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AAH #750 - America's Manufacturing Failure
AAH #750 - America's Manufacturing Failure
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About this episode
Sandy Monroe joins the discussion to address America's manufacturing decline, emphasizing the critical shortage of skilled tradespeople and the impact of educational systems that prioritize college over vocational training. Monroe shares personal anecdotes about his journey as a toolmaker and critiques the current educational landscape that overlooks practical skills. The conversation also touches on the challenges facing the EV market, the competitive landscape with China, and the need for a strategic approach to manufacturing in the U.S. Monroe's insights highlight the importance of reviving trades education to sustain the manufacturing base.
Topics:
manufacturing decline
skilled trades shortage
vocational training
educational system critique
electric vehicles market
China competition
trades education revival
Cars:
AMC Javelin
TOPIC: Lack of Skilled Trades PANEL: Sandy Munro, Munro and Associates; Gary Vasilash, shinymetalboxes.net; John McElroy, Autoline.tv
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
American Motors Corporation (Amc) Javelin
"...of our biggest successes that I can talk about is Javelin or you heard about the bunker Buster. I was on th..."
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Speaker 1: I'll don't line after hours. It's brought to you by
bridge Stone Tires Solutions for your journey.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, thanks for joining us. We have got the
man in the room here with us. Sandy Monroe from
Monroean Associates and.
Speaker 3: What I did.
Speaker 2: You've been hearing the show quite a few times, at least twice at least. Yeah, year's worth and Jerry Vassilash also,
so who.
Speaker 3: We missed last week? We were off last week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's good to be back. This is the
first show of the second half of the year. So yeah,
we had the week off our mid year break last week.
Speaker 3: But oh thank god, that's good noise.
Speaker 4: So we started with a bang here.
Speaker 3: Well we'll see about the bank. I just hope somebody
doesn't come down and you know, take pot shots at me after we get done. Oh, we should give out.
Speaker 2: The address so I know where they can come find you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's good. Agree a shut out. But I was
talking to somebody a while ago and he said, well, how did how did your YouTube channel actually get started?
And I said, well, it didn't really start at Monroe, it started at at our wine and uh and John McElroy came up and did an interview, and I had already said I hated this, and I hated that, and this is crap, and on and on. Then I said, well,
the wow, the circa boards looked pretty good. It drives
really well. And now we've got it all torn aparts,
laying on the floor.
Speaker 2: You're talking about Tesla Bottle three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Model three, And and you asked, well, do you think they'll make any money? And I thought, look,
how do I do this? I said, well, something along
the lines that if it was made in a conventional factory, and I know this isn't And and we applied our rules and regulation, and this thing here would do somewhere between thirty and thirty five percent gross profit. And you
went wow, and so did the rest of the world.
And that's how everything got started. And shortly after that
the world came to a screeching halt and we had to do something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you're talking about COVID and the yeah, coach chip shortage and all that stuff. Well, COVID first, COVID right,
really froze out of the business.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it was fun, it was up the industry, Oh it did, but not at Monroe. So what we
did was we tore apart pieces of the car, put him in somebody else's pickup truck or car, and they took him home and they did the analysis at home.
So and then we would do a video on whatever came back. And so we got kind of like nervous
when we saw police cars driving through the parking lot and whatnot. So he said, we're going to be smart.
So we took our cars and put them inside the factory.
And and so we were doing a video, or we'd just done a video, and in the old days, we just run the video and we popped it up and and so anyways, I hear bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang, Hey all about wait.
Speaker 5: All you're in there. We were watching your video. The
cops we just sat there quietly, kept our mouth shut.
And there's no lights on in the front of the building, so and they couldn't see all the way to the He had to see through steel or brick in.
Speaker 3: Order to see in the bag. But that was so.
Speaker 4: Sandy for the chimes, for the two or three people who are watching who don't know who you are and what you do. You're not just a video producer, so
exceed what it is that you guys do.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, so first off, YouTube doesn't really pay the bills for the two people at work on it all the time. YouTube is a very very small part of Monroe.
So what we normally do is we either do new product development, so we work on we do work on cars and trucks, there's no question about it. From a
commercial standpoint, that's probably your own. I don't know thirty
five of our business. The next thing that's up there
would be aircraft and like commercial aircraft, and then the next one would be a whole bunch of things. We
work on appliances, there's HVAC systems on the floor right now.
Medical a lot of medical devices lately, So we do a lot. And then we have the bigger part of
the company, which is about seventy percent, maybe sixty five percent of everything we do, and that is all department and defense work. So that requires different set of status.
Only Americans can work on it on and on. So yeah,
and for that we work on everything. Actually, one of
our biggest successes that I can talk about is Javelin or you heard about the bunker Buster. I was on
that team as well.
Speaker 2: The original javelin being a missile.
Speaker 3: Missile, yeah, the javelin missile. Yeah that yeah, that was
pretty exciting. It was a dead project and then we
got called or Monroe got called in. I just happened
to be the guy that was free went down. We
worked on that for about two months. Figured out how
to snap in lenses. Not as easy as you think
because the lens this is big and it's basically a big black rock. So anyhow, I'm good at snap fits,
and they snapped it in and because when it took off, normally it shake like a son of a gun, anyhow, it didn't do that after we get done.
Speaker 2: So basically, you guys are really good at taking products, tearing them down, figure out how to make them better, cheaper, stronger, lighter, all that kind of stuff, or even provide guidance to companies on your guidelines to be able to do that so they can do it themselves.
Speaker 3: Well, sometimes it's a redesign, most times it's new design.
So new product development is what we're really kind of famous for. And that means that somebody wants something. Like
one of the companies that we worked for when I was working a lot in China, they wanted to have a new basically induction powered kettle, and so we helped them out at the design phase and they said, well, it has to look different as and that was called bite Them. Bite Them is huge in the rest of
the world, not so big here in the US, but the rest of the world. Women love theirs of because
it's the right colors, it actually works, and it helps you out with fuzzy logic what we would classify as AI now and yeah, and make sure that your cake or whatever you're making. And when I's always going to
be perfect. Always it's got controls like you can't believe.
But I haven't seen him here, well, so.
Speaker 2: Maybe it'll change. But one thing I wanted to get
into is let's talk about some of the latest developments going on in the industry that I'm pretty sure you're going to want to comment on. So about a week
ago or so, maybe two weeks at this point, Jim Farley was speaking at this conference called the Aspen Institute, and some of the things he came out with is the shortage manufacturing jobs in the United States. You know,
Trump says he wants to bring back all these manufacturing jobs.
According to Farley's stats right now, something like six hundred dollars manufacturing jobs going begging. Uh, there's like a shortage
of one hundred thousand car text to work at dealerships on cars. There's shortage of all kinds of manufacturing or
you know, work related stuff. And you know, Farley's message
essentially was the country has got to turn this around or it's going to lose its manufacturing base. And all
this has been.
Speaker 3: Going to lose it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's losing it right.
Speaker 3: Okay, before you go on, let me just tell you one hundred thousand or six hundred thousand or whatever post numbers are way off. I mean, we're looking at tens
of millions of jobs that are basically not being able to be filled. Because he was looking only at the
automotive industry. Go find a plumber, Go find an electrician,
go fight. I'm a tool maker, that's really what I am.
I never really got through university. I found out that
you punch a professor in knows and guess what, they won't let you come back in. So I never got
done all right, and I did, okay, But when it comes to the trades, I know toolmaking quite well, and I know what we used to be and what we used to have when I was in in Windsor. I
came from Canada when I was in Windsor, and I got my Journeyman's ticket. And I'll tell you how I
got that, because I cheated there too, but I got my journeyman's ticket. There were about two thousand journeyman tool
makers in Windsor. In Detroit, just Detroit, twenty thousand minimum.
And now I'm Ford.
Speaker 2: Chrysler used to do all their tooling in the house we used to have were almost none of it.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you what I did tooling for GM FOURD and General Motors and everybody else on it. But at
the end of the day they also did it. And
then what happened, Oh, we can get it cheaper if we go to Japan, we can get it cheaper, if we go to Korea. We can get it cheaper, if
we can go to China. And now you're looking at
basically under ten thousand certified tool makers in the United States.
Speaker 2: So what does a toolmaker do?
Speaker 3: I mean anything, We can fix anything but the krack of down that's what you're told. I had to learn
how to be an electrician, how to be a pipefitter how to run every machine imaginable, and in those days we did have CNC machines, but not many. So my
big thing was I had very good hands, and so I worked on a thing called a jig grinder. That
was what I was the best at. And quite frankly,
I literally could make anything. If you gave me the
drawings and gave me the correct steel, I can make anything, and I could heat treat it. I was pretty good
at what I did. So let me tell you a
little story, and I promise not to bore you too much.
I did not graduate from two schools. I already told
you about college. That didn't work on. Well, I never
got out of grade school either. How about that. I
didn't get out of grade school. And as my principal
said my principal when I was going to grade school, Sandy, if you work real hard by the time you're forty, you'll be able to pump gas. Right. Well, you know what,
I am.
Speaker 2: Just a stupid thing to say to a student, any.
Speaker 3: Kid, anybody, everybody, anybody. I'm not a real fan of
that kind of horseshit. But anyways, I didn't know at
the time when I was going to school. But I
am dyslexic, and nobody had a name for what I was except stupid. That's what everybody used. So Sandy so stupid. Okay, fine,
So I managed to get to grade eight. I was
told that I was going to fail. He was failing me,
and he was. He tried to give me, get me
into I forgot what they call him. It was a
two year training course to learn how to use a broom.
That's basically it. So that's what my fate was supposed
to be. Well, I didn't like that idea. So I
was living in the country. I lived in a place
that isn't even exists anymore called Sandwich East and I went to a little teeny tiny grade school called Victoria.
And I wanted to go to the technical high school that was in downtown Windsor, and that was called W. D.
Lowe Technical. I am a low tech graduate, and you
think I'm going to be here all week.
Speaker 2: So for those who are only to this, Sandy is now holding up his graduation. I don't know it's.
Speaker 3: This is a reward of honor. Oh only three of us. Okay,
So there were I've been told that maybe I'm wrong on this I thought there was a thousand graduates out of this school in sixty eight when I graduated. It
may be less than that. It might be eight hundred, okay,
but there was a shitload of us, and there was three of us got one of these, the top three, and we got a toolbox and a whole bunch of other stuff to go along with it. How is it
Sandy's too stupid to pump gas? And now Sandy is
a tool maker? Because I'll tell you how I got
to be a toolmaker, but Sandy's now pretty much a tool maker and he comes in a second. I think
it was second in the in the whole damn graduating class.
How does that happen? How could that possibly happen? Because
I went from something I hated and couldn't do to something that I was brilliant at it and could do.
Speaker 2: Some people are good with their minds, other are good with their hands.
Speaker 3: Some are good with both exactly, And our education system currently does what only your mind? It's not even your mind, No,
it's do you spelling bees? Oh? Sandy loves ose. I
love spelling bees. I was out of that in a heartbeat.
Why because I can't spell? Why because I'm dyslexic. On
and on and on. It's only built for teachers. I
call it the eye class. It's straight up and down.
You start here, here's you know, the smartest kid in excuse me, the smartest kid in the class. Second smart
boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. And here's Sandy.
And it's all academic. Everything is academic. When I was
in math class, they would say, okay, here how the formula goes blah blah blah, and when wait a minute, that that that that and here's the answer. Well, oh,
you did it wrong. What do you mean I did
it wrong? Is that the right answer? Yes? But you
probably cheated by looking at you know, Gary Porter's paper or something. You cheat it. We know it, so big
red f for that. I could see how the math worked,
even if I was dyslection. But I couldn't see was
sentence structures, spelling. Reading was nightmare for me. I didn't
follow the eye. That straight up and down, bar that
that that that that that debt. And it's based on who,
not me. It's based on teachers. Teachers figure out who's
smart and who isn't smart. I don't believe in the
eye system. I believe in the U system. I believe
that there's a different kind of character stick and some people they work really well in the eye system. And
we'll say that that's on the left hand side. That's
only about thirty five or forty percent of the population.
The rest of us are dummies. But if you look
on the other side, the technical side, all of a sudden you see a whole different ballgame. The people over
here don't do well over there. The people over here
are terrible over there. Right, how many people do you
know couldn't pick up a screwdriver and figure out what to do with it. They're the smart guys on the
left hand side. The right hand side, this person's a dummy.
And quite frankly, I watched more of this. We can't
tell which is which. What are you shitting me? The
Europeans did it for a long time. We did it
for a long time. We used to even I don't know,
I'm pretty old, but in grade six, seven and eight you were allowed to go to shop classes. I came
home the the uh okay, so we'll go back in a bit, But I came home with stuff that was razzle dazzle good. Why well, I don't see. I had
a lathe. My dad had a lathe. We had a sauce.
We had everything you needed in order to do whatever you do. When I went to these shop classes, this
was amazing. I could get everything done in a hurry.
So I was good at that. What about the guy
that was the top of the class on the eye system, He leaned too close to one of the machines and the burden nest he was drilling a hole with in steel.
The bird nest reached over, grabbed his sweater, and he yanked it off of him. So that was it. He
started crying and he left.
Speaker 4: So you explained that the birds and nust is formed by these Yeah, but.
Speaker 3: You drill it. If you're foolish, you'll you won't. If
you're foolish, you'll just keep pulling it down and then you wind up with a bird nest which is really made out of steel. You're smart, You just go and
it's wicked shirt. It's like razorblade shirt. So you just
break the thing and it'll fly off and you're all done.
But Gary didn't really, he didn't see that. That wasn't him,
Not you, Gary, This is another Yeah, the smartest kid.
Speaker 2: But let's go back to what Farley was talking about about and bring your thoughts full circle here. You know,
we used to have shop classes in the United States and virtually every single high school you could learn all the skilled trade kind of things or the basics of it and find out if you liked it or not, or we're good at it or not. Starting in the
nineteen seventies, academia and the US decided that every high school student had had to be prepared to go to college, whether they were going or not, they had to end.
They pretty much started the high schools pretty much started closing down all the shop classes. Now there's a a
push people with Farley and others. You know, if you
look at first robotics, if you look at Square one SAE, what it's doing with formula SAE, you know they're trying to get people to use not just their brains but their hands make things. Again, what would you do? I mean,
Farley's talking about all these shortages of skilled trades people.
What's the solution.
Speaker 3: I always take a giant step backwards to what made us great? Why were we great in World War Two?
Because everybody did stuff everybody knew stuff. There are two
things missing. You talked about shot plasts. But you know what,
at the end of the day, there used to be this thing called home economics, and I took that as well.
I learned how to basically sew, how to cut up cloth, how to cook, how to keep a bank book. I mean,
at the end, this is something that's totally missing. We
missed out. That's seven eight, sorry, six seven and eight
the to have that. We used to have technical high schools.
If I would have went to a collegiate that's where the fancy kids used to go, or an ordinary high school, I would have failed miserably. I never got past grade ten.
But I got a chance to go to a technical high school. Remember cast tech used to be tech. Yeah, okay,
not anymore. We don't have that stuff. We don't we
don't create tradesmen. Oh my son is never going to
be a plumber. He'd have to go and touch poop.
I'll tell you about a story about a plumber that came and see me on Sunday. But at the end
of the day, we are in this class system and it's only benefiting one group, one group only, and that group is the teachers group because they understand right from kindergarten or even pre kindergarten, tell the children to go to college. Tell the children that their dummies. If they don't,
if they can't read, tell the children. And it goes
all the way up and you get into high school and they say, well, you can get through high school.
We're training you to go to college. And when you
go to college, if you want to, then you can take your technical if you want to. You can become
something after high school. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I started at
fourteen at wd Low, and I already had my own experiences at home. And when I went there, I was
working on stuff like real machine products. And not only that,
I got everything. I got wood shop, I got so
I learned how to do construction piping, two kinds of piping.
There's mechanical piping, and then there's house piping, electrical, all the stuff, all this stuff. We even had a foundry.
And I'm telling you what, we had everything at wd Low.
Why why don't we have that anymore? Because at grade
twelve you walk out and you've got a job. They
don't want that. They want grade twelve. Oh no, you'll
go to two year college, three year college, four year college, and we'll make more money and you'll be so much smarter. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
There are two halves. They go around in a circle.
There are people at the bottom, they can't do anything.
The guys on the right, they're the guys that get really screwed up. And I don't mean just guys as
in men. I'm talking about men and women. Oh oh,
you want to be a housewife. Oh that's so passe.
Oh no, no, you don't want to be that. You'll
wreck your figure. And but are you kidding me? Are
you kidding me? That's what these people wanted. They're dismissed.
So you've got about twenty percent or something like that at the bottom here that okay, they do have issues.
You've got on the right hand side about forty percent that are leaning toward technologies or leaning towards skills that are not cool. And then you've got the ie people
over here. Well, guess what, We've got a little example
that maybe we can talk about. And and that's this
Lady Sue found this my wife. My wife is the
opposite of me, the antithesis of me. Sue graduated top
of the school from GMI. She graduated with an MBA
and she also has a master's in manufacturing engineering and a PhD in engineering. So and I have a problem,
I just go and talk to Sue. So when I
say that this right hand bar here is not just men, obviously, I'm married to one of the women that sits on that out of the bar. But if we don't go
back to where we were, we will never get anywhere.
So let me tell you my story about about my new best friend, the plumber. He's twenty two years old.
In grade school they called him a dummy. He started
going to high school and they said, oh, you're never going to make it anywhere. You're useless. At fifteen, his
uncle took him in because his uncle has got a plumbing shop, and went to his uncle took him under his wing. He started training him to be a plumber.
At fifteen, he was not very good in school. And
he said that, well, you know, my high school sweetheart helped me out with a lot of stuff so I could get out. When he get out, I think that
maybe if it's a d it's for me kind of a situation. Anyway, he got out fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen.
He's a plumber. He's twenty two years old, he owns
his own house, he's got three motorcycles, he's got a truck and a car, and he's so flush with money he doesn't know what to do with it all. Oh
he's I'm sorry, but Mario is just not smart enough.
I'm sorry, Sandy is just not smart enough. How many people,
how many people didn't get divine intervention like me and him? Tons.
This system, this schooling system that we've got right now is criminal, criminal, and that's why we have nothing. Because
it's criminal. It undermines it. Usually, when I grew up,
if you had a job that was honorable. Any job
is honorable nowadays, Oh well if you don't have a degree, blah blah blah. So anyway, so let.
Speaker 4: Me ask you something you said earlier that when you started out, the number of toolmakers that existed in Windsor and the number of toolmakers that existed in Detroit, and these people were necessary to keep the auto industry going to always Marke, this.
Speaker 3: Was the democracy or sorry of the arsenal democracy. Everything
was done here, everything right.
Speaker 4: But I mean your time was after the war.
Speaker 3: So no, no, we were still it was after the war, but we were still making tanks, not maybe as many as before. We were still designing aircraft, we were still
looking at I mean, my mother used to make firing pins for machine guns during the war. After the war,
they said, well, can you hang around because she was one of the best laith hands that they had. No
the arsenal democracy wasn't it just didn't vanish in nineteen forty five. We were still doing.
Speaker 4: Stuff, right, So I guess my question is that you said that the industry then decided that they could get more cheaply elsewhere, and then they started sourcing around the world.
So I mean, to what extent is the lack of toolmaking ability as well as lots of other trades that go into making products. Modern products is based on the
fact that companies decided, eh, we can get a cheaper elsewhere.
Speaker 2: We don't need you guys.
Speaker 4: Therefore there's a little demand for them. Therefore, you know,
there's the job market isn't going to take them and give them profitable jobs.
Speaker 3: If we don't manufacture China wins read this book.
Speaker 2: So Sandy's holding up a book right now called.
Speaker 3: The Hundred Year Marathon China secret strategy to replace America as the global superpower nineteen or sorry, twenty was about ten years ago, or so twenty fifteen or something. But
I got a better one. I have a better one.
When the slave becomes the master. Written in nineteen I
got it in nineteen eighty four when I was working for Ford. We all got it. It all got dropped
on everybody that was in the I don't know whether it was a manager or whatever. Some kind of title
I had was a I think it was either a nine or a ten. Everybody that was in there got it.
Now I was on the technical ladder. I didn't want
anything to do with management, period, but that that came, and what is it? What the illustration is a English
guy dressed up with a pith helmet and he's got his hands around a rickshaw and sitting in the seat is a Chinese guy nineteen eighty four. That was predicted.
Anybody with a brain could see what's going to happen.
The problem is that when you look at these guys, these guys think differently. Their strategic is like a military strategic.
But unfortunately we have another issue, and that's the NBA.
The NBA teaches you how to do stupid stuff, and you go after cheap and cheap alone. And so everybody
with an NBA. Hey, this Chinese guy came in and say,
you can give us a die for half the price.
What's your strategic view on it? I don't give a damn.
I'm not training them in what we do. That's not
the NBA way. Oh boy, we're going to get it cheaper.
And that's the NBA way. That's the way it works.
And that's why we send stuff out to Japan. And
when when that happened, the Japanese got a lot smarter and a lot a lot more intelligent about the way they did things. Doctor Deming went over and trained them,
brought them back from like total devastation to the power house that they became. Well, guess what did the same
thing with China. We trained them to beat us. It's
just like if you look at history the Roman Empire, how could they possibly lose? They owned the whole damn planet. Well,
they trained their enemy, They trained them in everything that they knew how to do. And then the Romans didn't
put any people from Rome into their military anymore. Why
because they became affluent I'm not going to send my kid to that. And that's the same situation we are
in right now. I'm not going to send my kid
to be a plumber. I'm not going to I'm not
going to send my kid to be you know, some guy that pulls wires or runs a machine. You're going
to come home and stink. No, No, I want my
kid to have something like, you know, be an egyptologist.
And this is where Sue found this unbelievable, this little story.
Speaker 2: Tell that story, and then we got to take a quick break.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I can do it quick enough.
Speaker 2: Okay, then let's take a quick break here because I want to get into other topics too. But a shout
out to our good friends at Bridgestone.
Speaker 1: Performance that shines even in the rain.
Speaker 3: That's what really matters.
Speaker 1: Rich don't pretends to tires, improved grip and wet conditions.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back talking with Sandy monrou here and did you want to get into the egyptologist story?
Speaker 3: Why not through it? So after we talked to my
new plumber, I started talking and whatever. And Sue is
a great research maybe the best researcher I've ever bumped into.
And she said, you know, let me just find out a little bit of something. She types in something like
people asking questions about different different fields that they can get into, and one pops up and she says, in essence, it's up there. If you want, you can pop it
up and I'll just do it by memory. This woman says,
I'm I've got my BA in ancient history and blah blah blah, and my my counselor is encouraging me to get a master's degree in egyptology because that's what I really love. I want to follow my dreams. Right, does
anybody know what the what their relationship might be to someone who has a master's degree to get into egyptology.
And then she gets back some very astounding results. Well,
if you have a master's degree, you're useless. No one
will hire you. A master's degree is useless, you're underqualified.
If you get a PhD, you'll never get a job.
There are only the only way you get a job in Egyptology is if somebody dies or retires, and even then they don't always replace them. Wow, that's cruel, that's
kind of cold. Why did that counselor tell her to
go into Egyptology, because you have to follow your dream follow your dreams, that's bullshit, follow the trail of money.
So I have some interesting facts for you to check out.
And by the way, I used two different AI programs to find all this. Thirty four percent of the population has.
Speaker 2: A four year degree, so one out of three.
Speaker 3: One out of three. The sixty percent that receive degrees
said that they meant nothing, and he got ordinary jobs.
Seventy percent said that they were lied to in high school.
Six point six percent go to jail, thirty nine percent go on welfare, sixteen percent become the working poor. If
we can't build stuff, China wins first year apprentice plumber.
Now on the web, it said eighty thousand. This kid
that I was talking about, I'm not going to reveal how much he's making, but he makes a lot more than eighty grand.
Speaker 4: You saw him on Sunday. He probably got double time.
Speaker 3: He did, and that's one hundred and forty five bucks an hour that he was pocketing. So Maria told his
I already went through this. But Mario talked about his
I school and how he and I already told you about fifteen and whatnot. Three motorcycles a truck and a car,
So let's talk about some of the other stuff that might be out there. And I think I might have
told this story a while ago. I went to a
high school in Troy that'll remain nameless, and they asked me to talk about, you know, what I did for a living. And I walked out on the stage and
I looked around. There's everybody there. So I said, how
many people here are going to become actors or you know, go into the arts, or are they blah blah blah that kind of thing. And I said, just stand up.
I'd like to have you stand up, please, that would be great. Stand up. And then I asked how many
of you are are interested in getting into sports? I mean,
if you think you've got what it takes to play basketball, football, baseball, whatever, why don't you stand up? And they did and I
said great, thank you. Or and then the last one
is how many of you are going to be teachers or social workers or stuff like that. They stood up.
I said, you're a lucky day. I got nothing for you.
You can go and take a free day or free free period. You can all leave. So they left and
a few other people went with them. That didn't stand
up because oh boy, I'll get free time. All Okay.
Then I told the rest of the group to come forward, and I told them a little bit about what it's like to be an engineer. I wasn't going to waste
my time on morons, okay, or people who've been so brainwashed that they can't. So let's talk a little bit
about I want to be an actor. What are the
odds that I'll get five years at seventy thousand dollars a year? Take a guess, pretty low, fourteen million to one.
That's like I could go and buy lottery tickets. How
about a professional athlete that gets selected. Now, by the way,
that doesn't mean that this is going to be This is fourteen million to one every year, so this compounds, It goes over and over and over. How about an
athlete that gets selected? What nine million to one? Actually
it's nine.
Speaker 2: Thouds are getting better?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, so you show.
Speaker 4: Harder to be an act, so we really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but remember that's selected, But that doesn't mean you're going to get a contract. Right, it gets the number
gets even bigger. It got so convoluted I couldn't make it,
so only I only did two things seventy thousand a year, fourteen million to one. And think about it, how many
tom cruises are on all the movies? Right? Who are
the normal guys you always see? Men and women? Doesn't matter,
they're always the same singers, dancers, actress that. There are
a few that that continuously make it, and the rest of them get shit canned. I'm telling you flat. I
cannot begin to tell you how many teachers sucked my son into saying, Oh, yeah, don't don't be an engineer like your dad. Look at how dull he is. You
should be in Hollywood? So how you huh did they
meet you? Oh? Hell no, you should have been Okay,
So let me let me put it into perspective. College
majors that make the most college courses and whatnot that make the most millionaires. What's number one dropouts?
Speaker 2: No, finance.
Speaker 3: Engineers. Engineering has long been a top field for producing millionaires.
The top field for producing millionaires. The next one down
is visited administration. Finance and economics comes in third, Computer
science and information technology comes in fourth. What do you
think five and six?
Speaker 2: Egyptologists?
Speaker 3: You may be right, but not today law. And then
when I started looking for this stuff. And by the way,
you should be able to find everything you want. Maybe
you use AI on the web. When I started, I
would have thought number one on the hit parade should be medicine. You know these guys. Oh and by the way,
it's broken up into two halves. One half is surgeons.
Then they make a tremendous amount of money. But the
sample size is so small that you can't really get anything out of it. But when it comes to millionaires,
the graph which I should have copied but I can't find anymore, the grapher engineers is like here, and then it dribbles down pretty quickly, And if you think about it, it's pretty good. It's going to be pretty tough when
you look at people like Elon Musk, the guy's gazillionaire, or what's his name, Steve Jobs, or you look at m M, what's the guy that invented Microsoft? Gates? Yeahs
Bill Gates. Okay, they're they're engineers. And by the way,
Bill Gates didn't graduate right, neither did neither did Steve Jobs.
I don't even know if he got out of high school.
And and Elon.
Speaker 2: Should have been on your list.
Speaker 4: That's why I said dropouts should have been on your list.
Speaker 3: Drop there's a lot of dropouts, myself included.
Speaker 4: Okay, but but let's get let's bring this to Okay, So if if is the auto industry going to hire a whole bunch of engineers, whether the mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, you name it, or are you suggesting that people go into the trades rather than follow a fo your curriculum and become an engineer.
Speaker 3: You have to start. If you want to be a
good tradesman, you have to start ingrid. You have to
start in grade nine. Your brain changes as you get
a little bit older. It's very supple in around. It
starts to lose its suppleness at about thirteen. Okay, so
maybe I didn't get a lot of education, but I did trade my time when I when I was teaching at Stanford or lecturing at Stanford, I traded my time.
I don't want their stipend. It just buggers up my
income tax. But when I was there, I said, yeah,
i'll teach you a two week thing here, and but I want to trade. I want to sit in with
your psychiatrist guys to find out how I can do what I need to do. Am I good at it? No,
because I was only taking a little bit. But I
did catch a number of things. And one of those
things is if you're going to be good at something, you have to start into it very early. Child prodigies
playing a piano at six years old and whatnot. That's
kind of like what you have to do. If you
want to get into the trades. You have to go
to a trade school. You have to go to a
technical high school.
Speaker 2: Like if it don't exists, how are you going to do that?
Speaker 3: And they're in lines the rub Why Why? Because there's
a big industry, a big industry in universities. I don't
Here's something that I've talked to other people about this.
Have you noticed how many different universities have what do you call it correspondence courses? Have you seen it? I thought,
you know what, I'm going to just count up in an hour and I got five, five in an hour, and they're all different. There's big money in this, and
what are the courses? They don't tell you because they're
all bird courses. There are all courses that you're going
to pay money on and you're going to get a certificate.
Oh look, all I got what's it going to do for you? Let me let me go back here. Seventy
percent say they were lied to in high school. Sixty
percent said that they received degrees that meant nothing and got ordinary jobs. Why why would anybody get into it?
Oh my teacher told me, Oh, my counselor told me. Oh,
the TV told me, Oh, the radio told me. But
I ain't going to be told by Sandy Monroe. That's
for damn sure, because I'm going to say, hey, you want to make money, kid, go to a technical high school.
Find a technical high school, go to it, get yourself a trade, and wind up like Mario my Sorry, yeah, Mary, my own. That's what you need. And I'm telling you
what you can't. Just so, engineers are engineers. If you
want to talk an engineer into becoming a pipefitter or something like that, that's going to be a hard sell.
Where are the tradesmen? When we were talking about manufacturing
people when sorry, not we, but Jim Farley when he was talking about it, and I said, that number is so incredibly low with any even funny think about it, we got what three hundred and sixty three hundred and seventy million people here in the United States, find a plumber can't do it? Why, oh, I don't want my
child to touch poop. I'll touch poop all day long
for twice the amount of money that somebody who's a Walmart greader is going to. I mean, we have really
got to change the viewpoint on what's honorable and it's honorable to work for a living. I did it for
a long time. I can tell you for sure. And
it's rewarding.
Speaker 4: So it's according to the National Association for Manufacturers as of so that's the trade organization for manufacturer in companies, three hundred and eighty one thousand job openings right now for manufacturing professionals, and they say three point eight million new employees are going to be needed by twenty thirty three.
So for local or no, this is a national number.
Speaker 3: Low to I'm telling you, I go everywhere. I mean
I was. I was, so I did three or four trips,
and I said, what's your biggest problem? On YouTube? What's
your biggest problem? Can't find any people? We're trying to
import them. They try, they come up here to try
and steal them for down there, down South California. It
doesn't matter where Florida. Everybody is looking for people that
kind of can do stuff. And when a kid comes
in and he's twenty years old or she's twenty years old, well I'd like to get a job. Sure. Do you
know anything about electrics? Yeah, don't put your finger. That's
not the kind of thing we're talking about. Can you
do anything? Are you a trades person?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: Well, thank you. And by the way, I think Walmart
needs some greets. That's what it works out to. We
don't teach people what counts. And because of this this
caste system that's in place, created by the education system, here we are and the seventies is when it started to happen. Oh, everybody has to be you know. No,
everybody doesn't fall into the same category. And I have
gotten into toe to toe with professors, and I always mentioned that the last clownet got too close, wound up on the floor. And even though I'm old, I'm still
pretty fast. I really don't recommend that anybody start sending
nasty letters because I'm right, and you may be profiting from all this, but you're wrong, and that's a fact.
Speaker 2: Okay, Look, we got about fifteen minutes left in the show.
I want to get it to some other topics. We're
going to have to probably do this almost a rapid fire kind of thing. But I want to kick off
with a question that came in from Scott Stevenson, who said, what do you, Sandy, what do you think of what's going on with electric cars right now? All the incentives
are getting wiped out and you've been such a proponent of EV's. What's your view of what's going to happen
with the market now?
Speaker 3: Actually the market? Yeah, okay, the EV market right now,
China is producing more electric vehicles than the United States produces vehicles. Does anybody aware of that? I just found out. Okay,
we're at around thirteen million, and China has produced about fourteen million electric vehicles to date. That's not electric hybrid
blah blah, it's electric vehicles. So they're beating us. Okay,
So when the barbarians were knocking down the doors in Rome, where's the army? Isn't that our army? Well, it's our uniform,
but it's another army and they're here to kick your ass.
And that's what we did, and that's what we're doing, and that's where we are. Okay, we're We can try
and block things for a while, but time and tide don't.
They don't. You can't. You can't make things go backwards.
The rest of the world is going in the direction of evs, and all we're doing is putting ourselves farther and farther behind. Do I like the idea of having
the government bribe me to buy an electric car? No,
we should be able to. Actually I can't talk about it.
But anyways, right now we're at We're at a juncture where there are so many new technologies for batteries that the cost differential between an ice vehicle and an electric vehicle is negligible. The only thing holding it back is
the advertising world. I'm going to pick on everybody today.
Why is it that the big corporation's, Big, ABC, NBC, all the c's. Why is it that they pick on
Tesla all the time? Because tests that doesn't buy advertising.
It's all about money. Remember I talked about NBAS that
they look at money. If you don't pay for advertising,
you don't get any play. Simple as that.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about Tesla then too. I mean sales dropping,
profits dropping, Elon and Musk in a pissing contest with each other and Trump trumpet musk, excuse me, what are you thinks going on in Tesla these days?
Speaker 3: Well, I just got invited to come down and have a look at some more stuff. I you know, don't
they have like movie stars? And I saw something. I
don't know exactly what I was looking at, but there was two women. I think they're movie stars or maybe
they're maybe they're singers or something in they're going ins at each other and then two weeks later they'll kiss and makeup and where they go. I don't pay any
attention to that. Right now, You've got a faction that
that figures that got lied to mostly people who are basically on the left side of the fence, and you got another bunch of people on the right side of the fence said, well, wait a minute, do you want help them? No? You okay, they're always going to argue.
In about six months, you think that they're still going to be making noise like that. No, they'll find out
something else and then people will go and buy whatever they want. But I'm pretty sure that Tesla's shortcomings right
now will be a thing of the past in the not too distant future, and those those companies that don't come out with a really good electric vehicle and about anywhere between six months and a year, you're going to be in trouble. And I already know one or two
that's being tried from now from today, and I know one or two of them that right now are in negotiations, negotiations over what should we go bankrupt or should we be sold?
Speaker 4: So so Sandy, going back to John's question, you know about you know, we've seen the the EV market has been like eight percent in the United States, and now that the incentives are gone, it's projected that you know, we'll be there'll be a bump between now and September thirtieth, and everybody hurries up because he can still get seventy five hundred dollars, but then after that it'll go down.
So technically, do you see the electric car as being the next thing, the the evolution of what we've been using?
And therefore, should companies like General Motors and Ford Instilantis North America still fund their EV projects or should they say, you know what, we really don't need to sell them here.
Let's throw in some more money and full sized as tuvs that have eight cylinder engines.
Speaker 3: Well, a long time ago in the United States, Indians had bows and arrows and white guys had guns. Who won.
I don't want to be in I don't want to be in a war where I've got a bowl and arrow.
If it was me, if I was in charge of it, yeah I would. Maybe I wouldn't go and publicize it
a hell of a lot, but I would have people working furiously to get to the point where when And I want you to think all the way back to when the Japanese were importing their cars, okay, and everybody was screaming, hey they're dumping, and hey they aren't competing favorably and their prices are too low, and blah blah blah.
What what did we do to level a field? What
did we What was done by government to make it so that it was all fair?
Speaker 2: Limited imports?
Speaker 3: Limited it imports, But if you build it here, Oh, welcome home, Toyota, Honda, Quinde vw All of a sudden they started building their products here. What happened to afford?
General Motors is my favorite? Sixty percent market share? What's
it now? Eighteen seventeen, No, it's lower than that. It's
at least it's it's down around fifteen for sure.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think it's a little bit higher than that, but it's way below what.
Speaker 3: It used to be. It's not sixty I know that right. Well,
what's going to happen here? And instead of being Toyota
that's the top selling vehicle, it'll be BYD And why is that? Because BYD will bring BYD's already here. They're
already making the best damn electric bus on the planet and they're making it in la I don't know how do you make any money there? They got two ants
and they're building a third, and quite frankly today at lunch, I can't talk about the name of the company. But hey, Sandy,
we're going to be bringing in our semis and you know, we'll be doing a kdie lockdown kind of an operation, and we're going to need some help. What do you
think can you help us out? Sure? Why? Because nobody
else is moving fast enough and as long as everybody says, hey, let's just go backwards and put in a big Diesel or a big D eight or a blah blah blah. Yeah,
I can't understand it. I feel the pain. I hear
a noise.
Speaker 2: Hey, we've got another question here or response from oud Elvis Drezik. I think that's how you say his name,
and he wanted me to ask you about tariffs and what you thought about tariffs and the impact on the industry.
Speaker 3: I don't like government intervention to anything. I don't want
to be given a prize for driving an electric vehicle, and I don't want to be penalized by somebody who is trying to close the door in a bad way.
I am, I'm I don't know what the right word would be, but I'm certainly a capitalist.
Speaker 2: You're a free market person.
Speaker 3: I'm a free market person. I don't like. There's a
whole bunch of things I don't like on this side, and I don't like a lot of stuff over there.
Somebody said we should have a third party, and when they told me what the name is, that's what I'm going to vote for.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, Elon's already doing that supposedly.
Speaker 4: Yes, Sandy, going back to this book that you were showing earlier, the one hundred Year marath Aaron about the Chinese their twenty five year planned you know, China twenty twenty five, about how they're going to be leading in robotics, in electric vehicles and so on. So it was it
was an industrial policy plan that the that the Chinese have that they're being fulfilled. Do you think that there's
a role for the government in terms of perhaps opening vocational schools, in terms of funding more research into evs or into batteries or or what have you, in order to catch up with some of what you're you know, you were saying earlier about about the Chinese building more evs and we're building cars.
Speaker 3: If if the automotive industry or industry in general is serious, then why the hell isn't there a Ford skilled trade school.
I couldn't get in. I wasn't. I wasn't I couldn't
get in. You had. It was really really difficult to
get into that. I got into tech, but I couldn't
get into the Ford trade school. What happened to it?
If everybody wants tool makers, why aren't the toolshops cranking out?
Because this really and truly they wanted to keep it going.
The government stepped in and closed it down and turned it into a dance class or something. But really and truly,
the tool makers or the toolshops in Windsord wanted to keep it open and they were going to buy the building and make it happen, but the government came in because we're the government and we know best than you don't.
I'm not a fan of government. I don't know if
that came across yet.
Speaker 2: You know, Look, I hear what you're saying. But you know,
Michael Dunn, who I think is one of the foremost China experts in the auto industry here said, look, GM and Ford are not competing against byd NEO and the rest of them. Their campaign competing against China, China the
government because to Gary's point there, China's got a plan.
We don't like the word industrial policy or the term industrial policy. It's got a lot of political baggage to it.
But what I'm saying is if the United States doesn't have a strategy of how it's going to compete, the free market's not going to be able to keep up with that.
Speaker 3: Okay, let me give you a counterpoint to that. I
would like to have as many Chinese vehicles as I could get in the United States, tearing them down, finding out what's good, bad, and indifferent, and then giving that to our people. Why would I want to do that,
because that's how the Chinese did it. They brought over
our best tool makers. And by the way, not just
the United States. When I there's another story, I go
shit loads of stories. I was in a Shanghai Automotive.
Shanghai Automotive has this unbelievable big coffee shop waiting room whatever for the supply community, not vendors, supply community experts.
And I was in there trying to get a coffee.
A guy comes up and he grabs me by the shoulders and squeezes and says, my goals said, what the bloody ell are you doing here? I'd achieve it anyways,
What the bloody ell are you doing here? I turn
around and there's three guys from from Bentley, and a guy from Earl's Royce and a whole bunch of guys from from Jaguar. And when they're all old like I am,
what are you guys doing here? Same thing? You are
raking in the cash. Every expert on the planet was
being brought in by the Chinese to help them get ahead, right, and they brought back.
Speaker 2: How does a free market approach compete with that?
Speaker 3: The free market approach isn't free. That's number one. There's
a whole bunch of people that they have to pay for.
Why aren't we paying to get some of the train these guys that are now smarter than we are and bringing them in? Okay, But I can't just get I
can't get a green card for a couple of my people.
Why well, we've got shepherds that we need to bring in from Mexico. Who's going to watch over my kid?
That's where the freedom ends. It ends at government. These
guys don't I don't think they think for a second about anything except for what it is that we do.
Speaker 2: I don't think any of the Chinese good Chinese companies, because there's some crime ones too. I don't think any
of the good Chinese companies would be in the position they are without China's industrial policy for the automotive industry.
Speaker 3: That is probably one hundred percent true fact. However, how
could you ever convince a bunch of people in Washington, d C. To have a consistent plan when all they
do is bicker back and forth? How are you going
to ever have an industrial plan with these clowns? All
they do is snipe.
Speaker 2: That I don't even want to call it a plan.
I call it a strategy. And you know a plan
is like now you're going to create a government democracy.
I think that a lot of this can be handled with a more favorable tax code for R and D investment, a more favorable tax code for machinery, and depreciation of one year right off one year one year. Judge passed
this last week.
Speaker 4: I mean, basically, if you if you look at what's in the bill, I mean the R and D credits.
Speaker 2: The that's a good first step. That's a good first step.
Speaker 4: You can get and buy machinery and you can write it down right away.
Speaker 2: But a hodgepodge of we'll give you this benefit here and that benefit there and this one over here is not a strategy.
Speaker 3: It's a plan, or maybe it's some sort of not At the end of the day, here's what happens. In China.
A guy comes up and he says, I have a technology.
I have a technology, but I have no equipment to make it on. China gives them that. They buy it
and give it to them and say go ahead. Right,
that is better than a than a write down, right, that's that's better than depreciation. Here. It is when I
walked into the first Chinese tool shop. I wellped my pants.
The best German equipment, the best Japanese equipment, and the best American equipment all around me in a plant that was obviously brand spank and new, that was as clean and polished as any any hospital. That is a strategy.
If you arm your soldiers with the best equipment, you will win the war. Right, what do we do tax
cause all kinds of national.
Speaker 2: Plan, we have no plan. That's that's my thing about it. Look,
I'm all for the free market. To your point, it's
not free. We're not competing against the byds, the NEOs,
the Liato were compete against China Inc. Essentially and they
have a plan on the plan.
Speaker 3: There used to be Japanese Inc. Japan Inc. There was
books written about it, right because they did have a strategy.
Now it's been buggered up. They, i hate to say it,
hired a bunch of nbas and guess what, and they got a lot more lawyers. They used to have a
tap on a number of lawyers, lawyers and nbas went crazy in Japan and believe me, it kicked the shit out of what they had. Japan Inc. Is now not
Japan Inc. China Inc. Is still the same, So maybe
what we need to do is send lawyers and oh nevermind.
Speaker 4: I think there were a number four on your list though anywhere.
Speaker 2: Hey, look, we could go on for a lot longer, and we probably will, but we've got to respect the audience's time too. Oh so we're going to have to
wrap it up here. But Sandy, great having you back
on the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my blood pressure old and I could yeah, I could drop over dead any second.
Speaker 4: Yea, And you vented all of that, so your blood pressure here is not very low.
Speaker 3: Let me still stop for a cocktail or something. I
don't know.
Speaker 2: Derry you and I will be back here next week, and I want to thank all of you for having tuned in.
Speaker 1: I'll online. After Hours is brought to you by bridge
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