Posted on 07/14/2016 7:01:27 AM PDT by Hojczyk
Think we don’t make anything in America any more? Think again. US manufacturing output is close to a record high, even when adjusted for inflation. The reason that sounds surprising is manufacturing jobs have been disappearing since the late 1980s, and now that number is just 12.3 million. Since 1989, manufacturing output has surged 69% while employment has fallen by 32%.
Manufacturers are doing more with less because of technology: computerized machines, streamlined processes, and on just about any factory floor that’s been built or revamped during the last 20 years, robots. “Automation is eating jobs from the inside out,” says Moshe Vardi, a professor of computational engineering at Rice University in Houston. “It’s the major cause of job losses in manufacturing.” There’s a different storyline in the presidential campaign, with Donald Trump blaming bad trade deals and unfair labor practices in China and Mexico for the loss of decent-paying blue-collar jobs in the United States.
“They’re eating our lunch,” Trump often says of trading partners that pay their workers below US standards and sell billions of cheap imports to Americans.
It’s easier to blame other countries for the loss of American jobs than it is to blame technology entrepreneurs, many of them American, who have revolutionized manufacturing and will continue to do so. But the numbers do suggest that technology has made many manufacturers far more productive and cut the need for human workers. These two charts show manufacturing output and employment during the last 30 years – and they’re clearly going in opposite directions.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
And where are the robots being designed and built?
The facts might be right
But a lot of plants have just moved everything overseas
For taxes and regulation
EPA chased all the chip plants overseas…chemicals
My guess Japan
Actually, Robots AND China are eating our lunch. And the Chinese aren’t stupid, they are mechanizing too.
But robots won’t spit in my food, so I may once again be able to patronize fast food establishments once again.
Yes, but manufacturing robotics, and making software and hardware for robotics opens up an entirely new sector for jobs. Unfortunately, too many of these jobs are not in the US.
What a joke. American’s aren’t out of work because of robots. They are out of work because of artificially high minimum wages that eliminate starter jobs and, more importantly, because of open borders politicians who are letting the entire population of Latin America into the United States to work. If technology was the issue, we’d all be a lot richer if we went back to manufacturing methods from the late 1800s or early 1900s.
Total and utter BS. Factories that have been completely automated and produce products with essentially ZERO labor content have been packed-up and moved lock, stock, and robots to low-cost countries in order to avoid punitive taxes, fees, and insurance rates.
Read Boston Consulting Group’s papers on “reshoring” to understand why this is starting to reverse despite horrible policies. Trump will accelerate the trend with favorable trade agreements and by ending punitive anti-business policies.
“Since 1989, manufacturing output has surged 69%”
Every time I hear this type of statistic I cringe. It makes it sound like manufacturing in this country is doing great, but what they don’t tell is how that compares with consumer spending.
The long term trend of consumer spending in this country is about 3.6%, so although manufacturing has “surged” 69% since 1989, consumer spending has surged somewhere around 160%. So where did the other 91% go? China, Mexico and all the other places Trump is talking about.
This article, by saying that adjusted for inflation, manufacturing is near all time high, is really saying that manufacturing in the US peeked in the 80’s and has grown very little since. Most of the growth in demand for products is being met by imports.
While the issue of automation is real, it doesn’t come close to accounting for the mass destruction of manufacturing jobs in this country.
Automation has not displaced American workers.
Automation has been taking place since the 1920s and has driven economic expansion, productivity and economic growth and raised standards of living to levels not believed possible.
A perfect example is the rise of high speed computer controlled machine tools. there are now more high skilled machinists than there were back in the days of counting the thousandths on a manual machine .
CNC systems have started entire new industries
There are also software programmer jobs, technician jobs and support jobs than ever
Well, seeing this comes from yahoo - a Marissa Meyer and Katie Couric anti-Trump website, I’d take this with a grain of salt.
Robots are a factor, to be sure, but other non-tecnological issues abound in this country. Most stemming from a communist-leaning government.
The take home of this of course is that Trump is all wet. Sorry girls, Mr. Trump knows exactly whereof he speaks.
The only thing to get out of this piece is that Yahoo is biased against Donald Trump. Some of us have already noticed that. We have also noticed that Donald's detractors always tend to be less cerebral than our candidate, who is well aware of the many once great American Corporations, who have been manufacturing less and less of their merchandise in the United States.
It is that reality that is devastating communities across the sub-continent. But that awareness is apparently over Yahoo heads--either of the local variety or of those whom Gulliver discovered on his fourth voyage.
Ro-bertz! They took err jerbs!!!! ;)
I think you’re right. Used to be even Hershey would design and build their own machinery. Now that’s all gone.
Factories relocated to China and Latin America also make use of robots and automation, and yet they still have a high demand for human labor as well.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.