US Manufacturing Is Not Dead

In a nutshell, manufacturing != manufacturing employment and the trade deficit just doesn't seem to be linked to the latter.

Secondary conclusion: As long as manufacturing productivity continues to improve, increasing our manufacturing may lead to American prosperity, but it won't save the economy, in that it won't produce jobs.

Long-term, I've actually not been concerned about American manufacturing for a while now. Why is overseas manufacturing cheap? Primarily, cheap labor. When does that cease to be an advantage? When labor is no longer a significant cost in manufacturing. We're getting there pretty quickly, and IMHO robotics has only recently (i.e., last two or three years) taken off, which should be able to continue the increased-productivity-per-human trend for a while yet.

Bad time to become an assembly line worker. Good time to get into robotics for manufacturing, probably.

I had a contract job in a tool & die facility a couple of years ago. It wasn't a factory, it was a "build-to-order" facility that had a wide variety of equipment in various places and they needed better tracking of their jobs and such. I didn't mention this to anyone, but I was struck by how much work was being done that could be automated in the near future. Tens of jobs dedicated solely to moving things around, which robots are going to be able to take over in the 5 year timeframe. Another tens of jobs that involve placing a metal part just so in a press and pushing two buttons (two so you have to use both hands). QA can't be replaced with robots entirely, but it could be helped. The bulk of the people on the floor were not doing things that required human judgment, even for human-class vision or human-class pathfinding. The future is basically now.

Yeah, that part seems like it needs more support. The situation for the largest and most diverse economy on the planet is a little bit different than the situation for those Asian countries. Our economy is far too complex for this sort of central planning to be effective. Also, politicians are idiots, and need to secure votes from the workers in industries currently existing, not the industries of the future.

I love it how they show a few charts not adjusted for inflation or anything else to claim that the US still has huge manufacturing base and then you can't find a SINGLE "made in the USA" product in a mall. Give me a break with your megalomania.

Krugman: "He was driven mad by Lester Thurow and Robert Reich in particular, both of whom had written books touting a theory that he believed to be nonsense: that America was competing in a global marketplace with other countries in much the same way that corporations competed with one another. In fact, Krugman argued, in a series of contemptuous articles in Foreign Affairs and elsewhere, countries were not at all like corporations. While another country’s success might injure our pride, it would not likely injure our wallets. Quite the opposite: it would be more likely to provide us with a bigger market for our products and send our consumers cheaper, better-made goods to buy. A trade surplus might be a sign of weakness, a trade deficit a sign of strength. And, anyway, a nation’s standard of living was determined almost entirely by its productivity—trade was just not that important."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/03/01/100301fa_fact_...