Posted on 12/14/2002 10:22:42 AM PST by arete
ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Charles Seitz remembers when Rochester was a bustling manufacturing town. Now, all the 58-year-old unemployed engineer sees is a landscape of empty buildings.
''There's nothing made here anymore,'' the former Eastman Kodak employee says, his eyes welling with tears as he talks about his struggle to find a new job. ''Wealth is really created by making things. I still adhere to that.''
It's a situation that's been playing out across the country for decades but has received increased attention in recent years.
Fifty years ago, a third of U.S. employees worked in factories, making everything from clothing to lipstick to cars. Today, a little more than one-tenth of the nation's 131 million workers are employed by manufacturing firms. Four-fifths are in services.
The decline in manufacturing jobs has swiftly accelerated since the beginning of 2000. Since then, more than 1.9 million factory jobs have been cut -- about 10% of the sector's workforce. During the same period, the number of jobs outside manufacturing has risen close to 2%.
Many of the factory jobs are being cut as companies respond to a sharp rise in global competition. Unable to raise prices -- and often forced to cut them -- companies must find any way they can to reduce costs and hang onto profits.
Jobs are increasingly being moved abroad as companies take advantage of lower labor costs and position themselves to sell products to a growing -- and promising -- market abroad. Economy.com, an economic consulting firm in West Chester, Pa., estimates 1.3 million manufacturing jobs have been moved abroad since the beginning of 1992 -- the bulk coming in the last three years. Most of those jobs have gone to Mexico and East Asia.
Last month, film giant Eastman Kodak -- the largest employer in Rochester and the central focus of the community since the company was founded by George Eastman in 1888 -- announced it was shutting down an area plant and laying off the 500 employees who make single-use, sometimes called ''throw-away,'' cameras. The work will now be done in China or Mexico, two countries where the company already has operations.
The movement of jobs to other countries angers Seitz the most.
''The United States got to where it is today by making things,'' he says. ''People are suffering, and communities are suffering.''
Yes, it is being created in other countries. It's called globalization.
Richard W.
Comments and opinions welcome.
Richard W.
Yes, definitely a national emergency when our single-use cameras are being made overseas. How will we survive when they cut off our supply? {/sarcasm}
I don't get it. I see these threads of FR all the time. Everyone whining about the decline of manufacturing, free trade and globalization. And completely ignoring the objective statistical evidence that:
1. National inflation-adjusted income continues to climb.
2. Unemployment has gone down dramatically since introduction of NAFTA and GATT, despite the recent downturn.
3. A global economy improves standard of living both here and in other countries, making war less likely, and making it more likely they will stay home instead of coming here as a penniless immigrant.
Hey, folks, we're Americans. We don't need to whine. We have the most powerful, most productive economy ever seen on the planet, and it shows no signs of serious decline.
Yes, it's tragic when people lose their jobs. But you want to look at the alternative? Look at Europe. They're trying to maintain their manufacturing base and make jobs safe. They have all kinds of laws about it. Guess what? Their economies are in the tank, they have produced less than 1/10 the number of new jobs per capita that we have in the last ten years, and they are on the way to being third-rate economic powers. Is that what you guys want?
Our only problem is that our government imposes far too much regulation and restrictions on business, while other countries do not. But that's our problem, and we've got no business blaming anyone else for it.
And yet we have the highest per-capita income and the highest standard of living in the world. Ricardo still rules....
So let Mexico and China have the throw-away camera market. I stopped using them years ago with the advent of digital cameras. For about 10 thow-away cameras that take crappy pictures one could probably buy a cheap digital camera that takes better pictures which cost much less to store than the cost of film processing for the throw-aways. So, what's the big fuss about?
If the Kodak enginmeer had more balls and stood up for the guy that got fired recently for publically broadcasting his wish not to receive gratuitious homosexual propaganda from Kodak, I might have some empathy.
Fundamentally, we believe that the U.S. government needs to devote more resources and put in place new programs to build wider expertise about China and to protect our industrial base from eroding as a result of our economic relations with China.
-- C. Richard D’Amato, chairman
U.S.-China Security Review Commission
(How to improve U.S.-China relations)
That's what you get for paying attention in macroeconomics ;)
I have been saying this for years. I love it when the talking heads on tv talk about the Christmas season as a "make or break" time for the retailers in this country whose goods come from foreign factories.
How utterly ironic that our economy's survival is predicated on the sale of billions of dollars of foreign goods.
In the U.S., we are slaves to consumerism and debt. We're all becoming slaves to the ruling class elite puppet masters.
Richard W.
Let go of it already. Simply ''making things'' has never been enough. ''Wealth is really created by'' providing value.
When ''making things'' is enough, the people live in 1-room apartments, they rejoice when the grocer has fresh bread and rutabagas, and they wait years for the chance to buy a Trabant.
(No, thanks.)
I too prefer the new Korean digital camera over the Mexican throw-away.
Richard W.
Don't cast blame on your so-called "ruling class elite puppet masters"! Any slaves to consumerism and debt became that way of their own free will. No one's holding a gun to anybody's head.
Those who refuse to live within their means have no one to blame but themselves for the consequences.
"Just say 'No.'"
The US could probably produce everything in the world more efficiently than other countries do (except for things where other countries have an "absolute advantage", like growing coffee). However, if we spread out our workforce (a resource) to produce all of these things, we wouldn't be doing what we do best.
Other countries then have a comparitive advantage doing the manufacturing things so that we can use our resources in more efficient places.
Yeah, it sucks to be the person in the inefficient sector of the economy. Suck it up, learn skills that are in the areas of the economy that we do best.
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