Yeah I don’t agree with any of this. I find it really fascinating that, after WWII, the US finds itself in this self-imposed fatalism where we can “never” compete with the rest of the world on manufacturing because of labor costs. It’s also a little odd because in multiple threads at a near daily pace I see people advocating that we explicitly cut back on consumption spending for environmental reasons (reasons I find very compelling). China is also one of the, if not the, world’s biggest polluter.
The Apple example is a good one, but, again, I find it very hard to believe that an 80% (or hell even 90%) automated manufacturing footprint here in the US is a) infeasible and/or b) undesirable relative to the status quo.
I’m tired of the fatalism about this issue. It’s pathetic and signals that America is near collapse if we are essentially just giving up on our industrial base and willing to be reliant on cheap consumer goods from China.
The US isn't near collapse at all. The postwar era and the fact that the US is the primary consumer of global goods is a different way of saying that the US is one of the most prosperous countries on the planet.
The US could compete with foreign countries on manufacturing, but not through human labour unless you want Americans to work 9/9/6 in hazardous conditions and under environmental degradation. The dematerialisation of the US economy has made it cleaner, more energy-efficient, less physically demanding, and richer, because it extracts value from its global IP, and it has given Chinese workers a step up the ladder to prosperity. If manufacturing is coming back its in the form of robots, and that does very little for displaced workers.
There is no reason for fatalism because the premise is all wrong that deindustrialisation is bad. It's not. The problem the US has is a cultural one where the vision of the Ford company man working the same job at the conveyor belt with a dog and car and a house in the suburbs hasn't been updated. Adjust the political system to compensate the segments of the population that lose out, find different ways to provide meaningful work, and we'll be better off, instead of making everyone worse off.
“We consume a lot of goods therefore we are prosperous.”
Utter nonsense. I implore you to actually hang out in, not just visit, these places that got blown up so that some companies could make some basis points on their quarterly returns.
It’s also amazing that you’re saying that the “cultural” hangings on about the mid 20th century are something to be readjusted. Dude, these people are not going to become firmware engineers at night school. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting what was a normal family life at that time to exist in 2019. If your claim is that that is not possible, then declare what sacrifices are required. Did globalism make this impossible?
The Apple example is a good one, but, again, I find it very hard to believe that an 80% (or hell even 90%) automated manufacturing footprint here in the US is a) infeasible and/or b) undesirable relative to the status quo.
I’m tired of the fatalism about this issue. It’s pathetic and signals that America is near collapse if we are essentially just giving up on our industrial base and willing to be reliant on cheap consumer goods from China.