Posted on 04/09/2025 10:41:59 AM PDT by daniel1212
Coming out of the Second World War, the US was the king of production,” says William B Bonvillian, a lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an expert in US innovation policy....
by 1945, more steel was produced in the state of Pennsylvania alone than in Germany and Japan combined....
By the turn of the millennium, the US’s global domination in mass-scale industrial production, technology and efficiency was lost. Long-standing issues culminated between 2000 and 2010, when the US lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs....
Between 2000 and 2010, nearly six million jobs in US manufacturing were lost, with the sectors most prone to globalisation displacement, such as textiles and furniture, taking the biggest hit, according to research by Bonvillian and MIT’s Peter L Singer....
The fixed capital investment of manufacturing (plant, equipment, information technology, and so on) actually declined in the 2000s – for the first time since data collection began in 1947...
Meanwhile, US manufacturing output grew only 0.5% per year between 2000 and 2007, and during the global financial crisis of 2007–09 fell by a huge 10.3%...
In 2015, the US ran a trade deficit of $832bn in manufactured goods,..
“Most of the jobs that were lost were in the lower end of production, as opposed to higher skilled jobs,” says Bonvillian. “In other words, one of the main routes into the American middle class just got cut off....
Trump’s politics came right out of that. He was the first US politician to.. speak directly to the anxieties of what the American working class had gone...
coming out of the Second World War, the whole focus for the US innovation system was on early-stage R&D, not manufacturing. “Production was the last thing we worried about, since we were the king. Nobody was remotely close to us,” adds Bonvillian...
Meanwhile, post-war Germany and Japan were rapidly rebuilding their industrial bases to counter mass unemployment. This meant their innovation systems were focused on manufacturing,..
“This imbalance explains why, for many decades now, the US has been innovating new technologies that get built elsewhere,...says Bonvillian. “More recently, we have been trying to pick up the Fraunhofer model [universities and industry working together]. But guess what? China did the exact same thing...
it is becoming increasingly common for US companies to move from ‘innovate in the US and produce abroad’ to ‘do both abroad’....If Apple, the company that was dominating stock markets and largely considered to be heralding the dawning of a new era in innovation, was outsourcing its manufacturing, surely it was on to something?
The feasibility of reshoring factory jobs aside, Trump was in fact reacting to a very real issue...
it wasn’t a sudden burst of robots that took most jobs away, it was other causes, and when you boil it down, it really was the rise of the Chinese economy,” contends Bonvillian...
Not only has China charged ahead of the US in terms of the production process, but it has also done so increasingly with innovation in the past decade....
For all of Trump’s bluster, he had little success in bringing factories home...
Another deeply rooted issue for US manufacturing has been the growing stigma and prejudice about its value. The result: a gaping skills gap...
“Why would a parent want their children to work in a factory where jobs were being lost all the time?” asks Bonvillian.
Meanwhile, the white-collar college dream only grew stronger, with the preference largely being for young people to go into what was considered to be the more academic fields of medicine, law, accounting and services.....
the lack of desire to see young people go into manufacturing jobs adds to a lack of viable educational avenues into the sector, which is exacerbated by the lack of large-scale adoption of innovative technology...
During Clinton’s presidency, the internet and the wider use of computers changed almost every aspect of American life..the increased use of information technology exacerbated the globalisation of manufacturing...
Obama did see some success in creating manufacturing jobs, but he felt short of his one million target and instead manufacturing jobs rose by 590,000 in his second term..
However, since the onset of the manufacturing decline under Reagan, every single Republican president has seen a decrease in average annual manufacturing employment...
A closer look at the crime scene shows that US manufacturing was not killed, but it has endured grievous bodily harm. The American factory has lost its edge. Reclaiming this must be one of the country’s economic and geopolitical priorities.
Nixon had genuine political reasons to open up.China. He knew of the break with Kremlin and also knew that break could be healed. Stepping in when he did was a way of making tge healing of the breach more difficult and it never was.
It was American consumers. They chose the Chinese products over the American goods.
As he died in ‘92 you’re likely correct. But I doubt the idea had not been discussed before his death.
It was a conscious effort to strip mine the US economy and make huge profits. It is still going on. The only thing that fixes it is a world war which we will win after millions of needless casualties and tactical loses while we re industrialize. Kind of like WWII.
Root cause? liberal 60's policies and people who became more focused on feelings and doing the minimum. The Great New Deal by Johnson significantly contributed and IMO, has been the most responsible for the downfall of society and the economy.
Not one word of the legislation and bills that gave a monetary incentive for companies to move overseas...not a word. I read all of the article and it was all Republican taking the brunt of the blame. Wall street is touched upon as a catalyst also. Long winded but just skimming the surface. Without manufacturing plants the middle class gets eliminated and corporate and governmental thieves rise and profit. The masses be damned approach.
You do know that over 90% of manufacturing is non union? Right? You are fighting the last war.
https://www.devex.com/organizations/overseas-private-investment-corporation-opic-united-states-44419
Why the 10% tariff should have started in 2000.
from inception... from the drawing board, who came up with, put together the contracts, who designed the partnerships of NAFTA and GATT?
IMHO, those are the ones who sold America out...
nafta and wto ensured the continued decline with MFN status being granted to China in 96 an insane EF you to the middle class
That alone places you in a 1% category of FR readers!
The big cause is the bureaucratization of everything.
In 1950 buying a car paid the salaries of a bunch dudes with drills and hammers who built the car.
In 2025 most of that money goes to lawyers, HR leads, marketers, accountants, and programmers. With only a small slice for the guys who built the car.
The problem is most Americans prefer to sit at a desk pushing numbers around on a screen instead of doing real work.
Investor’s Business Daily——TERRY JONES 10/04/2016
Obama’s Regulatory Siege Killed US Mfg Growth
America’s workers are the world’s most productive, but they are sorely handicapped by needless regulations, including those imposed in the last year by the Obama administration, a new manufacturing study says. (AP) Economists on the left routinely appear mystified by the ongoing slow growth in jobs, investment and business startups under President Obama. But a new report from America’s largest manufacturers’ group suggests a big reason for our current slowdown can be found in one word: regulation.
The study by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) shows new regulations over just the past year amount to a huge hidden tax on U.S. businesses that chokes off investment and expansion, and kills jobs. How big is the hidden tax? In the last year, federal agencies and departments imposed rules that will cost U.S. businesses $81.6 billion over the next decade, while killing 155,700 jobs. Oh, and to boot, companies would have 411 million hours of added paperwork tacked on to the already-hefty regulatory paperwork burden they bear.
By the way, don’t expect a sympathetic hearing from Hillary Clinton and other Democrats on this issue: They like regulations, which are how they control Americans’ lives and behavior without even asking Congress for approval. This last point is key, since Congress — not the unelected bureaucracy — is the only branch of government under the Constitution that is supposed to make laws.
Of course, progressives don’t care about all this, because many of the 155,700 who will lose jobs in coming years will be counted among the “deplorables” that Clinton says support Donald Trump. The point is, because of excessive regulation, it’s a tough time to make things in America, according to NAM. “The litany of these new labor laws has made it more costly for firms to employ workers,” the NAM study said. “Forcing companies to spend more money in compliance costs has little to do with a company’s main purpose — producing goods and services. These rules result in lower productivity growth, and companies end up paying lower wages and reducing employment.”
And here’s the surprising kicker: All these nasty effects we discussed above come from just seven new rules that have been pushed on us by the bureaucracy. Those rules have the force of law, even though neither you nor your representative voted directly to impose them.
According to NAM, the deadly seven rules are: “the Fair Pay and Safe Workforces rule (also known as the ‘blacklisting’ provisions); the updated overtime rules; the new silica standards in the workplace; the new (Employment and Equal Opportunity Commission) rules requiring annual reporting of employment and wages, broken down by race, gender, and job category; the “Ambush Elections” rule; redefining what constitutes a ‘joint employer;’ and the requirement that companies publish reports of all injuries and illnesses.”
Those rules seem innocent enough, until you consider their massive cost. And this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg under Obama. Remember, that $81.6 billion figure is added costs, not total costs, arising from just one year of Obama’s presidency. Businesses already spend more than $140 billion a year just to comply with federal rules.
In a recent study, the Government Accountability Office found that the four administrations before Obama averaged about 1.6 major new rules per year. Under Obama, that’s jumped to three. No wonder the economy’s still crawling at a less than 2% growth rate, instead of the robust 3%-plus rate of earlier administrations.
Regulation of the U.S. economy — in particular, regulation in which costs far exceed the benefits — has become a major hindrance to our prosperity. According to the Cato Institute, the total economic cost of regulation is now about $2 trillion a year — more than 11% of GDP. How can our economy fly when it has so much dead weight?
Meanwhile, a study earlier this year by the Mercatus Center found that the regulatory boom in recent decades has cut GDP growth by roughly 0.8% per year. That might not sound like much, but Mercatus estimates that if regulation had been held to the 1980 level, the U.S. economy would have been $4 trillion larger by 2012 than it actually was. So, yes, regulation matters.
This is yet another reason why all of us need to pay close attention to what the presidential candidates, vice presidential candidates and their surrogates, have to say about the economy between now and the election. The next job the poison of excessive regulation kills might be yours.
Behind it all and concomitant with it was and is the decline of conservative Christianity (not there is any other).
1. A nation can overcome adversity, and affliction, but none I know overcame great prosperity in its various earthly forms. Rare is the person who gains the latter and does not lose spiritual and moral Christian values. Yet God requires us to overcome what takes away faith.
“Religion begat prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother.” - Attributed to Cotton Mather alarmed by the trend toward materialism in New England Society
Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart. (Hosea 4:11)
2. As American increasingly became post-Christian, so it increasingly becomes anti-Christian, adopting the demonic perversions of all the God ordained. As we sadly see daily and more so.
They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off. (Hosea 8:4)
I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing. (Hosea 8:12)
Israel hath cast off the thing that is good: the enemy shall pursue him. (Hosea 8:3)
For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples; and Judah hath multiplied fenced cities: but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the palaces thereof. (Hosea 8:14)Every generation since perhaps 1950 has been the most Biblically ignorant, morally confused and mislead generation America has ever raised, with each other surpassing the previous one. Now we are seeing the 3rd generation in the voting booth since so-called "the greatest generation."
3. One of those is contraception, which goes with abortion. Without these two practices alone and the welfare which fosters broken homes, there could be a partial social revolution, of actual families of more than 1.6 children if at all, and learning to share, tolerate, interact, endure difficulties, build character, initiative. etc.
4. The growth of secular, anti-Christ media. Never before has there been a media so pervasive, perverted and persuasive since perhaps Pompeii, though we do have sane as well as sacred alternatives, thank God.
The bottom line.
wy69
It was
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