Lately I've seen presidential candidates claim that they can, "Bring back manufacturing jobs." From my perspective, that seems like an impossible task. You see, manufacturing jobs have been disappearing since their heyday in the 1950s and they are on the way to extinction. So why would candidates claim they could bring them back? Because they know that if you repeat a lie often enough and loudly enough, people tend to want to believe that it's true .
I don't want to delve into all the history, just a little bit. Manufacturing really got started in England and then in the United States during the Civil War when, primarily the North, had to produce large amounts of munitions in a very short time. The model that was used was a shop with a foreman, training workmen on the job and getting them to produce parts and whole assemblies in the quality that was required. This worked well through the end of the 19th century, primarily because raw materials were plentiful and waves of immigrants that would work for next to nothing made manufacturing very profitable for the robber barons of the era. These entrepreneurs grabbed up all the land that they could after it had been taken away from the native populations and divvied out as leases, homesteads, and outright grants by the government. These enterprising fellows then took all the easy to gather resources and, generally, abandoned the sites for others to clean up. This worked well for lumbering, because it paved the way for farmers who came later on the cleared land, regardless of its value to farming. Mining was a different story because mines tended to pollute the land and water much more than lumbering and plowing. Some of those early mines are still polluting today over 100 years after they were abandoned.
By 1900, consumers began demanding higher quality and consistency from the products they bought at retail establishments. Frederick Taylor was the first to see the opportunity to work with companies and improve their productivity both by streamlining the manufacturing process and finding ways to train and reduce the often ill trained and unruly workforce. While the assembly line had been tried earlier, Henry Ford perfected the process while building the Model T Ford, and the productivity that resulted allowed him to pay his workers a prosperous wage that guaranteed their loyalty without resorting to unions.
The robber barons, for the most part, were only interested in profits, and sought ways to eliminate unruly workers and to fight the growing union movement asking for better working conditions, wages, and relief from long working hours. By the end of World War I, workers had had enough abuse and unions became stronger and stronger. When the Great Depression caused a tremendous loss of jobs in every sector, legislation was passed in the mid-30s that allowed union members collective bargaining and the ability to finally obtain living wages and benefits for their hard work. World War II munitions demand accelerated manufacturing, and the exuberance of the 1950s after the war resulted in superstores and mass consumption as we know it today.
But the minions that followed Frederick Taylor, industrial engineers, among them my twin brother and I, were all about improving manufacturing in ways that increased quality and consistency by perfecting machines and processes… and, reducing the number of workers that it took to make a product from raw material to its sale. I used these techniques and processes to improve productivity and quality of work in the higher education institutions that I worked in. And my twin brother worked in over 80 companies either as an employee or a consultant to improve processes and remove unnecessary manufacturing jobs.
My point in the previous discussion is that by the 1970s lower paying service jobs had exceeded higher-paying, skilled, unionized jobs for the first time. While some service jobs were unionized, these unions were quite weak and ineffectual. Skilled manufacturing jobs were not only being eliminated, the manufacturing jobs that replaced them, were, for the most part, lower skilled and highly monotonous. All the skill and quality moved to the machines. Computerization of the machines made them much more productive and very soon doing quality and speed of work that no human could duplicate, reminiscent of the old story and song, John Henry.
By the 1980s, corporations had largely replaced companies and spread their influence across the world, seeking new resources, labor sources, and markets. Corporations had certain autonomy and were run by shareholders whose only interest was the bottom line. And this interest was very short-term, often quarter by quarter. All corporations have long-term planning and improvement of their production processes, but money became the all-important part of the equation. Shareholders wanted to get richer. Their riches would "trickle down" to the rest of society and everybody would be better off. At least that's what Ronald Reagan claimed.
In order to do this short-term moneymaking, the corporations enlisted the Big Eight accounting firms to help them with the "bottom line." Consulting quickly was taken away from industrial engineers and placed with the moneychangers who came up with all kinds of ingenious ways to make use of the flood of legal and illegal immigrants, and exploit, more and more, foreign sources of both resources and labor. This process has been underway without check into the 21st century and it is the rule today.
I don't have the statistics, but manufacturing jobs have been going, going, gone for a very long time and there's no real way of bringing them back. One either has to have very high intellectual ability and schooling to enter the upper-middle-class professional workforce, or settle for low-paying service jobs. There are low-paying monotonous manufacturing jobs still out there, but anyone with any skill level would not want to work them. Immigrants seem to be more willing to take these jobs than the average, now college-educated, American.
These presidential candidates all want to cut, "big government." Well, the record of the government cutters from the past shows that they all have grown government during their government leadership, and for the most part, created a revolving door with corporations so that laws were passed protecting corporations from any retaliation from low-paid workers with rules like, "right to work," allowing anyone suggesting improvement in anything that doesn't follow the corporate line for increasing profits to be summarily fired without any right to sue for unjust dismissal.
And, as a way of increasing corporate profits, the movement towards "privatizing government" continues unabated. The fact that government jobs provide some stability, generally higher pay, with full benefits is lost by these short-term profit-taking enterprises. The difference between government and the private sector is that government must serve all the people all the time. Private-sector companies have a tendency to "cherry pick" the most lucrative government functions and leave the rest, "up to charity." So, while we need more real people in government jobs taking care of the business of all the people in the country with personal contact and and helpfulness at both the national, state, and local levels, corporations are making money doing these functions without regard for all citizens. Budget-cutting for government services takes away some of the best jobs in the country. These jobs will not be replaced by manufacturing jobs.
The craft industries give us hope that some higher-paying jobs will return to the United States. But the success of these industries requires that people will pay more for their products and services. Generally, when these companies start to become successful, corporate entities buy the them out and assume their brands. All one has to do is watch the TV program, Shark Tank, and see that when a particular pitch person claims that they will build their product in the United States, the sharks all chime in and say, "No, you have to manufacture overseas to get your price point to where I will give you an offer." And their offers, quite greedy, do nothing for improving the product or the way that it is made. It's all about how much money can be made by convincing or fooling an ever more fickle and gullible consuming public hooked on corporate come-ons and discounts.
While entrepreneurial companies have always made inroads in progress towards products and services, they are not suited two large projects that provide a service to the citizens of a nation. These projects, often infrastructure, can only be created by government. Historic examples of these kinds of projects are the establishment of the national parks and forest system, the Rural Electrification Act that brought electricity to the countryside poor people cannot afford to pay for the transmission lines, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Interstate Highway Act. These and other infrastructure projects have always paid higher construction wages been given jobs and people in areas that were lacking other job sources. Spending money on upgrading and repairing our country's infrastructure benefits not only jobs, but improves life for everyone. Privatizing infrastructure can lead to monopolies that can hold the people hostage to higher prices and/or discriminatory services.
If we want higher-paying, more stable, jobs to return the United States economy, we need to be very careful who we elect and what we consume. As long as we continue to allow big money to control how government is run and buy our products and services from corporations instead of our neighbors, we'll be stuck with hearing this same old saw from politicians about manufacturing jobs as our economy sinks lower and lower and China and India become the innovative and financial giants of the world.
9/30/15
© Ronald W. Hull
after reading ur post, as well as the comments, and concluded that both you & JQ may be correct. Conventional manufacturing as we know it may not return. However,
imagine a National campaign to install Solar Panels on each & every roof in the USA...
Factories to produce mullions of panel... local companies to install the systems...
thousands of jobs for laborers... homeowners saving money every month... some even earning money selling juice to the Grid ... People spend $ buying things... Retail sales improve... States get Sales taxes... The Feds collect more tax $ ...
EVERYBODY WINS !!!
Love ya!
Jane
Big money, Ron, unfortunately will always be with us and dictate much of how our lives will be lived. Shangri-la is a myth . . .