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Title: Made in the USA
Source:
Boston Globe
URL Source: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/e ... es/2011/02/06/made_in_the_usa/
Published: Feb 11, 2011
Author: Jeff Jacoby
Post Date: 2011-02-11 16:34:18 by jwpegler
Keywords: None
Views: 5558
Comments: 7
IN ECONOMICS as in apparel, most fashions come and go. But like the navy blazer or the little black dress, bewailing the decline of American manufacturing never seems to go out of style. Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back.’’ So sang Bruce Springsteen in “My Hometown,’’ a hit song from his 1984 album, “Born in the U.S.A.’’ More than a quarter-century later, that sentiment (if not the song) is as popular as ever. “You know, we don’t manufacture anything anymore in this country,’’ says Donald Trump in an interview with CNNMoney. “We do health care; we do lots of different services. But . . . everything is made in China, for the most part.’’ The Donald has his idiosyncrasies, but on this issue he is squarely in the mainstream. A recent Heartland Monitor survey finds “clear anxiety about the decades-long employment shift away from manufacturing to service jobs,’’ National Journal’s Ron Brownstein reported in December. The “decline of US manufacturing’’ is giving Americans a “sense of economic precariousness’’ — only one in five believe that the United States has the world’s strongest economy, versus nearly half who think China is in the lead. “Near the root of the unease for many of those polled is the worry that the United States no longer makes enough stuff.’’ When asked why US manufacturing jobs have declined, 58 percent cite off-shoring by American companies to take advantage of lower labor costs. There’s just one problem with all the gloom and doom about American manufacturing. It’s wrong. Americans make more “stuff’’ than any other nation on earth, and by a wide margin. According to the United Nations’ comprehensive database of international economic data, America’s manufacturing output in 2009 (expressed in constant 2005 dollars) was $2.15 trillion. That surpassed China’s output of $1.48 trillion by nearly 46 percent. China’s industries may be booming, but the United States still accounted for 20 percent of the world’s manufacturing output in 2009 — only a hair below its 1990 share of 21 percent. “The decline, demise, and death of America’s manufacturing sector has been greatly exaggerated,’’ says economist Mark Perry, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “America still makes a ton of stuff, and we make more of it now than ever before in history.’’ In fact, Americans manufactured more goods in 2009 than the Japanese, Germans, British, and Italians — combined. American manufacturing output hits a new high almost every year. US industries are powerhouses of production: Measured in constant dollars, America’s manufacturing output today is more than double what it was in the early 1970s. So why do so many Americans fear that the Chinese are eating our lunch? Part of the reason is that fewer Americans work in factories. Millions of industrial jobs have vanished in recent decades, and there is no denying the hardship and stress that has meant for many families. But factory employment has declined because factory productivity has so dramatically skyrocketed: Revolutions in technology enable an American worker today to produce far more than his counterpart did a generation ago. Consequently, even as America’s manufacturing sector out-produces every other country on earth, millions of young Americans can aspire to become not factory hands or assembly workers, but doctors and lawyers, architects and engineers. Perceptions also feed the gloom and doom. In its story on Americans’ economic anxiety, National Journal quotes a Florida teacher who says, “It seems like everything I pick up says ‘Made in China’ on it.’’ To someone shopping for toys, shoes, or sporting equipment, it often can seem that way. But that’s because Chinese factories tend to specialize in low-tech, labor-intensive goods — items that typically don’t require the more advanced and sophisticated manufacturing capabilities of modern American plants. A vast amount of “stuff’’ is still made in the USA, albeit not the inexpensive consumer goods that fill the shelves in Target or Walgreens. American factories make fighter jets and air conditioners, automobiles and pharmaceuticals, industrial lathes and semiconductors. Not the sort of things on your weekly shopping list? Maybe not. But that doesn’t change economic reality. They may have “clos[ed] down the textile mill across the railroad tracks.’’ But America’s manufacturing glory is far from a thing of the past.
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#1. To: jwpegler (#0)
(Edited)
There is the BS of the story - pushed by those free trade traitors at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. If you include in "manufacturing" coal mining and other mining as well as manufacturing of "electricity" then America does look like it still in the manufacturing game. But the mountains of empty containers from China that are imported and are not re-exported because America produces no goods for export that can fill them tell the true story. Importing more than you export means lots of empty containers. That visual manifestation of our trade deficit is what drivers see as they pass the Port of New York and New Jersey on the New Jersey Turnpike. In the first eight months of 2010, the port saw the equivalent of 700,000 more full 20-foot containers enter than leave. 45% of containers exported from port operator APM Terminals’ Port Elizabeth facility (part of the Port of New York and New Jersey) are empty, a reflection of the trade imbalance.
"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
U.S. Corporations are doing more job making abroad not because they have to, but to humiliate and dis-empower the American worker and to destroy unions in general. We need to punish these corporations by removing any tax breaks and bringing sanctions against them for this Machiavellian attitude they have.
Why do you allow yourself to be fooled by people who are from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. It is like you want to desperately believe them and thus maintain some sort of narrative about your image of America linked to your self worth? It is clear to me you want to be lied to. Manufacturing figures cited include electricity/power utility generation. So it skews the numbers. Here is an example from the UK: "Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.
Wrong again bozo. China produces almost three time as much coal as the U.S. The People's Republic of China is by far the largest producer of coal in the world, producing over 2.8 billion tons of coal in 2007, or approximately 39.8 percent of all coal produced in the world during that year.[11] For comparison, the second largest producer, the United States, produced more than 1.1 billion tons in 2007. China also produces 83% of the electricity as the U.S. It's the Chinese manufacturing numbers that are overstated. You propagandize. I state facts. You need to stop embarrassing yourself like this.
The socialist assholes have no sense of integrity. Bottom line: they're incapable of shame.
Socialist ass-hats think "There will be no more money when the U.S. dollar has no value, until that time we can keep printing more." And yes, that IS from LF's answer to Ben Bernanke, go65, leading disfunctional and delusional socialist of the forum. "You want me to kill THE ENEMIES of Jappos, I'll kill THE ENEMIES of Jappos, Rebs, or Sioux, or Cheyenne... For 500 bucks a month I'll kill whoever you want. But keep one thing in mind: I'd happily kill you for free." Algren, "The Last Samurai" They are incapable of independent thought and analysis too.
No, Americans make more high ticket items than any other nation.
“The decline, demise, and death of America’s manufacturing sector has been greatly exaggerated,’’ says economist Mark Perry, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington
#2. To: Godwinson (#1)
#3. To: jwpegler (#0)
“The decline, demise, and death of America’s manufacturing sector has been greatly exaggerated,’’ says economist Mark Perry, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington
#4. To: Godwinson (#1)
(Edited)
If you include in "manufacturing" coal mining and other mining as well as manufacturing of "electricity" then America does look like it still in the manufacturing game.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."-- Charles Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office, 1899
#5. To: jwpegler (#4)
#6. To: Capitalist Eric (#5)
The socialist assholes have no sense of integrity. Bottom line: they're incapable of shame.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."-- Charles Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office, 1899
#7. To: jwpegler (#0)
Americans make more “stuff’’ than any other nation on earth, and by a wide margin.
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