Maybe manufacturing will make a comeback

[JSt0rm]

we need to stay focused on making quality products. Its just a drop in the bucket but we can do things with greater quality then they can.

 

[Engineer]

As things stand now, to keep manufacturing in the USA the American labor force needs to accept a third world standard of living--poverty wages, no labor law protections, fewer environmental regulations. Is that what we really want? Americans can have all of their jobs back--every last one--just as soon as they are willing to accept a third world standard of living.

That's why you see people (many in here) advocating getting rid of the minimum wage. Sure, you'll have jobs move back to some extent but people won't be able to live off of the wages.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Show me an industry that makes up a ridiculously large percentage of our population and I guess I can see the benefit of a protective tariff, otherwise its a net loss and you might as well just tax the goods and give the unemployed the proceeds and not even bother putting them to work.

It wouldn't affect any one particular industry, but rather manufacturing in general and knowledge-based jobs (that were offshored). If global labor arbitrage only affected one industry we wouldn't be having this conversation and our nation wouldn't be having as many economic problems it now suffers.

However, global labor arbitrage affects all of manufacturing and a great many college-education-requiring knowledge-based jobs. (If the work can be done on a computer, it can be done for less money in India. Even functions related to patent law and perhaps the writing of patent applications themselves--a heavy duty knowledge-based job that requires years of college education--are getting offshored.)

According to your theory, before global labor arbitrage became prominent the USA should have had massive unemployment and poverty because everyone would be suffering from the result of the need for domestic production. However, the evidence seems to resoundingly suggest the exact opposite--in the Fifties one bread winner with a high school education could afford a house and support a family. Today a husband-and-wife pair with college educations are having difficulty. Go figure.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

We make cars here. We build $200 billion airplanes. We manufacture heavy equipment. We export tech.

Do we really want to go back to producing socks and tshirts? As others have said... if we do that and actually want to sell this type of stuff... we will have to have people making 50 cents to $1 per hour.

The problem I see is that companies like IBM, Intel, Apple, GE, etc export their tech manufacturing to China. Who promptly steal IP, repackage, and sell cheaper.

The textile industry used to provide numerous jobs for Americans. Don't knock it, part of the economic problem in the Carolinas is the loss of the textile industries.

The other thing you should realize is that foreign outsourcing has not merely affected only the manufacture of socks and undies. It's also cost us high-tech manufacturing (computers, TVs) and even a great many knowledge-based college-education-requiring jobs. (If it can be done on a computer, it can be done in India for less.)

What do we still export from this country other than food? Whatever it is that we export (other than natural resources and land-based food products) we probably won't be exporting for long since all production can be done less expensively by third world labor. This will also be the case for innovation and intellectual property production; other nations have or are developing their own smart PhD researchers (often at American universities--brilliant strategy on our part--training our competitors).

 

[Engineer]

The textile industry used to provide numerous jobs for Americans. Don't knock it, part of the economic problem in the Carolinas is the loss of the textile industries.

The other thing you should realize is that foreign outsourcing has not merely affected only the manufacture of socks and undies. It's also cost us high-tech manufacturing (computers, TVs) and even a great many knowledge-based college-education-requiring jobs. (If it can be done on a computer, it can be done in India for less.)

Not to mention the thousands of people who used to build and service the machinery for the factories that have now been offshored. People who sell the robots, sensors, vision systems, pneumatic cylinders and valves, hydraulic components, welding controllers, logic controller...on..on..and on.

Throw in the fact that engineers, quality personnel, managers, maintenance staff, technicians, etc. have now been displaced by the thousands as entire plants have been shut down and moved offshore.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

And, I find it pretty disturbing how so many on these forums support and cheer on these types of companies - while vilifying the American worker (lazy, corrupt, communist) - companies who are aiding an oppressive communist government. Doesn't make sense.

It is disturbing. Americans have lost all sense of class identity and have bought into the free market religion hook, line, and sinker. The Americans are going to end up enslaving themselves. It's been happening for the past several decades.

Of course, you know my prediction. As a result of capitalist economics our nation will become an impoverished third world country where a small percentage of the people will be very rich and the rest will be poor, working for the wealthy class as servants.

It's a perfect situation for the wealthy. Not only are the people willingly accepting poverty and servitude, but ideologically they will believe that it is good and right. They'll think it's OK because the lemmings will believe in meritocracy and personal responsibility. "If only I had worked hard enough or had three PhDs and not just one, then I could be part of the middle class. I can only blame myself for not having enough education and for not being part of the top 5% of the class that found employment in my field."

Has there ever been a time in history when the slaves or the lower classes enslaved themselves and thought being the lower class was a good thing? The American people are in the process of making history by doing just that.

Only in America. We have the perfect combination of Protestant work ethic and religious belief in free market ideals. Our transformation into an impoverished third world country is thus inevitable. I don't think it will be stopped now. The Tea Party will prevail and the Democrats will try to become more like the Tea Tards in order to compete.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

That's because these idiots spouting right wing talking points don't work in the Manufacturing sector or most likely never had a job and don't have a clue what the true reality is.

I think many of them grew up in middle class families, went to college, and obtained jobs in their fields out of college and didn't have to struggle much, or if they did have to struggle, opportunities were at least available to them and everything worked out.

Much of what we're seeing is a short-signed, myopic "I've got mine, F-you" mentality. People don't realize just how how lucky they are and just how much of a role good luck and the avoidance of bad luck played in their success. By maintaining a near-religious belief in Meritocracy they reinforce their egos, telling themselves that they worked hard and that they are the best or at least pretty good as evidenced by their current economic status.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

What is that reality? That everyone is owed a job earning $20/hour turning a wrench in a factory?

Ideally people should be able to afford a modest home (say 1400 ft), a reliable car, healthy food, and health insurance even if they are not in the top 20% of productive ability. Is that too much to ask given our level of technological advancement?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/11/eveningnews/main6764731.shtml
http://www.manufacturing.net/Articles/2011/03/Featured-Articles-America-s-Skilled-Worker-Shortage
http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside...-seek-solutions-shortage-skilled-workers.html

This is the reality.

It's mostly complete bullshit put out by the business lobbies to justify foreign outsourcing. What specific skills do they need for these jobs? Are they decrying a lack of people with mechanical engineering degrees? hey didn't seem to say, "We need more people with MechE degrees." (And you can bet that they don't want to pay employees the kind of money people with engineering degrees should receive.) If there's a shortage of millwrights and welder fabricators then why didn't the article just say so? If they need people with math skills why not just hire college grads to do the math? If they really really needed to hire someone, they would just go ahead and do it and train that person.

They seem to want people who are fully pre-trained for very specific jobs. I bet that those companies receive tons of resumes but they just refuse to train people. Employers have this mentality today that their new employees must be 100% up to speed from day one and must know everything about their very specific equipment.

Also, if college grads start applying for those jobs, they'll probably be told that they are overqualified. Businesses wouldn't want to hire "flight risks" who will leave for a job in their own "booming" fields as soon as one comes up. (Most or at least a great many successful business people and people with hiring authority believe that all college grads will find upper middle class jobs in their fields just like they themselves did and that it's only a matter of time.)

If you want to slack off through life and ignore getting an education (even the crappiest school systems in the U.S. still have something to offer the student who wants it)... then don't expect all of these companies to drop to their knees begging you to work for them when you turn 18.

So you're saying that if everyone went to college our unemployment and economic problems would vanish? How do you explain unemployment and underemployment amongst people who have college degrees? According to one study, 17 million Americans with college degrees work in (presumably low-paying) jobs that do not require a college education. See:

Why did 17 million Americans go to college?

From Wall Street to Wal-Mart: Why College Graduates Are Not Getting Good Jobs

So, what is to be done for the 85% or 90% of Americans who will be unable to obtain knowledge-based college-education-requiring jobs? Going to college isn't sufficient since only 10-15% of all jobs require or make actual use of college education.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Whats with all the manufacturing doom and gloom? Worst case scenario current Googleing shows the US manufacturing is less than 2% behind China. However, many stats refute that claim, including the UN Statistics Division.

01-31-11 US Factories still out-produceing China

3 14 11 US Manufacturing Remains World's Largest

Is US manufacturing way down from, say, 20 years ago? Of course. But we still dominate. You would think the US had NO manufacturing reading the chicken little reports here.

We have a trade deficit in the area of manufactured goods including high-value-added electronic goods. (The last time you bought a TV or computer component manufactured in the U.S. was...?) America might lead the world for manufacturing but if so we probably also lead for consumption and we have the world's third largest population by a very large margin (at about 310 million). (The next closest country is Indonesia at about 238 million last I looked.) Maybe a better measurement would be manufacturing activity per capita.

Also, the issue is not merely manufacturing but a loss of knowledge-based college-education-requiring jobs to other countries (and many of those jobs are also filled domestically by foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas).

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Well when you compare $4 t-shirts to $200 million defense aircraft heck yes we still manufacture a lot in terms of GDP.

Most people go through a wal-mart and can't find anything made in the USA so that is probably why there is the panic.

The panic is the result of our decades-long trade deficit and the fact that you don't need a Ph.D. in economics or even a college degree at all to understand very basic principles of supply-and-demand. Very simply, most people can understand that if the U.S. labor market merges with the impoverished labor markets of the third world, American wages and their purchasing power MUST decrease.

It's funny how I can explain it to a work-a-day blue collar person with a high school education but sometimes have difficulty convincing college educated people about the workings of simple supply-and-demand. They've been taught dogma such as the notion that comparative advantage always applies and especially the free market dogma that international trade is always good and beneficial. In contrast, the lowly blue collar laborer understands that it's better for him if he's the only person who can do his job and he doesn't have 10 other people who are just as qualified offering to work harder, longer hours and to do the job for less money.

If you want to convince us, why don't you convincingly explain how Global Labor Arbitrage is good for the U.S. economy and why a merger of the American economy and labor market with that of the billions of impoverished people in the third world will not result in an averaging out of the American standard of living with that of the third world. If you can make a really convincing argument then our politicians and businessmen will shout it from the rooftops, almost literally.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Well then lets just pick up our ball and go home, and make an Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged capitalist utopia. No need for tariffs just seal off all imports and exports and live in a bubble.

Rand wouldn't have advocated that. She fully supported free trade as far as I know.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

There's a reason those jobs have gone by the wayside and it's not because of unfair trade; it's because service jobs pay better and are more in demand/necessary, and that holds true in every mature 1st world country btw, ones that aren't still stuck in the U.S. equivalent of an industrial revolution the way China is.

What kinds of service jobs pay better? Are you trying to say that working at Walmart or as a Certified Nursing Assistant pays better?

Where are all of these wonderful service industry jobs? Why is it that 17 million people with college degrees work (presumably low-paying menial) jobs that do not require a college education? How do you explain the large amounts of unemployment and underemployment-involuntarily-out-of-field amongst college graduates and college graduates who have advanced and professional degrees (MBAs, lawyers, science PhDs, etc.)?

One reason we have so much unemployment and underemployment amongst college grads these days is that when the factory jobs disappeared, everyone and their brother felt compelled to go to college and now we have lots of people with huge amounts of student loan debt but no jobs or at least not jobs that require college degrees.