# Let's bring those jobs back... How? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 19, 2016, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448 "2016-11-19T18:20:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/81 "2016-11-21T07:26:45Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > you know something that’s gonna happen too is what happened when a lot of factories tried to unionize in the 30s … they’ll just shut down due to being not worth the expense … Except union membership in the USA was consistently around 30% from the 20s to the 60s, the USA grew into the largest industrialised nation in the history f the world, and the American Dream of house ownership and quality of life evolved. So there is that. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/82 "2016-11-21T13:43:59Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I just did a Google search and [this site](https://swizec.github.io/h1b-software-salaries/#*-*-*) says that the average salary for H1B Visa holders is $86,164. So this is hardly “cheap immigrant labour”. In San Jose, that’s a starting salary at a good tech firm. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/83 "2016-11-21T14:19:03Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Can a city survive without surrounding land to provide raw materials? No. Can the surrounding areas survive without the city? Yes. > > One is necessary. One is not. Can country areas survive without cars and trucks, and ag equipment, made in cities? No. Without computers, imported or made in cities? No. Without all the health care, designed and implemented in cities? No. Country areas depend heavily on cities for the products made in cities. If all cities were wiped out, the country areas would descend rapidly to bare subsistence living. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/84 "2016-11-21T14:34:47Z")
Those pagans out in the sticks are hardy resilient folk. If need be they will turn their crops into fuels by hand and still be able to worship the combustion engine. As the empire falls they will become self-reliant, with their own militias to organise justice, and democratic committees to organise virtue, as the cities crumble and strong grass grows tall in the streets. Everyone loves democracy, right ? ---
**Author:** ![moldmonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ee59a6/32.png) [@moldmonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moldmonkey)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/85 "2016-11-21T15:08:55Z")
> [@](#): > > Same USA that produced a tremendous proportion of goods during WWII can’t even mill some aluminum for a phone case now? Machinist here. The phone case can be machined here. It’s not that complicated of a part but it would require lots of capital and create very few jobs. The way I would set it up is horizontal mills with pallet changers. One low skilled guy can load blanks and flip parts for the 2nd operation on the pallets, shovel chips, change inserts, etc on a cell of 2-3 mills. These mills run all day while he is doing this and then run all night “lights out” unattended. Each of these mills could produce 100s of cases a day. Around here $10-15 for button pushers You would have a set-up guy with some good basic machining skills in charge of every 2-3 cells. He would be troubleshooting problems and managing the button pushers. $20/hr. One highly skilled programmer/supervisor overseeing it. $25-30/hr. QC would be highly automated on programmed CMMs just a couple guys around . Deburring cleaning and polishing would automated with conveyors and tumblers and parts washers/dryers. Dump the cases in one end and pick them up at the other. Just a couple of people. Add some low payed packers, some material handlers, and one or two guys running a automated saws. Each of these mills with the automation and tooling is probably half a million dollars if not more. We can compete on high volume parts with China by using high tech manufacturing. (Low volume, high value parts as well. Middle volume parts are hard because it doesn’t pay to invest in the equipment.) But it is highly capital intensive and requires lots of organization for very low margins. That I think is a big reason for manufacturing being shipped overseas that never gets talked about. It’s just a lot easier to send a PO to China and go play a round of golf. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/86 "2016-11-21T15:43:46Z")
It’s almost five years old, but [this article](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html) describes why the iPhone isn’t made in the US. (BTW, why is the iPhone always the textbook case of something not manufactured in America?) One paragraph reads, “‘The entire supply chain is in China now,’ said another former high-ranking Apple executive. ‘You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.’” The article describes how Foxconn turned on a dime to meet Steve Jobs’ requirement that the first iPhone have a glass screen and provided almost 9,000 industrial engineers to teach the 200,000 assembly line workers the work. Could you find 9,000 industrial engineers in America? Could you find that many assembly line workers? I know people who have been to that giant Foxconn plant in Shenzen. The scale is hard to imagine. One plant is where Cisco routers are assembled, another where Dell notebooks are put together, a third where iPhones are made. Meanwhile, Apple employs tens of thousands of people in the US, selling iPhones, supporting them, developing apps for them and so forth. And thousands of others develop their own apps or work for companies like Uber that would not exist if not for smartphones like the iPhone. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/87 "2016-11-21T16:43:38Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > … (BTW, why is the iPhone always the textbook case of something not manufactured in America?) … IMO it’s because Apple is held out as the quintessential new economy darling, creating massive wealth for shareholders and quite high-paying jobs for a very small number of designers in Cupertino. The Chinese manufacturing is the dark crusty underside of the shiny white cruise ship to the future. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/88 "2016-11-21T16:52:13Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > (BTW, why is the iPhone always the textbook case of something not manufactured in America?) Because it’s something almost every Millennial can relate to. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/89 "2016-11-21T16:54:11Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Can country areas survive without cars and trucks, and ag equipment, made in cities? No. Without computers, imported or made in cities? No. Without all the health care, designed and implemented in cities? No. > > Country areas depend heavily on cities for the products made in cities. If all cities were wiped out, the country areas would descend rapidly to bare subsistence living. We’re going by two different definitions of “survival.” Bare subsistence living is a survival. But the big cities don’t have their own crops, farmland, etc. Without food supplied from the countryside, people in the cities would face the real risk of starvation - genuine lack of survival - after a while. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/90 "2016-11-21T16:58:03Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Yeah, in most organizations it seems like 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work and everyone else is kind of shuffling around reports. It might appear that way to a person not doing the work. It is critically important, however, to remember that in fact this is not how the world works. Everyone else’s job seems easier than yours. That is not, however, fact. It’s bias of perception. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/91 "2016-11-21T17:11:30Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > In San Jose, that’s a starting salary at a good tech firm. Now add in the HR and training costs, the legal costs for processing the H1B, and simetimes transportation/moving costs for the employee, and see how cheap they are. Just the headhunting fees alone can equal 50% of an employee’s annual salary. No one is hiring H1B’s in Silicon Valley to save a few bucks on salary - they are hiring them because there is a chronic shortage of real talent. Tech companies don’t mind paying good salaries to highly productive employees. The productivity of computer programmer can varry by as much as 100:1 from the best to the worst. Paying a high salary for an ‘A’ level employee still makes them a bargain. The H1B program expands the pool of available applicants, making it more likely that the company can find someone best suited for the job. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/92 "2016-11-21T17:26:02Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > It might appear that way to a person not doing the work. It is critically important, however, to remember that in fact this is not how the world works. > > Everyone else’s job seems easier than yours. That is not, however, fact. It’s bias of perception. Except that I typically am one of the people “doing the work”, i.e. performing analysis or interpreting data to resolve issues. And when my work is compounded by having to produce a serioes of reports and presentation decks that are “reviewed” by a dozen people without any substantive comments or feedback, it is very easy to see how much actual work is done versus hours charged. I’ve been in a management position in which I was responsible for facilitating and overseeing the work done by others, and was shocked about the resistance from management above me to insisting that everyone on the team had to be contributing, to the point of being told to find ‘work’ to cover people who explicitly refused to do the tasks they were assigned to do. I’ve been fortunate to work in small startup organizations where everybody had a specific contributory role and it was evident when someone wasn’t doing their job, but in the majority of established organizations I’ve worked in there were a handful of key people doing most of the critical work to make the soup and many people just kind of stirring the pot once in a while. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/93 "2016-11-21T17:39:01Z")
heres a question… what would trump and co do if apple or anyone else leaves the us entirely ? I mean they can take their ball and go home and just sell Iphones from Europe or Canada ? Ban them ? I’m sure that will go over well I’m sure theres a few companies that will take this option … ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/94 "2016-11-21T17:46:24Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Except that I typically am one of the people “doing the work”, i.e. performing analysis or interpreting data to resolve issues. Whatever your job, you do not fully understand the nature of other people’s jobs, and are not well positioned to state what they spend most of their time doing or what their level of productivity is. If you are like 99% of all people - and that’s where the smart money is - you unconsciously overestimate how much you do and how important you are, and colossally underestimate how much others do and how important they are. You are _exponentially_ more ignorant about jobs that lie outside your company/industry, which is, of course, the vast majority of jobs. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/95 "2016-11-21T20:14:55Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > So, rural white america has spoken. And they have said to stop ignoring their needs, to stop ignoring their plight. They have said, rather loudly, that their needs will be forefront before anyone else’s are addressed. > > Okay, let’s work with that. > > In other threads, I have indicated that their best bet is retraining and relocation, where I was asked, “Why should the rural people have to move?” My response that they should move to where the jobs are was not taken well. > > So, I am not sure what would be best to do. What exactly is it that the rural americans are expecting? > > If you are in a town that whose economy centered around a single factory or mill, and that place of employment has shut down, what solutions do you want to see? What solutions do you expect? If you are worried about your factory closing and moving the jobs offshore, how do you want your jobs to be saved? > > I can see how to get these people jobs, if they are willing to retrain for the jobs in demand, and relocate to where they are, but I do not see any good way to bring the jobs to them. > > If we impose penalizing tariffs, so that imports are virtually nil, that may help a bit, but automation takes more jobs away than offshoring does anyway, so even if the factory is producing widgets again, it is not providing nearly as many jobs, and even fewer that they are qualified for. > > So, serious question, to any and all who are on the side that the rural americans should be able to stay where they are, without learning or developing any new skills, how is this to be accomplished? How are we going to bring jobs to them? I am at a loss myself, and I have yet to have heard any sort of proposal that would address this issue. Doesn’t automation usually makes people more productive? If automation lets people build a 60" TV that used to take 5 hours in one hour, every trailer in every trailer park is going to have a 60" TV. And we are all better off. In the history of this country, automation has only recently started to destroy more jobs than it created in this country and THAT is largely the result of so many jobs leaving this country as we build our new automated factories overseas. I am reminded of the story of the cotton gin, you remember, the machine that automated the hard tedious task of cleaning and combing cotton, work that had previously been assigned to slaves in the south. Then the cotton gin came along and stole all their jobs. This happened just as slavery was waning due to the poor immigrants providing cheap labor to northern factory cities. Instead of speeding the demise of slavery, it turned slavery into a growth industry as cheap cotton vastly increased demand for cotton plantations and slaves to pick the cotton. This is a vast overgeneralization of the effects of automation (and the history of slavery) but I think its reasonably accurate. I’ve been to rural America buying up their old sewing factories and shipping them to South America and the people there seemed pretty ready willing and able to learn new skills (they’re building cars there now for the Koreans). If you told the people of Ohio that they would have to learn clean room procedures and learn how to operate the machinery necessary to assemble iphones and shit like that, they would learn. They can’t work for $100/week but they could probably make a living wage for perhaps an extra $50/iphone. If they really don’t want to move and don’t want to learn, then the only way they get their jobs back is with a large planetwide EMP event. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_fun_ball/32/17664_2.png) [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Fun_Ball)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/96 "2016-11-21T21:03:10Z")
You know what I find interesting about this national discussion we have about bringing jobs back? I find it interesting that when black people in the inner cities didn’t have jobs it was their fault, but when white rural people don’t have jobs, it’s the governments fault. What happened to personal responsibility? ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/97 "2016-11-21T21:07:51Z")
Actually, it was the cotton gin (short for “engine”, meaning any machine) which caused the explosion in the slave trade. Cotton was a niche market - the time required to convert a boll into cloth made it extremely unattractive economically. The cotton gin (1794) made it dirt cheap to reduce cotton to cloth. Now, the expansive plantations with hundreds and hundreds of acres of cotton could make obscene profits. But cotton was still a hugely labor-intense crop. Slaves were bought as quickly as they could be found. The slave trade bloomed. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2016, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/98 "2016-11-21T21:50:21Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Doesn’t automation usually makes people more productive? If automation lets people build a 60" TV that used to take 5 hours in one hour, every trailer in every trailer park is going to have a 60" TV. And we are all better off. In the history of this country, automation has only recently started to destroy more jobs than it created in this country and THAT is largely the result of so many jobs leaving this country as we build our new automated factories overseas. I am reminded of the story of the cotton gin, you remember, the machine that automated the hard tedious task of cleaning and combing cotton, work that had previously been assigned to slaves in the south. Then the cotton gin came along and stole all their jobs. This happened just as slavery was waning due to the poor immigrants providing cheap labor to northern factory cities. Instead of speeding the demise of slavery, it turned slavery into a growth industry as cheap cotton vastly increased demand for cotton plantations and slaves to pick the cotton. This is a vast overgeneralization of the effects of automation (and the history of slavery) but I think its reasonably accurate. > > I’ve been to rural America buying up their old sewing factories and shipping them to South America and the people there seemed pretty ready willing and able to learn new skills (they’re building cars there now for the Koreans). If you told the people of Ohio that they would have to learn clean room procedures and learn how to operate the machinery necessary to assemble iphones and shit like that, they would learn. They can’t work for $100/week but they could probably make a living wage for perhaps an extra $50/iphone. > > If they really don’t want to move and don’t want to learn, then the only way they get their jobs back is with a large planetwide EMP event. Automation is a two edged sword. It lowers the cost of goods, but it also decreases the labor needed to make those goods, reducing the number of available jobs. In theory, this increases everyone’s standard of living, but there will always be those left behind in the march of progress. Addressing their needs is what this is about. > [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](#): > > You know what I find interesting about this national discussion we have about bringing jobs back? I find it interesting that when black people in the inner cities didn’t have jobs it was their fault, but when white rural people don’t have jobs, it’s the governments fault. What happened to personal responsibility? While I agree completely, this election has told us that the white rural people will hold our country hostage until we find a way to bring them jobs. Not that I feel it is the best use of our resources, but it apparently needs to be done. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/99 "2016-11-22T04:02:38Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > \ > > Or, in other words, it’s easy for someone outside the situation to say ‘just retrain and relocate’. But when it’s you it means uprooting your family, disturbing your kid’s education and breaking away from friends, loved ones and locations that might be a part of your existence from the moment you were born. > > Such moves are exceedingly hard for people. \ We’re a nation of immigrants. Unless your ancestry is significantly Native American, your forbears all uprooted their families and their lives because they wanted a better life for themselves and their families, and they knew their best chance was to move to a place that had resources they could use to do that. And in most cases, they were coming to a place that wasn’t particularly _safe_, either, if they were out on the frontier. My parents have always said that you have to move to where the work is, because it certainly won’t be moving to where you live. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448/100 "2016-11-22T05:45:57Z")
> [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](#): > > You know what I find interesting about this national discussion we have about bringing jobs back? I find it interesting that when black people in the inner cities didn’t have jobs it was their fault, but when white rural people don’t have jobs, it’s the governments fault. What happened to personal responsibility? I thought of that, too. Try to look at these jobless people as living in rural ghettos. We aren’t abandoning the inner cities, we are expanding the concern and understanding it better. Trump has promised to address the inner city as well as the country, so for now we can believe that is how things will unfold. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-bring-those-jobs-back-how/772448.md?page=6)