had went out of the country? We have a global responsibility it is true, but our first responsibility is to our family, then our neighbors, then our communities, then our states, then our nation and finally the world. We’ve been doing it backwards!
3. Isn’t it too late? Don’t we already drive foreign cars, wear foreign clothes, and shoes? Even Hershey chocolate is now made in Mexico. If we are already buying these things out of the country why not buy printing out of the country too? Anyone who accepts this line of thought needs to go back and read point No.1. This is the moral equivalent of saying that since murder is committed regularly in our cities it is all right to commit murder. No it isn’t. Just because a terrible thing has been happening doesn’t make it right! Moral people do whatever they can to stomp out wrongs, they don’t justify them and they don’t, for heavens sake, participate in them.
4. Business people who buy from China forget what they saw when China hosted the Olympics. The world was only allowed to see what the Chinese government wanted reveal. They even censured the Internet. What is China hiding? They wanted us to believe that everyone was happy. That the country was clean, prosperous, and healthy. Is it? The loss of our jobs and the expenditure of our dollars don’t go to the people who really need it. It goes to the upper class, just like it does in the US. We discovered that when we bailed out the big banks and they rewarded themselves with BIG bonuses! The difference is we are allowed in this country to see the disparity between rich and poor, but the poor in China are hidden by the government.
5. Don’t forget that Chinese businesses are guilty of serious crimes and injustices in their rush to grab all they can at the expense of their disadvantaged employees and helpless competitors.

• They pay very poor wages bordering on slave labor — pennies per hour
• They employ children. Impoverished children must work to help support their destitute families.
• They use toxic materials like lead based paints and inks. Remember the problem with Mattel and the recall of millions of lead painted toys?
• They substitute cheaper materials for the specified ones like in the wallboard fiasco.
• They have very foul working conditions.
• They have few, if any, environmental concerns or laws.

Is it moral to send work out of this country to benefit another, especially when you know that their workers are subjected to the rankest of conditions and living on poverty wages? They gave me a good price, and everyone else is doing it, aren’t very good excuses. Those American business people who are buying from the Chinese and are destroying the economic future of this country for a good price should hang their heads in shame. The karma they are creating will return, if not on them, then on their children or grandchildren. What moral person could live with that over their heads? I know couldn’t.

So is buying Chinese printing killing US printers? Yes it is, and it is killing our very way of life. Short term expediency will never justify the long term harm. Think about it. Think about it very hard and then choose to buy American. Our very way of life depends on it.

I didn’t want this post to be another rant. I was going to concentrate on the printing or publishing business and leave my tirades behind. That’s what I intended to do, but I can’t let it go just yet. You see, my last post More Dangerous to us than Terrorists generated a lot of comments, more than my usual posts. That’s good! What’s bad is the sense I’m getting that we are giving up. Are we really all that fatalistic? Do we carry the thought that there is nothing we can do about it so why try?  I’m concerned that we don’t have a clear enemy, that we think it is beyond our control anyway, and somehow small businesses and the general public are at fault.

One commenter named Vic wrote, “Wait a minute! Casting corporate honchos as villains sure feels good, and has a degree of merit, but we all share responsibility in making this mess. We were the ones who took out mortgage after mortgage, partying with the accrued equity of our homes. We were the ones who never [gave] a thought to the non-logic of an endlessly expanding economy. We were, and are, the shareholders in the huge corporations you criticize. I agree with much of what you say, but we were not helpless bystanders victimized by ruthless tycoons.”

To be fair Vic suggested some things we can do, like attending stockholders meetings, boycotting products, and living a lifestyle that supports our values. Okay Vic that is well and good, but isn’t blaming the little guy like blaming a baby who is given a loaded gun to play with? And before you get too offended with the baby analogy seriously think about the financial complexity of getting a loan, and how many people really know what they are getting themselves into? If they understood ARM’s they would be a minuscule mortgage devise instead of a popular way to qualify buyers for more than they can afford–maybe buying a house that they got talked into by a slick Realtor. Think about it.

Another reader, Karl wrote, “A business that has not got the resources to weather a downturn like we are experiencing is probably not that healthy a business. Did the owners put sufficient funding aside, focus on paying of debt and providing a buffer during good times?…The priority of the business owner is the health of their business in good and bad times. Focus first on the business, and when it has plenty of reserves so it can keep marketing in difficult times, and is debt free, then the owner can ease off and get a few perks.

Yes, the large corporates are really, really bad, but are the smaller businesses any different? I say not. It’s just on a smaller scale.”

I think of the Billy Joel song that goes, “We didn’t start the fire.” I believe that we all play by the rules the best we can. Small business owners are just people trying their best to get by. They care about their companies and they care about its employees.  Just ask an owner what the most difficult job is and they will tell you, “Firing someone.” The small business person is up close and personal with their employees. They don’t devastate thousands of families with just a computer stroke, that’s the exclusive area of the tycoons.

In the movie Seabiscuit promoted the premise that this horse with heart helped shake the country out of the depression by providing a symbol. They could see this champion win race after race against impossible odds.

I am hoping that our symbol rises soon, but in the event that it doesn’t, I pray that the people will get some backbone and change things, like:

• Demand public accountability of public corporations.
• Replace the entire congress and executive branch if they don’t permanently ban lobbyists.
• Rebuild the business infrastructure by encouraging American manufacturing.
• Severely tax companies who send jobs out of the country. Make certain the tax costs are equal to the money saved by hiring cheap foreign workers.
• If a shot in the arm is needed to jump start the economy, make sure it gets into the hands of the people and it encourages them to buy American made products.
• Make sure that if any taxpayer money is used to bailout any company, in any way, that bonus and salary reviews become mandatory for all executives. No exceptions and no bonus money will ever be paid unless tied to productivity and the profitability of the company.
• Punish and maybe jail politicians and bureaucrats found accepting any money, favors, or gifts from anyone seeking to influence them
• Require single-payer health care. Any proposed solution to our health care woes that either force the small businesses to pay for it, or allow insurance companies to administer it will fail. We have to stop rewarding executives for denying claims. It is a sick system that turns away people in pain because they don’t have a magic card to gain entrance into the halls of  healing. We can’t afford the failure.
• Pull back the military. Make it against the law to invade a sovereign country without providing evidence of a direct American threat. Why should we be the guardians of the word and spend taxpayer means to do it? Other countries don’t feel the need to do that–why should we?
• Pay down the national debt. The thought that China and the Mid-East hold a sword to our necks is very disturbing.

I’m sure that these ten items will never come to fruition. See, I’m being fatalistic too, but it is something to think about. I love this country and am deeply concerned that if we don’t act in harmony and take the power away from those who abuse it, it will be taken from us.