http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67T2JX20100830 Original Article
I don't seem to understand how in this economy, the US government can justify exporting any aspect of defense manufacturing abroad.
I know congresscritters love building planes piecemeal in every state to ensure funding, but how does outsourcing the construction to a foreign country make ANY sense? Factories and manufacturing facilities are being shut down all over america and we're talking about exporting sensitive, high paying defense manufacturing jobs to a foreign country.
To top it all off, we're actually donating tax money to Israel to build the facilities that will further erode america's manufacturing base and make the manufacture of these planes even possible. And then more money later to buy the planes thus created from us.
So basically America is paying out billions by taking out debt which america's citizens have to shoulder the burden of paying off, this money is then used to destroy our own economy and build up a foreign one so that it can undercut our workers.
Does this seem like sane policy to ANYONE?
Can Bernie Sanders tell me how this makes any kind of sense?
Comments
This is insane and makes absolutely no sense, as doesn't the conservative ideologies that sent jobs offshore in the quest of ever increasing profits. This nonsense and its true cost is discussed in Is the U.S. tech industry oiling its own guillotine? by Jason Hiner. The economic policies of the U.S. has been centered on serving business interests because business interests have appropriated our government for their benefit. Nothing we do is sustainable, from environmental to economic to social, yet we, at least those that accept the travesty that is objectivism and its religious analogue Calvinism, fully support it and elected politicians that enacted the wishes of the business community. It's, the U.S., is really a lost cause unless the stupid Americans wake up, which I don't see as happening as they have already been "woken up" by right-wing ideology.
You had me going for a second. This plane is being built in the USA, UK, Italy, The Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Austrailia, Norway, Denmark, and now Isreal. That is one of the reasons it is called the Joint Strike Fighter. All the countries that are buying some portion of the 3,200 being built are getting a piece of the action. Since Isreal is only building 800 wings and not whole aircraft, it doesn't seem like a very significant portion of the pie. THe USA put in most of the money and will be getting most of the jobs, seems fair.
But Israel isn't part of the "joint" in Joint Strike Fighter nomenclature as indicated in the article:
"Israel would be the first foreign country to sign an agreement to buy the F-35 outside the eight international partners that have helped to develop the plane."
And F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Lightning II
"For much of the free world’s military forces, the F-35 represents the future- a new family of affordable, stealthy combat aircraft designed to meet the twenty-first-century requirements of the US Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. The program is truly international in its scope and participation: Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Denmark, Australia, and Norway recently joined the F-35’s system development and demonstration (SDD) phase. All SDD partners will be active in the F-35’s development process and stand to gain economically from the program."
That doesn't mean that Israel shouldn't get thrown a bone, but overall the U.S. has given away technologies and jobs that should have been kept at home.
You had me going for a second. This plane is being built in the USA, UK, Italy, The Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Austrailia, Norway, Denmark, and now Isreal
This post is particularly funny in light of the Post above yours. Half-cocked comes to mind.
1) as another poster mentioned, Israel was not part of the JSF program. They had a very small contribution at the very end (~20 million) to gain early access so that they can do after-market modding of these planes to carry Israeli electronic warfare suites for the israeli variants.
2) You're telling me that america couldn't use the 5billion we're giving Israel to build this to create 20-30,000+ new high paying defense jobs to stimulate our own economy, retain manufacturing jobs and pensions and from a business perspective retain permanent replacement parts construction rights for these planes? Those 800 wings can and should be built in america or split up according to the original funding proportions to the various JSF partner nations i.e. within NATO, which was one of the goals of the JSF project.
To me, as an american, this is simply outrageous. You can stump for your own country but don't expect me to buy the line that giving some foreign country money to build factories to take away american jobs is good for america. Especially when we end up giving them the money to then buy the planes again and paying the interest on the debt to finance the whole operation.
So it's not only free but we're getting screwed in the process.
It isn't the jobs that are important...it's where the profits go.
At least, that's the wacky theory.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
Lockheed Martin? Isn't that where the parents of those Columbine kids worked?
As we do this, we out sources our tax base and can not maintain a government.
the USA is dead.
We do not even protect our people form illegal invaders.