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Pundits will debate the wellsprings of Donald Trump's election triumph for years. Right now, cultural explanations are in the lead. Multiple researchers and journalists are stressing the role of "racial resentments" and xenophobia as the deepest sources of Trump's appeal. And such explanations cannot be dismissed.
But the decades-long decline of U.S. manufacturing employment and the highly automated nature of the sector's recent revitalization should also be high on the list of explanations. The former is an unmistakable source of the working class rage that helped get Trump elected. The latter is the main reason Trump won't be able to "make America great again" by bringing back production jobs.
The Rust Belt epicenter of the Trump electoral map says a lot about its emotional origins, but so do the facts of employment and productivity in U.S. manufacturing industries. The collapse of labor-intensive commodity manufacturing in recent decades and the expansion in this decade of super-productive advanced manufacturing have left millions of working-class white people feeling abandoned, irrelevant, and angry.
To see this, one has only to look at the stark trend lines of the production data, which show a massive 30-year decline of employment beginning in 1980. That trend led to the liquidation of more than a third of U.S. manufacturing positions. Employment in the sector plunged from 18.9 million jobs to 12.2 million.
[...] In fact, the total inflation-adjusted output of the U.S. manufacturing sector is now higher than it has ever been. That's true even as the sector's employment is growing only slowly, and remains near the lowest it's been. These diverging lines—which reflect the sector's improved productivity—highlight a huge problem with Trump's promises to help workers by reshoring millions of manufacturing jobs. America is already producing a lot. And in any event, the return of more manufacturing won't bring back many jobs because the labor is increasingly being done by robots.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 21 2016, @12:33PM
Those bubbles you refer to probably contributed to the increasing loss of jobs. But, I blame the unions.
The steel industry was first. Corporations were actually showing zero profits, and even losses, mostly due to insane pension schemes. The future wasn't looking real good for them. Initially, the corporations attempted to bargain with the unions, seemingly in good faith. The word was, "If you'll take a 2% cut in benefits, we can get on an even keel, and things will be rosy for us for the next 30 years."
Now, you know me - I'm a cynical old bastard, and I don't believe anyone's word at face value. But, facts are facts - US Steel, B&W, Bethlehem, and dozens of others were showing smaller profits. Something needed to change.
The unions refused to bargain in good faith. The man in the street believed that no one in the world could make steel like Americans could make steel, and that no jobs would be lost. They kept believing that until plants were shut down, disassembled, and shipped overseas. Even then, the union people insisted that those plants would only make scrap metal because those foreigners didn't understand steel.
Today - those plants are still operating in Belgium, India, and other places. They aren't coming back. Even if I were stupid enough to believe that Indians are dumb in comparison to Americans - making steel isn't THAT fuckign complicated. You don't need to staff the plant with geniuses to produce good steel. A couple metallurgists, a couple engineers, and a mathematician are all the real brains required in a moderately sized steel plant. Everyone else can have IQ's under 100, and it won't affect the finished product at all.
Of course, that leads to the question - why can't China produce good steel? WTF went wrong there?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @12:57PM
(Of course, that leads to the question - why can't China produce good steel? WTF went wrong there?
They hired Indian engineers.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 21 2016, @01:50PM
They hired Indian engineers who were actually Pakis in disguise.
FTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @02:07PM
At least they weren't Guatemalans.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 21 2016, @02:24PM
More than likely, China was never really in a position to make good steel. Like you said, you need a good staff of metallurgists, possibly chemists, engineers, some decent people in quality control, and a facilities staff to keep the machines running. The rest of the people are just peons. The US and others had plenty of time, over 100 years to build a steel ecosystem. China had to learn to make steel the hard way. Their ludicrous speed like growth of their manufacturing market saw demand skyrocket. Chinese steel makers could barely keep up with demand. Remember the scrap steel boom of about 8-10 years ago when it was fetching $200-$250 a ton at scrap yards instead of the usual $40-$50?. It was all going to China. Hundreds of thousands of tons, if not millions. I'm sure Chinese steel makers at some point said "fuck it if it holds together after forming, it passes." Besides, in the beginning of China's export boom, quality was absolute trash. People didn't mind so much as long as they could buy something that normally costs $100 for $10-20. I mean, if people are willing to buy a $20 cordless drill which breaks after a few uses and just buy a new one, then why improve?
So in the end it was a lack of knowledge which hampered production which in turn lowered quality BUT it turns out it was just good enough to meet demand. So there was/is no real reason to improve quality as people are still buying.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @05:03PM
You are echoing the 1%'s propaganda. The pensions matched typical private-sector pensions for big co's at the time. Company pensions got cheaper over time. And union negotiations involve both sides. Why you blame JUST the union if the agreement is poor?
A better solution would be to get unions in China also, rather than kill unions and have a race to the bottom whereby the rich get richer and the rest get screwed. The middle class was strongest when unions were strongest.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday November 21 2016, @07:57PM
ALL monopolies are bad. Monopolies of labor as well as industrial monopolies as well as utility monopolies as well as transportation monopolies. Every single one is terrible.
Now tell me how a person in no position of power is supposed to arrange to get a decent wage? Companies are relatively few, and will agree to not pay more than they have to. Companies will even hold people prisoner and pay them in fake money (company script) to coerce them into only buying the goods that they choose to offer at the prices that they choose to offer.
So unions are terrible, but they *help* to rebalance a grossly uneven scale. I'd prefer some better solution, like universal basic income (which would also get rid of the need for minimum wage), but that isn't available. So what's a better option?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 21 2016, @08:12PM
*cough* "Company pensions got cheaper over time."
In which reality did you find this little tidbit? Here on the earth that I live on, the pensions were set up very much like a pyramid scheme. Not unlike Social Security. Everyone pays a little, for 20 to 40 years, then everyone takes a lot. All those little bits never added up to the jackpot that was promised to everyone. The medical benefits that accompanied pensions were just as bad. Retirees were promised the sky, but there was no way any corporation would ever be able to pay off on the promises. Maybe, just maybe, the largest corporations - except those are bought and sold, and the union contracts are dropped with the sale.
Of course, all that was wrong with the contracts didn't really matter, because so many of the pension funds were frittered away on bogus investments. The most stable pension fund in the US (for working people) was the rail road pension. That pension still works - primarily because the railroads have laid off 80% or more of it's workforce. Those individuals who were disabled while working for the railroads are as secure as government retirees!
Pyramid schemes look attractive, but they never work.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Monday November 21 2016, @05:58PM
I've felt that way much of my life. But recently I've learned about how truly bad manufacturing jobs and conditions were in the 1800s and 1900s and I understand why unions are 100% necessary. Few employers are truly benevolent.
Regarding their tough bargaining and holding their ground, the unions really had no choice, but ultimately they would lose because the power is with the $ controllers. I'm convinced, based on what I know and have seen of our entire economic system, that those steel plants and jobs were going to go overseas. Much cheaper labor, essentially no EPA, labor laws, etc., are the problem- it's not a level playing field.
The labor unions would do better to propagandize Chinese, Indian, Mexican, etc., workers into forming unions, but those workers would probably be killed, as so many workers were in the USA in the 1800s and 1900s. Carnegie was horrible in that regard.
They certainly can and do produce amazing steel. Very little of the good stuff makes it to the USA due to economics. But I am seeing better and better quality stuff coming from China, and I don't know if that's good or bad.