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Factories Wont Bring Back the American Dream
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2017 Jun 9, 5:39am 3,505 views 17 comments
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Tenpoundbass
2017 Jun 9, 6:33am
WE can have jobs if we want to and there's nothing the NWO Commies can do about it.
while encouraging foreign talent to start their next big ventures in Silicon Valley, not Shanghai.
30% of startups are by about 1-2% of the US population already (Asians and Indians)
From article:
Home to many of the world’s most important and innovative companies, from Facebook Inc
....Facebook is innovative? Similarly the pet rock was innovative...according to movie office space, the guy "made a million dollars"
R&D which holds value according to this article, is being outsourced as well. In my field probably half of the jobs (MS, PhD level) are in China and India now. Would be wonderful if they come back.
From article:
The talent necessary to conceive, brand, and market a new product is much scarcer than the skills to manufacture it.
...what Bloomberg willfully ignores is that there is a boatload of low skilled people in this country
Bloomberg also fails to acknowledge why integrating china and India into the global supply chain and how that benefits the US...although on latter, likely that it is omitted because it is a foregone conclusion that globalism is "good for everyone"
MisdemeanorRebel
2017 Jun 9, 9:28am
R&D can't come close to providing jobs for the millions in the workforce. And reality: Not everybody has the aptitude to be a drug researcher.
There are only 60,000 employees of Apple, and only a tiny % of that are involved in product development. The vast majority are Apple Store shelf stockers.
If Apple Manufactured in the US, it would create tens of thousands of decent jobs.
Only a tiny fraction of Merck, Novartis, Roche, etc. employees are involved in R&D.
America is not Israel or Singapore, a few hundred thousand R&D jobs won't cut it, a pitiful drop in the bucket.
Capitalism is failing & everyone tries to make excuses & hope the fubar doesn't collapse.
Dan8267
2017 Jun 9, 11:02am
Actually, it will, but just for robots. Robots will be the next and last group to achieve the American dream when they rise up against us.
R&D can't come close to providing jobs for the millions in the workforce.
Better than nothing. Factory jobs are not coming back, and where they are coming back, 3000 blue collar jobs will turn into 200 robot supervisor jobs. If R&D jobs come back, they will generate a reasonable number of service jobs as they are well-paid. The idea that one can bring back economic system of 1955 is delusional.
MisdemeanorRebel
2017 Jun 9, 2:43pm
Better than nothing. Factory jobs are not coming back, and where they are coming back, 3000 blue collar jobs will turn into 200 robot supervisor jobs. If R&D jobs come back, they will generate a reasonable number of service jobs as they are well-paid. The idea that one can bring back economic system of 1955 is delusional.
200 is better than 0.
Service Jobs mean permanent poverty. Nobody is going to buy an SFH on pouring coffee 25 hours a week at Starbucks. No benefits, near minimum wage, no upward ladder.
Add in massive unneeded unskilled immigration to make it worse.
"We give $7.90/hr Walmart Stockers Tax Deferred Retirement Vehicles." LOL They put $50/month away, until their alternator belt broke or they got the flu. Then they spent the next three months paying back the Cash Advance Guy.
Outsourcing to China is mostly policy, not "Natural".
BTW, in China, most of the electronics are still made the old fashioned way. People sitting over benches with a soldering iron. Same thing Americans did in the 70s and got a lower middle class income for doing.
Just need the Old Fashioned, All-American secret to success: Tariffs and Balanced Trade.
Dan8267
2017 Jun 9, 2:51pm
200 is better than 0.
200 isn't even a rounding error, and it's far less than the jobs that will be lost due to Trump's budget cutting education and job training support.
MisdemeanorRebel
2017 Jun 9, 2:53pm
200 isn't even a rounding error, and it's far less than the jobs that will be lost due to Trump's budget cutting education and job training support.
Again, we'll never create enough R&D jobs to replace manufacturing. Service jobs are lifetime dead ends.
When you have manufacturing, you need Engineers and Comp Sci people to design and maintain the assembly lines and robot programming. There will not only be Product R&D, but manufacturing R&D and process improvement to employ people at.
When it's only a handful of brilliant scientists, some hot Pharma salesgirls, and a ton of Coffee Servers, no middle class is possible.
we'll never create enough R&D jobs to replace manufacturing
R&D jobs create manufacturing jobs as well. Suppose R&D in pharma discover a drug. Production of this drug creates manufacturing jobs which are of the type that even today can not be fully automated (and require BS in Chemistry). These days, of course, half of R&D and 80% of manufacturing is in Chindia while management is in US.
Sadly, rise of robots has killed many and will kill even more middle-class manufacturing jobs. I do not see how one can bring sufficient number of jobs back.
A human welder today earns around $25 per hour (including benefits), while the equivalent operating cost per hour for a robot is around $8 when installation, maintenance, and the operating costs of all hardware, software, and peripherals are amortized over a five-year depreciation period. In 15 years, that gap will widen even more dramatically. The operating cost per hour for a robot doing similar welding tasks could plunge to as little as $2 when improvements in its performance are factored in.
It leads me to think that when technology advances some more, humans might as well go extinct while machines will run the world.
MisdemeanorRebel
2017 Jun 9, 3:33pm
If Energy remains cheap - which is a major competitive advantage the USA has. Our average KwH cost is much lower than China's.
I don't understand the sudden (past few years) focus on robots, they've been around for decades; I've yet to see them employed stocking shelves, serving coffee, etc. But it's definitely a growing issue.
But FFS, we need to start child licensing and to stop unskilled immigration if we're losing working and middle class jobs. Otherwise we're making the problem worse when it comes to a head.
It leads me to think that when technology advances some more, humans might as well go extinct while machines will run the world.
I don't understand the sudden (past few years) focus on robots, they've been around for decades; I've yet to see them employed stocking shelves
Shelve stocking robots are already here: https://www.racked.com/2016/4/29/11538648/target-robot
Perhaps the reason for sudden focus on robots are (1) new technological advances that allow for cheaper and more advanced robots, (2) minimum wage laws - the higher the minimum wage, the more economically beneficial robot becomes, and (3) insane regulations and increasing overheads that makes hiring humans less economically viable.
“One of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants,†Trump said he told Cook.
That sums up the economic vision of the Trump administration. The president and his advisers are convinced more factories can cure the trade deficits, lackluster growth, and (supposed) joblessness plaguing the U.S. economy. Trump has vowed to lure back plants that departed for cheaper locales such as China or Mexico and sanction companies that dare to leave. The result, he claims, will be investments that revitalize down-on-their-luck communities and American economic vitality. “We will bring back our jobs,†he pledged in his inauguration speech. “We will bring back our dreams.â€
The president, though, is plain wrong. Factories won’t restore the American dream. That’s because they don’t contribute as much to the economy as they once did, despite all the fuss politicians make over them. Chasing them with pro-factory policies will not only fail to bring the benefits Trump has promised but could also hurt the very middle-class families they’re designed to help.
Manufacturing is certainly not as important to the U.S. economy as it once was, declining to less than 12 percent of gross domestic product in 2016 from 26 percent 50 years earlier. But the whole idea that “we don’t make anything,†as Trump himself has put it, is a fallacy. The U.S. remains a production powerhouse, accounting for almost 19 percent of global manufacturing, behind China’s 25 percent but bigger than Germany’s and Japan’s shares combined. U.S. manufacturers are still extremely competitive in high-tech and hard-to-duplicate products—think Boeing Co. aircraft. And even as some factory work has moved abroad, the U.S. economy remains remarkably strong. Home to many of the world’s most important and innovative companies, from Facebook Inc. to Tesla Inc., the U.S. boasts an unemployment rate of 4.3 percent, less than half the euro-area level.
What Trump fails to appreciate is that the true value in making something is no longer in making it. Companies figured out long ago that they can capture most of the value of a product by focusing on its design and research and development, its branding, and the services that support it after it’s been sold. Stan Shih, the founder of Taiwan’s Acer Inc., illuminated this phenomenon in the early 1990s with his “smile curve.†The middle of the smile—the lowest point of value—is where the fabrication takes place; the highest value is found at the corners—the R&D at the beginning and the customer service at the end.
That simply reflects supply and demand. The talent necessary to conceive, brand, and market a new product is much scarcer than the skills to manufacture it. The integration of giant emerging economies such as China and India into global supply chains increased the number of available hands to screw or sew things together, dropping the cost of making a product even further.
Of course, more factories mean more jobs, and more jobs are always good. Studies show that workers who lose their job when a plant closes take a long-term hit to their standard of living. Unfortunately, the 21st century factory won’t create the jobs that yesterday’s did. With advancing technology in robotics and automation, a modern plant can churn out a lot more stuff with fewer workers. That’s why U.S. manufacturing output continues to swell while employment in the sector has withered.
whenever government tries to outmuscle the market, the result is almost always extra costs that have to be borne by the greater economy. A border tax being contemplated in a Republican tax plan could hurt shareholders, by decreasing corporate profitability and share valuations, and consumers, by hiking prices at their local Walmart or Target. That suppresses consumption, which is bad for growth and jobs. A major effort by the administration to force factories home could destroy lots of other jobs. Raising the price of imports would likely decimate the already struggling retail industry, which supports 1 of 4 American jobs, with slower sales and slimmer profits—almost certainly causing store closings and layoffs.
By obsessing over factory jobs that no longer exist, Trump may cost Americans the jobs of the future. The logic of the “smile curve†suggests he should focus on developing and supporting the parts of the manufacturing process that hold the real value—in other words, fostering more Apples. That would entail upgrading the skills of the U.S. workforce by devoting more resources to education and reducing the financial burden of a college degree, while encouraging foreign talent to start their next big ventures in Silicon Valley, not Shanghai.
Full Article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-08/factories-won-t-bring-back-the-american-dream
#Jobs #Factories #Employment #Economics