Manufacturing Jobs, Gone Forever

Not only can we not compete from a labor cost perspective.

I'll put in that the EPA cannot allow us to compete from a regulation perspective. That is the biggest issue to competition from what I understand and believe.

 

Foxconn produces massive amounts of consumer electronics. I'd be willing to bet that nearly everyone has at least one product or component manufactured in a Foxconn factory somewhere in their home. And yeah, they have a less than stellar track record when it comes to employee welfare.

Here's the thing, though -- North America and much of the western world has moved away from being producers of goods and created more of an intellectual economy. We produce ideas and designs and media now. It's unfortunate for all the blue collar folks because their sector is drying up, but I don't think it weakens the economy overall. It's just another step in the globalization process.

Someone like Baraka_Guru is no doubt going to come along very soon and either expand on what I've said or correct me. This isn't really my area, and I only have a rudimentary understanding of how these things work.

 

Slaves don't get paid and cannot change jobs. Equating hem to slavery is based on your opinion.

Many people in these countries are getting better lives and moving up in class. It isn't like blood diamonds.

 

Oh, look, you called it.

Basically, yeah: China opened itself up for the express purpose of moving towards a capitalist mode of economics and it was very successful at it. Now China is the world's factory, and there isn't much anyone can do about it short of replicating the same factors and environments that make it possible for them. Last I checked, America is rather short on rural peasant labour seeking a way out of destitution and starvation.

It's a bit misleading when people say that companies "shipped jobs overseas." It's more like the jobs are created overseas. This is a global economy and you have to compete with that. American companies — whether huge multinationals or not — have to compete with U.K. companies, Swiss companies, German companies, French companies, Japanese companies, etc., and you know what? They're all using China as a factory to some extent. If America wants to put a stop to that it will require one or two things: 1) the severe drop in quality of life among the majority of Americans (to a level not seen since the 19th century), or 2) the funnelling of billions (if not trillions) of tax dollars into what essentially would be socialist domestic factories (that may or may not run at a profit: most likely not).

Comparing China to the U.S. is difficult because each economy, despite their relative sizes, are in different stages. The U.S. is a large developed economy with a high standard of living even among the lower middle class. China is a smaller (albeit still large) developing economy with relatively low standards of living that are greatly increasing. China in many ways is playing the same catch-up game that the U.S. played after WWII. The U.S. eventually overtook Britain as the #1 influence in the world, and there was nothing Britain could do about it. The same goes with the U.S. vs. China regarding manufacturing: the U.S. is going to have to deal with it.

Economies change. Look at India: they went with cheap business services. America has to change as well. The growth opportunities of advanced and developed economies are there, but it looks like America is dropping the ball. Education is appalling compared to the top global education systems. America is going to need a well-educated, well-trained workforce if it's going to find out where new jobs are going to be created. This is the 21st century. Obsessing about manufacturing? What is this, the 19th century? Don't put your eggs all in one basket, especially if the basked has been plundered already. There is a reason why there was no Microsoft in 1850. There is also a reason why staring up a railroad company in 2012 doesn't make all that much sense.

The blue collar jobs aren't disappearing, but they're changing. Blue collar workers will need to learn new skills for new industries. Many of these jobs will require shifting from producing things to providing services. Many of them will be somewhat similar. If you can work in an automated auto plant, perhaps you can be retrained/educated to work for a green energy company that needs servicing on their technology or a telecommunications company that needs to lay out thousands of miles of fibre optic cable.

Slave comments aside, this is the reality of (mostly) free markets. Perhaps there should be trade policies regarding the conditions surrounding the production of imports. Either way, the reason why so many things are affordable here is because of these practices. I think we'll eventually have to get used to things getting more expensive. I generally think the golden age of America's consumer society is waning.

 

wait, you'll pay more for the products you purchase? because that's what it takes.... this isn't just electronic goods, it's about underwear, socks, tshirts, and other common place items that are no longer manufactured from the raw materials raised here.

 

Oh, there's no arguing that. Even folks who only casually follow tech news are aware that Foxconn's human rights track record is atrocious. I was addressing the topic as you initially framed it, but if you want to talk about human rights in China we can do that too.

The problem is that the folks who have the real ability to stop it aren't particularly interested in doing so, since paying workers higher wages and ensuring that their working conditions are adequate costs money, which drives up the bottom line. Apple in particular has repeatedly expressed shock and outrage every time a new story of an employee suicide (or "suicide," as some insist was the case in the missing iPhone 4 prototype incident), only to forget about it once the the heat dies down and seemingly be caught by surprise all over again a few months later. And you're going to, what? Convince people to boycott Apple and do without their iPhones? Doesn't sound very bloody likely to me. There's no pressure on them to change anything just now -- from the point of view of Apple, the system works.

I think it's instructive to bear in mind that it wasn't that long ago that we had similar conditions here in North America, though. My thinking is that China is on the long and painful road to modernization; in the interim the global economy makes protectionism economic suicide, while the strong emphasis on capitalism in the western world and the US in particular practically forbids any serious external pressure to change things, meaning there's little for us in the developed world to do but stand by and watch.

It's a bit of a bleak view, yeah, but there's a happy ending eventually. For whatever small comfort that is.

 

Much of this comes down to a) what the consumer is willing to pay, b) what the shareholder expects as performance, and c) what companies are willing and capable of doing to accomplish their objectives.

None are spared. We're all complicit no matter how indirectly. The only out is to shop consciously to buy products and services that aren't derived from exploitative practices. There are options out there, and, yeah, they're usually more expensive (but not always, depending on what you're buying).

http://www.allamericanclothing.com/
http://www.wsandcompany.com/

 

It works that way even in the states. In the 90's NY and NJ fought tooth and nail, well, more like NJ and they lured lots of businesses away from NY. It is the reason why NJ has so many financial jobs just across from Manhattan now.