Why is Maine a poor state? (Portland, Lewiston: crime, how much, closing)

[BacktoNE]

I should clarify that we prefer a fairly cool house. Our thermostat never even approaches 70*, we are comfortable with it set at the mid-60's. And when we purchased that home, we immediately set about insulating everything we could. We wrapped the exposed pipes in the basement, added insulation to the sill, we caulked all the windows and used those little foam insulators behind all the electrical outlets. We kept the furnace cleaned and in good repair (which I think makes a HUGE difference). We also used ceiling fans to push the warm air back down into the rooms.

[sfw1979]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

I don't think that I said anything about Brunswick, sad or not. I was pointing out that Cutler still exists even though 'shut-down'.

I know. I quoted the wrong person.

[sfw1979]

If the military is Maine's #2 employer does anyone know what the number one employer for Maine is?

[DavidoftheNorth]

Originally Posted by sfw1979

If the military is Maine's #2 employer does anyone know what the number one employer for Maine is?

I believe that the largest employer is state government, ie the State of Maine. I think that the largest private sector employer is Bath Iron Works.

[7th generation]

I believe David is right and the State Govt. employees 48% and the private sector employees the other 52%.

[7th generation]

oops vice verse oops!

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by sfw1979

If the military is Maine's #2 employer does anyone know what the number one employer for Maine is?

I would wonder how many of those are retired?

I bump into a lot of other military retirees.

[GregW]

Maybe the whole state is on goverment welfare. IIRC Bath Iron Works mostly builds ships for the US Government. Cold War corporate welfare at it's best.

Maine, like most of New Hampshire, is a poor state because the wealth producing industries moved to "lower cost" locations. First it was to the southern US (military is moving there now) and then to overseas sweatshops.

As a nation we have apparently forgotten that wealth is created by agriculture, mining and manufacturing. Everything else is a cost or a rearrangment. For now I suggest we get Washington DC to stop importing people and exporting industry. Then we would all be better off except for the financial manipulators getting rich off the relocations.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by GregW

Maybe the whole state is on goverment welfare. IIRC Bath Iron Works mostly builds ships for the US Government. Cold War corporate welfare at it's best. ...

Maintaining the most cost-efficient shipyards running is not what I would consider welfare.

We still need ships.

Each ship we have gets older with every passing year, and repair costs slowly rise. Fuel efficiencies get better with newer designs, and system could be designed better. So constantly replacing the older ships with newer designs, is a fact of life.

We still must do this, even though we are shrinking the fleet to have fewer ships over-all.

Having a fleet of 30+ year old ships that are inefficient to operate and no longer fill an operational need, is dumb.

Kittery and Bath were kept open as the BRAC committee saw that both were among the top in their industry in terms of cost-efficiency.

The shipyard in Hawaii is the absolute lowest in terms of cost-efficiency. It was kept open even though it is ranked as the worst waste of money. That is an example of corporate welfare.

[GregW]

Thread drift but WTH - Why can nearly completely unionized Finland build huge luxury cruise ships economically and we can only seem to build warships?

I served in 'Nam on a WW2 Liberty ship so I know about old.