Who am I to argue with a full fledged economist. Just a citizen with an opinion; however, I am eighty now and I grew up in an industrialized city in an industrialized country who assembled the greatest fighting forces in the world to fight against dictatorial regimes and won! Supply lines were so important as was the immense patriotism welled up by German atrocities in Europe and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii. Most of our citizens were blue collar- my dad a railroader and my wife, Jeanie's, a steelworker. Portsmouth's steel mill, N & W"s largest singly owned freight railroad freight yard, shoe factories provided greatly to the war efforts and to the booming economy after the Big War. Many American fighting people were lost, so many sobs or daughters of blue collar mostly along with some of white collar American parents. Ramanticized? Certainly! And rightly so! The industries added to man's footprint on the environment, which is overblown by today's politically correct too young to remember. The artics should have had a complete melt-down to nothing during all of that building and bombing.
But I yield to Mr. Samuelson's major points in the following article, but I am more in agreement with Mr. Ken Wallace's comments below the article .
Robert J. Samuelson commentary: America has romanticized its industrial past
Also in Opinion
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Almost everyone seems to yearn for a manufacturing renaissance. This would, the reasoning goes, solve many problems. It would kick-start the sluggish recovery. By providing well-paying jobs, especially for semi-skilled men, it would strengthen the middle class. By restoring a heritage of “ making things,” it would reduce U.S. trade deficits and re-establish our global economic pre-eminence. No doubt, millions of Americans endorse this appealing vision. It’s make-believe.
To be sure, manufacturing is reviving, and the more the better. Rising wages abroad and heightened anxieties about global supply chains are causing some U.S. firms to relocate production from China or Mexico back to the United States. Cheap U.S. energy costs, reflecting plentiful natural gas, also favor American factories. Though these trends are welcome, they stop well short of a sweeping transformation of the economy. On manufacturing, a huge gap separates public perceptions and economic realities, as Marc Levinson of the Congressional Research Service has shown in several reports.
For starters, manufacturing’s decline is misunderstood. The truth is that output has continued to climb. In 2010, Levinson reports, U.S. manufacturing production of nearly $1.8 trillion was the largest in the world; it was slightly ahead of China’s, about two-thirds higher than Japan’s and nearly triple Germany’s. China may now be No. 1, but the U.S. remains a manufacturing powerhouse. In 2011, near-record output was 72 percent more than in 1990 and six times greater than in 1950. Recall some American-made products: commercial jets, earth-moving equipment, gas turbines. (Output refers to “value added,” which is the difference between the sector’s purchased inputs and its final products.)
Manufacturing’s “decline” refers mostly to job loss, which is stark and long-term. In 1970, the 17.8 million manufacturing jobs represented 25 percent of all 71 million U.S. jobs. By 2012, the 11.9 million manufacturing jobs were only 9 percent of the 133.7 million total. The declines reflect two forces: automation and imports, especially of labor-intensive products. In 2011, Levinson notes, 97,000 steelworkers produced nearly 10 percent more steel than the 399,000 did in 1980. As for labor-intensive products, clothing output has dropped more than 80 percent since 1980, with jobs falling from 1.3 million to 150,000.
For society, this is a mixed bag. People who lost their jobs, or couldn’t find one in local plants, were often devastated. Manufacturing’s shrunken size also means that it can’t singlehandedly sustain recovery or cut unemployment. To date, factory jobs have risen 512,000 from their low point; that’s only 9 percent of the total increase of 5.9 million. Finally, Levinson notes, automation has eliminated many factory-floor jobs; professionals and managers are almost a third of manufacturers’ work force. Factories will provide less economic and social support for blue-collar workers than in the past.
On the other hand, automation improves the workplace. It replaces exhausting, dangerous or boring jobs. In his book America’s Assembly Line, historian David Nye quotes an early worker at a Ford plant on the demeaning regimentation of factory work: “Henry Ford has reduced the complexity of life to a definite number of jerks, twists and turns. . . . When the whistle blows the worker starts to jerk and when the whistle blows again he stops jerking.” Many electronic assembly jobs outsourced to Asia today are similar: “The assembly line ran very fast,” complained one worker for the electronics assembler Foxconn, “and after just one morning we all had blisters.”
More important, greater factory efficiency raises living standards. Prices are held down; purchasing power expands. This has enabled Americans to spend more on education, health care, travel, recreation and much more. Because these activities typically don’t require the huge energy inputs of heavy industry, society becomes less energy intensive. This is happening in all advanced nations; since 1973, manufacturing’s share of Sweden’s employment dropped from 28 percent to 13 percent.
It’s a mistake to romanticize manufacturing and disparage services, portraying them as separate economic realms in competition with each other. In reality, they’re completely intertwined. Almost all services depend on manufactured products. Air travel requires planes, the Internet needs computers, and health care dispenses pharmaceuticals. And almost all manufactured products generate services. Cars provide transportation, homes give shelter, and films offer entertainment. There’s plenty of industry left in post-industrial America.
Robert J. Samuelson writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.
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Ken Wallace (Kinetics)
What
planet does Samuelson live on? The clear fact is we build almost
nothing in this country. Go to any mall and try to find something that
isn't made in some 3rd world sweatshop. Manufacturing jobs that paid a
reasonable wage with some benefits have been sold out to China, et al
dropping the middle class into minimum wage (or less) service jobs like
call centers or clerks. Now they are despised as 'takers' needing food
stamps & welfare. No one said manufacturing jobs were nirvana but
they were a lot better than now. I've heard all the talking points he
presents and they are just cover for Global corporations getting rich at
the expense of the 99%. Manufacturing supports a whole ecosystem of
expertise including R&D which cannot be separated from the
manufacturing line. Here is Ohio we had a generation of skilled
craftsmen, machinists, tool & die makers - people that could build
things. Now we have 'keyboarders' plugging away in dead end jobs which
HE romanticizes. Automation is fine if we build & program the
robots (remember Cincinnati Milicron) but we even import them. I think
he's all wet here.
