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DesideriScuri -> RE: Economic Nationalism (11/26/2016 8:39:00 PM)
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ORIGINAL: vincentML
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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
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ORIGINAL: WhoreMods
Would it sound uncharitable to say that pissing and moaning about your country no longer having any manufacturing capacity that wouldn't make a dog laugh after spending thirty years standing back and saying nothing while all of the country's industries that wasn't protected by unions* was outsourced (mostly to your economic competitors, but that's a whole other issues, really) isn't so much closing the stable door after the horse has bolted as denying that you opened the stable door and invited the pikeys in to steal your horse?
*(and most of that as well, if we're honest)
Let the people compete.
We're running at 75% capacity.
Manufacturing output is way up.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/haroldsirkin/2016/07/07/chinas-new-worry-outsourcing/#395d5f5031c2
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-donald-trump-is-wrong-about-manufacturing-jobs-and-china
Percent capacity is a squirrely metric, DS. Seventy-five percent capacity of eleven million manufacturing jobs is not the same as 75% of 19 million manufacturing jobs.
This chart reveals that we hit our peak in capacity in June, 1977 at ~ 19.5 million factory jobs. In 2012 we hit bottom at ~ 11.5 million. I understand that resourcing has continued since then. Manufacturing plants are being returned. But here is the catch (this is from the New Yorker article you linked)
But the more low-skilled of those positions are not, despite Trump’s claims, among those that could be brought back to the U.S. Nor are they ones that Americans would necessarily want to see returned. Typically, the lost jobs involve making products, like T-shirts or pressed-wood desks and chairs, that are now profitable to manufacture only if labor costs are at a bare minimum, and that companies can afford to maintain excess inventories of in order to obviate concerns about lead times and transportation costs.
The American manufacturing resurgence hasn’t helped many of the country’s blue-collar workers who were let go in the past two decades, including many who were pink-slipped during the last recession, in part because the modern factory environment is driven by high-tech equipment, robotics, flexible scheduling, and lean techniques. These factories depend on workers who are adept at programming and overseeing high-tech equipment; able to handle multiple jobs throughout the factory as product demand shifts, rather than a single station on an assembly line; and proficient enough with manufacturing concepts that they can recommend plant improvements, large and small, on their own.
The author of the New Yorker article then goes on to recommend retraining strategies but many workers who lost their jobs in 2009 are in their late fifties and I am guessing without much income or health support other than Obamacare.
Economic nationalism seems a muted dream.
I won't disagree at all, but I was pointing out that we already have excess capacity, so we could, theoretically, increase our output by 33% without having to increase the amount of capacity we already have.
We're never getting those 8M jobs back, either. Technology sees to that. There is a GM engine plant in Toledo, Ohio. The Union negotiated a reduction in driver-less towmotors, but not because of any sort of safety reason. It was solely because one mechanic could service 2-3 of the driver-less models, while the models with drivers had one tow moto/mechanic. Not only did the number of required towmotor mechanics double for each driver-less model replaced, but you were also getting a job for a driver. It cost the company more to have tow motors with drivers, but that wasn't a concern of the Union.
Not only has technology replaced many low-skill jobs, but it's also replaced a lot of more risky jobs, so worker safety has improved. And, output has risen greatly, even in the face of a smaller work force.
It's a matter of economics, which many seem to ignore or not realize. If I can come to market with a product with at least the same quality as my competition, but at a lower price, the odds are that I'm going to gain market share. It's especially likely if my price point is significantly lower. Employees are fucking expensive. If automation is safer, cost-effective, and more reliable than human labor, then, I think we both know what's going to happen there.
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