Why Manufacturing's Last Boom Will Be Hard To Repeat (msn.com)
- Reference: 0179986152
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/06/1813240/why-manufacturings-last-boom-will-be-hard-to-repeat
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/why-manufacturing-s-last-boom-will-be-hard-to-repeat/ar-AA1PWrug
Strikes were frequent in steel, auto, trucking, rubber and coal mining. That relentless pressure from an organized working class raised real wages and created fringe benefits including health insurance and retirement pay. Government support for unions kept executive salaries at just a few times median income. Stock buybacks were illegal or frowned upon. President Eisenhower declared at the 1956 dedication of the AFL-CIO national headquarters that "Labor is the United States."
The system began unraveling by the mid-1960s. The Vietnam War drained federal coffers. Inflation accelerated as government deficits exploded. Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971, unleashing currency volatility. The 1973 OPEC oil embargo quadrupled energy prices. Foreign competition returned from Japan, Korea and West Germany. American companies carried mounting legacy costs like pensions that discouraged investment in upgrades and research.
Milton Friedman declared in a 1970 New York Times essay that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993 and championed the World Trade Organization in 1995. Bethlehem Steel employed around 150,000 people in the mid-1950s. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2001. Its former hometown plant in Bethlehem, Pa., is now a casino.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/why-manufacturing-s-last-boom-will-be-hard-to-repeat/ar-AA1PWrug
The biggest mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
Is we let manufacturing happen in countries that are our direct rivals, instead of friendly countries. All because we wanted cheap stuff. I don't care about cheap goods anymore, we throw too much away.
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If we listen to the current rhetoric, every country is a direct rival. And the idea was that people who trade with you are seldom interested in killing you, because that would stop the trade they profited from all the time.
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I've not ever considered the EU a direct rival. Free trade is the real rival, making Wall Street our own rival. Wall Street likes free trade. Main Street never has.
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> Oh sorry we can't allow healthcare because a black guy instituted it.
"Racism" is not the answer to every fucking political disagreement. The black guy in question did just as well as a percentage of the electorate (or better) than the white guys in the three presidential elections since he left office.
The government is currently shut down because, apparently, the "affordable" care act is so affordable that the emergency subsidies put in place during Covid now need to be made permanent, or, apparently, even people with six figure incomes can't afford it. I don't see "skin c
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Anyone who lives in America and thinks racism doesn't play a role in every political controversy is someone who thinks they can go swimming without getting wet. The reality is there are people for whom race is the central issue. But there are even more people who see "black people" or "people of color" or "not white" as distinct from people who are white. In fact, for Americans that is taken for granted. The reality is that Obama's father was not African-American, his mother was white and he was mostly rai
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Per capita Peru had the months COVID deaths per million population. Thanks for playing.
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Obama tried to introduce universal health care but the Republicans made him change a lot of it.
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> Obama tried to introduce universal health care but the Republicans made him change a lot of it.
And it originated from the (R) side. It's actually more properly known as RomneyCare as that was a fundamental pillar of his platform. Obama just adopted it thinking the (R) side would support one of their own proposals.
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No, actually Obama had a 60-vote Senate, so he didn't need Republican support at all. There was a universal healthcare option in the Obamacare bill via the "Public Option". The public option was removed at the behest of the insurance companies, not because of Republicans. After going through reconciliation, a bill need to pass the senate by 51 votes. According the the website [1]whipcongress.com [archive.org], they had them.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20100324023306/http://whipcongress.com/
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The reason for the "huge revenue stream to the health insurance industry" was because they were mounting opposition to any reform. Obama felt it was the only way to get some reform. And maybe it was, but it had the effect of promulgating a stupid system where the poor still have a difficult time affording health care. And it gave the opposition that dumb talking point of "let the market figure it out". The market was what got the U.S. into the health care expense crisis.
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> The reason for the "huge revenue stream to the health insurance industry" was because they were mounting opposition to any reform.
I think its important to look at who influenced that debate. It was not a bunch of family doctors, small town hospitals or insurance agents. It was medical equipment manufacturers, large hospital networks, drug companies and insurance companies with close ties to the same ruling elite that helped elect Obama as one of their own.
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> We have a one-drop rule in America. If either of your parents is black, you are black, all the way back to the dawn of time.
Where is that rule written other than your imprinted racist view of the world?
> This is a simple matter of definitions.
So all the mostly white descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings are black? Lets talk about reality rather than definitions. There are all sorts of issues associated with being born into the community of descendants of American slaves. Your own race is only one small part of that.
Is it race or class? (Score:3)
Oppression is a multi-variable equation. Black Americans experiencing oppression experience a lot more related to class and income than race. IMHO, obsessing about race is doing a huge disservice to those who you want to help. All shootings that inspired Black Lives Matter?...nearly all were poor black men. Not a single one I know of was wealthy or upper middle class. Nearly all, if not all, were poor. Studies have shown that police presence is the strongest variable in determining probability of bein
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> Oppression is a multi-variable equation.
Of course it is. For Obama the consequence of racism is inconvenience while trying to get a cab. He is never going to find himself dying on the ground with a cop's knee on his neck. A poor white guy living in that same neighborhood in south Minneapolis is far more likely to have that kind of run in with police. That doesn't mean race is not part of the equation.
Identity is used to claim ownership of other people's experience. So the son of a college President can talk about how "our neighborhoods" were redl
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> Few things piss off economically struggling blue collar white voters more than wealthy educated upper middle class (mostly white) women telling them to "check their white privilege"...when they're living paycheck to paycheck and wondering which utility is least likely to shut them off if they underpay this month.
I doubt that is true. There are plenty of other things to piss off blue collar voters, white and black alike. Most or them don't care what wealthy educated upper middle class women think. That image is just classic stereotyping of both.
What is true is that "white privilege" is not remotely evenly distributed. The reason race works so well to divide the working class is exactly that. White privilege may give the white coal miner and advantage over a black coal miner. Focusing them on that difference leaves c
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Ask yourself why healthcare is so expensive relative to the rest of the planet. After salaries, the biggest cost to any employer is paying for health insurance. This is problem unique to only the USA.
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I think the single biggest reason is because demand for healthcare is basically bottomless and we have a lot of money to throw at it so we do.
I haven't seen any emphasis on this factor but look at the correlation between per capita GDP and per capita healthcare costs:
[1]https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
That is a strong correlation!
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-expenditure-vs-gdp
Corporations have no social responsibility. (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is the problem.
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Taxes. The word you're looking for is taxes.
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Consequences. The word you're looking for is consequences.
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Honestly, the problem was Co. v. Riggs (203 U.S. 243 (1906)) that established corporations be treated legally like people.
The moment this happened it was the beginning of the exoneration of c-suites from the consequences of their actions. I suspect that if these individuals' freedom and wealth were liable for the consequences of their choices, the subsequent century would have played out rather differently.
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Hindsight being 20-20, we should have built guillotines the next year.
Definition of "boom" (Score:2)
The article seems to define "boom" with this sentence: "The golden age--and middle-class prosperity". If that is the definition of "boom", I wholeheartedly agree that mid-century U.S. was a fluke that unusually benefitted the middle class, for the very reasons stated in the article. However, if by "boom" is meant corporate profits (as one might assume by reading only the headline), although it would take herculean effort, it is not totally impossible that the U.S. will once again become a major manufacturer
Manufacturing jobs - why? (Score:3)
Why do we want more manufacturing jobs? They are hard, boring and don't pay well. Look at what you spend money on. If you count your taxes as mostly going to wards services then most of us spend over half our earnings on services. Next comes housing, then comes food. I can go weeks without needing to buy any physically manufactured stuff.
Also this is the golden age for those who own a house. Don't think of wealth, think about consumption.
The over 50 will continue to live in luxury till they are
Re:Manufacturing jobs - why? (Score:4)
You can't go a single day without using something that required manufacturing. The food packaging was manufactured. The service person sat in a chair, at a desk, working on a phone and computer, talking over miles and miles of infrastructure and every single bit of that used manufactured products.
The ability to turn raw materials into finished goods is a core competency of any society and economy.
Manufacturing has higher pay that many other industries. Besides, we need assembly line jobs because that's all some people can do. But they also need tech and engineering to support them, managers to manage, sales to sell, accountants to count, etc.
It is very short sighted to think manufacturing is not beneficial to our society.
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> It is very short sighted to think manufacturing is not beneficial to our society.
He never said he doesn't value more manufacturing, just that he doesn't want more manufacturing jobs. Those aren't the same things, which is something the US electorate has been slow to learn.
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> You can't go a single day without using something that required manufacturing.
You can't go a single day without using something that required agriculture either, but that doesn't mean agriculture provides the kind of jobs that appeal most people, let alone enough jobs to be a pillar of employment in first-world countries.
Manufacturing is clearly been going in the same direction and further progress in automation is inevitably going to push it further that road in the future.
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The WSJ (and I) seek middle class prosperity, however that comes.
Automation (Score:1, Interesting)
70% of middle class jobs were taken by automation. The United States produces more factory goods than it ever has we just do it with a robots.
Automation has devastated the middle class. We don't like to talk about it. Google that 70% figure and you'll find a link to the article and the study that goes with it.
We are a country where if you don't work you don't eat. And we are running out of work. We are likely to see 25 to 30% on employment in the lifetime of a 50-year-old. The last time we hit thos
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There used to be a sock factory near where I live. It didn't get automated, it closed and moved its manufacturing to China where it could pay its workers even less than they could here.
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Yet I struggle to find products that say, "Made in USA". Made in "China" seems to be the mark I see. And the process we're working to kick of is the re-industrialization of the US.
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> We are a country where if you don't work you don't eat.
You post this over and over and it's just not true. Lots of people who don't work continue to eat. Anyone can give anybody else food, parents, children, friends, charity donors. Nobody is stopping you or anyone else from giving food to anybody you want to.
But what you want is the ability to force other people to provide you with food (and presumably clothing and shelter and entertainment) without compensation. Essentially you want slaves who will provide you what you want without any obligation on your part
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You can make a simple statement like "nobody starves to death in America" and it offends people every time. They'll call you deaf dumb and blind yet they can never say who it is that's starving to death.
There are homeless people wandering around all over the place, they produce nothing, ever, yet somehow food just keeps materializing for them. In fact they hardly resemble truly destitute people actually starving around the world. I'm glad that's how it is here and wouldn't want it any other way but it'
There's a recipe for repetition in the summary (Score:2)
> American manufacturing's postwar boom from the 1940s through the 1970s resulted from conditions that cannot be recreated, a story on WSJ argues. Global competitors had been destroyed by war.
I believe I see a possible path to repetition.
Incredibaly poor argument (Score:2, Troll)
A lot of the things he mentioned were totally irrelevant to the manufacturing boom.
Here are the things that actually mattered:
1) Post WW 2, total lack of international competition. When most of the industrialized countries were bombed to crap, there was a period of 5 -ten years when they had to buy American to fix their factories, and then they had 5-10 years when they were focused on rebuilding the rest of their country.
2) Baby Boom. 20 years after the war ended, there was a short period of time (10-15
Recovery is impossible (Score:3)
The MBA program's goals in the 60s werre maximizing profit and lowering costs. Those, combined with corporate greed and extreme union activity drove American manufacturing off-shore.
Congratulations! Labor and management fucked each other. Now, everyone loses except for shareholders who reap the profits.
Summary's causes are out of order (Score:2)
The post-war boom is not why we are forever stuck with this asinine system where employers cover employee health insurance. That is a direct result of wage caps imposed *during* WWII. Because they could not offer higher pay, employees had no way to incentivize top-tier employees to work for them. So they invented "benefits" that could legally be offered on top of wages. Free or low-cost healthcare proved to be the most popular idea, and soon every employer had to offer it if they wanted to be remotely compe
Wasn't the last "new" new thing... (Score:2)
Wasn't the last "new" new thing, 3-d printing supposed to be the next industrial revolution, only at home? The industry returning to the cottage, and all that delightful utopian futurism? The return of manufacturing, only at a personal level.
A home person could 3-d print an engine support bracket flange for their Saturn automobile, Or a new pot handle for their Sunbeam electric kettle, or a valve knob for your Bernz-O-matic cigarette lighter, all from your home. ???
JoshK.
Paying more taxes (Score:2)
> ... social responsibility ...
Social responsibility is reducing the burden of the the uneducated, the sick, the hungry and the homeless. Making more money does not reduce that burden: Paying more taxes, reduces that burden. But the US government has spent 40 years helping their richest people pay less tax.
Depression followed by War which is won (Score:2)
is the only way to get a manufacturing boom in the past.
Why is this? Wars redirect resources due to national emergencies (real ones, not conjoured up ones). After a depression and a war, tons of manufacturers and there are surplus resources which need to be reallocated to peacetime purposes.
As the the glut of manufacturing capability pearmeates through the peacetime economy, it lifts the living standards for most people. This lasts for a while, but then
it starts being chipped away at by companies competing
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Interesting idea. Not to mention the colonialization of resources that goes with war (to the victors...).
The new model seems to be investment in R&D (cough... AI, cough...) to increase efficiency (which also corresponded with America's manufacturing dominance), but that has taken a backseat to profit taking and hype.
And so we are back to the prospect of war.
So what your are saying is... (Score:2)
So what they are saying is that we need a world war to decimate all our international competitors. But it needs to be started by someone else so that the USA isn't the bad guy, we need to wait from them to pummel each other for a few years before getting involved while remaining unscathed. Then our companies will be welcomed once more across the planet to rebuild other countries' destroyed cites.
Seems like the plot of a derange sci-fi novel.
Who signed NAFTA? (Score:5, Informative)
Just for the record: George Bush (R) negotiated and signed NAFTA in 1992 but he wasn't able to get the corresponding US bill passed before the end of his term, so Bill Clinton (D) signed the US law in 1993. Both presidents supported NAFTA.
Re:Who signed NAFTA? (Score:4, Insightful)
> Both presidents supported NAFTA.
They both went to Yale. Both parties share the same elitist agenda. The debate is about important issues where there is disagreement. Like what bathroom should transgender women use.
NAFTA wasn't good for workers (Score:1, Troll)
On either side of the border but the manufacturing jobs were always doomed. By 1993 automation was devouring factory jobs. We focus on outsourcing because it's more immediate and abrupt so it makes a better news story but 70% of the jobs lost got taken by robots not Mexicans.
Clinton knew that and his solution to it was the kind of out of touch nonsense you get from over-educated Democrats. Well meaning and useless.
His plan and his wife's plan was for all of us to go get advanced college degrees and
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It's also worth noting that NAFTA obliterated Mexico's smaller farmers which massively ramped up illegal migration from Mexico to the US.
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Also, Donald Trump renegotiated and extended NAFTA in his first term.