Opinion:... ..., Hillary and Bernie are lying to us about those lost manufacturing jobs

Most, if not all, of those manufacturing jobs are gone because of better technology, not Mexico

As the primary season progresses,... ...candidates continue to peddle some version of a promise to “bring back jobs and manufacturing to America.” Voters clinging to this hope need to steel themselves for a letdown. Here’s why.

...Manufacturing employment peaked nationwide in 1977. Since then... ...makes twice as much “stuff” in an hour as he or she did in 1977...

...In the 1930s, more than half of American household consumption was in manufactured goods... ...Manufacturing now accounts for only a third of family consumption.

...candidates blame the North American Free Trade Agreement, but could Nafta cause these job losses? Nafta was implemented in 1994, so if Bernie, Hillary and...

...are to be believed, American firms must have anticipated Nafta by some 20 years (so much for all that short-term thinking on Wall Street).

For every manufacturing job lost since 1977, we have had nearly 10 created elsewhere....

...trade also creates jobs. We have 7 million more transportation and logistics jobs alone...

...The “bring jobs back” promise is simply fiction... ...graduate degrees in robotics laboring in Palo Alto, Calif., West Lafayette, Ind. and Boston are to blame...

...look at any online help-wanted listing in Indianapolis, where Carrier Corp. (part of United Technologies Corp. UTX...

...the real concern is finding enough manufacturing workers to fill existing demand.

The demagoguery on manufacturing employment is most un-presidential and readily contradicted by easily obtainable data. Candidates cannot bring jobs and production back from overseas, since they didn’t go there in the first place. Voters looking for a return to the 1960s economy richly deserve the bitter and lasting disappointment that awaits them.

I guess because they ship them down there by the truck load. A friend of mine had a battery/starter/alternator shop for 40 years and was busier than a one legged well digger for the whole time. Rebuilt everything electrical for cars/trucks/heavy equipment.

Their excuses to move overseas just does not cut it with me. What pees me off is the CEO’s and BOD’s of all these companies worship their god, money, and do not give a damn about Americans, the very people they expect to buy their crap.

BS. Post your source, so we can laugh at it.

The laughs on you

Over the past 40 years, a period in which U.S. GDP per capita more than doubled after adjusting for inflation, the annual earnings of the median prime-aged male have actually fallen by 28 percent. Indeed, males at the middle of the wage distribution now earn about the same as their counterparts in the 1950s! This decline reflects both stagnant wages for men on the job, and the fact that, compared with 1969, three times as many men of working age don’t work at all.

Authors:

Michael Greenstone

Michael Greenstone is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the Milton Friedman Professor of Economics and Director of the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at Chicago. His other current positions and affiliations include Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, Faculty Director of the E2e Project, Head of the JPAL Environment and Energy Program, and co-Director of the International Growth Centre’s Energy Research Programme. Prior to rejoining the faculty at Chicago, Professor Greenstone was the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT.

Greenstone received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and a BA in economics with High Honors from Swarthmore College.

Adam Looney

Adam Looney is Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury. In that role, he advises the Secretary on economic issues related to tax policy, analyzes current and proposed legislation, and provides the official receipts forecasts and revenue estimates for the Administration’s budgets. Prior to joining the Treasury, he served as the Policy Director of The Hamilton Project, and was Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Previously, Looney served as the senior economist for public finance and tax policy with the President's Council of Economic Advisers and was an economist at the Federal Reserve Board. He received a PhD in economics from Harvard University and a BA in economics from Dartmouth College.

The reason why Free Traitors™ always use textiles and apparel as examples of obtaining ground shaking cost savings is because textiles and apparel are the most labor intensive to produce durable good you can buy. For the overwhelming majority of the durable goods labor is just a small component of the overall retail price. Usually less than 8%. Those experts want you to think this applies to all durable goods and nothing could be further form the truth.

Don't let the Free Traitors™ mislead you. Prices for made in America products are just marginally more expensive.

The Cruz-Freepers who still obstinately linger, like petulant children, have never learned one bit about, and have no curiosity about, TPP, despite the mountain of info available online. Most don’t even know what TPP is an acronym for. They don’t know or care to be informed. Anyone who knows and understands and READS TPP (ok, you don’t have to read the countless pages of individual tariff schedules) knows the truth. Others are uninformed. If you know TPP you know the existential globalist threat it is for USA sovereignty.

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