A common misperception is that US manufacturing has been declining only since the 1980s, when we allowed the evil Japs to sell us their cars and cameras. In fact, US manufacturing has been in decline for more than 60 years.You want evidence? New England residents can see the hundreds of mill towns that used to line the rivers throughout the region. Connecticut residents can visit armpits like Bridgeport and Waterbury. These places didn't decline due to foreign trade, they declined due to changing demand, new technologies, and companies/employees/local governments refusing to embrace reality.
Some of these New England mill towns are fortunate enough to exist in scenic settings and have been rescued by monied residents of Boston and New York. The rest of these towns are dead or will be soon. See Berlin, NH for an example.
We still manufacture stuff in this country. To succeed on a large scale again we need to dump the rigid, counterproductive union work rules and strive for better employee/employer relations. Companies dumping their medical insurance liabilities on the Federal government will also help manufacturing.
12 comments:
We still manufacture stuff in this country.
Criminals and prisons? :-p
No, we actually do manufacture stuff in the US. My company does.
I have a particular interest in Berlin since it was a waypoint for my ancestors. Quebec was an armpit even for the French, so they moved south.
Our ancestors probably snuck across the border together.
I grew up in the Mittineague section of West Springfield Massachusetts where Horace A. Moses (yes that Horace A. Moses) first built his paper mill. My grandmother was the company Executive Secretary in the depression.
Nothing but an empty lot and abandoned train station now. Map. I was a mill chemist for Strathmore in the 80s.
Rob, that's funny. My parents are Springfield College grads. I have lots of relatives in the hinterlands of New Hampshire. They are good people, and when I visit we like to make fun of our regional accents. One of my aunts actually says, "ayuhh" instead of "yes."
But they are all old and their kids have moved far away. To places like California and Texas.
The main industry in these old Northern towns is government and tax harvesting. The only short hours, above market, fully benefited, early pensioned jobs are in government. All of which are heavily in debt.
Borrowing on the backs of elderly and fleeing young is no way to run a city, but if you want to retire to Florida on a couple, or triple town/county/state pensions, you got to do what you got to do.
Don't be too smug, these younger, well pensioned retirees will soon be weaseling their way into your local trough.
Also, you will be federal taxed to support the high cost Northern elderly.
Isn't that nice?
I have SC credits in my varied college collection.
But they are all old and their kids have moved far away. To places like California and Texas.
Mom, Florida. Sisters Brisbane and Dayton Ohio (Air Force). Brother Nicaragua.
We are in a new mobile society. The Rust Belt thought they had a captive herd of sheeple. Californina repeated that mistake.
Actually, Lou's right. We do manufacture stuff in this country.
What we don't do is use many people to do the manufacturing; robots, improved management processes, etc have massively reduced the number of people needed to run a plant.
Even if every item we made was produced in the US, we'd only add a couple million jobs to the job pool. And those items would be a lot more expensive - and rapidly, even those jobs would be lost as manufacturing is an area where capital easily replaces labor.
Even China, the workshop of the world, has tens of millions fewer manufacturing jobs than it did 25 years ago due to improved productivity. The massive Mao-era factories aren't improved - they're simply shut down and replaced by far more efficient plants that use far fewer workers.
Providence, RI used to be a manufacturing center. What do you think will happen to Providence, RI?
Some of us 30-nothing natives are still here, but in the southern tier with the high tech jobs that have crept up from northern MA...
I love the northern part of the state though. I'd like to build my doomstead up there someplace...
Steph, Coos County would be a good place for that bunker, but it's still close enough to get radioactive fallout from Montreal and Quebec City.
...and unions. Unions kill just about every industry they touche.
um - that would me touch!
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