Why did manufacturing jobs leave the USA?

And should they be brought back? If so how?

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The next president of the United States will explain, just wait a week or so.

outsourcing

NAFTA and similar attitudes allowed companies to build their employment model around non us citizen workers which ultimately funneled money out of the US economy while increasing profits for shareholders

I blame labor unions. They demanded too much, it was unsustainable and as soon as companies had the chance they got the fuck out.

"Somebody else demanded too much" squealed the covetous Jew.

Higher taxes
Lower costs in other countries
No tariffs

I have worked in HR for a small tech company for over a dozen years.

When applying for jobs: ALWAYS PUT AFRICAN AMERICAN or mixed race as your identification.

You are guaranteed to have a 15% to 25% higher response rate on that alone.

And in all my years in HR, there has never been a case where we had to verify an applicant's race... that would be inviting lawsuit.

China did it cheaper, because it's not a democracy and they don't have to mollify voters with things like labour laws and working conditions and living wages.

But since Made In China means Made Wrong, manufacturing jobs are coming back to the UK. America? You're probably still shafted because the middle classes can't afford nice things.

all advanced economies veer towards a service economy, which unrionically stunts growth if the average citizen isn't wealthy.

i thought that was bs?

nafta
lowering costs on international shipping
slavery on asia

in that order

minimum wage laws, labor unions and other legislation that increases the price of labor has effected manufacturing and industry pretty significantly.

also consider how environmental legislation raises the overhead of industry in the country it's enacted in but not elsewhere.

Manufacturing has never left the US. The US industrial output is at an all-time high and still growing.

But the jobs have indeed disappeared. Automation is the answer.

For every job lost to China, there are two lost to automates - since the 1960s.

Cheap labor is the main reason these jobs are never coming back.

You get three employees for the price of one, and you don't have to pay them any benefits, and you also save a ton in taxes.

This is why Trump and Apple make all their products in poor countries. And I'm small potatoes compared to this guys, but I manufacture AC units in Mexico near the border. I then truck them over to the US where I distribute them to US retailers.

An employee in Mexico gets paid around around $90 USD a week. In the US even the lowest paid employee gets around $300 a week. Plus you need to have all kinds of permits, insurances, and pay taxes for both employees and the business itself. This all adds up and it cuts into my bottom line.

but to be honest, the retail environment is so comparative that my business would not survive without outside labor. If I was making my products in the US, I would have to sell them at twice the price. You can't do this when you have similar China made products at dirt cheap prices. Also, customers are super accustom to cheap cost items.

Would you rather pay $600 for a smart phone or $1200 for the same exact phone? exactly

...

Automation and globalization took our jerbs!!!!!!

Obviously everyone should just become upper middle class hipsters and only buy things from small, local businesses

I don't get you Americans. Do you like picking cotton and working assembly lines 9 hours a day? It's not like now that those jobs have gone away you have mass unemployment? Why do you guys want cheap jobs to remain in your country?

would give some of the uneducated unemployed more access to productive employment. That would allow them not only to make a positive contribution to society, but also reap the benefits that come from owning your own possessions with your own money and choosing your lifestyle.

Somebody allowed a command economy (China) to compete in a global market. People complain that its all about 'outsourcing'. Thats been going on for centuries, but locals can always compete due to a shorter chain of command, no language barriers, better quality products etc.

Command economies can set their price below what it actually costs to produce. It's kinda why the west went out of its way to shame, tax, block and slander every Soviet export during the cold war. Most of their products were pretty good, reliable if a bit dull. But since their money is based on 'time' and not 'value' they can produce goods at a lower cost than everyone else simply because they don't need to 'make money' to stay in business.

Long story short. Letting China export to the world without insisting they dump Communism was a mistake and we're all paying the price.

That is precisely what happened in western PA in the steel mills.

No. Alot of companies that contract with the government must first show a 'diversity' percentage in their workers.

Non 'diverse' companies get passed over for government contracts.

This is why you see alot of blacks in Gov't IT who are pretty much unqualified to be there.

If you are voting for Trump you should fuck off back to /pol/

Yeah this.

Any arguments about savings on the cost of goods were just industry propaganda sold to common idiots.

The net less resulting from the lost wages and income taxes from employing US labour is orders of magnitude greater than the alleged savings on the final retail price of garbage made in China.

>I blame labor unions.

Idiots usually do.

What's even worse and really shouldn't be allowed is diversity BS when your a fireman and the guy or girl who you depend your life on REALLY isn't qualified? That should always be the best men or women for the job period.

Trump is going to kick your ass.

It's cheaper to get a 3rd worlder to make it.

> should they be brought back

I think so yes. There's pros and cons to both. IMO having an entirely service/admin economy is dangerous.

> How?

Like Trump says, change trade regs so companies have to pay if they wanna send jobs to 3rd worlders.

As an engineer, I'm hoping I can bring manufacturing back to America... with zero new jobs! haha fuckers!

You're exactly right, but it is the government's fault for allowing individuals like yourself, or Trump or Apple, to make these products oversea and them bring them into the country without any kind of tariff being applied.

Revenue for government should be primarily raised via tariffs on foreign manufactured goods.

Focusing on manufacturing jobs is a step backwards, we've adapted and are now a highly educated workforce why would we abandon that to go back to less valuable manufacturing jobs, especially since an overwhelming majority of them are going to be automated in the next 50 years

>And should they be brought back? If so how?

There were never manufacturing jobs man.

A very small percent of US jobs have consisted of manufacturing. It's expensive, businesses want cheap shit to keep costs and thus prices down.

I can't even fathom how you can argue in favour of free trade with nations who literally have armies of cheap semi-skilled slave labour...

Free trade was the greatest lie ever told in the 20th century.

A 20 year old living in a tiny apartment with a minimum wage job has access to more luxuries, healthcare, gizmos and gadgets compared to a family of 5 in the beginning of the 20'th century

What do you do with the 30% of the population that is only mentally capable of working in menial manufacturing jobs?

>I can't even fathom how you can argue in favour of free trade with nations who literally have armies of cheap semi-skilled slave labour...
>Free trade was the greatest lie ever told in the 20th century.

Are you retarded?

The same products would cost 300% more. Do you really want that?

It's a good thing. It lets the US have more important jobs in software development, teaching, medicine, etc.

Much better than menial factory labor.

>It lets the US have more important jobs in software development, teaching, medicine, etc.
except about 95% of our workforce isn't capable of any of that.

menial factory labor is about what the average American is cut out for. Instead we've got menial service jobs, most of which are taken by foreigners anyways.

"Gizmos"?

Are you like 60 years old

>except about 95% of our workforce isn't capable of any of that.
>menial factory labor is about what the average American is cut out for. Instead we've got menial service jobs, most of which are taken by foreigners anyways.
This. Most people are only capable of menial labor, the industrial revolution resulted in huge gains of wealth because we figured out how to make retards' menial labor more useful not by making them white collar professionals.

We have a service economy and have for a long time.

Seriously fellas bringing manufacturing to such a technologically advanced country as the US is a disaster.

Freetrade is good

It's the fucking minimum wage you retards.

Get rid of it and start paying American laborers $0.50 an hour like we do the Chinese or the Indians or the Mexicans and the jobs will come back.

>Seriously fellas bringing manufacturing to such a technologically advanced country as the US is a disaster.
It's literally never been done before. No similarly advanced country has shipped off, then brought back, manufacturing. You have no basis to assert it would be bad.

I'm not arguing for bringing manufacturing back, I'm just saying our current markets exclude a hell of a lot of people that could be doing some pointless job.

as automation continues we're going to see a lot more of that. People getting paid to not work because businesses love to pass on human costs to the taxpayer.

whether it's Walmart enrolling its employees in government welfare programs or auto manufacturers using robots while the government supports former factory workers. Companies don't care, just so long as they're not paying the cost of idling millions of American workers.

It's for the greater good.

Yes we could have SOME more jobs.

But people are accustomed to cheap prices in the US.

The same people who are happy to have a new manufacturing job will be confused as to why an iphone is $2500 now and why computer parts make the cost of building a pc thousands of dollars.

I don't disagree.

Workers would have more money and a lower standard of living, which would be a net loss.

At some point we're going to have to evolve past employment or recognize it as pretend work that we give people to justify paying them out of the public coffers. We're going to eventually need the CCC or something similar again. Pointless jobs that don't really need doing, but provide people with a way to earn their welfare dollars.

>The same people who are happy to have a new manufacturing job will be confused as to why an iphone is $2500 now and why computer parts make the cost of building a pc thousands of dollars.
Would they also be confused as to why they could once again raise a family of four on one working class income?

And who's going to pay them those wages?
American businesses? Good luck lmao

Why pay an American worker $20/hr when you could pay a Chinese worker to do the same exact job at less than $1/hr?

Companies are in the business of making a profit for their shareholders, not babysitting entitled American workers.

>And who's going to pay them those wages?
The same companies who can now sell iphones for $2500?

to be fair if you were ok with a 1950's standard of living you probably still could raise a family of 4 on one income.

that's one car, 13 inch black and white tv, no cell phones, no cable or satellite, no internets, no vidya games, cooking your own meals every day, washing cloth diapers, traveling only to places you can drive on a weekend, 2 kids sharing a room in your 2bd house, mowing your own lawn and spending very little on entertainment or vice.

wages have dropped, but our standard of living is much much higher.

I'm old of spirit

Oh

And English is my second language, so I might not be on top of the current trends of words I am allowed to use without seeming old-timey

It changed because our lifestyles changed.

Even the poorest Americans are bathing in metaphorical chocolate

this

poorfags today got their hands on credit cards and are now consuming excessively above their means chiefly through debt: big screen TVs, video games, multiple cars per household, mortgages, going to restaurants and eating out, Starbucks, sending kids to college, taking vacations, traveling, sporting events, concerts, smartphones, internet, etc.

NAFTA. you should know this

Yeah I mean seriously

I'm relatively young with $50k networth.I'm pretty frugal...

But then I talk and find out poorfags have more and better things than me.

>But then I talk and find out poorfags have more and better things than me.
And like 30k in credit card debt. I swear plebs shouldn't be allowed credit.

Yeah but their quality of life is better than mine.

>I blame labor unions. They demanded too much, it was unsustainable and as soon as companies had the chance they got the fuck out.

If it was labor unions then why did all the textile jobs in North Carolina leave too?

The unionized auto workers of the 1930s and 1940s sent their kids to college. Larry Page's grandfather was an auto worker, his father was a professor and he founded Google.

North Catolina workers were successful in being segregated, going to church and getting non-union wages. Then the segregation broke down and the jobs left. All they have left is their fundamentalist preachers, and the abandoned barn meth labs that keep blowing up.

For now. Just wait till they're old then you'll see.

this kills the country.

Globalization in it's early stages sucks for first world countries but it can't be reasonable stopped only curbed. For better or worse those jobs are not coming back, America has been going through periods of intense evolution to a service economy for decades but it sucks not to have the old with the new like it was in the 80's and 90's.

At least China and Mexico are having trouble holding on to the jobs as well due to automation. Eventually the pendulum will swing back and America will come out on top so long as education and infrastructure are heavily invested in.

But we do have mass unemployment...
There is literally no downside to giving employees more options of employment.

by fucking with the worthless commie chinkies hard up the ass and taking our rightful place

The service economy is a fucking meme. Its not real. Economies can't work with out production. You are cutting the bottom part of the pyramid off and then claiming we don't need it. All a service economy really is, is making middle class people as poor as the poor and the poor just go unemployed.

>The service economy is a fucking meme. Its not real. Economies can't work with out production. You are cutting the bottom part of the pyramid off and then claiming we don't need it. All a service economy really is, is making middle class people as poor as the poor and the poor just go unemployed.
This. Sucking dicks does not an economy make.

This thread started with the pretense that manufacturing/production jobs have left the country not the economy. Globalization means that each countries economy is less of an island of it's self.

It's reasonable to observe the rise of a service economy in first world nations. If your conjecture is that this is fucking with the poor and middle class I don't entirely disagree but I wouldn't pretend it is a meme.

Where exactly did this mass unemployment start?

Also by what fucking metric do you think we have mass unemployment? I will sometimes bitch about the U-3 but under fiver percent and it's just a fight for decimal points.

tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate

as an investment banker I completely agree with you

A service economy isn't completely devoid of production.

The idea is that mechanization and automation have made the processes by which we produce so efficient, there just isn't a need or ability to employ every Tom and Dick who sets foot in the factory like we used to.

The shift to outsourcing manufacturing happened because it allowed industries to exploit cheap resources and value the kind of work those workers do correctly (e.g. almost nothing). There is no reason one should believe that depriving them off those resources would mean they'd suddenly start paying everyone middle class wages again. More than likely any plants we manage to claw back will return with maybe half the jobs and be redesigned to be more efficient.

This isn't conjecture, this pruning of jobs has been happening for decades with the manufacturing that has managed to stay.

If you want to talk about stupid things, start with the retarded premise that Americans have some intrinsic value that overrides the need for a logical economy. If lazy fucks took time to learn a skill or trade they'd find there are massive job gaps in the economy already waiting to be filled.

But they'd rather dream of being a professional dildo sorters who can walk in to the production line and turn off their brain the whole day then drive home in a Lamborghini, and then when it doesn't become a reality, they whine on the internet about how an economy based on service just doesn't make any sense.

Leave mastercard, the banks and visa to do that calculation. Its a wonderful business lending out money to fools.

I'm so fucking uncomfortable with this notion, i don't disagree that a fool and his money are soon parted but something about it seems so insidiously artificial. I personally try to avoid any kind of debt like the plague as i work my way into the middle class but I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to review the policy in place regarding how much credit is allowed to the poor.

> inb4 muh increased consumption

Consumer garbage is meaningless, ownership of tangible assets has gone down.

>The same products would cost 300% more.

That's not true at all.

The only difference is the profit margins of the company peddling Chinese made shit would go down.

I know of companies which took an existing product to be made overseas, they maintained the same retail price and only their margins improved substantially.

You're a literal drooling retard, with a little babby brain.

>It lets the US have more important jobs in software development, teaching, medicine, etc.

And what does the other 80% of the work force do? Huh? Faggot?

The other 80% need meaningful employment and not McJobs, so they could afford the shit you import from China in the first place.

If you have no income or no disposable cash than no matter how cheap your Chinese shit is, it's not going to sell.

It's funny that pro-Globalism tards don't have a single fucking leg to stand on.

Germany is more advanced and yet is somehow able to maintain a very high degree of manufacturing, which has made them quite prosperous.

They apply tariffs on Chinese shit.

Seems like an easy and intuitive solution to the wholesale loss of the wealth generated by manufacturing.

Trump 2016.

Hi retard, no, you don't even need to touch the minimum wage.

Simply apply a tariff on any product from a nation with a lower standard of living, and scale the magnitude of the tariff to the difference between working and living costs in China to those of America.

You'll notice QUICKLY, that once you level the playing field, like Trump wants, China's comparative advantage simply fucking VANISHES overnight.

Again, parroting this lie about retail costs of meaningless goods.

The only difference between a product manufactured in China and the USA is the size of the profit margin.

China is actually harmful to the market because it inhibits innovation. Instead of pursuing ways to be more efficient to bring their costs down, companies just turn to the hundreds of millions of semi-skilled Gooks willing to work for free to raise their profitability on a product.

Why bother working hard to research new techniques and methods to bring costs down, when there's already some factory in China, setup with subsidies from the communist government, setup to start churning out the product and then getting subsidies so that shipping costs are eliminated.

This is a free trade? Fucking lyl

Dealing with China is harmful in many ways.

>Companies are in the business of making a profit for their shareholders, not babysitting entitled American workers.

And why, should a company that does not invest a single dollar in American workers or infrastructure, should be granted the privilege of operating and selling in the largest consumer market in the world?

So you just want to dump your overpriced Chinese shit on this market and repatriate your profits tax-free? Sorry. 40% tariff on any of your goods unless you manufacture 40% of the content here.

It's an easy fix, but it requires you to not be a brain-dead idiot.

The reason the situation is allowed to exist is because of the high level corruption in federal government. The companies simply bought off the politicians to legislate in their favor.

Time to make things right and level the playing field.

>gizmos
Obviously talking from experience

Good job, man. How old are you?
My goal is $50k by the time I graduate college at 23.

Finally someone posted this. The US has probably the most employed population of any western country. In my country we have areas where there is over 25% unemployment and the average dipped below 10% just recently and we do fine. Not everyone needs to work, just as long as some people have enough work to pay taxes to subsidize the non workers. That's the future..

Yeah, I know, the Schwabs were Jews.

>It lets the US have more important jobs in software development, teaching, medicine, etc.

Let's see:

the pro-rich/pro-business right hates teachers
software developement is farmed out to Pajeet
doctors are getting browner every day

Fat lot of good that does for white Americans.

Manufacturing jobs left the usa because americans keep having kids and increasing the population. If americans stopped having kids in the 80's, all the manufacturing jobs would still be here.

Quit having kids anons. Population control would solve most of the problems of this planet. Humans are fuckung shit up on this planet because they keep breeding. Humans are the worst virus on this planet.

Discuss.

You literally have a double digit IQ.

>Mfw he thinks it's a compliment

Manufacturing is fucked in the UK. I would say more than in the US. All your engineering companies are pretty suppliers to rail, aero, military or automotive. Currency used to be(maybe still is) too strong therefore making products expensive. UK is really good at medium/small production of niche products.

Tariff on imports; making credit easier to come by; decreasing interest rates; lowering small and medium business taxes; increasing big business taxes; increasing the minimum wage;

stupidest shit I've ever heard

glad someone else shares my pov

the world would be so much better if we eradicated most ppl and encourage ppl like elon musk to thrive

[spoiler]meme.jpg[/spoiler]

Manufacturing jobs left the US because we automated all of our manufacturing. The jobs will never come back unless people become cheaper than the machines that replaced them AND cheaper than third world labor. Why would anyone want that?

Neo-luddites can fuck off.

youtube.com/watch?v=7Vo9OVJyy4A

A good discussion given the topic of the thread

But muh deadweight loss.

>but to be honest, the retail environment is so comparative that my business would not survive without outside labor. If I was making my products in the US, I would have to sell them at twice the price.
then perhaps the government should mandate that all manufacturers of products entering the US have to abide by US laws and standards? Would foreign labor really be that much cheaper now that you can really factor in the shipping costs?

>Revenue for government should be primarily raised via tariffs on foreign manufactured goods.
I like this a lot
I was thinking more like speed cameras on the interstates

>The same products would cost 300% more. Do you really want that?
OK so when Carrier moves their factory to Mexico, prices should drop 300% right? When Ford moves their factory to Mexico, the price goes down 300% right?

it's been tried. It failed miserably when other countries slapped tariffs on our goods and our export business collapsed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot–Hawley_Tariff_Act

we should be sterilizing people then
taxation is theft

that didn't even address what the heck I just said. I said make every company that wants to send goods to the United States comply with all US labor and environmental laws. Your article is about how the US slapped a 60% tax on 3200 goods from overseas causing incomes and employment to rise quickly, which was just as quickly ended by the Great Depression cause by banks.
lel, did you even read the entire article? The end is fucking hilarious.

>taxation is theft
it's a bit more complicated than that.

without taxation that paper you work for would be worthless. So yeah, they're stealing some of your labor but the benefits probably outweigh the loss.

you should probably be a lot more worried about the work stolen by your employer and your bankers, but you don't know exactly how much that is so it doesn't bother you as much.

As an employer I know I take more than half of the value of your work, and as a homeowner I know my bank takes more than half over time as well. If the government took half of everyone's pay there'd be a revolution. When your boss or Chase does it nobody notices.

>I said make every company that wants to send goods to the United States comply with all US labor and environmental laws.
you don't think they'll see that as a tariff? It'd cost them a hell of a lot of money.

that sucks