The Inequality Merry-Go-Round Built By Stanley Tools

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00][music] >> In this day of AI smart tools, it's easy to forget that we humans [music] once relied on dumb hand tools like saws, drills, screwdrivers, and wrenches. For decades, a major maker of these trusty instruments has been a company in New Britain, Connecticut, appropriately named the Stanley Works. Today, having taken over other big brands like Craftsman and Black & Decker, Stanley is a $15 billion a year a year conglomerate. And many former workers are asking, Stanley works for whom?

[00:00:31]That's because corporate top executives have quietly orchestrated a decades-long move of Stanley factories out of our country, abandoning the skilled machinists who literally made the brand successful. The final blow comes this week when Stanley will shut down the last of its red brick factories in New Britain. An odd move since workers there produced one of Stanley's most iconic products, the PowerLock tape measure. It is enormously popular. Indeed, I have two of them. Yet, corporate bosses claim that cheaper foreign-made tape measures now dominate the market. So, poof, goodbye 300 American jobs. But wait, Stanley did not eliminate the jobs, it just moved them to Thailand where labor is paid 75% less than in Connecticut.

[00:01:19]Indeed, the major foreign competitor to Stanley turns out to be Stanley. It has been building modernized production facilities in Thailand even as it divested in US factories and increased shipments of foreign-made tape measures to the US. This is Jim Hightower saying, Stanley CEO was paid $7.6 million last year. Nice, but now the paychecks of 300 workers can be reallocated to global shareholders and give another hike in the chief's pay. And that's how the inequality merry-go-round keeps spinning [music] round and round and round.

[00:02:00]The Hightower Radio Lowdown is made possible by you subscribers to Jim Hightower's Lowdown on Substack. Find us at jimhightower.substack.com.