Pay Burger Flippers $15 an hour and the managers will increase your cost to buy what began as a 15 cent hamburger. Forcing businesses to pay higher than market wages increased the cost of the burger 900 percent from 15 cents to a dollar twenty nine. Pay Steel Mill workers $100 and hour and steel manufacturing will move from Philly and Pittsburgh to China.In Northeast Philadelphia there’s a 18 acre manufacturing plant with a high red smokestack with the word “YALE” on it. YALE forklift trucks were made by 3,000 people until 1981 when the 18 acre factory closed. YALE forklifts were made for half the cost in Nagoya, Japan.
Drive up Roosevelt Boulevard to the 11,000 block. The Smokestack is still there but there’s nothing coming out of it. There are lots of cell phone antenna’s on it. It’s just a high pole. The 3,000 jobs went to Japan. High wages caused it. The smokestack is proof. Truth can be spun but not forever. Economics are destiny. The 3,000 lost jobs proves it. The YALE smokestack is a silent witness.
It’s almost worth making the pilgrimage to see the YALE name on the smokestack and to remember the names of some of the large manufacturing and steel plants that have closed in Philly. BUDD. PHILCO. RCA. MIDVALE STEEL. U.S STEEL in Fairless Hills which employed so many people that Levitt built Levittown. GENERAL ELECTRIC in King of Prussia. WESTINGHOUSE. BALDWIN. ROHM AND HAAS. There are probably 50,000 businesses that closed around Philly as the cost to make things was artificially forced higher and higher. Burger King invented a machine to flip the burgers.
Philadelphia was known as “The Worlds Greatest Workshop”. Now it’s one of the worlds great welfare cities. What happened?
Manufacturers were forced to pay far above market prices to workers. The effect rippled through the Philadelphia factories and they closed. They’re gone. Remember that next time you drive north on Roosevelt Boulevard and read “YALE” on a smokestack.
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