De-industrialization of the U.S. Did we screw up?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A large part of the manufacturing and industrial jobs have gone overseas. At first the idea looked pretty good, at least to those who profited from it. But now good paying, skilled and semi-skilled jobs are harder to find. And the tech industrys future doesn’t look quite as rosy as it once did.
Do you enlightened Dopers think that maybe, in the long run, we’ve screwed up? Is it time to ‘pay the piper’?
Maybe so, say’s me.
Peace,
mangeorge

2
      • The jobs that have left the US (and other first-world countries) did so because typical US workers are accustomed to a higher standard of living than typical third-world workers, and nobody in the US was willing to do the job for the same amount that somebody in a third-world country will. -So the job wasn’t “lost” so much as “rejected”, based on the difference of what it pays and the local cost of living.
  • That leads to the question of if there are any jobs that will never have to move. The only industry I can think of might be governmental, but that’s it. Even geologically-tied industries like petroleum and mining relocate over long time spans. Agriculture might be a possible candidate for non-movable, but “never” is a long time and I suspect that very-long-term use of fertilizers and pesticides will eventually take their toll. The damage may be repairable, but it may be cheaper to just move to literally greener pastures.
  • Relocation can be seen as an advantage or a disadvantage though: the only people really stuck in one place are governmental workers. Everybody else in any regular industry can relocate to any place they want if it suits them better than where they are, but the government of Norway is never going to relocate to Spain, and having held a high government office in Norway previously doesn’t guarantee you any political advantage should you relocate to Spain. - DougC
3

This is a worthy topic for Great Debates, but I’ll give an IMHO bite-size opinion. Yeah, I think the U.S. has stripped out the underpinnings of a strong economy. The current system works as long as there’s peace and free trade. But for those who don’t remember, let me remind you that the oil embargoes of the 1970s threw the entire U.S. economy into a spin. Now, imagine what it would be like if the Afghan War gets hotter and someone blows up a few strategic oil pipelines. Imagine what would happen if the tech workers from Taiwan, Singapore and India decided to boycott U.S. software companies, or even if the thrid-world sweatshops got closed down and we couldn’t get our Nike’s.

These are admittedly flip comments, but the loss of skilled tool and diemakers, for example, could spell REAL trouble if we would have to gear up industry suddenly.

4

I think that is a fallacy, for the most part. When heavy manufacturing (steel, automotive, etc.) started to dry up in the U.S. in the 1970s, it didn’t go to Mexico and Indonesia, it went to Japan and Germany, where wages (and the total cost of doing business) are generally higher than in the U.S. When I was growing up in the Rust Belt, I saw a lot of factories close, but I rarely heard management offer to keep a plant open in exchange for pay cuts. The plants went out of business because they were run into the ground by lousy management. The recent trend toward moving operations offshore isn’t affecting manufacturing disproportionately because manufacturing has been dead in the U.S. for years.

Besides, American companies can’t claim to be sensitive to labor costs when they insist on paying their CEOs 500 times the average blue-collar wage, compared to Japan (10 times). If they were that interested in cutting costs, they’d move their corporate headquarters overseas and pull the trough out from under their piggy CEOs.

5

Sheesh.
Maybe, as kunilou stated, this topic would be better suited for Great Debates so people could argue their point. I wasn’t sure where to put it.
I welcome the mods to move it there if they see fit.
Anyway, I see the middle and lower middle income population diminishing, and that can’t be good for the nation overall. Who’s going to buy the houses and cars, etc? And who’s going to pay for the infrastructure (ie roads and bridges) which seem to be getting worse every year?
I guess we’ll see over the next decade or so.
Hell, I’m going to retire before long, so I’m pretty well set. But I don’t want to see my kids and grandkids pay for our mistakes.
Peace,
mangeorge