Bad news for Mitt Romney
Michael Tee ·
January 5, 2012 at 8:20pm
Saw this on Twitter. It's fairly...devastating.
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Comments:
Jan '11
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
KEN McAULIFFE: That video is only the first, you can expect hundreds of worker type testimonials and dozens of executive types telling the story of a Romney that kills companies to make millions. Any working guy sitting on the fence about voting for Obama or voting for Romney will rush back to Obama.
Having employed a lot of high school educated working class guys I can tell you for certain they don't think like Todd or Drew or LowCountry Joe or most of the others who posted here.
Well, when I was a high school business education teacher, I certainly tried to expose my students to an alternative way of thinking about business and economics. I honestly think they appreciated hearing a different perspective than what their other teachers were trying to cram-in. And I would NOT be afraid to teach older people the same kinds of things...whether that would take place on television within a debate, in person and face-to-face, or on a Internet forum -- even one supposedly receptive to limited government and capitalism.
Jun '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Stuart Creque:
The man in the ad is a "victim" of what Schumpeter called "creative destruction." As BThompson and LowcountryJoe point out, a healthy capitalist economy constantly replaces companies and industries that are inefficient with ones that provide more value for the invested capital and produce more value for the consumer.
People would feel less threatened by this if the jobs being lost were replaced by other jobs here in America. When American factories are shut down and replaced by more "efficient" ones in China, coupled with a rising unemployment rate here, they get worried.
Apr '11
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Guruforhire
Misthiocracy
Guruforhire
Misthiocracy: How, exactly, did Bain Capital "make millions" off the purchase and closure of a single factory? · Jan 5 at 8:21am
Edited on Jan 05 at 08:22 am
Tooling can add up real quick. · Jan 5 at 8:25am
Do you mean that the money they made from selling the tools was millions of dollars greater than the purchase price of the factory?
I understand how Bain could save millions by closing a single factory, and I see how selling the tools can help recoup some of the cost of purchasing the factory. · Jan 5 at 9:49am
Depends on what they did. I can see clearing a million selling off the tooling from a factory and then opening up operations overseas. ·
That's something that can work sometimes, but when you're selling at a time when factories in the same industry are closing around the world, you're not going to get a great price. When no one is buying and many are selling, you're not on the road to profits.
Aug '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Yes, but buying an unprofitable company,turning it around, and making it profitable again by moving capital and facilities around to make them more efficient is very different from "making millions" simply from the closure of a single factory, as is claimed in the ad.
The ad makes the claim that the transaction itself resulted in millions in immediate profit.
Jun '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
katievs
I don't think anyone who looks at his background and proposals can doubt that he's serious about reviving the rust belt, and capable of doing it. · Jan 5 at 12:42pm
Where can I look at his proposals, do you have a link handy? Apologies if you posted it earlier and I missed it.
Aug '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
This is only devastating if you are an anti-capitalist academic.
Apr '11
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Having had this conversation with, I'm fairly confident, hundreds more voters than anyone else on Ricochet (out of around 12k calls + more difficult to count conversations), I can attest to this being one of the areas where voters are reasonably receptive to persuasion.
It's true, some of his businesses failed, but the great majority of them succeeded, some of them becoming giant companies, including many that voters are familiar with (that counts for a surprising amount; always worth finding out what businesses are prominent in the area you're calling). Some jobs lost, particularly in industries that America has been struggling to maintain anywhere (ie., it's not Bain Capital that resulted in the decline in manufacturing), but many more created. That appears to fit in with how most people think of the world, so often satisfies. The American people may be better than you think.
Dec '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Or at all worried about losing your own job, or angry that a friend or family member has been out of work for a while. So it probably won't resonate with more than, oh, 50 or 60 million voters.
Aug '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Good point. Gordon Gekko made his plays for Teldar Paper and Bluestar Airlines during a boom, not during a recession.
Yes, I do realize Gordon Gekko is a fictional character...
Aug '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Exactly, this about being against business. Obama is going to run against business people in general. He is going to appeal to welfare recipients, union sympathizers, and people who have lost their jobs. It will be all about the haves and havenots. Classic class warfare. It's bad enough that there are this many naive statements about what Bain does for a living here on Ricochet. Good thing Bain didn't buy a food company , there'd be pictures of chickens in cages, pigs in pens, and slaughtered Elsie the cows everywhere. Or a car company like Chrysler, which was owned by Cereberus (Dan Quayle) but grabbed by the government and handed to the UAW. That little bit of thievery is going unnoticed. That and the Volt . These foxes are stealing chickens the whole time they're blaming the trusty old dog that's chained to the barn and trying to guard the henhouse. Trouble is the barking is ignored.
Edited on January 5, 2012 at 10:11pmJan '11
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Joseph Stanko
Stuart Creque:
The man in the ad is a "victim" of what Schumpeter called "creative destruction." As BThompson and LowcountryJoe point out, a healthy capitalist economy constantly replaces companies and industries that are inefficient with ones that provide more value for the invested capital and produce more value for the consumer.
People would feel less threatened by this if the jobs being lost were replaced by other jobs here in America. When American factories are shut down and replaced by more "efficient" ones in China, coupled with a rising unemployment rate here, they get worried. · Jan 5 at 12:49pm
What are jobs?
By Don Boudreaux
March 6, 2005
Worry, as an emotion, should motivate and inspire. If it does not, then those people should be turned on to [by those who love and care them] those thinkers who will give them the needed kick in the posterior and who will remove ignorance as an excuse just like Boudreaux does in the link provided above.
Dec '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
DrewInWisconsin
Stuart Creque:
Unless Romney is able and willing to create ads and other messaging to counter this ad, to show that some jobs lost at that mill were outweighed by other jobs created elsewhere, he's going to be vulnerable to this line of attack. He cannot afford to ignore or dismiss it.
The problem is, they shot first. Now Romney is forced into a position of reaction instead of the proaction that could have been on his own terms. Any response will come from a defensive position. Romney on defensive puts me in mind of the Bret Baier interview. · Jan 5 at 12:42pm
Romney on the defensive will always to me be "Corporations are people too, my friend." That has to be the least voter-friendly way of making a valid point about our economy and political system that I've heard from a politician in a long time.
Jun '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Stuart Creque
You've traded -- at no additional cost, due to the different cost structures -- a factory and labor base that were producing the product at high cost and selling at a loss for a factory and labor base that produce the same product with greater efficiency due to the newer equipment and lower labor cost, so now your product cost is less and you can make a profit even if you cut prices. So you reduce your product's sales price, gain market share, and increase profit even more.
Right. A factory in China, making the same widgets as an identical factory here, will have lower costs because:
You pass those savings on to your customer, and your customers and shareholders are happy.
So, a question: suppose over the next 10 years we closed every single American factory and replaced it with a new one in China. Would our nation be stronger or weaker, better or worse off, as a result?
Aug '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
a) That would mean closing the well-run, profitable factories along with the poorly-run, unprofitable factories.
b) Who is doing the closing? Is the government closing them as a matter of policy, or is the free-market closing them because they are unprofitable?
Jan '11
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Joseph Stanko
So, a question: suppose over the next 10 years we closed every single American factory and replaced it with a new one in China. Would our nation be stronger or weaker, better or worse off, as a result?
Let's qualify your question: you mean that through the economic decisions of each individual economic actor, within ten years the 'market' had shifted all of the factories that we had at the beginning of 2012 to China. And in the wake of how this played out, there were new (but different) income earning opportunities that emerged, both better in some instances and worse in other instances?
If you'll agree to this qualifier then what I would want to know is whether or not our consumer choices and purchasing power improved. Assuming that the economic actions were made rationally and with self interest, I have no doubt that economically the United States would be stronger and that consumer choices and purchasing power would have improved.
Edited on January 5, 2012 at 10:28pmApr '11
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
No, there's a lot of people for whom this is a very big issue. They're almost all democrats, but not quite all. It's been mostly defeated as an issue in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where a couple of decades ago it could have been lethal. As such, they're happy to vote in serious free traders and capitalists, with strong records to attack on exporting jobs and suchlike (Robert Portman was US Trade Representative for Bush, and Pat Toomey has been excellent on the issue, too). Michigan has been politically transformed, too.
Happily, most of the areas where it is a serious problem are deep blue or (in Alaska's weird case) deep red, although Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota are issues.
There are also a lot of people for whom this is an any-weapon-to-hand support for their candidate issue, but that's not terribly important.
Jun '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Misthiocracy
a) That would mean closing the well-run, profitable factories along with the poorly-run, unprofitable factories.
b) Who is doing the closing? Is the government closing them as a matter of policy, or is the free-market closing them because they are unprofitable? · Jan 5 at 1:24pm
a) Wouldn't even a well-run, profitable factory become even more profitable if it could cut its labor costs in half?
b) A "market" can't really close anything, but suppose it's the owners closing them rather than the government.
Dec '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Joseph Stanko
So, a question: suppose over the next 10 years we closed every single American factory and replaced it with a new one in China. Would our nation be stronger or weaker, better or worse off, as a result? · Jan 5 at 1:16pm
In your hypothetical, that would depend on how reliable a supplier China remained, and whether American labor could be more productively used in other ways. It might be pretty awful if China decided to stop shipping products to us, or if American workers were unprepared to take other types of jobs (if such jobs existed) in the US.
Of course, my example doesn't necessarily mean China. You can see how even Japanese and Korean companies are making automobiles profitably in the USA, just by setting up shop in right-to-work states and avoiding archaic union rules and pay structures. And Nucor Steel thrived as the traditional big mills fell into rusty disrepair by creating efficient mini-mills that used resources in ways the big mills could not.
Apr '11
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
Joseph Stanko
Right. A factory in China, making the same widgets as an identical factory here, will have lower costs because:
You pass those savings on to your customer, and your customers and shareholders are happy.
So, a question: suppose over the next 10 years we closed every single American factory and replaced it with a new one in China. Would our nation be stronger or weaker, better or worse off, as a result? · Jan 5 at 1:16pm
You encounter this sort of thing quite often in discussions about trade, and it always kinda confuses me.
You are aware, Joseph, that there were new enterprises starting up in America during the Bush years? Why do you imagine anyone would do that, if they could be confident of getting a better deal if they started up in China? In order to remove patriotism as a motive, why did foreigners set up plants in America? Alternatively, in order to avoid offensively suggesting that you're undervaluing America, why do businesses set up in Canada?
Jul '10
Re: Bad news for Mitt Romney
James Of England
No, there's a lot of people for whom this is a very big issue. They're almost all democrats, but not quite all. It's been mostly defeated as an issue in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where a couple of decades ago it could have been lethal.
Oh, it will play in Pennsy:
Manufacturing jobs in PA.