Posted on 02/07/2015 5:52:17 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In the last decade, we’ve lost millions of manufacturing jobs to outsourcing. According to U.S. News and World Report, there are now 5.1 million fewer American manufacturing jobs than in 2001. The lure of low wages, tax advantages, and other cost savings has made for a seemingly straightforward calculus, and manufacturer after manufacturer, supported by intricate spreadsheets, has abandoned ship, until offshoring has become the emerging mantra of the new millennium. U.S. companies that still manufactured locally have slowly become outliers.
Interestingly, this dynamic now seems to be changing, as we’re beginning to see more manufacturing in the U.S. Total output from American manufacturing relative to gross domestic product is back to pre-recession levels, with more than half a million new jobs. According to the Reshoring Initiative, 15% of this job growth results from reshoring alone. There are many reasons for this shift back to the U.S.
More bang for the buck.
The first has to do with cost. It used to be cheaper to manufacture outside the U.S.; now the costs are now converging. In the manufacturing sector, the U.S. is still among the most productive economies in the world in terms of dollar output per worker. To be more specific, a worker in the U.S. is associated with 10 to 12 times the output of a Chinese worker. That’s not a statement about intrinsic abilities; it merely reflects the superior infrastructure of the United States, with its higher investments in automation, information technology, transportation networks, education, and so on....
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I think the bottom line is that it is hard to find Americans who are willing to work hard. Most Millennials have never actually held a job when they graduate from high school.
Summer vacation was invented in order for school children to be given several months off to help their families work in the farms.
How many high school students spend their summer vacations picking strawberries and peaches? If they even tried, the farm owners would be jailed for hiring minors to do the work that we have illegal aliens for.
Tomatoes was the worst. I’d rather be pitching hay bales for 10 hours.
I meant what price?
Fixed.
A very good one. +16 That’s all you get.
Keep in mind these Eagles are never touched and are BU.
They stay packaged the entire time. It’s just a commodity that is traded.
What the stock market needs now: American spending (How can people spend what they don't have?)
Now that the globalists (so called free traders) have largely destroyed the US middle class and stolen most of the nations wealth it appears it that our standard of living (labor costs) are low enough now to bring a few jobs back. For the illegal immigrant population, of course we would not what an uppity American middle class to rise again.
All Employment Growth Since 2000 Went to Immigrants
Thank You (so called) Free Traders!
Define “peanuts”.
Are you in favor of raising the minimum wage to $25 per hour?
You think that will bring back all those lost American jobs.
a lot of the jobs of which you consider to be lost are in fact obsolete in the present American economy
Per head of lettuce labor costs for picking and packing is 3 cents per head. The retail price of a head of lettuce is around $2.00. So you could DOUBLE labor costs and the head of lettuce would rise a whopping 3 cents from $2.00 to $2.03 per head retail. Oh wow what a crises call out the national guard!
Fixed.
> Here in Seattle, any manufacturing facility that pays less than $15 per hour has a workforce that is at least 50% foreign born!
They’re also paying less than minimum wage ;-)
Define “peanuts”
How much should the grower pay to each lettuce picker to make sure he isn’t paying “peanuts”?
At what wage would you go into the field and pick lettuce?
Not really. Cheap energy makes long distance shipping cheaper. And most manufacturing these days is machine done, even abroad. The day of hand made mass produced goods has passed, manufacturing jobs are history, and every advance in automation and 3D printing puts them further and further in the rearview mirror.
Minimum Wage Limbo Keeps [Seattle] Small Business Owners Up At NightThe protectionist response? The manufacturer is not paying enough. Oh, and you should pay higher taxes.
Longtime Seattle manufacturer moving 100 jobs to Nevada
That being said, I'm paid about 75-80% of the industry average, so I'm not booking any trips to Aruba anytime soon. But unlike some of the protectionists on this thread, I'm not whining about it, either.
And furthermore, "high-paying" manufacturing jobs are not all that common. It's really the OT that brings in the money, and you have to set it aside for the rainy days.
If you have you import stoop labor from the third world then the wages are too low.
All the more reason to repatriate our manufacturing base since labor is not a factor.
Stuff will be made where it is the most cost effective. As it always has been.
Wait we HAD to off shore because of unions and expensive labor. Now a new excuse. You free traitors are just too much.
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