US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent
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Re: US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent
#2"Measured in constant dollars, America’s manufacturing output today is more than double what it was in the early 1970s."
What's a 'constant dollar'? Is that nominal or inflation-adjusted? Over that timespan the two could mean very different things.
Re: US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent
#3"The growth of productivity — output per unit of input — is the fundamental determinant of the growth of a country’s material standard of living."
Re: US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent
#4"Measured in constant dollars, America’s manufacturing output today is more than double what it was in the early 1970s." What's a 'constant dollar'? Is that nominal or inflation-adjusted? Over that timespan the two could mean very different things.
"Constant dollars" = inflation-adjusted.
Re: US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent
#5A lot of people don't understand this. I'm an English grad student, and one of my more, uh, politically-minded professors said in a seminar that the U.S. doesn't manufacture anything anymore. I sent him this e-mail:
When I mentioned the bit about the U.S. continuing to manufacture a lot of stuff, I wasn't just trying to be a pain, as it's actually true; see Dept. of Labor Data on the subject here: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/MANEMP.txt or a post on the subject here: http://blog.american.com/?p=8593 ("Amazingly, if the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate country, it would be tied with Germany as the world’s third-largest economy."). CNN even points out that "China's manufacturing sector is on the brink of passing that of the United States, according to a report released Monday," (http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/21/news/economy/china_us_manufa...) but that it hasn't yet.
What has happened is that the U.S. manufacturing sector represents a much smaller part of the overall U.S. economy—mostly because the rest of the economy has gotten so big.
When you stop believing in polemics and conventional wisdom and start trying to look at what really is, you'll find a lot of unusual stuff.
Re: US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent
#6While it is true that North America still manufactures great quantities of luxury and high tech stuff, that isn't what is pissing off the populists. They couldn't care less if our manufacturing doubled in terms of dollars of output. What they really want is a return to the highly paid, unionized, tradesperson.
To them robots making Chevy trucks matters just as much to their lives as nerds writing software. As productivity increases continue, demand for noncerebral labor declines as a ratio for demand of cerebral labor. Even if the average tradesperson is better of today than 40 years ago (they have cars with AC, for example) they want their relative standing to increase. They used to be paid, say, half of what the engineer made, now its a fifth. That really, really pisses them off, so they take it out on China.
Combine that with the fact that 40 years ago "mom" stayed home, converting (tax free) raw ingredients into delicious food, as well as watched the children and mended the clothes. Now they buy less healthy instant food and need to find a way to pay for daycare, as well as a second car to get to work, and if they are American, substantially inflated healthcare costs.
I'm not envious of their position.
Re: US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent
#7Gee I remember when it seemed the US's manufacturing output was orders of magnitude beyond China (and Japan seemed like it was where China is today). Good for China for bootstrapping their economy so effectively, but no one would claim that the US trade deficit was irrelevant to the process either.
Even if you believe that China's output is now approaching parity with the US (46 percent is nearly equal on the long term graph), is it not reasonable to ask at what point they're going to start buying some of our stuff in return?
Or if they're not going to spend their dollars with us, the least they could do is let their own currency valuation happen in open markets.
Re: US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent
#8A lot of people don't understand this. I'm an English grad student, and one of my more, uh, politically-minded professors said in a seminar that the U.S. doesn't manufacture anything anymore. I sent him this e-mail: When I mentioned the bit about the U.S. continuing to manufacture a lot of stuff, I wasn't just trying to be a pain, as it's actually true; see Dept. of Labor Data on the subject here: http://research.stl…
It's not necessarily good though. A multi-billion $ weapons system built in America for the US taxpayer, even if it is never deployed or even abandoned, counts as a $Bn manufacturing output.
As a famous economist said - from a GDP point of view the ideal person is someone undergoing cancer treatment during an expensive divorce
Re: US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent
#9"Measured in constant dollars, America’s manufacturing output today is more than double what it was in the early 1970s." What's a 'constant dollar'? Is that nominal or inflation-adjusted? Over that timespan the two could mean very different things.
"Constant dollars" = inflation-adjusted.
However that raises the larger question of whether these inflation-adjustments are accurate.
Re: US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent
#10I was reading about how the US now considers McDonalds hamburgers to be part of US manufacturing output, whereas in the past that was credited as service since it was a restaurant.
So we must ask. Does the claim made by boston.com include hamburgers?