Posted on 12/31/2006 6:25:30 AM PST by A. Pole
AMERICAN manufacturers no longer make subway cars. They are imported now, and the skills required to make them are disappearing in the United States. Similarly, imports are an ever-bigger source of refrigerators, household furnishings, auto and aircraft parts, machine tools and a host of everyday consumer products much in demand in America, but increasingly not made here.
[...]
the experts shifted the emphasis from production to design and innovation. Let others produce what Americans think up.
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But over the long run, can invention and design be separated from production? That question is rarely asked today. The debate instead centers on the loss of well-paying factory jobs and on the swelling trade deficit in manufactured goods. When the linkage does come up, the answer is surprisingly affirmative: Yes, invention and production are intertwined.
"Most innovation does not come from some disembodied laboratory," said Stephen S. Cohen, co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California, Berkeley. "In order to innovate in what you make, you have to be pretty good at making it — and we are losing that ability."
[...]
Franklin J. Vargo, the association’s vice president for international economic affairs, sounds even more concerned than Mr. Cohen. "If manufacturing production declines in the United States," he said, "at some point we will go below critical mass and then the center of innovation will shift outside the country and that will really begin a decline in our living standards."
[...]
"It is hard to imagine," Mr. Tonelson said, "how an international economy can remain successful if it jettisons its most technologically advanced components."
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I have a fine arts degree, and have been in six figures for ten years. It appears that I'll have to all but sell my soul to the false god of cheap plastic crap to remain at that level going forward, however, and I resent it.
"The article also missed the whole part where American corporations are exporting jobs to countries that use slave or forced labor, long long hours, no benefits such as health care, pensions, 401k plans. Positions that pay a meager wages"
Those are all MINOR, MINOR issues to the REAL causes of manufacturing flight in America....
ie:
OVER-UNIONIZATION
OVER-TAXATION
OVER-REGULATION
INANE ENVIRO REGULATIONS
UNLIMITED CIVIL LIABILTY
Add in the global effect the STANDARDIZED SHIPPING CONTAINER has had on the movement of goods...
I get upset when prople start into "the Greedy CEO" BS, without looking at the REAL CAUSES of job flight....
You're trying to quantify something that can't be quantified. The best engineers I ever met not only worked like fiends and really knew their stuff, but also possessed an abundnace of creativity. That's what I mean by talent -- a combination of creativity, hard work and brute force intellect.
The same qualities are found in people successful in the more artsy-fartsy careers.
The ones who are almost always unsuccessful are those who think a degree assures them of success -- that's just the "buy in" before the game starts. And those who want some kind of 9 to 5 paradise life.
I remember one boss I had who fired a guy who repetitively said, "Nothing is more important to me than my family." The firing began with the boss saying, "You're going to be spending a lot more time with your family." The boss was an SOB, but had a point.
I should add that the artists and manufacturers were greatly eclipsed, in size of Hampton "cottage", by the Wall Street crowd.
Wall Street is a different story altogether. I genuinely like a lot of Wall Street people, but I'm hard pressed to get at the center of their "expertise." It's a mixed bag and an odd skill set.
I have a fine arts degree, and have been in six figures for ten years. It appears that I'll have to all but sell my soul to the false god of cheap plastic crap to remain at that level going forward, however, and I resent it.
If Target is good enough for Michael Graves, then it's good enough for you.
"What does cheap plastic crap have to do with you?"
I was referring to China. I'm not eager to go to China with marketing production services, such as photography and printing for marketing materials and packaging, that have been performed on an exclusively domestic basis up to now, but I am going to have to do so, or so it would appear at present.
[sigh] You started by saying that engineering majors are no longer lording-it over arts majors. Now your position has morphed into "an arts major that is dedicated and works his butt off will make more than an engineer who expects everything on a silver platter."
And add back all the companies that were spun off. Dow would be over 30,000.
Anyway, imagine raising 7 kids on the average engineer's income these days.
If only we could wipe out all other manufacturing around the world, we could replicate your Dad's experience.
The dollar has been subject to ferocious devaluation over the past 30-40 years, to the benefit of the thieving scum arranging the same, the pestilence that infest government.
Do you want to return to the days of a gold standard? Because we had no inflation or deflation back then?
Yeah, those damn businesses deciding who to hire and where. Next thing you know they'll be deciding what to make and how much to sell it for. All this freedom, what are we thinking?
No, my position hasn't changed. I know plenty of talented engineers (and software whizzes) who are out of work because they got outsourced and art guys who are flourishing because it's more difficult to outsource their work, which is "culture based."
Which is why we only have 145,564,000 people working in America.
The more I think I about it, Paleocons like to turn back the clock. and stop change.... Why I don't know....
The ones I've run into aren't very good at math. They suffer from fuzzy thinking too. They dislike change because they can't compete. IMO.
The more I think I about it, Paleocons like to turn back the clock. and stop change.... Why I don't know....
Fear of the future. A whole new set of rules to learn. Economic/financial uncertainty. Regret that they won't get to grow old and die in the same world they were born into.
I suppose that places me in the position (in spite of having a slew of income data at my fingertips) of being buried by anecdotal evidence.
It depends where you are. Different disciplines do well in different regions. If you're buried in anecdotal evidence, it might be because of the region you live in.
Chemical, so it probably wouldn't be lumped in the general term engineering. But the list was posted in the engineering annex of what a "general" engineer would make.
Granted, it has been a few years.
Here's some data:
http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/archives/000388.html
http://www.domain-b.com/industry/general/20051213_engineering.html
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