Is America Preparing Kids For a Fool’s Paradise?
In the 1950s, 30 percent of the American workforce was employed in manufacturing—almost one in three jobs. This country was a relative manufacturing superpower; we were the world’s richest and most productive country. By 1994, approximately one in eight Americans had jobs in manufacturing. If government projections are accurate, by 2014 only 8 percent of jobs in the United States will be in manufacturing—1 in 12 jobs.
The government is telling us in black and white that the policies they are enacting will decrease both absolute and relative manufacturing employment to levels below that of the 1950s–over 2 million below.
In less than 20 years since America put in place some of its most self-devastating policy decisions (NAFTA, WTO, CAFTA, KORUS etc.), this country will have almost completely converted from a self-sufficient sovereign state, capable of manufacturing what it needs to sustain and protect itself, to a country of servants–serfs, working at the behest of foreign employers or engaged in the sales, marketing, and distribution of foreign-made goods–working at their discretion, for wages they determine, and forced to pay their prices for needed goods. This is the definition of a servant.
A country that stops producing anything of value will have little to consume at home and nothing to trade abroad. A nation like this will end up having a low standard of living. This country was built by developing world-leading industries and dominating markets with products that we invented. Now we have conceded that we will exist by selling our assets and eliminating most of our ability to produce for ourselves. This would make any country extremely vulnerable.
From 1994-2004, manufacturing was the second fastest job-losing sector in our economy (second only to agricultural employment). From 2004-2014, the government predicts that most of the employment growth will come from retail, health care, leisure and hospitality, government jobs, and “professional and business services.” We will then have reverted from a productive to a service (servant) economy with a much lower living standard.
This country needs salespeople, waiters, attorneys, doctors, and managers, but we cannot be a superpower country on those professions alone.
Many say that we are shipping jobs overseas because they are too low-paying or too rudimentary. Anyone who has worked in a factory operating a million-dollar piece of equipment can tell you the satisfying difference from being forced to work in a restaurant as a waiter because of lack of alternatives. Why would we send factory jobs overseas to replace them with jobs in retail and hospitality? Factories sustain communities. Retail and hospitality enriches absentee corporations and shareholders. Offshore outsourcing strips us of technology, taxes, profits, and career opportunities. Why would we choose that path as manufacturing jobs pay much more on average than service jobs?
Some other countries, like Japan and Germany, pay wages as high as or higher than America because their manufacturing is capital- and knowledge-intensive and requires fewer workers per unit of output. In addition, other countries like China that pay wages as low as 1/10 of ours, also does not have the same cost of living as the U.S. Their goods cost a fraction of what they cost here in America; therefore it is not possible to compare the wages on an absolute basis.
Many people also say education is the key. They say that not enough Americans are being trained for engineering, science, or production occupations. There is no point in educating people when there are no jobs—these industries are being systematically and predatorily destroyed by foreign subsidized competition producing and operating both externally and here in this country through insourcing.
We are living in a fool’s paradise, being propped up by foreign loans to our government and foreign subsidized consumption of our incredulous trade deficits.
The net takeaway of the government report is that if you expect to earn a decent living by producing a product–any product–in the next 10 years, you will have little opportunity to do that in this country. Shouldn’t we do something about this now?!
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From December 2000 through December 2010, U.S. industrial production fell for the first time since the Depression, and America lost over 3 million private sector jobs, the worst record since 1928 to 1938.
In that same decade, 5.5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs, one of every three we had, disappeared.
Manufacturing, 27 percent of the U.S. economy in 1950, is down to 11 percent and accounts for only 9 percent of the non–farm labor force.
In traded goods, we ran up $6.2 trillion in deficits, $3.8 trillion of that in manufactured goods.
The cumulative U.S. trade deficit with China in manufactured goods was $2 trillion. China now holds the mortgage on America.
The cumulative current account deficit of the United States from 2000 through the third quarter of 2010 exceeded $6 trillion. To finance it, we had to borrow $1.5 billion abroad every day for ten years.
More Americans now work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined.
The historical record is clear. Nations rise on economic nationalism. They descend on free trade.
Excellent article. Just a couple of quibbles:
1. Germany and Japan are able to compete with China despite having wages as high as ours because the work is capital and knowledge-intensive? I don’t think so. Could it be because their governments are protecting their industries?
2. The claim by some companies that there is a shortage of educated people (science, engineering, etc.) in this country is a LIE. It is an excuse for those companies to bring in foreign workers on H-1B visas who will work for “peanuts.” According to Paul Craig Roberts, our government allows about 65,000 H-1B workers to enter the country each year, while our science/engineering graduates take jobs as waitresses or bartenders. (“How The Economy Was Lost,” P.176)
3. The “need more education” argument ignores the two- thirds of our population who are not cut out for calculus or C++, but who actually do most of the work in any factory and who still need jobs.