Posted on 04/27/2016 5:32:36 AM PDT by expat_panama
Half a century ago, harvesting California’s 2.2 million tons of tomatoes for ketchup required as many as 45,000 workers. In the 1960s, though, scientists and engineers at the University of California, Davis, developed an oblong tomato that lent itself to being machine-picked and an efficient mechanical harvester to do the job in one pass through a field.
The battle to save jobs was on...
...These days, the battle to save American jobs has a different flavor...
...In America’s factories, jobs are inevitably disappearing, too. But despite the political rhetoric, the problem is not mainly globalization. Manufacturing jobs are on the decline in factories around the world.
“The observation is uncontroversial,” said Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning economist at Columbia University. “Global employment in manufacturing is going down because productivity increases are exceeding increases in demand for manufactured products by a significant amount.”
The consequences of this dynamic are often misunderstood, not least by politicians offering slogans to fix them.
No matter how high the tariffs Mr. Trump wants to raise to encircle the American economy, he will not be able to produce a manufacturing renaissance at home... ...“We are more likely to have a smaller share of a shrinking pie.”...
..The first large transition from agriculture to industry in the early 20th century — well lubricated by public spending on world wars — liberated workers from their chains far more effectively than Karl Marx’s revolution ever did.
The current transition, from manufacturing to services, is more problematic. In poor countries...
...In the United States... ...American workers are rebelling against the changing tide.
Note to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump: A grab at the world’s manufacturing jobs is the wrong answer. Walls will damage prosperity, not enhance it. Promises to recapture industrial-era greatness ring hollow.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Here's the graphic that came w/ the piece--
-showing how an economy dominated by manufacturing is one in squallor. Like the fact that half the Chinese workforce still scratches for food out of the ground.
Too bad the NYT perverts this reality into their left-wing New York Values of big time government spending; the writher tries to suggest that the agricultural to factory move was thanks to gov't spending so somehow we need more spending now to move into services.
Moron.
The left is insane. They want to bring in more and more illegal aliens while at the same time they force jobs to go overseas by making it impossible for local businesses to operate. So they go straight onto welfare after knocking out a few anchor kids, and the whole economy sinks lower. Trump is the only person running in the who even wants to fix it.
Well, yes. It’s beside the point however. It’s now very expensive to make things in China, which is why manufacturing is starting to come back to the U.S., for example our good old Lincoln logs are now made here again. Yes, some will go to places like Vietnam, etc, and good luck with that.
Yes, manufacturing has become more mechanized but they make it sound like there’s going to be a small army of programmers in every factory. It just isn’t true. There won’t even be one.
Where did this come from? What does it have to do with manufacturing? Eduardo wants the world to know how silly walls are ....
Soulless cowards who don't deserve to be called American. If they had been in charge, we'd still be huddled in isolated enclaves on the eastern seaboard shipping all our wealth to England.
We don't ship much to England these days. But these losers are still huddled in their enclaves, crying in their chablis.
So let’s speed up the replacement of human beings by forcing human beings too expensive to employ (higher minimum wage, required healthcare coverage, etc). Yeah, that’s the ticket!
A very happy FOMC Day morning to all --everyone held tight yesterday w/ no change in stock indexes and gold (though silver's up to $17.32). Here's the plan today--
7:00 AM MBA Mortgage Index
10:00 AM Pending Home Sales
10:30 AM Crude Inventories
2:00 PM FOMC Rate Decision
--and futures traders are now seeing flat metals and mixed stocks. News over breakfast:
The Madness of Negative Interest Rates - Richard Rahn, Washington Times
Uncertainty Is A Fact Of Life, Get Used to It - Caroline Baum, MarketWatch
The Horror of Donald Trump Retrieving 'Lost Jobs' - John Tamny, RCM
Internet of Things Will Dramatically Boost Economy - David Drake, RCM
Sanders' Right Wing Arguments Against Soda Taxes - Jonathan Chait, NY
The Shockingly High Price of Federal Regulations - Editorial, Investor's
Oil's 'Magic Recovery' Number is $50/Barrel - David Wethe, Bloomberg
Saudi Prince Vows Thatcherite Revolution - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, DT
Why Janet Yellen Could Blindside the Markets - Chris Matthews, Fortune
What really powered the world economy for a hundred years was petroleum. Eventually, there WILL be peak oil. One can debate whether the peak will be in 10 years, 20 years, or 50 years. But it will happen.
Simply put, in terms of energy density, applications (transportation, power, fertilizer, pharmaceuticals, asphalt, etc), portability and scalability (cars, motorcycles, power plants), petroleum is unrivaled. Not nuclear (Fukishima, Chernobyl anyone?), not solar (EROI anyone?).
We aren’t going to find magical dilithium crystals to power everything, because they don’t exist, anymore than leprechauns riding unicorns that poop rainbows into pots of gold exist.
America produces so much food, because it MANUFACTURES food by pumping massive amounts of fossil fuel products into the soil. Factor in the illegal immigrants picking fruit, the people making fertilizer, the trucks transporting food, etc, it is a lot more than half a percent working in agriculture.
It is like saying the Earth’s space programs have only has employed a few hundred astronauts.
Seriously? China is still going to be cheaper for the most part, even when looking at the total landed cost. There is no manufacturing rennaiscence like some claim. It just isn't there. With the Chinese economy in a slump, pricing is even likely to get better, at least in the short term.
They intend to break the system that has brought the brightest future. They are merchants of Lies, Deception, Misery, Slavery (to the State), Subjection, Poverty, DEATH of people who oppose and hence the nation.
They say they don't believe in nations. Imagine, no place of refuge from this evil.
These are the Devils Disciples.
Parson Malthus was wrong.
Amen.
Washington Times website: 118 trackers. Most I’ve seen yet.
Yup. Exponential grow can never stop.
The year 5,000 AD, we will be producing 500 billion barrels of oil per day, and the Earth will have a population of 15 quadrillion.
LOL.
Cornucopia.
These experts (sic) miss the macro trend tho. Manufacturing paradigm will change from large central urban based to smaller rural and dispersed base.
Robotics, automation driver-less trucks, local renewable power etc tend to point to smaller manufacturing/farming ops away from the increasingly dangerous and costly cities. Of course this would also involve elimination of much of the ruling class’s self-protecting regulatory systems creating free-market-killing barriers to entry.
When the prices drop to price of a luxury car to make a small manufacturing operation for widgets in your own neighborhood with little or no staff and deliveries by robotic means the base factors the article relies on go out the window.
Think a thousand widget makers all over the country competing on quality and price with relatively low start up and distribution costs.
“Think a thousand widget makers all over the country competing on quality and price with relatively low start up and distribution costs”.............
There will always be the issue of “supply and demand”. As the population increases, there will be a demand for those products current produced off shore which could easily be produced here in the U.S. The big issue is are the American people willing to work for lower wages and we already see that they will NOT, as they demand $15.00 min hourly wages.
A boss of mine bought a plastic extrusion machine for his basement and ended up with 5 factories. It was an ad in the back of Popular Mechanics.
This the wave that is coming. It has been here for many decades.
Eduardo wrote this article. It is from a foreign, globalist point of view.
“Where did this come from? What does it have to do with manufacturing ?”
Nothing. Carlos Slim (google him) owns the Times and has turned it into a open borders public relations rag.
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