Let's bring those jobs back... How?

Great Debates
21

Personally, I relocated out of Red State America to a place where I could get a decent job. I’m doing all right- if I can simply keep my current job I will have the choice between basically getting rich or retiring early, assuming I don’t have kids. OTOH, relocating really did require wrenching sacrifice, more than just not having kids, even considering I was highly motivated to do it. The end result is I am way more of an asshole than I would be under different circumstances.

For people unwilling to make such sacrifices- and, make fun of rural people all you want, but I can understand not wanting to leave- it’s tough. People float the idea of manufacturing solar panels and wind mills as part of a new economy, but dig deeper and you will discover that there is a glut of those things today. I suppose the deployment of alternative energy could be ramped up, but sooner or later that will reach an end point of saturation, and then what? There will be jobs maintaining the systems, but that will amount to less than the jobs produced by manufacturing and installing them.

People who are willing to commute to a city to be an Uber driver are going to be out of luck- within 20 years, maybe less, those jobs will be done by robots. All of the 50’s style manufacturing jobs have been mostly taken over by robots already- American innovation was too good, and it put people out of work. Even humble supermarket clerks have been put out of work by self-checkout systems.

And so on. As I read the OP, I had a vague vision of society transforming the way it is organized. Recognize that the people on the receiving end of profits from automation are responsible for the people put out of work by it, impose blatant wealth redistribution and train people for more socio-spiritual kinds of jobs, things focused on happy communities that keep people off drugs, raise smart and well-adjusted kids, and, ummm… then I read the post about prisons and realized that is probably it. We’re on the path of cutting health benefits and other government aid to pretty much everyone. Evictions, homelessness, outlawing camping on public land, ambulances that go around and retrieve the dead bodies…

22

How are you defining rural america? It’s not like just small towns and agricultural communities voted for Trump. Look at Oklahoma County - it has over 700K people and voted solidly for Trump. Is a county that has 700K people still rural? Is rural a way to “other” folks who didn’t vote the way you did?

23

The rural jobs - farm work, work at the grain elevator, maybe a bank teller. Short-order cook, bar tender, one or two retail jobs at the General Store.

Go through that list.

I read a bit about how Sam Walton built Wal-Mart on the backs of displaced farm workers as farm machinery finally made it to Arkansas in the early 50’s - he didn’t have to pay decent money - if you don’t want the job, there are 10 more ex-farm workers who do.

There were three grain elevator down the road a bit - their night lighting made a really good image. They were destroyed before I got a camera down there.

Retail? Banking? all now in Wal-Mart. Including 2 people in a bank booth.
None of these are going to pay enough to buy a house and raise a family.

And those labor-intensive diners are now McDonalds’ - which pays like the retail.

Do we need to discuss Appalachian coal mines? Natural gas (found in quantity with fracking wells)
is cheaper than even Feather River pit mines and burns hotter and cleaner than coal.
The few remaining coal-fired electrical generating stations are now adding gas-fired burners.

The folks down on the farm know damned well the old labor-intensive methods are gone forever.
I can maybe see the miners blaming EPA and the “Muslim in the White House who personally delights in seeing white folks suffer” for their condition.
Higher education in that area meant “High School” not too long ago.

But - gut the Clean Air Act, enact higher tariffs than have ever been tried? Yeah, that’ll bring back all those punch press, spray booth, brick making jobs.
Actually, it will result in trade wars, and the companies which CAN compete - Boeing, Caterpillar, high-tech, maybe Tesla? will shut down more jobs than will be created.

One summer, I worked in a tiny manufacturing company - sheet metal fabrication.
A few heating duct pieces for Ford, but mainly window fans and a bit of plastic work - humidifiers - for Sears, Roebuck and Co.

Think Sears still buys window fans made in the US? Expect the housings are still made of steel?
Think 6 people are involved in making the thing?

There are maybe three people doing what those six did - and those three are producing the equivalent of 5 shops of that size.
Those jobs ain’t coming back.
The three jobs which remain require much more skill and intelligence than the ones gone.

You ain’t going to have your father’s job*.

  • -my father had a job which most can’t imagine a person doing - given an order for a semi-custom multiple-horsepower electric motor, he wrote up which housing, which shaft (and it’s machining), the windings, etc.
    That job is now done by the customer when he places the order.
    He retired in 1980. Just for giggles, I went looking for both his employer’s original name + the name of the company which bought the original (the factory is now abandoned, of course).
    The origin still existed as a product line name.
24

At the factory job I used to work at, they require a college degree and pay $13/hr with no benefits.

At another factory job, A guy I know said he worked there for years, but made more money working at taco bell.

25

An iPhone as is is $749. If it were assembled in the US it would cost about $780. If not only the iPhone but the parts for it were assembled in the US it would cost about ~$830.

26

Well governments have to actually do something to help with this.
In my career I’ve both retrained and relocated, and it was all my own idea and came out of my own pocket. Many people either don’t think to do that or more commonly don’t have the means.

Or, if we want to embrace libertarian principles then we just have to accept market failure and increasing numbers of unemployed (although contrary to right-wing rhetoric, unemployment is decreasing)

Well the article says up to $100 more, but I think that’s still very optimistic. In the building all the components case they don’t factor in the cost of building the actual factories / labs which are extremely expensive just in physical costs. For the US to make all these components would mean a big R&D investment, as they are not necessarily things that we know how to make right now.

Of course all this is music to the ears of the trump supporters: factory-building jobs! R&D jobs! I think this would be a disaster, but I guess we don’t need another thread talking about this.

27

No. That’s a ridiculous and impossible question to answer.

But do you think there is no correlation between American wages and the loss of jobs and Chinese wages and the growth of jobs?

28

Same USA that produced a *tremendous * proportion of goods during WWII can’t even mill some aluminum for a phone case now? The same USA whose college age adults need play-doh and coloring books because of an election? Is there a link?

29

In fairness, an iPhone would have cost a lot more during WWII. :wink:

30

Nonsense. The us has a rather large portion of the global semiconductor production. The iPhone could be built here with a modest investment. Granted the Chinese manufacturing logistics infrastructure is a bit better that the US, but we could take first place with some effort.

31

Looking at the automated nature of much production, including Apple products, I also note a high correlation between overseas production and non-payment of US taxes - so-called repatriation of profits.

Could it possibly be corporations are hiding behind labour costs when they’re actually focused on driving shareholder value …

32

It is not undelightful that what was done to Russia during the Clinton administration is now being returned to America, again courtesy of Clinton incompetence.

Hopefully without the dead millions.

An entire population of people who had lived with guaranteed employment, guaranteed healthcare, old age pensions, and a planned economy saw the social safety net swept from underneath them, as widely unpopular policies, backed by Washington, were imposed on the country. US Senator Bill Bradley describes the tone of US diplomats in their interactions with Russia, saying Clinton administration officials spoke of “stuffing shit down Boris throat,” gleefully taking pleasure in ordering him to wreck his country’s economy.

Russia Insider

33

I’m going to make a bold prediction:

By the end of the Trump administration, we will be able to identify statements made during the campaign that Trump was unable to fulfill.

34

My understanding has been that manufacturing is as strong as ever in the US, but automation is responsible for most of the job losses. Here are two charts which purport to show this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=manufacturing+output+vs+employment&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS717US717&espv=2&biw=1520&bih=731&tbm=isch&imgil=iBfe3sHj9O5ixM%253A%253Bh4FRJWw4igsxlM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.aei.org%25252Fpublication%25252Foctober-2-is-manufacturing-day-so-lets-recognize-americas-world-class-manufacturing-sector-and-factory-workers%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=iBfe3sHj9O5ixM%253A%252Ch4FRJWw4igsxlM%252C_&usg=__43eUVGTN2QQFM8WJL76a1xsQADQ%3D&ved=0ahUKEwinmuGFwbfQAhVN62MKHcDuBbUQyjcINA&ei=Oa4xWOeZLM3WjwPA3ZeoCw#imgrc=iBfe3sHj9O5ixM%3A

And this one showing auto sector employment:

https://www.google.com/search?q=auto+sector+output+vs+employment&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS717US717&espv=2&biw=1520&bih=731&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjGz7ydwbfQAhVX2mMKHVLKA9UQ_AUIBygC#imgrc=pto1y0PfsMlhBM%3A

Finally, and I can’t seem to find a site, but I have read that steel output in the US is down 20% since 1980, but employment in that industry is down 90%

So can someone fight my ignorance: Isn’t this pretty conclusive that manufacturing is strong in the US but it’s automation killing the jobs?

35

How many jobs could be created by ramping up renewable energy? Solar and wind installers make a lot of money. Also, if we stopped dismantling hydro plants, we would be keeping engineers employed.

36

A limited amount, really, despite promises. Newer energy manufacturing tends toward very high automation. It won’t be enough to replace the millions of old school factory jobs lost.

37

Gutsy call, counselor

I’d be more willing to bet there are any number of statements he’s made on the campaign trail that we can identify NOW he won’t be able to fulfill.

38

One thing America can easily do is to stop the importation of cheap immigrant labour - the H1B visa issue IIRC - by making people pay for them. Say $100K per year. Earning that amount shouldn’t be a problem for the world’s brightest and best, should it?

39

Step one is better trade agreements. I’m not believing for an instant that is some easy task that Trump will accomplish, the other side has a say in the matter too, but we have to remove the incentive for US companies to produce their products overseas, and allowing products from other countries to be sold here without restriction while we are effectively limited in our ability to sell our products there. This step is accomplished by killing the belief in ideological free trade as a magic formula and looking at the results. We need free trade where it benefits both sides of the agreement in actuality, not in a hollow promise. And it has to benefit everyone in this country, not just those who reap the profits.

The next step is cleaning up regulation. We are over-regulated in two ways. One way is that we have overly detailed the regulation process instead of the results. And that feeds into the second way, anti-competitive regulation. Set the standard based on public interests. If we need safety in our products create a reasonable standard of safety that producers must meet without setting the specific requirements of how they accomplish it so strictly.

Perhaps more important than those considerations is finally realizing that the price of unemployment is crime, poverty, and disease than becomes generational over time. Retraining has consistently failed over time. People are often lucky to find any line of work for which they are well suited and after having spent half their lives doing that one job they can’t just simply develop a new set of skills. Relocation is difficult but often a necessity, the idea that people can live in the same place and keep doing the same things forever has never worked, but we do nothing to make relocation feasible, more often than not it turns into a flood of migration that quickly saturates a new locality and we watch as the old one crumbles beneath the feet of those unable to leave. We have to stop being greedy and selfish people who are willing to stand by as the lives of others diminish while we still do well. I don’t care if we pay people to paint rocks or move a pile of dirt from one side of the road to the other, or invest in infrastructure, or subsidize businesses that keep people employed, but we have to do something to keep people in working, and whatever it costs us now in the short term is insignificant to the costs we face in the future from failing to do that.

40

Why not make the companies pay? I doubt many of the workers make 100k, let alone enough to pay 100K OOP.