Dr.Love
September 25, 2009, 9:33pm
162
Would you accept an anti-cite? Below is a post I made in responce to this exact assertion about a month ago, in a thread that gonzomax participated in. Conclusive proof that, not only are we not making “less and less products all the time,” but we’re actually making more and more products all the time (with the exception of the current recession).
As RickJay mentions, one major problem with the article is that manufacturing in the United States is not disappearing…
Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization in the US, compiled by the Federal Reserve. Look, especially, at Chart 1 , which shows the manufacturing output out the United States over the past 40 years. If you look at the chart*, even after accounting for the damage done by the current recession, we’re still manufacturing roughly twice as much as was manufactured in 1970. The population in 1970 was about 200 million, which means the US is now manufacturing roughly 33% more per US citizen than it did it 1970.
The graphs are constructed from source data measuring physical output of each industry, then combined in a weighted average. The weights are “derived from their proportion in the total value-added output of all industries” (from the explanatory notes ). Notice that neither the physical output, nor the weights are affected by inflation, and thus the graph itself automatically corrects for inflation.
What is true is that manufacturing employment is dropping. Part of this is probabily because other countries are increasing their manufacturing employment, but it is also because the manufacturing workers that remain are becoming increasingly more productive. Basically, we don’t need as many manufacturing workers because the ones we have are so damn good at what they do.
*The Federal Reserve should update the report to include data from July in about five days, so what I say will be a bit out of date soon…