Wow....You are really uninformed. Despite the number of US maker plants that have closed over the last 4 decades, a number equal to or even greater than number of foreign auto makers have built plants here in the US employing hundreds of thousands of American workers at very high wages. The only difference? No unions needed. In fact the employees want nothing to do with Paully, Joey, Mikey and Guido's mobbed up organizations. Just last year thr UAW tried to organize the VW plant in Chattanooga, TN....The union lost. The union then said "well, we got cheated. We're suing". They lost that too....
BTW, the wages plus those Cadillac health plants cost GM for example, $70 per hour per worker. There is no way that in this highly competitive auto marketplace, that is sustainable.
GM is paying over ONE MILLION pensioners....That is one million people not working but being paid wages and medical benefits.
Oh and while we're on the subject of record corporate profits....Oh well, no need to explain. You are well aware the hypocrisy I am about to point out...
Lastly. What makes you believe that taxation forces business to invest in anything but paying taxes?
Since 2001, the country has lost 42,400 factories, including 36 percent of factories that employ more than 1,000 workers (which declined from 1,479 to 947), and 38 percent of factories that employ between 500 and 999 employees (from 3,198 to 1,972). An additional 90,000 manufacturing companies are now at risk of going out of business.
Long before the banking collapse of 2008, such important U.S. industries as machine tools, consumer electronics, auto parts, appliances, furniture, telecommunications equipment, and many others that had once dominated the global marketplace suffered their own economic collapse.
Manufacturing employment dropped to 11.7 million in October 2009, a loss of 5.5 million or 32 percent of all manufacturing jobs since October 2000. The last time fewer than 12 million people worked in the manufacturing sector was in 1941. In October 2009, more people were officially unemployed (15.7 million) than were working in manufacturing.
But American companies have difficulty competing against foreign countries that undervalue their currencies, pay health care for their workers; provide subsidies for energy, land, buildings, and equipment; grant tax holidays and rebates and provide zero-interest financing; pay their workers poverty wages that would be illegal in the United States, and don't enforce safety or environmental regulations.
Proponents of free trade and outsourcing argue that the United States remains the largest manufacturing economy in the world.
Yet, total manufacturing gross domestic product in 2008 (at $1.64 trillion) represented 11.5 percent of U.S. economic output, down from 17 percent in 1999, and 28 percent in 1959. As for our balance of trade, U.S. imports of goods totaled $2.52 trillion in 2008, while exports came to $1.29 trillion -- creating a goods deficit of $821 billion. Those imported goods represented 17.6 percent of U.S. GDP. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2008 stood at $700 billion -- or more than $2,000 for every American.
Damn that Guido and Mikey!
The Plight of American Manufacturing