19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America That Will Blow Your Mind

[Joanne98]

The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing. It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution. It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes. It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II. But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America. Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period. The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little. Do you know what our biggest export is today? Waste paper. Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us. The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was. Once upon a time America could literally outproduce the rest of the world combined. Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world. If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?
Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things. So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation? We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable. Every single month America does into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.

So what happens when the debt bubble pops?

The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country. But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.

For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them. Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.

The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind....

#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/19-Facts-About-The-Deindus-by-Michael-Snyder-110115-119.html

[DrDan]

1. not surprising

". . . between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8 percent to 21.1 million."

[customerserviceguy]

2. It's a natural progression

Economies move from agricultural, to industrial, to service economies. As mechanization has taken over food production, why wouldn't that happen with manufacturing, as well?

Ever seen "Star Trek"? In that world of the future, do you imagine that anyone is still doing stoop labor to produce food, or banging a hammer on metal to produce things? If our future is going to transistion to that, then the leading economies on the planet will get there first.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Well, lacking food replicators and a live-and-let-live attitude I would say

we are a long ways off yet. All I know is I don't want to stay completely true to the "Star Trek" progression as it would require us going through a nuclear war. :)

[customerserviceguy]

30. It was not a call for a strict following of the Star Trek timeline

It was just a way to illustrate the idea that someday, we're not going to be manufacturing the same way that we did for the last couple of hundred years, just as the way we've been farming for most of the last century is not the way we were providing our food for the nearly ten thousand years before that.

We're moving in that direction, perhaps a bit slowly, but eventually, all employment will be in a service economy, even if it's just to be a techie that fixes the machines, until we invent machines that will do that job.

[crikkett]

10. Scotty was always banging on something w/ hammer

:dunce:

[lostnfound]

14. Please see this photo of a natural progression

The modern way of making manhole covers for New York City (New York Times 2007)
Just because our production is occurring out of sight doesn't mean it is progressing into the future. It is also regressing to the Dark Ages..

[reggie the dog]

26. right, our goods used to be produced in far more humane manners

in the 1970s, that cut into costs of the wealthy elite and created an uppity middle class, so they delocalized, and yes, it is back to the dark ages for all once the credit bubble bursts

[customerserviceguy]

31. And you help to make my point

At some time in the future, the economies of the developing world will rise to the place where we will not be able to make manhole covers with primarily human labor. A machine will be developed to put raw ingots in, and get manhole covers (or anything else made of steel) out of.

As the Western economies rose, the hard labor jobs that built them will go to the developing world, and aid in their rise to join the rest of humanity.

[lostnfound]

34. Such machines already exist but the abuse of desperate labor is more profitable

That story told by proponents of NAFTA etc once seemed believable and specifically it once seemed believable to me that the impoverished in Mexico would benefit, but what has actually happened is that the jobs last long enough to destabilize or destroy the native economy, and then they move on like a plague of locusts to strip another field.

[customerserviceguy]

36. And it will be, until those economies improve

By the way, the picture you show is probably not unlike the steel mill my grandfather worked in, although I'm sure he wore more clothing.

Every economy has to go through its stages before it reaches a level of comfort enjoyed by a majority in a Western society. The gentlemen in the picture you posted are probably glad they have those jobs, I wonder what they were doing when manhole covers were being made in the US. It probably didn't pay as much.

[lostnfound]

44. Is there any data that supports the 'free-market religion'?

The fact that the American Enterprise Institute et al has hundreds of well-paid talkers and writers spreading it as fact doesn't mean that it's true. It's a useful theology to support the race to the bottom and profit-taking by those who are tired of inconveniences like child labor laws, OSHA regulations, environmental regulations, etc.
No problem -- I'm sure in about 200 years there will be a healthy resurgence worldwide of the painful movements that birthed those regulations, so that's something my great-great-great-great-grandchildren can look forward to.

[Enthusiast]

45. Plus one!

This free-market religion has destroyed the American working class. But strangely enough they can still get away with pushing this bull shit. Those that benefit from this free-market religion are the big club Carlin spoke of, the one you ain't in.

[customerserviceguy]

48. I'm not talking about the 'free market'

Such a thing exists only in theory in economic textbooks. As a practical matter, corporations almost always find ways to keep new competitors out, and enhance their abilities to get sweetheart deals from governments, paid for by taxpayers.

We know that already happens here in the US, I submit to you that it occurs with a vengeance in the developing nations. They'll cut any corners, take any bribes, sell out any parts of their populations, and wink at any pollution to get even a manufacturing economy of the kind in the manhole sweatshop. That's how US businesses made it, until enough people here cared to make them toe the line when it came to doing business fairly. Business will gladly go to where they get to do things like they did in the Wild West, and unfortunately, Americans will purchase cheap products from these firms.

Eventually, the nations at the bottom will develop a middle class that will demand what US citizens wanted when they passed laws to clean up businesses here. It's just going to be a rough time for those caught in the transition.

[Enthusiast]

18. Tell that to those living in

the rust belt states where millions of jobs have left with nothing to replace them. I certainly can't see that as "progression", natural or otherwise.

[reggie the dog]

27. come on, there are plenty of jobs selling drugs

it is easy as hell to get heroin, crack, and even weed in places like toledo, chicago, detroit, flint, pittsburg..... drugs are a growth industry in the rust belt.... and the cocaine may be import, but most of the crack is boiled up right in place.

[Enthusiast]

37. The ugly truth.

I can't tell you how close that hits to home.

[reggie the dog]

41. i wouldnt hold it against you

i smoke weed and know that most of the dozen or so dealers i had when i lived in chicago were dealing to make ends meet and were either unable to find good paying work where factory work was there a generation earlier, or had been laid off themselves and lost nearly half of their income. Plus LOTS of people grow weed in these places.....


the crack and heroin industries are a success because there are so many depressed suicidal people who figure they may as well get high seeing as they already wish they were dead.

[Enthusiast]

42. Well, it isn't me personally, but.

it's a very sad situation. It is a situation that we can't seem to resolve. Prescription pain killer abuse is rampant in my area. It is at epidemic levels. There appears to be no answers only high numbers of casualties.

[customerserviceguy]

32. I'm not saying that there won't be dislocations

Surely, we had them when we went from a principally agricultural society to a manufacturing one. In the 19th Century, you didn't need an education past the eighth grade if you wanted to be a farmer. You might well have not needed even that.

In the society that is to come, we'll need real, practical educations. Those who do not have them will be left behind.

[Enthusiast]

38. So what are your suggestions

for the millions that bought a home and have deep roots in an area. You can't sell a home for a fraction of what they cost originally in many. Older workers don't have enough work-life time left to relocate, re-train and then find new work.

Anyway I disagree that we should move to a new kind of society. Manufacturing should be a top priority in this nation. Selling made-up ethereal financial products is a piss poor substitute for actually manufacturing useful products.

[customerserviceguy]

40. For starters

stop thinking that the factory will always be there to employ your kids and grandkids. Make sure they stay in secondary education, and even think about picking up a truly useful trade in the service economy by going to at least vocational-technical school, if they're not university material.

We're moving to that service-economy type of society, no matter what anyone does about it. Subsidizing rust-belt industries is just doing CPR on a dead horse, and only delays the process. Manufacturing is often a dirty business, few people want it in their backyard anymore. Third World economies will still tolerate the pollution and other environmental damage that the US was happy to have before the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

[Enthusiast]

43. Stop thinking that the factory will be there?

I personally had two factories close leaving me high and dry.

If there is a will to continue heavy industry in this nation it could continue. We could stop these ridiculous unfair trade deals that give every advantage to the foreign manufacturer while cutting the legs out from under the domestic worker. We should have tariffs that offset these foreign advantages, advantages in workers health and safely requirements, environmental requirements and labor laws. We need tariffs to offset every single advantage that foreign competition enjoys. We are actually expected to compete against foreign socialized industry. It is sickening that any Democrat would support this.

If Germany pays their factory workers high wages, yet remains a major manufacturing nation, we can do the same. You appear to be happy with a service-economy. Maybe even a cheerleader for the very trade deals that have destroyed our nation. I won't accept, "Oh, there's nothing we can do!" I'm never happy to hear Democrats promote Republican notions. It makes me highly suspicious.

I'll work against any candidate that promotes a trade deal, any trade deal, no matter how many lies they tell to sell it.

[customerserviceguy]

47. Then you know that having a town depend on a factory always being there

is the road to ruin. There are still a lot of towns out there who haven't shaken the notion that, "it's always been there, it will always be there," and they expect the next generations will keep doing what their dads and grandads did.

As for the trade deals being unfair, sure, they have been, but even truly fair deals would eventually do us in. The only way that Western economies can compete temporarily with developing countries in manufacturing is to heavily subsidize those industries, and that's what Germany is doing. Eventually, the developing nations will educate enough of their citizens to run a factory, and the low wages in those countries will siphon manufacturing jobs off. Add to it the fact that you don't have the "not in my backyard" problem in places where the government has way more power than the people to determine where a factory will be located, and the move to the developing world is indeed inevitable.

I'm not a fan of the trade deals, but all they did was grease the skids under a process that was already underway, with fat benefits to the rich corporate donors that engineered them. You cannot have a world where the workers in one country get $50 an hour, including benefits, and the workers in another get $5, and not expect the playing field to level out eventually.

[crikkett]

24. Scotty was always banging on something w/ hammer

:dunce:

[baldguy]

3. America is at war.

Not in Afghanistan. Not in Iraq. Not in Pakistan.

America is at war in Nevada, Michigan and California. Our enemies are major multinational corporations.

[maryf]

4. Our enemy is capitalism, nt

[baldguy]

6. I don't think so, and most Americans correctly wouldn't either.

Capitalism is a tool, and like any tool if used properly & intelligently it can create wonderful things.

But when you swing a hammer, you don't let the hammer determine where it strikes. If you don't think & act carefully & control it while it does it's work, it'll do a lot of damage & a lot of people can get hurt.

[ixion]

13. An ideology cannot be an enemy, sorry.

The enemy is a group of wealthy folks who think they get to tell the rest of the world how to live. These people are corporatist, not capitalist.

[reggie the dog]

28. you replace one idology with an other

corporatist is an idology which is not the same as capitalist. capitalism with no poor, a huge middle class, and a few rich thanks to saftey nets and progressive taxiation as well as laws favorizing no or very low unemployment would not be bad, capitalism dominated by corporatists is

[ixion]

35. As I said, the enemy is a group of people, not an ideology

And as far as corpratism goes, it's closer to socialism than capitalism. Except the recipients of the welfare are companies, rather than individuals.

[Enthusiast]

19. Thank you, baldguy!

That is what goes unsaid.

These multinational corporations and their 'bought' politicians are a far greater threat to the nation's wellbeing than any Muslim terrorist. Yet here we are again with our priorities completely askew.

[Kolesar]

5. Kids, don't believe this lugubrious malaise

The US still has the biggest manufacturing economy in the world. There are good careers in manufacturing if you learn quality methods, information technology, and industrial engineering.

[sunnystarr]

15. WOW! Send me a ticket to the US you live in ... and a map

I'm assuming you wrote that with :sarcasm: lol.

[Kolesar]

22. I can photocopy my pay stub

ha ha ha

[Enthusiast]

20. What a laugh. nt

[Igel]

33. You're in the wrong place.

Every day I go on the freeway here I see containers and flatbeds hauling stuff built locally. If you get near the port southbound on the freeway it's a majority of the traffic many days.

Then there are the trains, hauling petrochemicals northbound and the products of fairly heavy industry south, to the port.

There are fewer jobs because productivity and efficiency increased. A lot of jobs left older, high-priced facilities to find cheaper labor in the south--the alternative being higher tariffs pushing prices up and demand down or having the jobs go away overseas, either through outsourcing or the "unofficial outsourcing" usually called "jobs lost to foreign competition."

A lot of the products are fairly specialized. Some are big, bulky, and still require high-tech to produce them. The days of my parents' jobs are gone--working in a steel mill that produced very large batches of fairly low quality steel (by today's standards) with prosaic coatings applied to sloppy standards (by today's standards), while the workers earned pretty good wages and benefits. China did the large, crappy quality stuff. Japan, S. Korea, Germany pioneered fairly cheap boutique steels.

As the steel mill my parents worked at died, Jimmy Carter made a big splash by praising the "post-industrial" economy. It's the first I heard of it, on the cover of Time Magazine (IIRC). I was a teenager. I, an Alex P. Keaton wannabe, looked at it and thought, "You're an idiot, Carter." Then my mother, a good dem, told me to shut up, he was a good president. (I stand by my opinion on this point.)

[safeinOhio]

8. How will the crime wave in Mexico

affect US auto plants? Unrest in other countries too are a great risk. Not to mention the unrest due to high unemployment in this country will cost.

[creon]

9. True

We have been moving away from manufacturing for many years. It has been a slow process, and not that many have noticed it.

[old mark]

11. K&R_ While I don't agree with some of the OP, I worked in US factories

both as labor and as a factory planning designer for almost 20 years. My first "real" job was at the Bethlehem Steel plant here in PA. I pointed out many broken windows to my foreman, and he told me, "Kid, some of those windows were broken since before you were born." The company put NO money into modernizing that plant since WWII ended. Today, part of it is a casino, and parts are various shops and markets...most of it is waste ground. This has been happening for over 60 years, and I can not see much indication that manufacturing will ever return to the US.

The biggest problem is there has been little real effort to replace what has been relocated...the politicians seem to feel that the US economy is so huge it can absorb endless neglect and abuse without negative effect. I know of NO politician or group that is trying to find real answers to these problems, and that in itself is our biggest problem.


mark

[Enthusiast]

21. The politicians have essentially

been bribed to behave as if the US economy is so huge it can absorb endless neglect and abuse without negative effect.

Right now they are touting ever greater free trade agreements. I won't vote for any politician that promotes new free trade agreements.

[Kolesar]

23. Ohio has a program called "Third Frontier" that stimulates manufacturing and ...

... other new types of businesses.

[ixion]

12. A good read, but oped news has gone ad crazy

The garbage ads make an ironic commentary when reading about the demise of our industrial base.

[MindPilot]

16. It's certainly a top concern for this American.

But there is exactly zilch point shit I can do about it.

[Enthusiast]

17. K&R And yet I recently heard

pundits from right wing think tanks espouse the free trade agreements as good for the American consumer.

By now anyone with half a brain knows that these trade deals have been destructive to our national economy. There is no way to argue otherwise. And any politician (President Obama) that argues on behalf of a policy that creates more free trade deals is finished.

[crikkett]

25. There is an environmental argument - away went the factories' pollution, too

With the factories and the factory jobs went the factories' pollution.

We're very happy about that.

[lumberjack_jeff]

29. "Increasingly little"?

Sorry, sometimes I can't ignore the sore thumbs.

[sadseraph]

39. Progress in the making?

Generalizations have a tendency to make facts a little fuzzy. For instance, the article fails to mention that the US is still produces and exports more food and agricultural products than any country in the world, and we haven't been a primarily agriculture economy in a long time. We are still the world's leading manufacturer of military weapons and equipment. And finally, we can think of the US as having 'moved on' from manufacturing. Drucker referred to this as a knowledge economy. But quite simply the US's GDP still dwarfs every other country (and is nearly more than all of Europe combined). Food, guns, and money seem to be our primary exports (not waste paper), and if these weren't so successful I daresay the rest of the world wouldn't have any reason to produce consumer electronics or manhole covers for us.

[indimuse]

46. Thanks! knr! n/t

[Sherman A1]

49. Thanks for Posting

I will have to read a bit later, need to get some work knocked out right now.