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For better or for worse, the American model of working in the same paper mill/steel factory/automobile plant/coal mine that your father and grandfather worked a

For better or for worse, the American model of working in the same paper mill/steel factory/automobile plant/coal mine that your father and grandfather worked at is over. Automation, commodification, and globalization means that the profit margins in these fields are in free-fall and the ability to have the sorts of wages that these professions used to have where workers could be paid sufficient to support their families on a single salary are long gone and they are not coming back. The US should be focusing on decoupling the need to be able to survive (food, housing, healthcare) from holding a job instead of pushing for bringing back these jobs that are not likely to ever come back.

tyingq 6y ago
That's true, though it's interesting that many companies still talk and act like employees should be "loyal". They don't seem to understand how that worked.
- phone8675309 6y ago
  I cannot fathom being loyal to a company where they expect two weeks notice from me (at a bare minimum) if I'm leaving but where they don't have to give me two minutes notice before terminating me.
neutronicus 6y ago
I wouldn't conclude too much about the steady-state price of manufacturing labor based on the present global market. At the moment regional differences in the price of manufacturing labor are so large that corporations are basically labor market arbitrageurs. But arbitrage opportunities are by their nature kind of ephemeral, ending when the relevant markets stop mis-pricing things. Your POV seems to be that labor is correctly priced in the current cheapest labor market (the "Race to the Bottom" hypothesis) but I don't know that this is automatically true. It's at least possible that one can only arbitrage the price of labor in developing markets for so long until they develop and drive up the local price of labor, and until they are all developed. "The Jobs Ain't Comin' Back" is an appealing position for professional automators like us, because it lays the credit for manufacturing labor market dynamics at our own self-important feet, when in actuality it's shaped largely by brutally exploitative and probably transient (on the scale of decades, though) labor-price arbitrage. In particular the current manufacturing labor market artificially rewards centralization because the profit made by labor-price arbitrage is so large compared to shipping costs. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that manufacturing is either Sweatshops or Robots in the long run.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  The "Race to the bottom" will be ongoing for a long time. The nice thing about manufacturing for a middle-income economy is precisely its role as a stepping point to far higher productivity in services and high-skill sectors - this means that many developing economies will naturally tend to become manufacturing-intensive over time, even beyond the East- and South-East Asian countries that most observers focus on at the moment. The U.S. is supposed to be well beyond that point already.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Problem is most people are past that. China and India do have a few more poor people to take cheap low skill jobs, but overall cost of labor is going up in both countries and manufacturers are starting to look elsewhere. Problem is that elsewhere is countries with much less population so they will run out. It probably won't be in my lifetime, but my kids need to plan for the day when there isn't a cheap labor source waiting to tap. It will be a good problem to have (think about all the engineers making life better), but it will be a problem.
    - StillBored 6y ago
      I think its a bit like a game of hot potato, where the final manufacturing location will basically end up being a global power house for the next couple centuries. Which at the moment looks to be china, despite textiles trying to move to lower cost countries, the magnetic force of ongoing factory automation in china might pull them back. The US deindustrilized to early for any of these really to come back without some seriously focused "billionaire" class investors putting their money first (aka Musk).
      - bluGill 6y ago
        How much can we learn from each other? I work at a factory making things, we have locations around the world because our final products don't fit in a shipping container so local factories out compete global ones. That means that we have manufacturing experts scattered all over the world. We buy parts from all over and share knowledge. (expect China, we are careful what gets shared with China)

tyingq 6y ago

That's true, though it's interesting that many companies still talk and act like employees should be "loyal". They don't seem to understand how that worked.

phone8675309 6y ago
I cannot fathom being loyal to a company where they expect two weeks notice from me (at a bare minimum) if I'm leaving but where they don't have to give me two minutes notice before terminating me.

neutronicus 6y ago

I wouldn't conclude too much about the steady-state price of manufacturing labor based on the present global market. At the moment regional differences in the price of manufacturing labor are so large that corporations are basically labor market arbitrageurs. But arbitrage opportunities are by their nature kind of ephemeral, ending when the relevant markets stop mis-pricing things. Your POV seems to be that labor is correctly priced in the current cheapest labor market (the "Race to the Bottom" hypothesis) but I don't know that this is automatically true. It's at least possible that one can only arbitrage the price of labor in developing markets for so long until they develop and drive up the local price of labor, and until they are all developed. "The Jobs Ain't Comin' Back" is an appealing position for professional automators like us, because it lays the credit for manufacturing labor market dynamics at our own self-important feet, when in actuality it's shaped largely by brutally exploitative and probably transient (on the scale of decades, though) labor-price arbitrage. In particular the current manufacturing labor market artificially rewards centralization because the profit made by labor-price arbitrage is so large compared to shipping costs. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that manufacturing is either Sweatshops or Robots in the long run.

zozbot234 6y ago
The "Race to the bottom" will be ongoing for a long time. The nice thing about manufacturing for a middle-income economy is precisely its role as a stepping point to far higher productivity in services and high-skill sectors - this means that many developing economies will naturally tend to become manufacturing-intensive over time, even beyond the East- and South-East Asian countries that most observers focus on at the moment. The U.S. is supposed to be well beyond that point already.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Problem is most people are past that. China and India do have a few more poor people to take cheap low skill jobs, but overall cost of labor is going up in both countries and manufacturers are starting to look elsewhere. Problem is that elsewhere is countries with much less population so they will run out. It probably won't be in my lifetime, but my kids need to plan for the day when there isn't a cheap labor source waiting to tap. It will be a good problem to have (think about all the engineers making life better), but it will be a problem.
  - StillBored 6y ago
    I think its a bit like a game of hot potato, where the final manufacturing location will basically end up being a global power house for the next couple centuries. Which at the moment looks to be china, despite textiles trying to move to lower cost countries, the magnetic force of ongoing factory automation in china might pull them back. The US deindustrilized to early for any of these really to come back without some seriously focused "billionaire" class investors putting their money first (aka Musk).
    - bluGill 6y ago
      How much can we learn from each other? I work at a factory making things, we have locations around the world because our final products don't fit in a shipping container so local factories out compete global ones. That means that we have manufacturing experts scattered all over the world. We buy parts from all over and share knowledge. (expect China, we are careful what gets shared with China)