7 ms·

> Interestingly, it seems the US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization The US manufacturing share of real GDP has been pretty much unchanged since t

by jjcon 6y ago

> Interestingly, it seems the US is almost unique in our mass deindustrialization The US manufacturing share of real GDP has been pretty much unchanged since the 40s - ie it’s growth has kept up with the rest of the economy. https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/Blog/2017/April/BlogImage_ManuRealGDPShare_041117.jpg https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/Blog/2017/April/BlogImage...

chrisjarvis 6y ago
this image contradicts everything I've maybe ever heard about "American manufacturing"'s decline. Not saying the image is wrong, it's just impressive how much one segment of industry has been politicized.
- jjcon 6y ago
  I imagine a lot of it is due to automation - there are in fact less assembly line jobs than there were in the 40s but economically the sector has continued to grow.
  - varjag 6y ago
    Automation in the industry is a big lie, the degree of it since post-WW2 days (when most of modern mass production methods were perfected) is greatly overstated. It is mostly due to outsourcing the labor-intensive parts to cheaper labor markets. The hypothetical robots are people working elsewhere.
- jedberg 6y ago
  It's important to note that the number of manufacturing jobs has fallen significantly. Manufacturing has gotten way more efficient since the 40s, so a lot fewer people are necessary. That's why it's so politicized. Manufacturing is about 12% of GDP. That 12% used to go to a lot of people. Now it goes to the few people who own all the factories and the robots inside them.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    > Manufacturing has gotten way more efficient since the 40s, It's both yes or no for USA: 1. Fever businesses at all in the sector 2. USA has an extremely strong slant towards expensive capital goods, in very entrenchable industries: aerospace, defence, weapons, medical, industrial vehicles, and machinery 3. All of the above is increasingly made with imported, off the shelf parts 4. USA has "industrial" companies who manage to report giant manufacturing outputs in accounting statements, but known to not have a single running manufacturing plant.
    - treis 6y ago
      Do you have an example of 4?
      - AlphaSite 6y ago
        I don't think its quite that extreme, but Boeing, car companies etc all extremely large amounts of subcontracting.
  - chrisjarvis 6y ago
    thanks, that's important to note and definitely explains why it is politicized.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- coliveira 6y ago
  The US decided to get rid of all manufacturing that employed lots of people, so politically they would destroy the power of unions. Unlike other countries, American politicians have no shame about it.
  - jhallenworld 6y ago
    Also US companies were just cutting costs- de-powering unions was a happy bonus. Technology allowed it (transportation, communications and cheap energy). But also the government allowed it, because it's all controlled by corporations.
- brandonmenc 6y ago
  > it's just impressive how much one segment of industry has been politicized Job losses in manufacturing have sent millions of people from middle class to poverty in the span of a single generation. Manufacturing is also directly tied to national security, regardless of how many choose to ignore this. imo it hasn't been politicized enough.
ghostcluster 6y ago
Tell that to the industrial midwest. If you look at statistics of # factories in the US over time, in every size category, the number of factories is going down. Chip manufacturing is a special case as well. China is using massive state spending to build a competitive infrastructure in its country. Intel is the only competetive industrial chip fabrication presence in the US and should receive a similar focus from our leadership if we don't want to fully hollow-out the US' production capacity.
- coliveira 6y ago
  Do you mean throwing public money at a private company? How is that even doable in a capitalist country and why are Intel shareholders the ones blessed to receive free capital influx?
  - bgorman 6y ago
    National security. See Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrupp Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc...
    - mycall 6y ago
      Who make's their chips?
    - stainforth 6y ago
      To the detriment of humans elsewhere suffering the consequences of those weapons
      - bobmalone123 6y ago
        Like the burgers you flip that feed soldiers that shoot? The capitalist chain reaches every one. You are equally guilty then? Nonsense.
        minerjoe 6y ago
jbay808 6y ago
Wasn't this investigated and found to be a misleading statistic? For example: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-12/shares-of-real-gdp-don-t-give-the-real-story-of-manufacturing https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-12/shares... The graph in this article, from BEA data, shows that when you don't apply inflation tricks, manufacturing has dropped from 28% in the 50s to 12% today. And they're still factoring in adjustments due to the "increase in quality of computers", ie, one computer today is worth some large number of 1980s computers.
- jjcon 6y ago
  It depends on the context - yes the number of manufacturing jobs has decreased (important in one context) but the industry at the macroeconomic level has been growing (to about keep up with everything else) Also - when did accounting for inflation become a ‘trick’? No way you can look at nominal gdp on these time frames.
  - jbay808 6y ago
    Did you look at the article I linked? It's not really focused on the jobs aspect, on which the data is clear, but rather on the accounting, and in particular your graph which is always cited in these discussions. I would need to quote too long of an excerpt to make a full reply. Here's where the discussion starts though. > Real gross domestic product is GDP adjusted for inflation, which allows us to better measure and compare growth over time. If you're measuring and comparing different industries' shares of GDP over time, it's not immediately obvious why you would need to do such an inflation adjustment. The very act of dividing manufacturing's contribution to GDP in 1960 by overall GDP in 1960 does the inflation adjustment for you, given that both amounts are in 1960 dollars. > The BEA's remedy to the problem is to put up warnings against doing share-of-real-GDP calculations all over its website. It's worth reading the whole thing.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      Comparing manufacturing output between time periods doesn't make a lot sense. How many 1980s mainframes equals one iPhone? It's a woefully incomplete question if you goal is to reason about economic value/output. Computing is not particularly special in this respect... The manufacturing/services divide itself is a bit silly without careful attention, and I think is incredibly overplayed because "manufacturing" aligns with a bunch of other political/economic geography stuff. This is true everywhere, not just in computing where it's most obvious. Even agriculture in a lot of ways. By the time you apply all that careful attention, any sort of meaningful macro work becomes impossible. You're just doing a whole ton of little sector-by-sector analyses. And it gets worse if you start looking at the labor economics instead of just measuring output. It used to be that manufacturing-related services and the physical work of manufacturing were relatively coupled. The people working in the manufacturing plants more-or-less knew how all the equipment worked. That's not really at all the case anymore.
wokwokwok 6y ago
People love quoting this, but you’re just cherry picking. This has quite thoroughly been criticised in the past, repeatedly, for the way the data is adjusted.
tesseract 6y ago
"Manufacturing" as a business classification sometimes seems to include companies that are in the business of developing and selling manufactured products but don't own or operate any factories themselves and outsource the actual, well, manufacturing. In the semiconductor industry people talk about "fabless" companies as a category but there's not really an analogous shorthand for, say, a factory-less soap manufacturer. With that said, I wish stats like that were a little more clear about whether they mean that broader definition of the manufacturing industry, or if it is strictly the economic output of actual factories.

by jjcon 6y ago

chrisjarvis 6y ago

this image contradicts everything I've maybe ever heard about "American manufacturing"'s decline. Not saying the image is wrong, it's just impressive how much one segment of industry has been politicized.

jjcon 6y ago
I imagine a lot of it is due to automation - there are in fact less assembly line jobs than there were in the 40s but economically the sector has continued to grow.
- varjag 6y ago
  Automation in the industry is a big lie, the degree of it since post-WW2 days (when most of modern mass production methods were perfected) is greatly overstated. It is mostly due to outsourcing the labor-intensive parts to cheaper labor markets. The hypothetical robots are people working elsewhere.
jedberg 6y ago
It's important to note that the number of manufacturing jobs has fallen significantly. Manufacturing has gotten way more efficient since the 40s, so a lot fewer people are necessary. That's why it's so politicized. Manufacturing is about 12% of GDP. That 12% used to go to a lot of people. Now it goes to the few people who own all the factories and the robots inside them.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > Manufacturing has gotten way more efficient since the 40s, It's both yes or no for USA: 1. Fever businesses at all in the sector 2. USA has an extremely strong slant towards expensive capital goods, in very entrenchable industries: aerospace, defence, weapons, medical, industrial vehicles, and machinery 3. All of the above is increasingly made with imported, off the shelf parts 4. USA has "industrial" companies who manage to report giant manufacturing outputs in accounting statements, but known to not have a single running manufacturing plant.
  - treis 6y ago
    Do you have an example of 4?
    - AlphaSite 6y ago
      I don't think its quite that extreme, but Boeing, car companies etc all extremely large amounts of subcontracting.
- chrisjarvis 6y ago
  thanks, that's important to note and definitely explains why it is politicized.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
coliveira 6y ago
The US decided to get rid of all manufacturing that employed lots of people, so politically they would destroy the power of unions. Unlike other countries, American politicians have no shame about it.
- jhallenworld 6y ago
  Also US companies were just cutting costs- de-powering unions was a happy bonus. Technology allowed it (transportation, communications and cheap energy). But also the government allowed it, because it's all controlled by corporations.
brandonmenc 6y ago
> it's just impressive how much one segment of industry has been politicized Job losses in manufacturing have sent millions of people from middle class to poverty in the span of a single generation. Manufacturing is also directly tied to national security, regardless of how many choose to ignore this. imo it hasn't been politicized enough.

ghostcluster 6y ago

Tell that to the industrial midwest. If you look at statistics of # factories in the US over time, in every size category, the number of factories is going down. Chip manufacturing is a special case as well. China is using massive state spending to build a competitive infrastructure in its country. Intel is the only competetive industrial chip fabrication presence in the US and should receive a similar focus from our leadership if we don't want to fully hollow-out the US' production capacity.

coliveira 6y ago
Do you mean throwing public money at a private company? How is that even doable in a capitalist country and why are Intel shareholders the ones blessed to receive free capital influx?
- bgorman 6y ago
  National security. See Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrupp Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc...
  - mycall 6y ago
    Who make's their chips?
  - stainforth 6y ago
    To the detriment of humans elsewhere suffering the consequences of those weapons
    - bobmalone123 6y ago
      Like the burgers you flip that feed soldiers that shoot? The capitalist chain reaches every one. You are equally guilty then? Nonsense.
      - minerjoe 6y ago

jbay808 6y ago

Wasn't this investigated and found to be a misleading statistic? For example: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-12/shares-of-real-gdp-don-t-give-the-real-story-of-manufacturing https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-12/shares... The graph in this article, from BEA data, shows that when you don't apply inflation tricks, manufacturing has dropped from 28% in the 50s to 12% today. And they're still factoring in adjustments due to the "increase in quality of computers", ie, one computer today is worth some large number of 1980s computers.

jjcon 6y ago
It depends on the context - yes the number of manufacturing jobs has decreased (important in one context) but the industry at the macroeconomic level has been growing (to about keep up with everything else) Also - when did accounting for inflation become a ‘trick’? No way you can look at nominal gdp on these time frames.
- jbay808 6y ago
  Did you look at the article I linked? It's not really focused on the jobs aspect, on which the data is clear, but rather on the accounting, and in particular your graph which is always cited in these discussions. I would need to quote too long of an excerpt to make a full reply. Here's where the discussion starts though. > Real gross domestic product is GDP adjusted for inflation, which allows us to better measure and compare growth over time. If you're measuring and comparing different industries' shares of GDP over time, it's not immediately obvious why you would need to do such an inflation adjustment. The very act of dividing manufacturing's contribution to GDP in 1960 by overall GDP in 1960 does the inflation adjustment for you, given that both amounts are in 1960 dollars. > The BEA's remedy to the problem is to put up warnings against doing share-of-real-GDP calculations all over its website. It's worth reading the whole thing.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    Comparing manufacturing output between time periods doesn't make a lot sense. How many 1980s mainframes equals one iPhone? It's a woefully incomplete question if you goal is to reason about economic value/output. Computing is not particularly special in this respect... The manufacturing/services divide itself is a bit silly without careful attention, and I think is incredibly overplayed because "manufacturing" aligns with a bunch of other political/economic geography stuff. This is true everywhere, not just in computing where it's most obvious. Even agriculture in a lot of ways. By the time you apply all that careful attention, any sort of meaningful macro work becomes impossible. You're just doing a whole ton of little sector-by-sector analyses. And it gets worse if you start looking at the labor economics instead of just measuring output. It used to be that manufacturing-related services and the physical work of manufacturing were relatively coupled. The people working in the manufacturing plants more-or-less knew how all the equipment worked. That's not really at all the case anymore.

wokwokwok 6y ago

People love quoting this, but you’re just cherry picking. This has quite thoroughly been criticised in the past, repeatedly, for the way the data is adjusted.

tesseract 6y ago

"Manufacturing" as a business classification sometimes seems to include companies that are in the business of developing and selling manufactured products but don't own or operate any factories themselves and outsource the actual, well, manufacturing. In the semiconductor industry people talk about "fabless" companies as a category but there's not really an analogous shorthand for, say, a factory-less soap manufacturer. With that said, I wish stats like that were a little more clear about whether they mean that broader definition of the manufacturing industry, or if it is strictly the economic output of actual factories.