We used to make TVs in America. We used to make shoes. Now we don’t. There is some truth to the “myth”.
On the other hand, we used to make gazillions of shoes. Then the Italians made gazillions of shoes. Then the Brazilians. Then the Chinese. Now the Indians.
Yet, the world's most efficient athletic shoe maker is still in America and he has an almost totally automated and roboticized operation.
Do you really think the Italians, brazilians, Chinese and Indians can ultimately compete against shoe making robots?
What we are having to deal with in manufacturing is TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE and IMPROVEMENT. That factor eliminates more jobs than outsourcing ever did.
Wanna see a liberal disconnect? Here’s an editorual from Ann Arbor complaining that low paid ($14 per hour) manufacturing jobs aren’t an economic answer.
These idiots look down on the lowly blue collar workers but will happily blame republicans for jobs being shipped overseas.
Hearing this, we did the same thing in our house. She amended her homework, "American people, food and buildings are made in America. A few things are made in Korea and Malaysia. Everything else is made in China."
And where are those shoes and electronics being made? Not in Canada or the European Union. They're being made in China and Malaysia and other low-cost labor countries. Another truth to the 'myth'.
Should we start competing with Malaysia on palm oil too?
More importantly, there are no American companies, to my knowledge, manufacturing TVs abroad.
High relative American labor costs are a primary driver in the decision to locate jobs abroad, but it is not the only reason. High corporate income taxes, incomprehensible and complex regulations, restrictive union work rules, government monopolies on functions that the private sector could easily assume, legal expenses and economic uncertainty also play a role, as does an absence of qualified technical workers in the U.S.
As a consequence, our economy has grown increasingly dependent on the service and information sectors, where jobs tend to be lower paid and less stable than the manufacturing jobs we have abandoned over time.
The larger problem, I believe is one that is invisible: the absence of new dynamic industries that were never created, severely curtailed or ultimately located abroad because of the aforementioned costs of doing business in America. Hence: lower demand for domestic labor, shrunken consumer markets, educational needs both uncreated and unfulfilled, lower wages and a greatly reduced wealth multiplier effect.
I do believe that Americans would be willing to pay higher prices for a wide array of goods currently produced in places like China, but that opportunity will never materialize as long as we continue to treat business alternately, as a necessary evil, and a cash cow to be milked dry by politicians eager to buy votes with others' money and to create dependency in place of self-sufficiency.
Right - it isn't a myth. Check where the stuff you buy is made and you will see where the jobs have gone. Clinton started job exporting, Bush put it on steroids, and Obama looks the other way.
There will be no recovery until we make more of what we import. Whatever it takes. A good place to start would be to put flexible tariffs to equalize what countries sell to us and buy from us. No tariff if the difference is small to the more the difference, the higher the tariff. Trade means we buy from us and you buy from us. Anything else is we are being robbed.