Lights Out on US Manufacturing and More

The last major GE factory making light bulbs in the US is closing later this month. WAPO has that story.  It’s a metaphor for how US national policy has encouraged the shift of manufacturing jobs outside US borders to cut costs and maximize corporate profits. It also illustrates how our federal policy has neglected to encourage research, development, and manufacturing in green technology. Here is a piece from 2007 on the loss of manufacturing jobs.  That’s before the housing bubble burst and things took a really bad turn.

This last US GE plant in Winchester VA makes incandescent bulbs. The future is not in incandescent bulbs. Heck, the present should not be in incandescent bulbs. Here’s a link to a piece on compact fluorescents I did a few years ago.

I think US manufacturing is predominantly war materials. I think that may not be best choice.

Another interesting story.  The NYT and everybody has this one I think.  Richard Daley is not going to run for re-election for Mayor of Chicago.

Mayor of Chicago?  is that a emphemism?  Rahm Emanuel is interested in the job.  I say make Rahm produce his birth certificate first.

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Light bulb factory closes; End of era for U.S. means more jobs overseas WINCHESTER, VA. - The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s. The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs. “Now what’re we going to do?” said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful.

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