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AT&T was broken up in 1982. Our manufacturing peaked around 1990 and what really pushed it downward was China joining the WTO. We also halted a lot of fab const
by spamizbad 2y ago
AT&T was broken up in 1982. Our manufacturing peaked around 1990 and what really pushed it downward was China joining the WTO. We also halted a lot of fab construction domestically after the GFC of '08.
- tonymet 2y agothe *case started in 1973 and was threatened for almost a decade beforehand. That put the entire industry on edge.
- PaulHoule 2y agoTo the contrary AT&T proved itself incapable of delivering end-to-end innovation. Sure it lowered the cost of intercity links for long-distance calls dramatically but couldn’t pass savings on to the consumer. Picturephone was a technical tour de force but demonstrated AT&T couldn’t deliver new services other than little things like call waiting and caller id. Notably high profits from long-distance dialup calls kept online services stuck at 2400 bps for most of the 1980s. Futurists circa 1960-1970 thought online services were going to become widespread about 15 years than they really did and AT&T was the #1 thing to blame.
- tonymet 1y agoBell Labs?
- vkou 2y agoThis is an interesting theory, but US manufacturing output actually peaked ~2022-2024. US wages paid to manufacturing jobs are going down year-over-year, because of automation, and, uh, other factors. But the amount of products that are produced has grown year over year... Or was growing, until waves at everything in 2025.