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https://www.project-syndicate.org/c...e-of-us-economy-by-j--bradford-delong-2017-05

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ECONOMICS
J. BRADFORD DELONG[/paste:font]
MAY 3, 2017 38
Where US Manufacturing Jobs Really Went
BERKELEY – In the two decades from 1979 to 1999, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States drifted downward, from 19 million to 17 million. But over the next decade, between 1999 and 2009, the number plummeted to 12 million. That more dramatic decline has given rise to the idea that the US economy suddenly stopped working – at least for blue-collar males – at the turn of the century.

But it is wrong to suggest that all was well in manufacturing before 1999. Manufacturing jobs were being destroyed in those earlier decades, too. But the lost jobs in one region and sector were generally being replaced – in absolute terms, if not as a share of the labor force – by new jobs in another region or sector.


Consider the career of my grandfather, William Walcott Lord, who was born in New England early in the twentieth century. In 1933, his Lord Brothers Shoe Company in Brockton, Massachusetts, was facing imminent bankruptcy. So he relocated his operations to South Paris, Maine, where wages were lower.

The Brockton workers were devastated by this move, and by the widespread destruction of relatively high-paying blue-collar factory jobs across Southern New England. But in the aggregate statistics, their loss was offset by a bonanza for the rural workers of South Paris, who went from slaving away in near-subsistence agriculture to holding a seemingly steady job in a shoe factory.

The South Paris workers’ good fortune lasted for just 14 years. After World War II, the Lord brothers feared that depression could return, so they liquidated their enterprise and split up. One of the three brothers moved to York, Maine; another moved to Boston. My grandfather went to Lakeland, Florida – halfway between Tampa Bay and Orlando – where he speculated in real estate and pursued non-residential construction.

Again, the aggregate statistics didn’t change much. There were fewer workers making boots and shoes, but more workers manufacturing chemicals, constructing buildings, and operating the turnkey at the Wellman-Lord Construction Company’s Florida-based phosphate-processing plants and other factories. In terms of domestic employment, the Wellman-Lord Construction Company had the same net factor impact as Lord Brothers in Brockton. The workers were different people in different places, but their level of education and training was the same.

So, during the supposedly stable post-war period, manufacturing (and construction) jobs actually moved en masse from the Northeast and Midwest to the Sun Belt. Those job losses were as painful for New Englanders and Midwesterners then as the more recent job losses are for workers today.

During the 2000s, American blue-collar jobs were churned more than they were destroyed. Until 2006, the number of manufacturing jobs decreased while construction jobs increased. And in 2006 and 2007, losses of residential construction jobs were offset by an increase in blue-collar jobs supporting business investment and exports. It was not until the post-2008 Great Recession that blue-collar jobs began to be lost more than churned.

Because there is always some degree of churn, a more accurate perspective on what has happened is gained by looking at blue-collar jobs as a share of total employment, rather than at the absolute number of manufacturing workers at any given time. In fact, there was an extremely large and powerful long-run decline in the share of manufacturing jobs between World War II and now. This gives the lie to the meme that manufacturing was stable for a long time, and then suddenly collapsed when China started making gains.

In 1943, 38% of America’s nonfarm labor force was in manufacturing, owing to high demand for bombs and tanks at the time. After the war, the normal share of nonfarm workers in manufacturing was around 30%.

Had the US been a normal post-war industrial powerhouse like Germany or Japan, technological innovation would have brought that share down from 30% to around 12%. Instead, it has declined to 8.6%. Much of the decline, to 9.2%, is attributable to dysfunctional macroeconomic policies, which, since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, have turned the US into a savings-deficit country, rather than a savings-surplus country.

As a rich country, the US should be financing industrialization and development around the world, so that emerging countries can purchase US manufacturing exports. Instead, the US has assumed various unproductive roles, becoming the world’s money launderer, political-risk insurer, and money-holder of last resort. For developing countries, large dollar assets mean never having to call for a lifeline from the International Monetary Fund.

The rest of the decline in the share of manufacturing jobs, from 9.2% to 8.6%, stems from changing trade patterns, primarily owing to the rise of China. The North American Free Trade Agreement, contrary to what US President Donald Trump has claimed, contributed almost nothing to manufacturing’s decline. In fact, all of those “bad trade deals” have helped other sectors of the American economy make substantial gains; and as those sectors have grown, the share of jobs in manufacturing has fallen by only 0.1%.

In this era of fake news, astroturf social movements, and misleading anecdotes, it is imperative for anyone who cares about our collective future to get the numbers right, and to get the right numbers into the public sphere. As the Republican Party’s first president, Abraham Lincoln, put it in his “House Divided” speech, “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it.”

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COMMENTS
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Well 'churn' does not explain an absolute drop in job numbers - regardless of whether they are blue collar or white collar.

Free trade suits countries with things to sell and a competitive advantage.

It is true that financial legerdemain now plays a more important role in supporting the elites than either manufacturing or soundly based service industries. So the elites do not care too much providing the rest don't make life too difficult for them.
 
Typical leftist viewpoint trying to ignore German and Japanese success in manufacturing by trying to characterize it as normal, when the US is something other.

The US was happy to sell out it's people, with the population idiotically complicit, and destroy it's own manufacturing base. Mostly it was corporations chasing profits, and politician shitbags like Obama trying to sell us globalization.

The reason US manufacturing jobs disappeared here and didn't in Japan and Germany is because they cared about their people. Not so much in Germany as they've recently allowed a flood cheap labor that hates their values, but regardless.

Kingstonian Kingstonian is right, free trade suits a competitive advantage. And also correct, elites live off of dividend income which for some odd reason is taxed way lower than regular income.
 
A simple factual question, OfficePants OfficePants : do you know who generally occupies these manufacturing positions in Germany? Given that the correct answer to that question holds the key to the post-WWII revival of German manufacturing, would you be willing to sign up to implement a similar scheme in the US?
 
viaattovannucci said:
A simple factual question, OfficePants OfficePants : do you know who generally occupies these manufacturing positions in Germany? Given that the correct answer to that question holds the key to the post-WWII revival of German manufacturing, would you be willing to sign up to implement a similar scheme in the US?
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Turks, I believe. They were brought in to rebuild. It's a trick question, like the question the other day about terrorism asking "after 9-11" to hide the 4,000 people that muslims killed. Germany had a strong manufacturing base well before WW2, so it's also bullshit to characterize it as a revival.

And no, I wouldn't want that. We have plenty of people willing to do the work.
 
They were supposed to be gastarbeiten, but the gast bit was forgotten and they never got sent home.

Good idea, poor implementation.
 
OfficePants said:
Turks, I believe. They were brought in to rebuild. It's a trick question, like the question the other day about terrorism asking "after 9-11" to hide the 4,000 people that muslims killed. Germany had a strong manufacturing base well before WW2, so it's also bullshit to characterize it as a revival.

And no, I wouldn't want that. We have plenty of people willing to do the work.
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It is a not a trick question; it is a factual question. The way you twisted it to make it into the "Muslim question," is entirely disingenuous and, more importantly, irrelevant.

The correct answer is immigrants. The program ran in that particular form from 1950s all the way into 1980s and included all sorts of guest (conractual and/or migrant) workers (Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Yugoslavians, Turks, and, I believe, even some workers from N. African countries). Whatever strong manufacturing base Germany had was exhausted - indeed, decimated - by the end of the war and apparently there weren't plenty of people around to rebuild. . .

But, yes, go on. . . Don't let the facts get in your way while you rant on about Muslims and other undesirable critters.
 
viaattovannucci said:
It is a not a trick question; it is a factual question. The way you twisted it to make it into the "Muslim question," is entirely disingenuous and, more importantly, irrelevant.

The correct answer is immigrants. The program ran in that particular form from 1950s all the way into 1980s and included all sorts of guest (conractual and/or migrant) workers (Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Yugoslavians, Turks, and, I believe, even some workers from N. African countries). Whatever strong manufacturing base Germany had was exhausted - indeed, decimated - by the end of the war and apparently there weren't plenty of people around to rebuild. . .

But, yes, go on. . . Don't let the facts get in your way while you rant on about Muslims and other undesirable critters.
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The reason it's a trick question is because Germany was a world manufacturing power before the war, and the only reason it needed rebuilding was because of the war. And the only reason it needed guest workers is because it's men were depleted thru death, not to mention the ones worked to death in Russian prisons.

You're also ignoring tens of thousands of people like the "Berlin Women" who were amazing clearing rubble. For food. And you're also ignoring the German men that participated in work and got the country back up and running.

So go on, cherry pick facts about Germany's rebuild, and make it look like it was all immigrants. I may rant about muslims, but I didn't in this case. I did point out how someone recently tried to label white supremacists in the US the #1 terrorist group "since 9-11" which was a total joke because it ignored the 4,000 that muslims killed just 1 day before. If it bothers you that this gets called out, maybe you should see the connection with your post.
 
doghouse said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...iddle-class/?utm_term=.516ca6b9ae4c&tid=sm_tw

Related data to the original article. Shows a clear peak in the 1960's, which means this trend has been in effect for 50 years, well before Reagan, or NAFTA or the rise of China.
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A country maturing does not mean "decline". Service industries started to emerge. The decimation was at the hands of corporations that shipped jobs anywhere they wanted with no consideration for the population of the country. That started, more or less, in the 80s.
 
OfficePants said:
The reason it's a trick question is because Germany was a world manufacturing power before the war, and the only reason it needed rebuilding was because of the war.
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This time, a trick question: who started that war you are talking about? It's not like Germans brought it upon themselves, right?!! And also what role exactly did the Germans play in that "depletion through death"?
 
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viaattovannucci said:
This time, a trick question: who started that war you are talking about? It's not like Germans brought it upon themselves, right?!! And also what role exactly did the Germans play in that "depletion through death"?
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It's irrelevant to the dynamics I was taking exception to above. You tried to make a false case that immigrants are the reason for Germany's manufacturing power.

That aside, some believe it was a restart to a paused WW1. And others believe it was 1931, Manchuria was taken by Japan. I've read estimates that about 9 million Germans died, they played a large part in the deaths of their own people, as they could have negotiated a truce at any point, and probably stolen some land in the process.
 
OfficePants said:
It's irrelevant to the dynamics I was taking exception to above. You tried to make a false case that immigrants are the reason for Germany's manufacturing power.

That aside, some believe it was a restart to a paused WW1. And others believe it was 1931, Manchuria was taken by Japan. I've read estimates that about 9 million Germans died, they played a large part in the deaths of their own people, as they could have negotiated a truce at any point, and probably stolen some land in the process.
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OfficePants said:
A country maturing does not mean "decline". Service industries started to emerge. The decimation was at the hands of corporations that shipped jobs anywhere they wanted with no consideration for the population of the country. That started, more or less, in the 80s.
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Offshoring was rife in the UK too. People started to demand payoffs to retire early - as if they were entitled to it. Then they complained when their kids could not get jobs that Indians were doing.

The firm I worked for was taken over by a French company. The French saw profits in cut-price, off shore contracts for the UK government, who would sell their grandmothers to the highest bidder (conservative or labour - it made no difference).

What interested me was that the French themselves did not adopt offshoring - far from it. They had to go for 'near shoring' i.e Poland or a Francophone North African country to even get the French to consider moving work abroad.

'Who started it?' is irrelevant whataboutery. You could say punitive Versailles peace terms were relevant but that's a diversion and not relevant to the topic under discussion.
 
It was not a false case. Germany's postwar economic ascendance was largely on the shoulders of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (including Turkey). Germany's current immigration policies, which are much maligned by many as some sort of globalist conspiracy, are actually simply a continuation of successful earlier ones such as Gastarbeiterprogramm. If what I presented were a false case, it wouldn't form the basis of further ventures.

But you keep implying that Germans have some inert capability towards manufacture, which allowed them pull themselves up by their bootstraps and rebuild in the wake of an utter devastation of their infrastructure. I don't recall saying that Germans themselves had no part to play in their own development, yet you want to consistently disregard the millions of people (a large number of whom happened to be Muslims -- Turks, Kurds, Arabs, etc.) who have contributed to this development with their very hands (manu-facture, eh?).

At any rate, it is an example that may or may not be pertinent for the US. But it was your example, so it wouldn't hurt for you to know something about it.
 
Fwiw, the US pumped billions into the Germany and conomyvduring the Cold War, for obvious reasons.
 
viaattovannucci said:
It was not a false case. Germany's postwar economic ascendance was largely on the shoulders of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (including Turkey). Germany's current immigration policies, which are much maligned by many as some sort of globalist conspiracy, are actually simply a continuation of successful earlier ones such as Gastarbeiterprogramm. If what I presented were a false case, it wouldn't form the basis of further ventures.

But you keep implying that Germans have some inert capability towards manufacture, which allowed them pull themselves up by their bootstraps and rebuild in the wake of an utter devastation of their infrastructure. I don't recall saying that Germans themselves had no part to play in their own development, yet you want to consistently disregard the millions of people (a large number of whom happened to be Muslims -- Turks, Kurds, Arabs, etc.) who have contributed to this development with their very hands (manu-facture, eh?).
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Off course the Germans have a huge talent for manufacturing. That was a big reason for the friction with the UK who had an early start in the industrial revolution and then saw their advantage eroded by quality German products.

Muslim manufacturing output in their own countries was negligible.

A better way would be bigger German families and no gastarbeiten once populations recovered. That would not suit the Cultural Marxists though.
 
Kingstonian said:
A better way would be bigger German families
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Any way that includes a population increase is de facto not a better way.

Anyway, you fellas keep arguing over shit that has nothing to do with the topic.
 
Rambo said:
hang on a second. aren't you always the one saying that we need immigration or else we're going to die out?
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For precisely that reason. Output increase without more humans on the planet.
 
Rambo said:
so how are bigger german families and immigration two different things when it comes to output?
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Are you really asking me the difference between creating more humans versus moving human around the planet on net population?
 
viaattovannucci said:
It was not a false case. Germany's postwar economic ascendance was largely on the shoulders of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (including Turkey). Germany's current immigration policies, which are much maligned by many as some sort of globalist conspiracy, are actually simply a continuation of successful earlier ones such as Gastarbeiterprogramm. If what I presented were a false case, it wouldn't form the basis of further ventures.

But you keep implying that Germans have some inert capability towards manufacture, which allowed them pull themselves up by their bootstraps and rebuild in the wake of an utter devastation of their infrastructure. I don't recall saying that Germans themselves had no part to play in their own development, yet you want to consistently disregard the millions of people (a large number of whom happened to be Muslims -- Turks, Kurds, Arabs, etc.) who have contributed to this development with their very hands (manu-facture, eh?).

At any rate, it is an example that may or may not be pertinent for the US. But it was your example, so it wouldn't hurt for you to know something about it.
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None of this chatter has anything to do with how Germany, in 2017, has a strong manufacturing base.

I can make the argument that the Ellis Island era immigration was responsible for the US manufacturing base, which loosely equates to your argument. So why did Germany maintain it's base and the US lost it all? We has shittier immigrants? No, we had shittier politics.

Germany's current policies have to do with the globalist mentality driven by a cabal of approx 8,000 loosely organized global elite that want a corporatized world government. The US has fallen for this shit like nobody's business. Germany will eat shit soon if they keep this up.
 
OfficePants said:
Germany current policies have to do with the globalist mentality driven by a cabal of approx 8,000 loosely organized global elite that want a corporatized world government.
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Get your facts straight. There is only 5,347 of us.
 
doghouse said:
Are you really asking me the difference between creating more humans versus moving human around the planet on net population?
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Quality is the key issue.

Cecil Rhodes is not well regarded in the present day but he made some sound points. What he used to say about the English could just as well be applied to the Germans nowadays :-

"I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimen of human being, what an alteration there would be in them if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence."

I would not think replacing the Germans with 'despicable specimens' is a sensible idea. Certainly not in the long term.
 
Kingstonian said:
Quality is the key issue.

Cecil Rhodes is not well regarded in the present day but he made some sound points. What he used to say about the English could just as well be applied to the Germans nowadays :-

"I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimen of human being, what an alteration there would be in them if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence."

I would not think replacing the Germans with 'despicable specimens' is a sensible idea. Certainly not in the long term.
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I'm not even terribly sure how to respond to this nonsense, but i think your German fetish is a little overwrought. Anyone with the most basic economic knowledge knows that the Germans don't have any particular magic about manufacturing, rather they have produced growth through busing in 'despicable specimens' by the truck load, right up to this very day. I know you don't think Merkel is taking in refugees because of altruism I'm sure? There is generally a reason Cecil Rhodes isn't well thought of by the way.

If the Germans have any talent, it's managerial, not manufacturing. I know, I deal with them all the time as one of the 8,000 global elite.
 
OfficePants said:
I know. You can have 1000 white German babies or 1000 Syrian immigrant babies. Net 1000 for GERMAN output. Not global output.
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Which had nothing to do with what I said, which is move existing humans instead of creating more.
 
Kingstonian said:
Really?

Now who is talking nonsense?
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I'd love for you to regale me with your stories from German factories and their all conquering Über-Menschen. I'm sure it will be a hit in the Liebherr factory this fall when I visit.
 
doghouse said:
Anyone with the most basic economic knowledge knows that the Germans don't have any particular magic about manufacturing

If the Germans have any talent, it's managerial, not manufacturing. I know, I deal with them all the time as one of the 8,000 global elite.
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#1, yes... no magic. They care about their population, that's the "magic".

#2, no... they work, and pride themselves in it. I have extensive experience working with Germans and Dutch, and they work really efficiently and smart with a high level of commitment.
 
doghouse said:
I'd love for you to regale me with your stories from German factories and their all conquering Über-Menschen. I'm sure it will be a hit in the Liebherr factory this fall when I visit.
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Here bro... and its the BBC so it's leftist enough for your taste.

 
OfficePants said:
#1, yes... no magic. They care about their population, that's the "magic".

#2, no... they work, and pride themselves in it. I have extensive experience working with Germans and Dutch, and they work really efficiently and smart with a high level of commitment.
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I'm glad you get on well with your German IT counterparts.
 
doghouse said:
Are you really asking me the difference between creating more humans versus moving human around the planet on net population?
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Your idea is Sir Francis Galton in reverse.

You see humans as factors of production that can be shifted for short term profits.

Sir Francis Galton at least looked at what he saw as the qualities of those factors of production. So he preferred Chinese to what he called Hindoos. He thought either would be more useful to the British Empire than native Africans. Now Chinese are gradually colonising Africa, albeit not for the benefit of
Britain.
 
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doghouse said:
I'm glad you get on well with your German IT counterparts.
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Easiest people to work with I have ever encountered. Unlike Indians who are a sneaky, protectionist bunch that build "code kingdoms" which only they know so you have to keep them around.

A German will always give you an accurate estimate and full day of work. They are very successful because of it.
 
OfficePants said:
Easiest people to work with I have ever encountered. Unlike Indians who are a sneaky, protectionist bunch that build "code kingdoms" which only they know so you have to keep them around.

A German will always give you an accurate estimate and full day of work. They are very successful because of it.
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Dude, the Germans are the most rigid motherfuckers out. That's why they will never have a significant market share in most sectors.

In the upside, I bet their IT actually knows shit like COBOL and assembly language unlike the suburban douchebags we put out today that call themselves 'IT' and you gnash your teeth they don't get jobs.
 
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