·Reading time: 3 minutes
- Large numbers of manufacturing jobs will not come back to the United States. The hopes of the rust belt that they will once again be the heart of the United States’ economic engine are doomed to be broken. These jobs have not gone overseas, they have not been taken over by immigrants, they have gone away. Completely.Despite the way manufacturing jobs have gone away, American industry is more productive than ever. This is because the jobs in question have been taken over by robots. Manufacturing automation has been the trend for at least the past 30 years, and will continue to be the trend for the foreseeable future. Some people studying the trend claim that half of all jobs in the next decade will be lost to automation.A prime example of the trend is a company by the name of Signicast. It’s a pretty safe bet you haven’t heard of Signicast unless you are a manufacturer that needs high quality investment cast, machine finished parts. Signicast is one of the originators of what has become known as “continuous flow casting”. The name does not mean anything like the flow of metal from the smelter, but rather the flow of work through the factory. Once the flow of work starts it does not stop. The factory does not stop work to retool between jobs, but they have the procedures in place to switch immediately from one job to the next.Everyone who is anyone in American manufacturing, who needs investment cast machine finished parts uses Signicast. Everyone. General Motors, Ford, Harley Davidson, Pratt and Whitney, General Electric, and the list goes on. The list is a who’s-who of American manufacturing. For this reason, Signicast is one of the largest continuous flow casting manufacturers in the world.50 years ago, or even 30 years ago, such an operation would entail the employment of thousands of foundrymen, mold makers, machinists, mechanics, and other trades to support them, including the administrative and office personnel to support all of that. How many, you may ask, does Signicast actually employ? The last time I looked the figure was a little over 700. All of the thousands of jobs their operation would have needed in the past have all been replaced by automation.In fact, Signicast was on the leading edge of the automation revolution in American manufacturing. That is how they came to their position today. Workers you don’t need are workers you don’t have to pay, which means you can either pump up your profit or undercut your competitors or both. Robots may be expensive, but over time they’re less expensive than skilled labor.For this reason, automation, these high paying manufacturing jobs are not coming back, and neither is the economy based on them.
Comments
- Robert Luis Rabello It's sad, but this is reality. A larger question becomes, "What are we going to do to provide meaningful income for people when displacement by robots and software becomes ubiquitous?"
- Sal Nucifora Build robots.
- Robert Luis Rabello Not everyone can do that . . .
- Artemis Westenberg give everyone a base income to participate in society and be respected. That is what my party in the Netherlands stands for in the coming parliamentary elections.
- Jay Ashworth No, the larger question "what is the Rust Belt going to do when they finally realize Trump has conned *them* too".
Assuming we're all still here by then. - Alan Petrillo The right wing media machine will find some way to blame it on Democrats, and their followers will believe them.
- Robert Luis Rabello Mr. Trump is a short-term problem with long-term implications. The displacement of workers by automation and software will be permanent.
- Jay Ashworth Alan Petrillo R Pres, R House, R Senate. What way would that be?
- Jay Ashworth Yes, Robert, and I'm absolutely amazed how much bipartisan traction Basic Income is getting on that front.
- Alan Petrillo I don't see it either, but you can count on it happening.
- Robert Luis Rabello Oh, they'll make something up, Jay. They always do!
- Robert Luis Rabello And Basic Income is an idea that both Mr. Nixon and Mr. Friedman proposed.
- Robert Luis Rabello But, of course, Mr. Nixon was WAY too "Liberal" for modern conservatives.
- Alan Petrillo When called to answer for their idiocy the knee-jerk reaction of most Conservative politicians and pundits is to blame the problem on the "liberal media". It's a recurring theme we've seen over and over again.
- Jay Ashworth It's not new; Heinlein proposed it (in some detail) as Social Credit in his 1936 first novel, published about 10 years ago; _For Us: The Living_
- Robert Luis Rabello Something along those lines will be necessary, otherwise we'll have a society that makes the feudal era look like a picnic . . .
- Alan Petrillo Indeed. We'll have a situation in which large numbers of people are poor, starving, sick, and desperate, and that way lies disaster. It would end in a Malthusian apocalypse.
- Thomas Trumpinski I expect a combination of the WPA and the CCC. After eight years of that, nobody would notice the lack of manufacturing jobs--FDR, not Hitler.
Long term, the deficit of jobs from available workers will have to be addressed by some sort of guaranteed minimum. - Thomas Trumpinski ..and as Charlie would point out, don't mistake either Trump of his voters for conservatives. He's a New York Democrat.
- Jay Ashworth He is, but I'm pretty sure the rural Republicans who elected him aren't.
- Alan Petrillo He is certainly something. I can't say what yet, but he is something. As has been pointed out ad-nauseum, he is a politician unlike any we've seen.
- Thomas Trumpinski We've *seen* it before, Alan, in FDR. That's the big point that I've been making for the last fifteen months.
- Alan Petrillo If you insist. I still don't see it.
- Thomas Trumpinski Much of my gut knowledge of FDR comes from long talks with Lost and GI Generation elders. FDR was a demagogue with fascist tendencies who won on a platform of punishing the Wall street fatcats who had caused the Great Depression. He used a new technology, radio, the same way that the Trump campaign used social media.
Many hated him and even those who voted for him didn't trust him. Both were inherited wealth and from New York. - Thomas Trumpinski Here's FDR's 1932 campaign song (and the unofficial theme of the Democratic Party up to the Kennedy election.)
The lyrics start about 1:20. Can't you imagine a modern song with the same lyrics being played at a Trump rally?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gqsT4xnKZPg 
youtube.com"Happy Days are Here Again!" (Ben Selvin and the Crooners, 1930)"Happy Days are Here Again!" (Ben Selvin and the Crooners, 1930)
Hide 12 Replies
brookings.edu
It won’t be easy to bring back millions of manufacturing jobs | Brookings Institution
It won’t be easy to bring back millions of manufacturing jobs | Brookings Institution
No comments:
Post a Comment