# American manufacturing is not dead. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 3, 2010, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-manufacturing-is-not-dead/531187 "2010-03-03T21:52:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-manufacturing-is-not-dead/531187/21 "2010-03-07T02:09:57Z")
> [@nilum](#): > > That could be one reason for Japan’s success when compared to the US. The Japanese have a debt-to-GDP ratio of over 150 percent, more than double the US level. They’re facing a demographic free fall, a shrinking population that is rapidly greying, which is putting a burden on their social services that their insufficiently numerous younger workers won’t be able to pay. Their economy still hadn’t entirely regained its vigor after the collapse of their own housing bubble in the 90s when they were hit with this newest crisis. Last I read, US productivity is about 20% greater than Japan per worker. And you call that success compared to the US? Were you by any chance stuck in a cryogenic chamber in 1988, and were just recently released? > [@nilum](#): > > 1. Socialize the Banking system. It lends out too much money and reduces the value of our currency and it gambles with our money on the stock market. A reader of this thread could likely develop a more sophisticated understanding about the US banking system after playing the boardgame Monopoly. > [@nilum](#): > > 1. Get rid of NAFTA and start collecting tariffs. The exporters of the world still want to sell to Americans, but the higher prices will encourage Americans to buy american goods… if there is a trend that Americans stop buying typically cheap products from other countries they might make the brakes in our cars work, or stop contaminating goods with lead. And now you’re advocating that we repeat the mistake of the Hawley-Smoot tariffs that helped contribute to the Great Depression. The damage of those tariffs has likely been overstated in the past–the primary problem of the Depression was the collapsing money supply–but there’s no controversy at all in professional circles that the tariffs contributed to the problem. Even very liberal economists fully acknowledge the importance of trade. ---
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-manufacturing-is-not-dead/531187/22 "2010-03-07T07:53:13Z")
are those graphs “value added” or “total sales”? You do realize that American manufacturing (including defense related one) is heavily dependent on imported components and the price of those components ends up written into the sales stats, right? Besides, note that even “value added” stats can be meaningless if sales are done through a corrupt, non-competitive process. When Chinese sell a computer for $300, that’s pretty obviously $300 of value. If it could be made and sold for cheaper, you will probably find a company that will do that. Now, when an American outfit sells $100M worth of military hardware to the Pentagon, how much of that money actually represents manufacturing work? How much represents the exorbitant salaries of lobbyists, managers, lawyers and “compliance specialists”? If Washington borrows $100 trillions and spends it all on a single American manufactured toilet seat for Air Force 1, would that mean that total American manufacturing has just produced $100 trillion worth of “value added”? More likely it would mean that lots of money was stolen and/or wasted and the statistics are not worth the paper they are written on, except for propaganda purposes. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-manufacturing-is-not-dead/531187/23 "2010-03-07T14:28:39Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Manufacturing may not be dead, but I don’t know that I would necessarily choose it as a career path. Depends what you mean by “manufacturing.” In fact, core manufacturing skills are always in demand. If you’re a skilled, certified welder, there will always be jobs for you; even in bad times, fabricators often complain that there aren’t enough good welders around. If you’re a skilled machinist who knows his way around a modern CNC, there will always be work for you to do. Hell, there’s almost always demand for truck drivers, in case you’d rather drive stuff around than make it. I don’t want to sound mean, but a lot of the folks who lose their jobs at GM and Chrysler, to pick on those companies, _don’t actually have any transferable skills._ They’re skilled at working on the GM or Chrysler assembly lines. If you’re a ticketed welder in mild, stainless and aluminum, you can work for anyone who needs welding of steel or aluminum, and there’s a zillion places where that skill is needed. If what you know is unique to a GM plant, you’re of no use anywhere else. [QUOTE=MOIDALIZE] You know, I’m trying to name 10 goods that are made in America off the top of my head, but I’m drawing a blank. Looking around my house didn’t help. [/QUOTE] Most of the food you eat, and most of the packaging that it comes in, and the dies and cutting tools that made the packaging, is made in the USA. Almost all carpeting and flooring used in the USA is made there. The house itself, obviously, as well as every building you see and most of the components that make it. Most of the cars on the road, including a pretty good percentage of the “Foreign” models. Most of the books you own, most of the software that your computer runs, and most of the drugs and beer and booze that make you feel so good as you read your books and play your video games (or is that just me?) Most of the electricity that powers your house is purely American in origin. Additionally, a great many of the things you have that are imported are made with American production machinery, planned out on American software, and shipped over to the USA by American couriers flying American airplanes. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-manufacturing-is-not-dead/531187/24 "2010-03-07T20:31:53Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > You’re one to talk about fetishising. You handwave away the experiences of millions of working class Americans and all the evidence of increasing income inequality and trade deficits in favor of a fucking graph because it supports the warped free market mentality we have that assumes the ultimate and inevitable direction of our economy is towards a small percentage of elites driving production towards the path of least labor resistance, reaping all the benefits, and leaving the rest of us to serve them coffee and do their nails. Or whatever the hell the plan is. Nevermind the problems that exist in trying to tabulate these numbers (such as taking a good that is mainly manufactured overseas, assembling it in America, and counting the total value of the good as domestically produced). We’re supposed to trust economists to come up with accurate representations of the economy and not make ridiculous assumptions? And you are handwaving away stats, figures and expert oppinion based on no evidence other than it doesn’t coincide with your world view. I’m not sure what you expect to happen. The United States should adopt an isolationist policy so that American workers and American businesses don’t have to compete with other countries? ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-manufacturing-is-not-dead/531187/25 "2010-03-08T00:23:19Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > I live in a concrete bunker. Where do you think the concrete was manufactured? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Love](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Dr.Love](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Love)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2010, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-manufacturing-is-not-dead/531187/26 "2010-03-08T01:14:04Z")
> [@code\_grey](#): > > are those graphs “value added” or “total sales”? You do realize that American manufacturing (including defense related one) is heavily dependent on imported components and the price of those components ends up written into the sales stats, right? > > Besides, note that even “value added” stats can be meaningless if sales are done through a corrupt, non-competitive process. When Chinese sell a computer for $300, that’s pretty obviously $300 of value. If it could be made and sold for cheaper, you will probably find a company that will do that. Now, when an American outfit sells $100M worth of military hardware to the Pentagon, how much of that money actually represents manufacturing work? How much represents the exorbitant salaries of lobbyists, managers, lawyers and “compliance specialists”? If Washington borrows $100 trillions and spends it all on a single American manufactured toilet seat for Air Force 1, would that mean that total American manufacturing has just produced $100 trillion worth of “value added”? More likely it would mean that lots of money was stolen and/or wasted and the statistics are not worth the paper they are written on, except for propaganda purposes. I’ll grant that this _could_ happen, but what evidence that it is occurring? Military equipment makes up only about [8 percent](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/business/economy/01charts.html?_r=1) of durable good manufacturing – far from enough for this to influence the value-added calculation much. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-manufacturing-is-not-dead/531187.md?page=1)