Flooding the country with opiates didn’t help either. Some people were able to start their own businesses doing various things and make it work over the last 15 years though. It wasn’t just the working class, they shipped a lot of R&D to China too.
US continues to break its own manufacturing output records annually. The only jobs that left the US were the ones that were no longer economically viable. Now I will concede, government regulatory and tax policies artificially raised some of those costs...
I work in an automotive plastics factory and I second what you say. Yes, we make some of the plastic components for your car, BUT, all of the American-made machines that we use are aging and the companies that made them no longer exist (Van Dorn, Newbury). They are being replaced by Japanese machines. All of our robots are also Japanese. And don't even get me started on the chip fiasco!
Consumer goods are low value (relatively speaking) and can't bear the costs of highly compensated US factory workers + US regulatory burdens & taxes...
And the end-user quality of the items produced, is it the same?
You see, we have the same problem. Business measured in profits, as return if investment - oh it just goes up for the 000.1%. Measured as salaries for the store workers in the outlets, it goes down as their money continue to become worth less.
And the quality of product is so rubbish, craftsmen and professionals alike are focusing on buying old machines and tools from back when they were made by white people in Europe, rather than chinamen in the national-socialist dictatorship where the free market capitalists devoid of any social conscience or moral, moved production. (That is the main problem with capitalism by the way: it has no moral at all, which is why so many religions warn against greed - greed, profit before everything else, destroys socities just as much as incompetent tyranny and state grift does.)
I have an axe, the head and handle of which is over a century old. It works perfectly, good as new. I also have a modern chinky-dink made one, woth a fiberglass handle. It's a piece of shit. The metal is neither iron or steel, but "chinese alloy", meaning scrap metal sludge molded to the shape of an axehead. The shape of the handle is xeroxed from the general shape of a wooden axehandle - only, fiberglass and wood does not behave the same, so cannot have the same exact shape. I can go on all day listing things that were better made when business was also nationalist and focused on earning money through sale of quality goods, rather than making profits for the owners by the virtual printing of more money through market manipulation - I'm old enough to have seen the change as an adult, and let me ask you this: the value of money is tied to goods and resources owned, and goods and services produced and exchanged in a nominally free market, right? And printing more money just decreases the value of it, right? So what happens if I create $1 000 000 without the corresponding increase in goods, services or resources just by talking up the value of my shares?
That is something no economist wants to look at, becasue if the notion that big business drives inflation via currency and stock (and other virtual, as in non-real, non-material) was to get traction... oh dear. Oy vey too for that matter. Bismillahi as well, actually and also chyort voz'mye.
Capitalism is not your friend any more than marxism is.
You are conflating government interventionism in free markets with capitalism. Only governments can expand the money supply, and doing so robs from the CEO as well as the janitor. Profits are destroyed by inflation, not enhanced except in the very short term as market prices rise more quickly than replacement costs for inventory and capital goods. But those gains evaporate fast as price increases for labor & materials start hitting the COGS side.
Consumers ultimately direct where and how capital is deployed. So you direct your purchases to where you think you get the best quality and so long as everyone else is free to do the same, everybody wins...
Manufacturing labor is at record lows vs. output - that's economic heaven. Once upon a time, 98% of Americans were involved in agriculture, most on a subsistence basis. Today <2% feed the US and a good chunk of the rest of the world. Americans work fewer hours to obtain the goods and service they went than did people 50, 100 or 150 years ago.
All wages are debased by inflation, from the janitor to the CEO...
Exporting industry to China we also gutted the hard nosed, common sense, working class that was the backbone of America.
Flooding the country with opiates didn’t help either. Some people were able to start their own businesses doing various things and make it work over the last 15 years though. It wasn’t just the working class, they shipped a lot of R&D to China too.
US continues to break its own manufacturing output records annually. The only jobs that left the US were the ones that were no longer economically viable. Now I will concede, government regulatory and tax policies artificially raised some of those costs...
Then why is almost EVERYTHING in the stores made overseas? Clothing, appliances, you name it.
I work in an automotive plastics factory and I second what you say. Yes, we make some of the plastic components for your car, BUT, all of the American-made machines that we use are aging and the companies that made them no longer exist (Van Dorn, Newbury). They are being replaced by Japanese machines. All of our robots are also Japanese. And don't even get me started on the chip fiasco!
Take heart; Intel is spending $20B on chip capacity in Columbus, OH
🎯???
Consumer goods are low value (relatively speaking) and can't bear the costs of highly compensated US factory workers + US regulatory burdens & taxes...
Yes, I’m aware that this is why USA businesses moved overseas. The financial incentives need to be reversed.
Ricardo's concept of comparative advantage isn't subject to reversing...
And the end-user quality of the items produced, is it the same?
You see, we have the same problem. Business measured in profits, as return if investment - oh it just goes up for the 000.1%. Measured as salaries for the store workers in the outlets, it goes down as their money continue to become worth less.
And the quality of product is so rubbish, craftsmen and professionals alike are focusing on buying old machines and tools from back when they were made by white people in Europe, rather than chinamen in the national-socialist dictatorship where the free market capitalists devoid of any social conscience or moral, moved production. (That is the main problem with capitalism by the way: it has no moral at all, which is why so many religions warn against greed - greed, profit before everything else, destroys socities just as much as incompetent tyranny and state grift does.)
I have an axe, the head and handle of which is over a century old. It works perfectly, good as new. I also have a modern chinky-dink made one, woth a fiberglass handle. It's a piece of shit. The metal is neither iron or steel, but "chinese alloy", meaning scrap metal sludge molded to the shape of an axehead. The shape of the handle is xeroxed from the general shape of a wooden axehandle - only, fiberglass and wood does not behave the same, so cannot have the same exact shape. I can go on all day listing things that were better made when business was also nationalist and focused on earning money through sale of quality goods, rather than making profits for the owners by the virtual printing of more money through market manipulation - I'm old enough to have seen the change as an adult, and let me ask you this: the value of money is tied to goods and resources owned, and goods and services produced and exchanged in a nominally free market, right? And printing more money just decreases the value of it, right? So what happens if I create $1 000 000 without the corresponding increase in goods, services or resources just by talking up the value of my shares?
That is something no economist wants to look at, becasue if the notion that big business drives inflation via currency and stock (and other virtual, as in non-real, non-material) was to get traction... oh dear. Oy vey too for that matter. Bismillahi as well, actually and also chyort voz'mye.
Capitalism is not your friend any more than marxism is.
You are conflating government interventionism in free markets with capitalism. Only governments can expand the money supply, and doing so robs from the CEO as well as the janitor. Profits are destroyed by inflation, not enhanced except in the very short term as market prices rise more quickly than replacement costs for inventory and capital goods. But those gains evaporate fast as price increases for labor & materials start hitting the COGS side.
Consumers ultimately direct where and how capital is deployed. So you direct your purchases to where you think you get the best quality and so long as everyone else is free to do the same, everybody wins...
What’s the employment like on that record output? And how do the wages compare after inflation?
Manufacturing labor is at record lows vs. output - that's economic heaven. Once upon a time, 98% of Americans were involved in agriculture, most on a subsistence basis. Today <2% feed the US and a good chunk of the rest of the world. Americans work fewer hours to obtain the goods and service they went than did people 50, 100 or 150 years ago.
All wages are debased by inflation, from the janitor to the CEO...