Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back

Spending money like a princess with a credit card may inspire jealousy - but it is not "Magic" ..

 

What does their internal trade have to do with our deficit?
I'm still looking for a country in Europe we don't have a deficit with.
Sweden - no
France - no
Spain - no

 

Offshoring our manufacturing was embraced because it defanged unions. The GOP wanted to do that since FDR. The Clinton dems helped the GOP .

 

That's another red herring.

Can we please look at overall trade deficits that a single country has?

You're now talking about specific relationships between two specific countries that don't have a lot of trade between the two, relative to all their other overall trade.

 

What states have passed right to work laws?
These states include: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri (effective August 28th, 2017), Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia

I'm looking for a blue one. Stand by.
Hmm. I thought maybe Michigan, but it went for Trump.

 

It wasn't for you when you were trying to make the cheap labor the cause. Why now?

 

The problem is this:
US trading away their ASSETS

 

As a citizen, does that not depress you? While deficits are natural, they should be within the 150% margin. If we're giving up double what we're getting back, then we're at a loss. And as he said, if we're buying double then that means we're shut out of the European/Chinese markets and that's not good either.

The US should be both a buyer/seller, not just primarily a buyer(or primarily a seller.)

 

Try again, it was your messiah who had our Naval troops, groveling on their knees.

 

How very lame, but at least you are consistent.

 

In addition to that which we have traded away already ! Outsourcing of our manufacturing was done to increase profits. Supposedly the consumer was supposed to benefit due to lower prices from cheap labor - but that is not what happened - a Nike shoe sells for over 100 dollars - and we don't even get to tax the excess profits and these are kept off shore in tax havens.

Whats not happening - as per the OP - is manufacturing being brought back to the US in any significance. What good does it do us if offshore manufacturing moves from China to Vietnam ? None.

 

Well, the consumer does actually experience some net benefit overall. But we have to remember that an economy is made up of both workers and consumers. They are both components.

And not every individual in the economy is as much a worker to the same extent they are a consumer. (For example, retired people with money saved up)

So even if the benefit to consumers were in direct proportion to the detriment to workers (which is NOT the case, by the way) different segments of society would benefit more than others.

 

Where is the benefit ? The only area where that happens is where there is competition . I agree that there is some benefit but not nearly what is touted.

 

I think what typically happens, if we can use an economic analysis, is that lower prices to the consumer typically translate into wage levels going down, because now the poorer segment of society can work for less money and still be able to buy the same things as before. So the consumer benefit does not really end up accruing to workers so much.

Meanwhile, there is also a separate additional effect of wage levels going down because of the competition with lower wage levels in another country.

Combined, the overall effect is that workers are hurt, and do not really end up experiencing so much of the benefit of cheaper prices for lower quality products.

Maybe consumer prices for the cheap things workers buy will go down 20%, but their average wage levels will end up going down 35%.

I think that may be the truly economic correct explanation, although it is also the more complicated one that does not sound so immediately intuitive or easy to sell people on.

 

Uh...why can't the middle class just move into different sectors of the economy? In the late 18th century they thought that the farmers, who formerly had to be like 80% of the people just to feed everyone else, would all starve since the farms didn't need nearly that many people any more, but the farmers all moved into manufacturing. The same thing will likely happen here. I don't know what it will be. Service jobs is what I hear but I'm unclear as to what that means, (it's NOT food service though, that's declining precipitately too)

What you suggest will ruin our economy about as completely as that can be done. Just what we can consume hasn't been able to provide even shitty jobs for half of us since the early 1900's. Oh sure, we could resolve to work twice as hard for half as much but we'll need 4x the regulations to forbid people from doing things a better way. I thought you conservatives were against oppressive and intrusive government.

And there is the fact, seldom recognized but fact nonetheless, that we really don't NEED to work 12 hours a day 6 days a week just to survive. That was the standard work week up until the 1920's and the 8 hour day was once the Holy Grail of American Labor though all the pundits thundered that if we ever provided anything less than 96 hours weekly certainly the Republic would fall.

My own feeling is that the 20 hour workweek is coming, though surely not soon enough for me

 

Uh...what?

Why would wage levels go down? Wage levels are determined by productivity and supply/demand. Employers don't care how much their workers can buy

 

As I explained, the explanation I gave I believe is actually the true most accurate correct one, but it is also the one that is hardest for normal people to be able to understand. (So it is probably not a good explanation to try to convince normal members of the public with)

If you have any understanding of Marxist perspective economics, you will know that there tends to be an equilibrium that will be maintained, where workers on the lowest tier will "demand" only so much money as it requires to maintain a certain level of living. So if consumer prices fall for them, they will not actually end up experiencing much benefit from that. The intense labor competition will result in them being willing to work for less money, and they will be in the same place they were before.

 

Um... because those sectors don't exist, or are hard to get into?

Usually there is a tendency in any economy for all the good opportunities that are easy to get into to get filled. So if there are any good opportunities left, there is usually a good reason why other people have not taken it. It's usually not so easy, or requires high levels of investment and considerable risk, or something like that.

You can see this type of phenomena in any market.

 

Those sectors unlike when factories replaced farmers dont exist.. The sectors that need employees don't exist. Except low wage servants.

 

The dems don't pass those state laws yet don't represent workers or unions.

Anytime a factory worker wants a raise the corporation threatens them with offshoring their jobs..

 

I THINK but am not sure, that may be Marx's version of Ricardo's "Iron Law of Wages". In any case it seems an outdated 19th century concept, much like Marxism itself.

Again, why would an employer pay a worker what he 'demands' in any case? He will pay him the smallest amount he can and still get the job done and the worker will move about from employer to employer until he gets the most there is available

 

"

Since January 2017, more than 480,000 manufacturing jobs have been added to the U.S. economy, following two decades of sharp losses.​

In President Clinton’s final three years in office, more than 430,000 manufacturing jobs were lost — declines that immediately carried over and expanded under the Bush administration, which experienced millions of manufacturing job losses, even before the 2008 crash.

Roughly 300,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during the eight years of the Obama administration, including minor losses in Obama’s final year in office.

In terms of the percentage of manufacturing job increases, the gains made thus far under the Trump administration surpass the performance in the first term of every president since the 1970s.​

"
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaig...n-weapon-a-remarkable-manufacturing-jobs-boom

 

They don't exist now, just like most of the manufacturing jobs didn't then. It's a sort of pushmi-pullyu thing.

Again, demand for them will call things into existence.

Barriers to entry exist for everything everywhere and yes, they vary. People overcome them too.

I also agree with Andrew Yang, that the most salient feature of the coming years may be how we deal with an increasing need to take care of more people with less work. We've done that before rather easily by reducing the amount we require people to work to survive. I don't see why that shouldn't continue.

 

You're not properly applying the concept of demand here.

That's a pathetic argument. You're basically saying "it doesn't matter, people will find a way to overcome".
We could apply that exact same axiom to trade protectionism too.

You should have realized that any argument is irrelevant to a debate if it can be applied the same both for and against.

I shouldn't have to point out basic logical fallacies here, but apparently I do.

Maybe stop outsourcing that work to other places, to start with.

 

They say it is unprofitable so we have it done elsewhere.
The collapse of American rare earth mining — and lessons learned
https://www.defensenews.com/opinion...erican-rare-earth-mining-and-lessons-learned/