[JohnDenver]

The guy in this video would fit right in with the family here at peakoil.com:

Link

He's really pissed off and has all the usual riffs: "green shoots", death of GM, gas prices ("I'm paying goddam $2.65 a gallon over here!"), Walmart, unemployment, dollar "dropping like a bitch", America's declining industrial power, etc.

"We've had 39 consecutive months of declining manufacturing job growth!" he says, while demolishing a computer monitor with a 2-by-4.

The guy is a complete oaf, and doesn't seem to be aware of it. At one point, the head of his sledge hammer flies off, and he yells (at the monitor he's destroying): "You broke my sledge hammer mother f**ker!"

Think about it folks: Cars, computers, nuclear reactors... These are precision instruments that require great patience, craftsmanship and attention to detail. Do you really want oafs with this temperament and skill set manufacturing the products that you buy? I think not. Hence the declining industrial power.

Unfortunately the Americans can't seem to make the connection.

"damn splinter"
"I coulda built that thing better'n that"
"Goddam light bulb was made in China"

[Hawkcreek]

We are just so lucky that we have smart people like you willing to teach us how to be better people.

I promise that I will never shoot my deep freeze again.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'I') am kind of like the guy in the video also.
I am angry...

[heroineworshipper]

Got to do something about the Americans.

[Pops]

Man that guy cracks me up.

But look, the economic and all the other PO Discussion forums are for discussion of, PO!

[pup55]

I suppose this is just another typical product of the US public school system, the "I get mine you go find yours" culture, regular infusions of whoppers and budweiser, and regular viewing of UFC....

I did not make it all the way through the 10 minutes, so did not see if he ever drew the conclusion that the whole thing comes down to our need to import 60% of our oil supply from elsewhere.... and the entire middle class and manufacturing decay he is talking about started at exactly the same moment at which US PO happened....

and that simultaneously to this, people started to be compelled to load their garages up with cheap junk, which they then felt compelled later to beat on with a blunt instrument out of frustration....

The crazy part is, in the eyes of Jefferson, this guy's vote is equal to that of someone a bit more thoughtful. I suppose the counterbalancing effect works.... or the whole place would be run by mullahs, like it is in Iran.....

I will think some more about this.

[ColossalContrarian]

Wallstreetpro2 is one of my favorite commentators on the economy and everything else he goes off about. It’s on the opposite side of the spectrum from what you see in the MSM. It entertainment and just funny, he tries to encourage more manufacturing in the US.

I believe the US can build any item built in another nation with the same if not better quality. It really comes down to the company and management, don’t think profit and greed get don’t affect the quality of items made in other nations. This guy is a patriot.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pup55', 'I') did not make it all the way through the 10 minutes, so did not see if he ever drew the conclusion that the whole thing comes down to our need to import 60% of our oil supply from elsewhere.... and the entire middle class and manufacturing decay he is talking about started at exactly the same moment at which US PO happened....

[Auntie_Cipation]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', 'O')n the other hand, you have this American, oafishly destroying things, while bitterly complaining about the loss of manufacturing jobs.

[JohnDenver]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ColossalContrarian', 'h')e tries to encourage more manufacturing in the US.

[dukey]

i wonder if in 10 years China will just own all of the US. Since well you can't keep importing stuff and exporting nothing. You have to have an industrial base.

[HeckuvaJob]

I think this guy should consider outsourcing his next video. Maybe find a video production company in a country without labor protection laws (smashing things up is dangerous), subsistence wages, no environmental protection (those monitors are loaded with toxins), poor human rights track record, etc.

I think he'd be surprised at just how cheap and easy it would be to accomplish; how our trade policies and tariffs are already set up to accommodate the outsourcing of American jobs and the penalty-free importation of foreign goods.

[TreeFarmer]

A large portion of our problem is due to the fact that many people think that the delivery of services is equivalent to the production of goods. By way of example the GDP is calcualted with $1 worth of a service delivered being the equivalent of $1 worth of goods produced which is pure fantasy.

TF

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pup55', 'I') did not make it all the way through the 10 minutes, so did not see if he ever drew the conclusion that the whole thing comes down to our need to import 60% of our oil supply from elsewhere.... and the entire middle class and manufacturing decay he is talking about started at exactly the same moment at which US PO happened....

[pup55]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRrESbZlXdc&feature=related

Let me tell you about this guy.

He's from the south, probably not far from the line between Nashville and Charlotte (I cannot quite pick up the accent)....The lake in the above video is far enough north so that there is a winter. He has a couple of litle kids, which means that he is probably under 40 but he looks much, much older because he is in terrible shape.

So let's be generous and say he was born in about 1977....He may be much younger....

His parents were beneficiaries of the industrialization of the south, they probably got a job in the first wave of exodus from Michigan and Ohio that happened in that time frame when a lot of the big manufacturing companies set up operations in the non-union areas. By a bit of hard work maybe Mom, and dad, if he is still in the picture, managed to accumulate enough money to have a lake house on one of the federally constructed water projects that are abundant in this area (I cannot recognize which one, but it doesn't matter). Mom and dad, being early Baby Boomers, may have inherited some of this from the previous generation.... The Boomers are not known for their thrifty ways....

He is too young to remember the fuel crises of 1973 and 1979, and his parents indulged him. He got what he wanted for Christmas, or any other time, by whining. He raised some hell as a youth.... and is too young to remember the desegregation era, but still, no doubt, has some residual resentment. The movies he went to as a kid: Rambo, the Rocky movies, a couple of others in that mode....

In high school, he was a slacker. Tried to play football but was unsuccessful, not because he was not athletic, but because he was lazy and had a big mouth. The high school itself, being where it was, was in the bottom third of the nation in SAT scores. The spouse is not in the picture, perhaps she has flown the coop already. I am thinking either way, she is not a yoga instructor.....The kids are good looking though, so there is no way to tell.

Maybe went to some cow college or football factory, maybe not. Either way, spelling was not high on the list of academic accomplishments... Either way, he has a hat from his favorite college which he wears proudly on Saturday when he roots on his favorite college team in football, while drinking beer and eating high-cholesterol foods.

Possibly he had the mistaken idea that he could get into one of those factory jobs like Mom or Dad had, and work... not knowing that the factory was going to be shut down again and moved to an even lower wage place, such as China......If not, he knew that mom and dad would take care of him..

Now? Well I suppose he has brains enough to smash his chinese made stereos and computer monitors, but not smash the video camera, which might or might not be Japanese (raising the question of logic).....

Maybe he works, maybe not. Hard to tell. Either way, some previous generation has deep enough pockets to take care of him, because he is quite right.... good paying jobs for low-end workers are pretty scarce....

He has all sorts of problems. He's a smoker and is hard pressed to make it down/back up the 90 steps to the lake at Mom's lake house. He probably has blood pressure issues, hemorrhoids, prostate issues, his hair is already thinning, and obviously some anger management problems....

His political philosophy? Well I suppose it derives from the Reagan era, extended through its irresponsible spawn Bushes 1 and 2, which, in hollywood fashion, stated that if you have a lot of underlying structural problems, you should just get cosmetic surgery, rather than address the issue. You rail against big government, but during your term(s) you expand the government to unprecedented heights. You spend money like a drunk, cut taxes, and pass the resulting deficit on to the next guy. You spend massively on the military, and use it to conquer such half assed countries like Granada and Iraq, thinking that it sends a message to your rivals China and Russia, which it does.....you use your overweight military stupidly and ineffectively.

I suppose despite the profanity-laced videos, he attends Christian church services, which, despite worship of a fellow who believed in helping the poor and downtrodden, and says "whatsoever you do to the least of your brothers that you do unto me" has not had much of an impact on his own behavior.....

He drives some kind of pickup. He cuts in front of you to get the last parking place. He pulls up behind you and flashes his headlights if you are driving in the fast lane and not going fast enough to suit him. He might even have a gun rack in the back.

He's a redneck asshole. His way of discussion is to be louder and stupider than the other guy. He has the buttons in his pickup radio set to Rush Limbaugh.

What else? I will have to think about this some more.

[Hawkcreek]

Good analysis, Pup.
Yeah, we have a lot of rednecks in this country. A lot of under-educated, oafish people.
And a lot of them are good people who try to do a good job in whatever they do. I've seen welders with a work ethic that won't allow them to accept any imperfections in their work. I've seen carpenters that work extra hours trying to get everything square and plumb.
Yeah, they go home to their beer and pickup trucks and watch the tube. They don't try to strain their brains too much.
But does the society they live in really push them to do so? When I see 50 percent of the cable channels turned into educational programs, I will believe that the groups that run this country really want an educated populace. When I see schools that have a vocational program that produces machinists as good as the average German machinist, I will believe that our country really wants that type of precision. Precision in your work leads to precision in your thinking, in my opinion.
Yep, we have a lot of problems, but I still believe that, like most corporate problems I have seen in my long career, they are pushed from the top down. Most unsucessful projects I have seen were caused by the procedures put in place by the top dogs, not the actions of the guys working in the field.
People without a clue need to be led, not fed.

[TheDude]

Just going by memory but I thought his schtick was that he'd come on like a frenzied redneck griping about immigrant labor while yelling things like "And then Bernanke tells us all this bull**** about how the yield on benchmark 10-year notes will tend to oscillate owing to impact on the LIBOR from quantum easing in the TARP! YAAHHHAHGHHGHGH!" (swings bat). Hence his handle of "walstreetpro2." Also part of the appeal humourwise. I remember commentators on The Automatic Earth saying, oh, if only you get him on a CNBC roundtable, or a guest shot on Mad Money...

[ColossalContrarian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnDenver', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ColossalContrarian', 'h')e tries to encourage more manufacturing in the US.