Posted on 06/05/2016 7:26:05 AM PDT by expat_panama
For the last two years, we’ve listened as presidential candidates promised repeatedly to “bring back manufacturing jobs.” But they really didn’t go anywhere. As the data show, manufacturing output is near its all-time high. Since 1980, factory output has grown 114%, while the number of factory jobs has shrunk by 36%, or nearly 7 million jobs total. It was technology and productivity, not China or any other nation, that “took” factory jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at services.investors.com ...
This article is complete bullshit
Sad but it isn’t going to change. We also import a LOT of the food we eat now. That worries me.
We have just 1 shipyard with the capability to make 1 aircraft carrier every 5 years.....
So WHERE is this automated factory located?
Textiles are a poor indicator of labor in relation to manufactured goods. Most manufacturing is not that labor intensive. That is why Free Traitors™ always use it as an example. It is really an outlier and disingenuous to do that.
As you know (or at least you've been told), we export over $2T in goods and services each year, so lots of them must be right here in the USA.
Hard to justify investing in steel making when your government has vowed to banish coal. But steel making is far less important than steel using. The companies that use steel and iron vastly exceed the employment levels of those making steel.
Are they huge, multi-block facilities? No! That's the thing with automation - the cost to make something has dropped so much, and the workforce needed has dropped dramatically, that a small 5000 square foot facility can do what used to need 10 times that amount of space. You don't need a labor force of 200 trained machinists; you need a dozen machine maintenance workers and a half- dozen engineers. Replace 200 blue collar workers with 12, and add half a dozen white collar guys. Done.
A single Haas CNC multi-turret machine (built 10 miles from me, right in Oxnard, California) can do the work of 50 machines of the 1970s. And all with a couple of people, rather than 90+. And in 100 square feet, versus the 3000 needed for those 50 lathes and mills of old.
The automated factories are increasingly smaller and distributed. With 3D printing (led by Stratasys, a Minnesota company that builds in Minnesota) changing the way things are done, including the use of such parts in production volume as the quality of the process continues to grow, that will further dilute and distribute manufacturing.
3D metal sintering. In another 3-4 years it will be cheaper for your company to buy a couple of such machines and just make parts yourself, rather than employing a centralized 3rd party manufacturer with a huge facility somewhere. Those thousands of jobs in a massive facility are being dispersed to hundreds of locations with a couple of workers at each location. Cutting employment dramatically, as well as actual plant size.
I would say most of the high tech factories are in Asia and elsewhere....
Yep. The plow was the worse thing to happen to employment.
A 20% tariff would repatriate manufacturing, balance the budget and reduce the trade deficit. Win-Win.
So why are we bringing in 1.1 million legal permanent immigrants a year, mostly low-skilled, and 640,000 guest workers annually while we have the lowest labor participation rates in 38 years?
Calling those against offshoring Luddites is stupid and really shows that your lack of intellectual capacity. Simplistic thinking is not going to solve out nations problems.
>That improvement in efficiency has historically reduced manufacturing employment. It is the primary cause of the reductions in manufacturing employment. The same thing has happen in the agricultural industries. And whatever happened to all those blacksmiths and shoe repair guys?
Where’s our steel plants? If we don’t make steel we will forever be at the mercy of those who do.
I never said anyone was a Luddite!
As we automate factories, understand you’ll have dramatically dropping levels of employment. I want more manufacturing here - but given automation and computing power, I also expect to see those blue-collar manufacturing jobs fall by 90% for the same output.
Expecting our manufacturing employment to ever reach that of the 60s and early 70s is a flight of fancy. I’ve seen factories in Germany, California, Japan, and China where a dozen men at desks sit and watch hundreds of machines operate and produce what used to take a thousand workers to do.
Computing power is changing the face of manufacturing.
Commies, in our high schools, colleges, and legislative bodies, of course. It seems to be the thing we're best at lately.
We are manufacturing Chromatographs and spectrometers. Titanium ingots and tubing. Water heaters and hermetic refrigerant compressors, poltruded fiberglass reinforced grids, a vast array of chemicals, various valves and the automatic equipment to open and close them. Wireless stuff of all kinds to monitor and understand all sorts of manufacturing equipment and processes. highly engineered large transformers and pipe supports. Glass of many kinds.
Just my personal knowledge and association to name a few
Excellent example. That machine requires capital investment. But many of the fascist traders beleive governemt taxes, regulations, and policies do not matter. They also beleive that empowering the US government to further tax and regulate us is the key to prosperity.
My favorite example is steel making and coal. We have now slapped heavy tariffs on imported steel. That’s great for steel makers but what about steel fabricators? This was done to protect an industry that is literally fueled by a resource that is be made illegal in this country. Coal is required for steel making and the Dems have promised to regulate it out of exsistence. But on this forum China is the problem not the US government.
I question those numbers. I know that my wife counts in that number, as she just got her permanent green card. But she’s not low-skilled nor a guest worker (and we actually support several jobs here locally in SoCal, directly - not to mention enabling dozens elsewhere in our customers). And my experience is that most of those permanent immigrants are either mid-level themselves or sponsored in by people who can prove they can afford to sponsor them in (yes, I had to go through a background check AND income/wealth verification to show I could support her for 10 years - which is the requirement to sponsor in someone for a green card).
The problem IMHO is that a big part of US culture (specifically amongst minorities) began rejecting the concept of education and bettering yourself at the same time that you have to educate and better yourself to work in the new economy.
How many gang-bangers had ever considered they could be a programmer or engineer or skilled tech, just like the few of their peers who did forge ahead of that? How many decided on an “easy life” of being a sports star rather than the guy who designs the electronic lens system on the camera recording those sports stars?
In order to work with the automated systems, you need to be educated to at least a minimal level. Reading, writing, basic logic - all required to be able to run an entry-level CNC system. Without that, you’re screwed.
We need to change the culture first - and my suggestion would be to cut off all benefits for those who refuse to better themselves. Yes, painful. Yes, probably riots. But it’s going to take a massive change in culture first to make any domestic gains in blue collar employment.
I’m 100% OK with bringing in immigrants as long as they are skilled and the best and the brightest. We should actually encourage that! Why not drain the rest of the world of their talent and establish the US as the place for any advanced technology design and creation?
Personally, I’d rather work alongside an educated, intelligent immigrant who WANTS to be here, who WANTS to better his life and that of his family than a typical early 20s slacker who is content with floating through life on the Government dole. Give me a dozen Kedarnaths from Mumbai, here to work hard and better their lives than a hundred Jacquans who are fine taking welfare and bitching about “the man”.
The dozen from India will make America a LOT stronger and better for all than the hundred slackers we already have.
As you drive through Alabama and Mississippi you see sparkling clean automobile factories of Mercedes and Hyundai.In Tennessee, there is Volkswagen and Nissan. In South Carolina, BMW and again Mercedes. In Texas they make Toyota trucks.
All these facilities require plants that manufacture the actual parts used in the assembly
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