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If USA wants to become a strong "manufacturing" country again, it needs to become a leader in the robot workforce revolution, too. You are more right than you

If USA wants to become a strong "manufacturing" country again, it needs to become a leader in the robot workforce revolution, too. You are more right than you know. This sentence is ten years or more out of date. I don't blame you for writing this sentence, because journalism is nigh-100%-broken and absolutely nobody understands the following facts. But: The USA is and has been a "strong manufacturing country". US industrial capacity has risen steadily since 1970. Until this last recession started, there was no year since 1970 where that capacity had gone down: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ipg1.gif http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ipg1.gif http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ (The Great Recession is, obviously, a problem, one large enough to show up on this chart. But it's a problem for China and other countries as well.) The problem is that US manufacturing employment has crashed. Here's a chart showing a 30% drop in the last decade alone: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001?data_tool=XGtable http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001?data_tool=XGtab... Why is this happening? Increased productivity. Why has productivity soared in this way? "The robot workforce revolution". And why do people persist in maintaining that US manufacturing is "not strong" in the face of very obvious evidence that it is strong? Because there is mass suffering due to mass unemployment, and it is easier to blame "robots" than to blame the humans that mismanage the economy and allow needless suffering to persist.

ciupicri 15y ago
And why do people persist in maintaining that US manufacturing is "not strong" in the face of very obvious evidence that it is strong? Because a lot of today's stuff, e.g. iPhones, LCD monitors are made in China.
- hugh3 15y ago
  It's largely sampling bias, though. It seems to us, as regular consumers, that everything is made in China because we buy phones and monitors, but we never buy steel girders and Boeing 777s.
  - mechanical_fish 15y ago
    Indeed, by definition people in the USA don't buy exported goods. And speaking as someone who used to work in the business of building electronics parts in the USA, parts that were then sent to Malaysia for final assembly: Lots of things undergo final assembly overseas because that's one of the least automatable manufacturing processes, so you save a lot of money on hand-assembly by paying lower prices for workers. But that doesn't mean that all the parts of your "made in China" goods - or of the machines that are used to make them - are made overseas. And as Apple's accountants will tell you the profits are not in the assembly step. For example, lots of machines with "Intel inside" are assembled abroad, but the processors are made in the USA - largely by robots - and a lot of the value is in those processors.

ciupicri 15y ago

And why do people persist in maintaining that US manufacturing is "not strong" in the face of very obvious evidence that it is strong? Because a lot of today's stuff, e.g. iPhones, LCD monitors are made in China.

hugh3 15y ago
It's largely sampling bias, though. It seems to us, as regular consumers, that everything is made in China because we buy phones and monitors, but we never buy steel girders and Boeing 777s.
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  Indeed, by definition people in the USA don't buy exported goods. And speaking as someone who used to work in the business of building electronics parts in the USA, parts that were then sent to Malaysia for final assembly: Lots of things undergo final assembly overseas because that's one of the least automatable manufacturing processes, so you save a lot of money on hand-assembly by paying lower prices for workers. But that doesn't mean that all the parts of your "made in China" goods - or of the machines that are used to make them - are made overseas. And as Apple's accountants will tell you the profits are not in the assembly step. For example, lots of machines with "Intel inside" are assembled abroad, but the processors are made in the USA - largely by robots - and a lot of the value is in those processors.