Posted on 09/03/2007 4:38:11 AM PDT by shrinkermd
The United States makes more manufactured goods today than at any time in history, as measured by the dollar value of production adjusted for inflation -- three times as much as in the mid-1950s, the supposed heyday of American industry. Between 1977 and 2005, the value of American manufacturing swelled from $1.3 trillion to an all-time record $4.5 trillion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States is responsible for almost one-fourth of global manufacturing, a share that has changed little in decades. The United States is the largest manufacturing economy by far. Japan, the only serious rival for that title, has been losing ground. China has been growing but represents only about one-tenth of world manufacturing.
But if the big picture is brighter than many realize, American manufacturing is nevertheless undergoing fundamental change that is exerting enormous pressure on workers.
Imports are rising, now representing a third of all manufactured goods consumed in the country, up from 10 percent in the 1970s.
American exports are rising even faster than imports, but companies face intense price competition, with China, India, Brazil and dozens of other low-wage countries now part of a global marketplace for labor and materials. Manufacturers are redesigning production lines to make them more efficient, substituting machinery for people wherever possible.
So while American American manufacturing is not declining, manufacturing employment has been shrinking dramatically. After peaking in 1979 at 19 million workers, the American manufacturing workforce has since dropped to 14 million, the lowest number since 1950.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Between 1977 and 2005, the value of American manufacturing swelled from $1.3 trillion to an all-time record $4.5 trillion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Right sentiment, not quite right time frame. More like fifty years ago.
The average American living at the poverty level has a higher standard of living, on average, than the typical European middle classer right now......and for some reason half the folks in this country want us to follow their model?
I do not disagree that much is still made in America but what concerns me is that we are loosing the ability to and the skill to manufacture what is needed to win a global war. Heavy industry is how we won WWII and we are forgetting that. It also bothers me that we continue to support welfare when there are help wanted signs everywhere. We a are a culture that believes that demanding charity from those who work for a living is more acceptable than working a job that is beneath them. There is a place in our society for the factory worker.
Also, for better or worse, Altria (Phillip Morris) is going to close their Concord plant soon. It is rare to meet anyone from the area who didn't work at either Cannon Mills or Phillip Morris.
No matter what happens here, there will always be NASCAR! That's one area industry that won't be going to China...I hope!
In fact, if you look at the 5 million decline in manufacturing employment, you can attribute almost all of it to unionized industries like automotive.
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We have a polyester fiber and pet resin plant here that was built early in the 1970’s and it is running with a small fraction of the number of people who used to work there. The parking lot that used to be filled to overflow now has room to hold a demolition derby. The workers have an income adjusted for inflation that is maybe half of what it used to be. I mean that seriously, less than three years ago some departments were actually paying about half in nominal terms of what the pay used to be. They had to raise the pay a little to keep new people coming in but most still leave before they actually learn the job. The company is teetering on the edge and will probably soon join the list of used to be manufacturers.
The good old numbers game. It doesn't mean, as your abbreviated post would have people believe, that we manufacture more. It means it's worth more based on some imaginary number.
Without knowing the details, it sounds like a typical manufacturer that did not update their manufacturing practices to take advantage of technology. Hence, they are slowly declining into oblivion.
OK. Let's go with your premise. Then the trade deficit, which is based on the VALUE of goods, it just an imaginary number as well.
What basis do you want to use? Number of horse carriages produced? Number of punch-card computers manufactured?
I guess you also missed the part where we produce 25% of the world's goods, based on value.
I agree that there is a place for him(her)...that place is changing, though and the factory worker needs to keep stride with the change if they wish to continue being a factory worker.
Yes, welfare bad...unfortunately, the times have changed and so have the scams...now those who don’t want to work fake an injury and get themselves on socialist security for life because they can only take advantage of the welfare hammock for 3 years. The most common faked injuries that I’ve seen are the back and the knee...
Sorry, I own a few rental properties and some of the folks I’ve seen over the years have jaded me, I’m afraid...
Well, I’m off to do some work on this LABOR Day...
Future wars will be won based upon acquisition of information, not the ability to produce T-34's. Silicon, synthetic fibers and nanotechnology are now the national treasure that was once our heavy manufacturing.
Joe Gibbs will be racing Toyotas next year.
Joe Gibbs will be racing Toyotas next year.
The best illustration I know of comes from the Pacific initiative of President Bush. Sure china makes toys and clothes, but anybody can do that, Bush responded by emphasizing nuclear power, clean coal plants, and water treatment facilities. You have to make millions of Elmos to offset a nuclear power plant. There is some sort of agreement that distributes textiles among 50 or so countries. If one pisses us off, we just go to another.
I remember when a toaster or a waffle iron were important possessions, when a trip across America was a once in a lifetime thing, when people read the restaurant menu from right to left, when few teenagers had their own cars, when everybody had only one TV if that.
Remember when the grocery stores had only canned asparagus and only one kind of mushroom?
America's unprecedented prosperity brought about many wonderful things! Most notably the classless society of the great American bourgeoisie--the fulfillment of mankind's dearest dream.
The Civil Rights Revolution is certainly one of the most glorious and priceless results of American prosperity and its evolution into a classless society. It is doubtful that this Revolution would have occured as soon as it did--if at all--if America had remained impoverished. It was prosperity, based on capitalism, that made it all possible.
American prosperity also brought the world ever closer to the fulfillment of The American Dream: universal liberty, justice, and prosperity for all the people of the world!
However American prosperity has not been entirely beneficial. It seems that every silver lining is attached to a cloud.
It is probably this unprecedented prosperity that bred the spoiled, decadent American Left, whose foolishness today enables, encourages, and empowers America's foreign enemies and threatens the destruction of Western Civilization and the American Dream.
The spoiled, decadent Left wallows in anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and self-indulgence, including self-indulgent whims to favor the xenophilic, irrational, bizarre, and self-destructive.
Perhaps the rise of civilization to power and prosperity brings with it its own suicidal poison.
Probably at all times, within all societies, there are populations of the suicidal and populations of the ascendant and that at times of ascendancy the ascendant prevail, at times of decadence the suicidal. What's important is to fight the suicidal and strengthen the ascendant at all times.
That's our challenge today--defeating the Left, which is decadence itself.
Imaginary number? Adjusting dollars for inflation is not an imaginary number. It produces real numbers that can fairly be compared.
In the last day or three, someone posted an article telling us that 30% of the population of Dalton, Georgia is now hespanic. The carpet mills are there. The jobs are going to the hispanics, if I understood the artcle correctly. My question would be, are these people figured in to the equation presented in the current article? I wonder how many jobs are no longer even counted as existing, if filled . . . maybe . . . just maybe with illegals?
Somebody here suggested that we shouldn’t care where those “crappy” jobs go. I believe there are still millions in America who would want those jobs. I would like to know that if I were to need a job now, I could go get a job, even at lower wage than Mr. Anti-”Crappy” Job would think admirable. My family survived on my taking such jobs (cabinet and furniture plants) in the early 80s. I thank God that they were available and I would never describe the hard, tedious work as “crappy.” I just spoke to two young men this mnorning in the USA who just had to take such jobs, and they are very grateful.
I have friends who paid off their modest homes (as we did) in the last ten years with somewhat lower paying factory jobs and doing the kind of outdoor work that, some are trying to convince us, Americans “don’t want,” and for which we should allow a Mexican invasion. And we saved our money for homes rather than on luxury autos or unnecessary household items (*see note below). Does Mr. Anti-”Crappy” Job happen to be more wealthy and have a larger home (with a large mortgage)? That’s fine, and we don’t begrudge him. Some of us are genuinely happy with more modest lives, have smaller homes (many of us debt free), paid for by doing factory work, yard work, home repair work, and other such things. We are proud of our labor. We are people who were/are not “too expensive.”
I certainly don’t want people leading our nation who would legislate or dictate in such a way as to rob me of the prerogative to be a laborer and to find good simple work. I also don’t want to be robbed of the choice to buy products made by Americans in America.
*The products that we deemed unnecessary while trying to pay off our home would have been all made abroad, anyway.
Caterpillar: Big trucks, big sales, big attitude
Big Yellow is thriving.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/08/20/100166166/index.htm
Joy Global Inc. Announces Fiscal 2007 Third Quarter Operating Results * New orders up year-over-year to $628 million * Aftermarket orders increase 15 percent
http://www.primenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=125783
Oracle Europe, Middle East & Africa Deliver Record Results for the Fiscal Year 2007
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2007_jun/emea07q4custs.html
Boeing Co. on Wednesday reported a higher-than-expected second-quarter profit compared with a year-ago loss, and raised its full-year forecast as it ramped up delivery of its hot-selling commercial planes and defense sales remained strong.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20070725/boeing-earnings.htm
‘us trade with sub-saharan Africa increased 17 percent driven mainly by increases in machinery (including parts for oil field equipment and gas turbines) aircraft, vehicles and parts, electrical machinery (including telecomunications equipment)
http://www.agoa.gov/resources/US-African%20Trade%20Profile%202007%20-%20Final.pdf
Who cares if we are making toys?
No kidding. There's a store near us (Central Market) that stocks dozens of types of potatos (Peruvian purple potato, anyone?), and about a dozen types each of bananas, oranges, and grapefruits. They have a total of 700 different types of produce -- and about 350 varieties of beer.
That seemed like the major point of the article. Most of the workers mentioned were all barely educated folks working in the same mills their Mama's had worked in, and making a fairly ok living. The woman mentioned near the end of the article realized she wanted something more, so she enrolled in the Community College and got trained for it!.
The newer 'manufacturing' jobs in biotech, etc pay more, but require more education. Since the Community Colleges have already started programs for that, there's no excuse for those folks NOT to get themselves educated for these new jobs. Community college education is not expensive, and there is a lot of Financial Aid available, especially for folks training for new jobs.
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