longwayhome
Posts: 1035
Joined: 1/9/2008
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
quote:
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.
I can't argue with much of that.
We are all struggling to come to terms with the fact that neither America nor Europe can complete in industries where there is a less skilled workforce which can be provided more cheaply overseas. We all export high value niche products, while also manufacturing products at home which are costly to transport around the world (like cars), but in term of exports we rely increasingly on highly skilled, high value added services, where the rest of the world cannot compete so easily on cost, quality or diversity.
There is one obvious casualty - low paid, manufacturing jobs.
It doesn't matter how many trade barriers we put up, the US and Europe is not going back to a place where we could compete internationally in this arena. The cost differences mean that our domestic consumers will have to suck up the higher prices domestically (which will hit the less well off disproportionately). Besides which the return of this type of industry, if it happens at all, will still be a shadow of it's former glory because their will be few exports (too expensive), and it will be so marginal that a butterfly flapping its wings could knock it for six. The alternative is to drive domestic wages down so low that competition is possible. Unfortunately we would just end up with people working long hours in dangerous jobs for less than they get currently in welfare - not exactly a result.
Long story short: short term gains; cost of living effects hitting the poor; the poor getting hammered again when it all collapses again or their wages are dragged down to to compete with the rapidly industrialising third world.
The key issue which to be addressed is how do you build a society around high value products and ensure that you don't leave those in the bottom half behind. How do you rebuild former industrial areas and ensure that all of society benefits, not just those earning excess profits made in a small number of companies?
We have to find different ways to be productive, different jobs for people, different things to be proud of.
Kidding folk, who are down on their luck, that you can literally bring the good times back by opening up their factories again is just dishonest.
I grew up in a community where steel, ship-building and coal mining used to employ a huge proportion of the population. These industries have all but gone. But although they gave people pride, I don't yearn for the good old days, not when I consider all the injuries and deaths, and all the poor health we are still living with as a result.
The answer is not to return to the past but to invest in local communities and local jobs away from traditional manufacturing.
|
RE: Economic Nationalism - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread