AJC 6/19/18 page a1
article “South Georgia’s anger spurs effort to secede” states the obvious. You
can earn a living farming if you have a good paying job in town. Rural counties and cities in the US were the
beneficiaries of small manufacturing plants from the 1950s to the 1990s and the
farmers could have a good paying job in town. In 1993, the passage of NAFTA
heralded to exodus of manufacturing from the US to low wage countries. US Rural
counties lost their manufacturing plants from 1993 to 2017.
US rural counties have
farmers, retirees and school teachers and county government employees. There
are some truck drivers and electric company linemen, In the rural cities of
these counties we have some retail shops, grocery stores, gas stations, auto
mechanics, churches, barber shops, beauty shops, a city hall, a police
department, a fire department and family-owned restaurants. The lucky counties
have doctors, dentists and nurses, but lots of hospitals have closed. When they had a manufacturing plant, the jobs
for 100 or more residents made a big difference in the economy.
Trumps victory in 2016
set up some expectations in rural America hoping they could regain their
manufacturing plants. As rural Georgians look to the Gold Dome, they expect
these “economic development” hounds to help bring manufacturing or something to
their counties, but they don’t see any progress in rural Georgia. The State of
Georgia has marketing support for farmers and agricultural product sales have
increased, but this isn’t enough. Rural Georgians see the Gold Dome focused on
Atlanta for the Amazon expansion and Savannah for the Harbor expansion. They
see the Gold Dome chasing Casinos and other deals that would land in high
population centers.
County officials have
been trying to recruit manufacturing plants, but the expansion required for
this to happen hasn’t happened yet. The advancements we need now would upgrade
and harden our electric grid and protect our digital devices from intrusion,
but our power companies don’t have the money and hardening our electronics
could take a while.
We already know how to
build completely automated plants, but it requires very high volume, high speed
processes to make it profitable. This is how we make light bulbs, paper
diapers, toilet paper and smart phones. These plants have low labor cost and
300 technicians can run plants that would require 3000 employees except for the
automation. The US should be a perfect country for this kind of manufacturing,
but the companies have these plants in other countries.
We already have “pick
and place” robots smaller companies can buy and these robots don’t require
programming skills to operate them. These robots allow companies to respond to
surprise large orders, because the robots can be set up to work 24/7.
Rural Georgia is
largely Republican. They don’t like the Republicans in the Gold Dome, because
they vote and act like Democrats. They send their favorite sons to represent
them, but they see them swept away to climb on whatever band-wagon the
Establishment RINOs direct them to. These are the real Republicans who are
reformers and they are the 45% of the Republican Delegates who vote for Alex
Johnson to lead the GA GOP at every Georgia GOP Convention since 2013. The big
city Republicans continue to dominate in Georgia and they don’t like reformers.
We saw the jobs pour
in to Georgia in the 1980s, but the electronics industry was driving it. We
moved to Georgia to support the PC and related programmable logic controller
business made possible by the advances made in semiconductors. We followed this
with a total retooling of telephony. This created a surge in the US economy
based on new product launch effort in several industries that lasted for 30
years. It started to wind down after 2000 and died in 2008. This electronics
advance quadrupled productivity and that created 40 years of economic growth.
To know when the next
new product launch surge will occur again, you have to look at technology
advances in necessary products. What we
have now is the clean-up needed to maintain our digital lives. This includes
fool-proof security on our electronic devices and that’s a job for software and
IT developers hired by banks, the power company and everybody else who relies
on our electronic infrastructure.
There is one way to
bring manufacturing back to rural counties.
You go looking for a skilled tradesman who wants to establish and grow
his own manufacturing business and he already has customers. If say, he is a
master machinist and does outsourced machining for customers. If he wants to
grow, he will be looking for a community college that has a good machining
curriculum. If he finds it in your county, he will visit it to see if the
faculty knows what they are doing. If it is nearby and his suppliers and
customers are not far and he likes your county, he will buy a home and build a
shop to work in. This is the one model I think will work for now and you really
don’t need the state government to do anything and that is perfect for the state
government you currently have in the Gold Dome. If you Chair your County
Commission, you need to put this plan into effect.
I got to live in
Salina Kansas for 8 years from 1975 to 1983. Salina is at the intersection of
I-70 and I-35 in the middle of 82,278 square miles of wheat.
Salina was founded in
1858 as a trading post and rest stop for covered wagons pursuing Western
expansion. It is nestled by the Smokey Hill River. The railroad arrived in 1867 and the cattle
trade arrived in 1872 amid the wheat farmers. By 1880, several mills were
operating making Lee Jeans and other garments. Carriage makers and farm
implement makers settled in. Salina became a “market” town with silos and grain
companies.
In 1942 Salina was
selected as the site location of Shilling Air Force Base. It covered 2,862
acres and boasts a runway 12,300 feet long.
It became a SAC base for B-52 bombers and brought another level of
activity to the local economy. It closed in 1967 and the USAF established a
“development authority” and leased space for manufacturing plants and
maintained base housing for “waiting wives” and we all hired them.
When the base closed,
the town fathers set out to recruit manufacturing plants. This is precisely
what your county commissions and city council need to do right now in Georgia.
When I arrived in
1975, it had a population of 40,000 and had 20 manufacturing plants, a major
trucking company and many small businesses. At the time manufacturing companies
were looking for plant sites in “right to work” states in cities that fit their
needs.
I loved Salina, it was
just the right size and was full of real Republicans.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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