There is a group of posters on FR who love to attribute the export of US manufacturing jobs to the EPA, corporate tax rates, unions and all sorts of regulations. But they never mention cheap labor overseas.
The number one reason US manufacturing has left the US is, and always has been. cheap labor. And the trend has been going on since the 1950s before the EPA and most regulations even existed. There are other factors, but whatever is next has been a distant second to cheap labor.
Maybe the trend is beginning to reverse to some extent due to rising wages in some cheap labor nations. But to pretend that cheap labor has not been the biggest factor in the loss of manufacturing jobs just indicates some have agendas other than dealing with reality.
It’s not a stampede but if the US dollar really nosedives it will become one.
The number one reason US manufacturing has left the US is, and always has been. cheap labor. And the trend has been going on since the 1950s before the EPA and most regulations even existed. There are other factors, but whatever is next has been a distant second to cheap labor.
Maybe the trend is beginning to reverse to some extent due to rising wages in some cheap labor nations. But to pretend that cheap labor has not been the biggest factor in the loss of manufacturing jobs just indicates some have agendas other than dealing with reality.
Based on that kind of thinking and the current "trend" to repatriate business to the USA, I guess we'll have to pass a big immigration bill with amnesty and even a Dream Act. That'll provide us the cheap labor we need...now, who is running a re-election campaign based on an immigration bill?
The number one reason US manufacturing has left the US is, and always has been. cheap labor. And the trend has been going on since the 1950s before the EPA and most regulations even existed. There are other factors, but whatever is next has been a distant second to cheap labor.
Not true. Labor intensive industries will shift to where labor is cheapest. Manufacturing goes where it is cheaper to manufacture. Labor is only one component.
Other components include educated workforce, government provided incentives/subsidies, taxation, regulations and laws including environmental. So manufacturing jobs can come back to America provided “the cost” of manfacturing is attractive to do so.
Labor intensive jobs will never come back unless the US becomes a 3rd world economy while the rest of the world including Africa burgeons.