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I hate this "America is losing greatness from losing manufacturing" argument. Our citizens don't want to work in manufacturing, and the Chinese (and other fore

I hate this "America is losing greatness from losing manufacturing" argument. Our citizens don't want to work in manufacturing, and the Chinese (and other foreign citizens) are willing to do it for less. Sure, why not, they deserve it! The world would improve if we stopped thinking in a "us-vs-them" nationalist way. Think in a global way!: * We're helping Chinese farmers get out of abject poverty into a slightly better situation. * We're improving their economy * We're making cheaper goods for Americans & other developed countries, which means that it will be accessible to poorer people (which is a good thing!) * The company will gain more profit and be able to make more innovative toys for us! If we want to go down the nationalist root, then why don't we just outlaw imports all together? Or at least pass some protectionist tariffs? If we did that, with the foolish misconception that it would help our economy, we would goad other countries into passing tariffs, and the whole world economy would hurt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act The Smoot-Hawley Tariff provoked that kind of response and was a key factor in creating the Great Depression.

rbanffy 15y ago
But, then, why would they need you? All you end up with are companies that can't make stuff competing against companies that can.
- civilian 15y ago
  China is making 'stuff' but they're not developing ideas or creating the software. Our strength is in management, finance, design and software development. I don't think we should shed any tears for a lost manufacturing industry-- hopefully it'll encourage more people to pursue these more intellectual careers.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    > Our strength is in management, finance, design and software development. Why do you think it would be hard for them to develop those strengths? What if those strengths derive from having a strong manufacturing base? As their own consumption rises, local companies have a much better chance to design products tailored to the needs of their own expanding markets, effectively expanding them further. And, as for software development, you'd be surprised by how much is developed outside the US.
  - jsavimbi 15y ago
    To look at the loss of manufacturing as an American industry while pretending that is was solely populated by those who chose less intellectual careers on the plant floor is to overlook the fact that manufacturing, coupled with our great land expanse and growing population, was the prime enabler for the pursuit of intellectual careers since the 1930's. Most, if not all of the business practices you'll learn today in a renowned university were conceived in the laboratories of American industry. Universities were founded with the whole purpose of providing trained managers and researchers to the manufacturing industries. Unfortunately, those highly educated and trained managers failed to see that the American success story was industry itself, not their ability to make manufacturing cheaper overseas. The consequences are more than apparent. Managers have to slave to meet Wall Street's predictions and goals, hard working people have to choose a career between writing software, selling financial products, providing healthcare services or working in a derivative position of such in order to make a decent living, and those who choose the higher intellectual pursuits, well, they get to choose whether to offer you paper or plastic at the checkout counter. Sadly, those who lack a strong educational background or the finances to improve upon it will be further sidelined and alienated from the growth economy and be forced to compete for continuously devaluated and scarcer positions while being forced to hand their pay over to the few companies that can compete in a global economy. And allowing them to buy cheap flatscreens at a super warehouse is not going to vent their frustration.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      On the whole, the people who lost the American factory jobs are still vastly better off than the significantly larger cohort of Chinese rural poor that ended up with those jobs. There's probably a lot of worthwhile policy steps we can take to help American ex-factory workers, but reclaiming the factories needn't be one of them. Factories may be a dead end.
      - rbanffy 15y ago
        You have to find another way to generate value. That can end up being hard if the research attached to the manufacturing operation gets behind the competition.
  - joe_the_user 15y ago
    Our strength is in management, finance, design and software development. So that means that the 90% of the population that doesn't work in these fields is going to be out of luck? Well, looking around I suppose it does. Uh, and there's plenty of software and finance back-office moving to India. A policy that plays primarily to a "strength" which encompasses only a small portion of the population ... well obviously primarily going to benefit that portion.
  - wpietri 15y ago
    > China is making 'stuff' but they're not developing ideas or creating the software. For now. Innovation requires two sorts of deep understanding: what people need, and what one can create. We are losing the latter, because much of the creation has gone elsewhere. A lot of Apple's design power comes because they're still deeply involved with the million physical details most companies now ignore. Software for the US market may be a defensible competency, because we understand both medium and need. But there's little reason to expect that most of China's software will come from the US; they're developing the capability, and understand their needs much better. Remember, to get China to send us the stuff, we need to send them something in exchange. Right now for every $1 of goods we send them, they give us $3.5 back. That's not sustainable.
  - DougBTX 15y ago
    http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/20/194236/Genome-Researchers-Wants-Your-Genes http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/20/194236/Genome-Res... Not developing ideas, you say?
    - nkassis 15y ago
      They will need genomic, health research that target their populations anyway. That's enough to occupy them for a while. What I don't seen in these discussion is the fact that I feel soon, Asia will want things for itself and that's a huge amount of people to serve. They will be busy making goods for them and that should drive up labor costs and help make the US labor look cheaper for US companies.
  - coliveira 15y ago
    So, you're assuming that in our country everyone wants to work in one of these industries... but what if you don't want to pursue an intellectual career? More interesting, what if you don't have the education for pursuing such career paths? This is the biggest problem for Americans today. Most Americans have low quality schools that cannot prepare for career paths in Engineering and Science. Most of the Engineering labor in the US comes from abroad, either via American universities of the H1B Visa program. What is left for most US citizens educated in this country?
- dctoedt 15y ago
  As China and India make more money, their workers will start demanding a bigger piece of the pie (we're already seeing this). Their prices will go up, meaning that, by comparison, U.S. workers will start to be a bit more competitive. I've also seen reports that offshoring customers have been bringing back some of their work to the U.S., sometimes because of poor quality but also for tighter coupling and shorter response times.
larsberg 15y ago
> Our citizens don't want to work in manufacturing Not true among those to whom college is not attractive. There is a group of Americans that would like a semi-skilled labor job that affords them a middle class lifestyle. I grew up in an area primarily populated with people like that, and while all of my friends are now of the BS/MS/PhD crowd, there is a huge set of people who now go on to college not because they want to but because they don't know what else they can do. Unless they are lucky enough to know somebody who can get them in as an apprentice at a union.
- tptacek 15y ago
  Those people don't want the lifestyle afforded to Chinese factory workers, but the fact is that this lifestyle is an improvement for the vast rural Chinese underclass; this argument comes dangerously close to suggesting that we should further impoverish millions of people to improve the lot of tens of thousands of Americans. It seems to be a simple fact that the US is structurally disadvantaged in electronics manufacturing.
  - larsberg 15y ago
    > this argument comes dangerously close to suggesting that we should further impoverish I apologize if my comment came across as suggesting a course of action. I'm merely commenting on the original commenter's assertion that Americans do not want manufacturing jobs. I have personally found that to be untrue, even if the job that they wish to have might not be possible here because of economic and/or regulatory reasons.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      I just think you have to be careful not to conflate. Americans are willing to work in manufacturing; that's obviously easy to see. They are not willing to work for Chinese manufacturing compensation, even after you correct for environmental impact and shipping costs. If manufacturing simply can't pay what an American worker needs to make, their willingness to work in factories isn't relevant, is it?
  - 15y ago
martinkallstrom 15y ago
I might be wrong, but I actually don't think it is as simple as that. Yes, it is detrimental with a too strong us-vs-them sentiment. But it is also true that the world is better off when every individual state is in good shape. The author of the article argues that the ability to innovate within an industry niche disappears with the manufacturing. Correct or not, the problem they are pointing out is not that manufacturing is disappearing but that all capacity for intellectual development goes with it. I'm all for balance, but I don't think the right way to achieve it is to cripple the stronger side of the scale.
wpietri 15y ago
> Our citizens don't want to work in manufacturing. Bullshit. Just a couple weeks ago I was talking with some people who have a family manufacturing business. They love it. Their employees love it. Their son wants to keep the business going. Further, even if a lot of people wouldn't ask for a manufacturing job as their first choice, quite a lot of them would prefer it to unemployment, or a minimum wage customer service job, or cleaning executives' houses. For a lot of people, making actual stuff is very satisfying. I really enjoyed my summer factory jobs, and I'm lucky that I happened to love making software more.
- dotBen 15y ago
  For a lot of people, making actual stuff is very satisfying Yes but "manufacturing" can mean all kinds of work, and you've not elaborated as to what your friend's family manufacturing business actually makes. With the type of high-tech electronics manufacturing the original article is talking about no one actually 'makes' anything - it's watching lines of machinery print circuit boards and solder chips onto them. That's very different to, say, a mom-n-pop US-based hand-made toy manufacturer where people are genuinely crafting something.
gautamc 15y ago
==> Is it implied that since the average American doesn't like some work, America is being afforded a chance to uplift "Chinese farmers" and whole bunch of other poor people? Is it? ==> Isn't such a thought ridiculous? Such a thought, I think implies that the global economy is a kind of a neo-socialist+charitable-capitalistic kitchen whose main aim is to feed the poor and in the process fatten some of them more than the others. Is it? ==> I think that the right question to ask is not if - Amazon Can Make A Kindle In the USA? The right question should be - Is the Amazon Kindle manufacturing ecosystem truly balanced? - If not, then in the long run some parts of the ecosystem will be eliminated, so that the ecosystem finds a balance. ==> Different regions have different geographic/social/economic environments and will be better suited for some kind of work than other regions. One can not ignore these facts. But, does amazon have a real stake in the companies that make the Kindle China/Korea? I think not. Isn't there an imbalance between what these companies gain, in terms of ability, from this ecosystem and what the rest of the ecosystem (Amazon/American) gets back? I dont think american companies have a stake in the Chinese/Korean companies/economies that they outsource to. In return they give you low cost electronics - in process building the largest reserves of dollars in the world and building the ability to innovate themselves in the long run. ==> I wonder how digium works though? http://www.digium.com http://www.digium.com ==> There is no point in being crazy nationalist. But I don't understand why a nation with such a huge continent can't find a place where it can build a manufacturing hub that can participate in the global manufacturing industry. The country has enough people to enable a volunteer military, but for some reason can't find people who can build a manufacturing hub? even if this was the case - haven't immigrants signed up before?
coliveira 15y ago
The argument of "jobs America doesn't want" is completely false. You are assuming that all jobs in manufacturing are $10/day jobs that only poor Chinese people may want. While there are many under payed workers, attached to these industries are thousands of high paying jobs that become part of the manufacturing environment: managers, engineers, service people, and entrepreneurs that participate in the supply chain. For China, while it is convenient to have a large population base that works on $10/day, the goal is to create a middle class that manages these people and eventually creates new companies, while at the same time making way much more money.

rbanffy 15y ago

But, then, why would they need you? All you end up with are companies that can't make stuff competing against companies that can.

civilian 15y ago
China is making 'stuff' but they're not developing ideas or creating the software. Our strength is in management, finance, design and software development. I don't think we should shed any tears for a lost manufacturing industry-- hopefully it'll encourage more people to pursue these more intellectual careers.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > Our strength is in management, finance, design and software development. Why do you think it would be hard for them to develop those strengths? What if those strengths derive from having a strong manufacturing base? As their own consumption rises, local companies have a much better chance to design products tailored to the needs of their own expanding markets, effectively expanding them further. And, as for software development, you'd be surprised by how much is developed outside the US.
- jsavimbi 15y ago
  To look at the loss of manufacturing as an American industry while pretending that is was solely populated by those who chose less intellectual careers on the plant floor is to overlook the fact that manufacturing, coupled with our great land expanse and growing population, was the prime enabler for the pursuit of intellectual careers since the 1930's. Most, if not all of the business practices you'll learn today in a renowned university were conceived in the laboratories of American industry. Universities were founded with the whole purpose of providing trained managers and researchers to the manufacturing industries. Unfortunately, those highly educated and trained managers failed to see that the American success story was industry itself, not their ability to make manufacturing cheaper overseas. The consequences are more than apparent. Managers have to slave to meet Wall Street's predictions and goals, hard working people have to choose a career between writing software, selling financial products, providing healthcare services or working in a derivative position of such in order to make a decent living, and those who choose the higher intellectual pursuits, well, they get to choose whether to offer you paper or plastic at the checkout counter. Sadly, those who lack a strong educational background or the finances to improve upon it will be further sidelined and alienated from the growth economy and be forced to compete for continuously devaluated and scarcer positions while being forced to hand their pay over to the few companies that can compete in a global economy. And allowing them to buy cheap flatscreens at a super warehouse is not going to vent their frustration.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    On the whole, the people who lost the American factory jobs are still vastly better off than the significantly larger cohort of Chinese rural poor that ended up with those jobs. There's probably a lot of worthwhile policy steps we can take to help American ex-factory workers, but reclaiming the factories needn't be one of them. Factories may be a dead end.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      You have to find another way to generate value. That can end up being hard if the research attached to the manufacturing operation gets behind the competition.
- joe_the_user 15y ago
  Our strength is in management, finance, design and software development. So that means that the 90% of the population that doesn't work in these fields is going to be out of luck? Well, looking around I suppose it does. Uh, and there's plenty of software and finance back-office moving to India. A policy that plays primarily to a "strength" which encompasses only a small portion of the population ... well obviously primarily going to benefit that portion.
- wpietri 15y ago
  > China is making 'stuff' but they're not developing ideas or creating the software. For now. Innovation requires two sorts of deep understanding: what people need, and what one can create. We are losing the latter, because much of the creation has gone elsewhere. A lot of Apple's design power comes because they're still deeply involved with the million physical details most companies now ignore. Software for the US market may be a defensible competency, because we understand both medium and need. But there's little reason to expect that most of China's software will come from the US; they're developing the capability, and understand their needs much better. Remember, to get China to send us the stuff, we need to send them something in exchange. Right now for every $1 of goods we send them, they give us $3.5 back. That's not sustainable.
- DougBTX 15y ago
  http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/20/194236/Genome-Researchers-Wants-Your-Genes http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/20/194236/Genome-Res... Not developing ideas, you say?
  - nkassis 15y ago
    They will need genomic, health research that target their populations anyway. That's enough to occupy them for a while. What I don't seen in these discussion is the fact that I feel soon, Asia will want things for itself and that's a huge amount of people to serve. They will be busy making goods for them and that should drive up labor costs and help make the US labor look cheaper for US companies.
- coliveira 15y ago
  So, you're assuming that in our country everyone wants to work in one of these industries... but what if you don't want to pursue an intellectual career? More interesting, what if you don't have the education for pursuing such career paths? This is the biggest problem for Americans today. Most Americans have low quality schools that cannot prepare for career paths in Engineering and Science. Most of the Engineering labor in the US comes from abroad, either via American universities of the H1B Visa program. What is left for most US citizens educated in this country?
dctoedt 15y ago
As China and India make more money, their workers will start demanding a bigger piece of the pie (we're already seeing this). Their prices will go up, meaning that, by comparison, U.S. workers will start to be a bit more competitive. I've also seen reports that offshoring customers have been bringing back some of their work to the U.S., sometimes because of poor quality but also for tighter coupling and shorter response times.

larsberg 15y ago

> Our citizens don't want to work in manufacturing Not true among those to whom college is not attractive. There is a group of Americans that would like a semi-skilled labor job that affords them a middle class lifestyle. I grew up in an area primarily populated with people like that, and while all of my friends are now of the BS/MS/PhD crowd, there is a huge set of people who now go on to college not because they want to but because they don't know what else they can do. Unless they are lucky enough to know somebody who can get them in as an apprentice at a union.

tptacek 15y ago
Those people don't want the lifestyle afforded to Chinese factory workers, but the fact is that this lifestyle is an improvement for the vast rural Chinese underclass; this argument comes dangerously close to suggesting that we should further impoverish millions of people to improve the lot of tens of thousands of Americans. It seems to be a simple fact that the US is structurally disadvantaged in electronics manufacturing.
- larsberg 15y ago
  > this argument comes dangerously close to suggesting that we should further impoverish I apologize if my comment came across as suggesting a course of action. I'm merely commenting on the original commenter's assertion that Americans do not want manufacturing jobs. I have personally found that to be untrue, even if the job that they wish to have might not be possible here because of economic and/or regulatory reasons.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    I just think you have to be careful not to conflate. Americans are willing to work in manufacturing; that's obviously easy to see. They are not willing to work for Chinese manufacturing compensation, even after you correct for environmental impact and shipping costs. If manufacturing simply can't pay what an American worker needs to make, their willingness to work in factories isn't relevant, is it?
- 15y ago

martinkallstrom 15y ago

I might be wrong, but I actually don't think it is as simple as that. Yes, it is detrimental with a too strong us-vs-them sentiment. But it is also true that the world is better off when every individual state is in good shape. The author of the article argues that the ability to innovate within an industry niche disappears with the manufacturing. Correct or not, the problem they are pointing out is not that manufacturing is disappearing but that all capacity for intellectual development goes with it. I'm all for balance, but I don't think the right way to achieve it is to cripple the stronger side of the scale.

wpietri 15y ago

> Our citizens don't want to work in manufacturing. Bullshit. Just a couple weeks ago I was talking with some people who have a family manufacturing business. They love it. Their employees love it. Their son wants to keep the business going. Further, even if a lot of people wouldn't ask for a manufacturing job as their first choice, quite a lot of them would prefer it to unemployment, or a minimum wage customer service job, or cleaning executives' houses. For a lot of people, making actual stuff is very satisfying. I really enjoyed my summer factory jobs, and I'm lucky that I happened to love making software more.

dotBen 15y ago
For a lot of people, making actual stuff is very satisfying Yes but "manufacturing" can mean all kinds of work, and you've not elaborated as to what your friend's family manufacturing business actually makes. With the type of high-tech electronics manufacturing the original article is talking about no one actually 'makes' anything - it's watching lines of machinery print circuit boards and solder chips onto them. That's very different to, say, a mom-n-pop US-based hand-made toy manufacturer where people are genuinely crafting something.

gautamc 15y ago

==> Is it implied that since the average American doesn't like some work, America is being afforded a chance to uplift "Chinese farmers" and whole bunch of other poor people? Is it? ==> Isn't such a thought ridiculous? Such a thought, I think implies that the global economy is a kind of a neo-socialist+charitable-capitalistic kitchen whose main aim is to feed the poor and in the process fatten some of them more than the others. Is it? ==> I think that the right question to ask is not if - Amazon Can Make A Kindle In the USA? The right question should be - Is the Amazon Kindle manufacturing ecosystem truly balanced? - If not, then in the long run some parts of the ecosystem will be eliminated, so that the ecosystem finds a balance. ==> Different regions have different geographic/social/economic environments and will be better suited for some kind of work than other regions. One can not ignore these facts. But, does amazon have a real stake in the companies that make the Kindle China/Korea? I think not. Isn't there an imbalance between what these companies gain, in terms of ability, from this ecosystem and what the rest of the ecosystem (Amazon/American) gets back? I dont think american companies have a stake in the Chinese/Korean companies/economies that they outsource to. In return they give you low cost electronics - in process building the largest reserves of dollars in the world and building the ability to innovate themselves in the long run. ==> I wonder how digium works though? http://www.digium.com http://www.digium.com ==> There is no point in being crazy nationalist. But I don't understand why a nation with such a huge continent can't find a place where it can build a manufacturing hub that can participate in the global manufacturing industry. The country has enough people to enable a volunteer military, but for some reason can't find people who can build a manufacturing hub? even if this was the case - haven't immigrants signed up before?

coliveira 15y ago

The argument of "jobs America doesn't want" is completely false. You are assuming that all jobs in manufacturing are $10/day jobs that only poor Chinese people may want. While there are many under payed workers, attached to these industries are thousands of high paying jobs that become part of the manufacturing environment: managers, engineers, service people, and entrepreneurs that participate in the supply chain. For China, while it is convenient to have a large population base that works on $10/day, the goal is to create a middle class that manages these people and eventually creates new companies, while at the same time making way much more money.