Will the high paid job loses in manufacturing continue? Absolutely, everything is simply going as planned.

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Good Morning Middle America, welcome to your King of Simple News Network.

U.S. NEWS: Ford is in the news today as the struggling auto maker gets a lift from its Brazilian operation.

The Reuters headline touts “Struggling at home, Ford sees lessons in Brazil.” The scene is set by announcing that poor people driving on poor roads, living in poor houses; work in one of the most modern auto plants in the world. Well, some of them do.

Ford determined that if having very poor people manufacture autos for very low wages and very few benefits, makes the company more money,…then it just goes to reason that having even fewer people employed would make even more money. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Chief executive of Ford’s Brazilian and Mercosur units had this to say, “There are several elements of the turnaround in Brazil that really worked as an inspiration for things that are being done in the States,”

These “things” that included canning some 46% of the work force and closing several plants in Brazil, worked so well that Ford came back to the U.S. and has cut 36,000 jobs since 2005 and has scheduled 10 plants to close. Oh joy.

Is Ford at fault for the massive loses that they have sustained? Are they at fault for 36,000 U.S. workers being unemployed? Not entirely. The trade policies ushered in during the 1990s simply allowed cheap foreign competition to enter the market unhampered by U.S. work rules and wages. In simple terms, Ford, GM, Chrysler, and thousands of other manufacturers, mathematically can’t compete; in the U.S.

So Ford’s idea is simple and necessary under the present conditions. Fewer plants, fewer workers, more robotics, and larger profits. But what about the workers? We have now entered the era of the “The non-reusable, non-returnable worker.”

The results to date of this shift in manufacturing to the poorest nations on earth are that some 3 Million workers have lost their jobs in manufacturing since 1998.

This trend will continue to the point that manufacturing nearly anything in the U.S. will be impossible from a labor and cost standpoint.

We now go back to yesterday’s column regarding the U.S. sinking to third world status. No job? Down you go. Just that simple.

Yet we have many politicians who calmly dismiss these issues as simply as calling for government to pay for re-training. Oh yes, the grand and delusional plans of our government. We’ll simply retrain welders to work as computer program analysts. Carpenters as stock brokers. Machinists as insurance salespeople. Sure we will.

I have a terrific idea. How about come election day, we don’t re-elect anyone? We prohibit past politicians from becoming lobbyists, and all of the displaced politicians can attend re-training classes for their new careers.

We need new leadership, totally new leadership. Middle America is dancing on the edge of the volcano. What’s that rumbling sound?

Wake up Middle America; the last trains pulling away from the station.

Authors Website: www.kingofsimple.com

Authors Bio:
Mike Folkerth is the author of "The Biggest Lie Ever Believed" and is not your run-of-the-mill author of finance and economics.

The former real estate broker, developer, private real estate fund manager, auctioneer, Alaskan bush pilot, restaurateur, U.S. Navy veteran, heavy equipment operator, taxi cab driver, fishing guide, horse packer and few jobs too embarrassing to mention, writes from experience and plain common sense.

Mike’s humorous systems of “Mikeronomics” and “Mikemathics” drastically simplify the economic and mathematic formulas commonly used by very smart, but terribly sheltered individuals.