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.
#2 Dell Inc., one of America’s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.
#3 Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in November. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.
#4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
#5 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
#6 As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
#7 The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000.
#8 According to Tax Notes, 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.
#9 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.
#10 Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul, Minnesota. Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford's new "global" manufacturing strategy.
#11 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
#12 In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.
#13 The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#14 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.
#15 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products. Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.
#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.
#18 One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
#19 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.
So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?
How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?
How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?
How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?
The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis. It needs to be treated like one.
If you disagree with this article, I have a direct challenge for you. If anyone can explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable economic future, please do so below in the comments section.
America is in deep, deep trouble folks. It is time to wake up.
Das Kapital…..Karl Marx. Ever read it?
You are wrong Tom; socialism is individual slavery to the needs of others, led by an elitist few and administered by an entrenched bureaucracy. Socialism will always lead to Totalitarianism.
You are wrong navywetvet; the export of manufacturing jobs was NOT inevitable, it was planned and executed in service to the neoliberal ideology of global economic interdependency and the redistribution of economic wealth.
It blows my mind that people still advocate socialism as the “solution” to all of our ills. I agree that our current corporatist state is completely corrupt and broken (except from the perspective of those reaping the benefits!). However, this is not the fault of capitalism, but rather a natural result of a powerful centralized government. A corporation is a legal fiction that is only able to come into being because it has been granted special protections and privileges by government dictate. Without special government protection, most business monopolies would naturally fail over time as they are undermined by smaller, more innovative businesses.
I’ll ask you all one question. Would you pay $800 for a basic DVD player so your neighbor could have a union job in the local DVD player factory?
Nothing happens by chance, laws are written by foreign governments, and corporations and passed through to congress via lobbyists. I don’t believe for one second that china and others are not playing an active role in this. It is not the high corporate tax rate in the US, nor the unions, nor lack of willing workers. It is businesses making decisions based only upon those factors that can be measured, i.e. labor costs, etc. Edward Deming tried to point out that there are things in business that can’t be measured, but must be considered, such as the impact of loss of production. The dollar amount of a plants production can be measured, but the amount of lost revenue from customers who went elsewhere can’t be measured, but is very real. The same can be said of the loss of jobs in the US from the outsourcing frienzy. The exact amount of lost market base due to a poorer population can’t be measured, but the immediate labor savings from moving to a low wage country can. Also, the quality of the outsourced products almost never goes up, so this is another unmeasureable, but negative side effect of management decisions. The real problem is lack of good management, and leadership in the US. Nuff said.
You need a dictator . You’re too stupid to vote !
I never cease to be amazed at the folks who think socialism is the way to go. It has never worked in the history of the world. Freedom is the answer. The plot is so thick that most simply do not see it, and they don’t want to. It is depressing. There has never been a nation like the United States, ever, in history. We have not lived under the nation our founders envisioned since shortly after our beginning. Once the elitist got their toe hold by getting control of our currency (Bank Of The United States) through a central bank, the slide began. The elite care not about the masses, because they believe that they know best,not the rest of us. The present day Federal Reserve, is neither Federal or has any Reserve. By their own admission, money is simply created out of thin air. We need to return to our founding principals, as envisioned by our founders. We have the capacity to change our government. It is called an Amendment to the Constitution. The whole issue here is complex, but We The People need to wake up. Perhaps those of us who understand what is going on can override the simpletons who have no idea.
It seems that some on here say capitalism is so terrible and needs to go away. Capitalism is the one thing that has created the most creative advancement of technology and benefits to mankind in history, not socialism. Socialism is a spawn of the devil.
Whatever the case, you’ll have to be willing to pay WAY more for everything if you want to buy a product that’s made here, in our $10/hr real minimum wage, $40-$75/hour typical union factory worker pay (PLUS costly retirement, medical, unemployment benefits). The Japanese have accepted paying the highest prices in the world in order to support their domestic manufacturing base as well as supporting the multitude of middle-men that make up the Japanese product distribution system. It’s each Japanese citizen’s patriotic obligation to do their part to support their country, economy and thus their fellow countrymen.
Result? An economy that’s a stagnant albatross. But they DO still have a (diminishing) MANUFACTURING base that adds enough vital fuel to keep their economic engine chugging along. That’s one solution, Voluntary High Dollar Capitalist Socialism.
Another answer is a floating of the Chinese yuan, coupled with a reduction in worker pay competitive with the pay for the same job in China and India. Nobody will have any money, prices for everything will have to come down to meet demand. We will HAVE to rebuild our manufacturing base because the shipping cost to import Chinese goods will be higher than it costs to produce the same product here.
This is pie in the sky, I know, but fact is, the ONLY way to keep manufacturing at home is to pay for it in one way or another. We didn’t want to, so we opted for lower cost production overseas.
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
– Margaret Thatcher -
The simple answer is that there is no simple answer. We have become a nation more interested in what’s happening on TMZ that whats happening in Washington. The rock star mentality has affected politics, business, sports, education, etc. Americans don’t care what’s really going on, until it affects them personally. By then it’s too late.
Treu there have been warninbg signs that we were headed for this, for over 40 years. We feared the Middle East, in the 70′s, because they controlled the oil and we were dependent. What did we do? Why build the SUV, of course! THIS solved the problem!
We feared the Japanese in the 80s because they were efficient and thrifty. they bought our failing businesses and made them profitable again. We imported their products to the point where they were buying US real estate at break-neck speed. What did we do? We got them involved in derivitives and US securities and nearly bankrupted their economy.
In the 90s, we thought ‘tech’ was going to make us dominant, again and everyone would retire rich. Anyone with a url could get millions of dollars in financing from dopy, greedy investors, who wanted to take an easy ride to riches. The bubble burst and billions were lost. People lost their retirements and more, then, too.
Bring on the new millenium. EVERYONE deserves a new home! Those who already HAVE a home, deserve an much BIGGER home! Our crafty politicians designed legislation to not only make borrowing easier, but FORCED lenders to give out the cash, when the borrower had no documentation that the information on the application was accurate or even true. Lenders KNEW this was wrong and didn’t want to get stuck with huge amounts of high risk paper, so they bundled ‘em up and sold them around the world as ‘investments’. THEN they bought securities, betting that these securities would default.
Our population has been duped time after time, not by business, not by politicians, not by foriegn governments, but by ourselves. We refuse to read. We refuse to learn how the world works. We refuse to work hard, save a little, invest conservatively and live a quiet life. We’re always looking for ‘the next big thing’ so we can get ahead of the other guy. We’re so focused on what the other person does or has, we ignore what we SHOULD be doing.
Our problems are not business, or politics or the other guy. Our problem is our own culture and how WE direct it. Want to fix things? Take stock of what you do, every day, including reading this post. How productive is it? How is this improving you, as a person? Grow up!! I’d be willing to bet that half of you read this just because of the name at the top.
Dear Readers,
This deindustrialisation has been planned for decades. The elite (politicians in any party and any country going WAY back)have an inside line, therefore, they plan on being the aristocrats of the world. They know that the implementation of this plan requires servants to comply. To comply, the rationale is to convince servants that kaos will happen. To create kaos the elite know that war is not the answer. The elite know that kaos will happen with the threat of economic disaster and that economic disaster will happen by removing industry in any over-producing country and shift it to an under-producing country, to “balance” or “share” the wealth.
This is PLANNED. Industry worldwide has the technology to produce energy related products to use liitle or no energy after the initial manufacturing process, ie; solar panels. The big oil industry cannoy allow this. The oil industry will collapse along with all associated production.
The U.S. Gov is the leader in this analysis. The plan is in full implementation and is constantly being evaluted.
The last report issued by the U.S. Department of NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL can be found and downloaded by anyone with internet. This may change soon so here is the link.
The report is a link on this page:
http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
Fox News will be covering this report on Friday, 9-1-2010 at 5:00 U.S. Eastern time on the GB program.
I always knew that energy technology was not utilized and developed to its full potential because of the fall of enrgy companies and the associated companies to maintain certain economical reasons, but to reduce the welfare of the United States citizen and put them at an elevated economic risk to appease the small number of elitest is unconstitutional.
And, now you know that one of the best industries that you can go to college and obtain a degree for is Economics 101.
GBA
Civilizations take a long time to collapse; an economy can collapse overnight.
While there are millions of Americans right now who suspect this has already happened – we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Bottom Line…The USA needs to make it as painful as it can to import goods into the US. Offer incentives to those companies that moved overseas to move back to the US. Offer other incentives for other companies to move their production facilities into the US. Their is no such thing as fair trade when your Country’s economic health is at risk.
Get the cobwebs out Amurika this is the sudden death match the Repunks wanted for years. It’s too late Mr. Author of this excellent piece, I’m sorry to report. They strangled the country the ruling class. So you think you want a revolution? Damn right. You have nothing to loose as comment 193 implies but your chains. OR do you continually want to be a slave to China and its USA corpros masters? Get a grip, get control and get angry, off with the masters of wars heads, our president and his Repunk stand in coming next yr will do nothing to really stop the slide ONLY we can stop it with our faith in our country, strength in numbers, and a firm stand NOW!!! OUT of empire wars now. That is number one, and Mr Author you didn’t mention it…how come every other country in the world either defends themselves from the barbarians at the gates or has Mr Gates at DOD actually and directly defend them from the bowels of the USA wehrmach? Out of empire now to save this great Republic!!!! Tax cuts and pandering Jesus soccer moms are not the answer.
In response:
Ladalang, if you want to return to a comodity based currency, I presume gold, where are you going to get enough to cover all the current wealth, value, and price of everything? How much gold will it take to buy a loaf of Great Value 100% whole wheat bread? It’s $1.48 I think. That’s not a lot of gold @ $1200 / ounce. “Money” is a tool, a convenience allowing more extensive trade than swapping arrowheads and skins.
And as for monopolies, because of delivery constrictions we have few natural gas suppliers in a state or region. However, some clever MBA (probably) figured out that with one electricity delivery company you could have many retailers. Electricity prices for my zipcode range from 8.8 cents per KWH to 16.1 cents. There are lots of competing companies and technologies for phone service. There are also many garbage collecting companies that can compete for a municipality’s business.
55medical, who died and left you to be the elite? You state that the current elite do not care about the masses. (You are probably correct!) But, with your overriding the simpletons who don’t believe what you want them to, I do not see that you are any better an elite than what we have know.
A simple challeng to charles the socialist…name ONE successful socialist economy…no, not the fake Swedish socialism where they sell their manufactured goods to good capitlaist countries….volvo, saab, ikea, etc….but a real socialist country. You know, one where the workers live in the lap of luxury, never having to worry about where their bread comes from………..i’m waiting………………a workers paradise, free from those nasty capitalist inventions like cars, phones, airplanes,cigarettes, stoves,toilets, pharmacuticals,hospitals……….im waiting charles.
(1) What is nature of this problem?
you mention trade deficits, job loss, services vs. manufacturing, loss of “wealth”
(2) What are the advisable solutions?
(3) Do you subscribe to the pre-Adam Smith idea that a negative trade balance means that “wealth” is leaving the country? Do you realize that this idea was the justification for colonialism?
(4) Do you realize that to an economist, a negative trade balance means that foreign nations are investing in America?
Lindsay Lohan, for the record I didn’t even notice your screenname until you mentioned it.
Your post was the most coherent and realistic take on the state of affairs in all the comments in the whole thread. You are 100% correct. I know this and you know this. The problem is the average citizen is either too dumb, too busy or too ignorant to understand that their behavior, en masse with the rest of the like “minded” (term used liberally) population, is the cause of their own misery. My friend I am sad to say it’s too late. I don’t see how things turn around at this point. People like you and I are no longer surrounded by a majority of what we would refer to as peers. Time to circle the wagons and watch out for yourself and your family since that is all you can control at this point…
Now that we have 35 million migrants and 12-20 million illegals all of these manufacturing companies say they needed and the companies leave the U.S to China and India and for less salaries.
Now there are no jobs for all of the migrants & illegals are left to U.S. citizens to now care for
at the cost of what few U.S. citizens are left.
What a pathetic government. Why can’t this article make headlines in CNN & FOX NEWS to inform the public!
Americans are reaping what they have sown.
To quote the great Nelson Munce “HA-HA!”
manufacturing leaves a country for a reason: more and more restrictive laws are passed that make continued operation in a restricted region unwise. This is inevitable economic law. Crying about it and trying to force everyone to do something else about it is not the answer. Eliminating the coercive power of those who use oppression to enforce these restrictive laws is what is needed. And its not going to happen until the majority gets truly educated about freedom.
J,
I can see your point from a business standpoint, yet the human implications need to also be considered as well. These large corporations need to understand that the people who work for them drive their profits. The government is the real culprit though, for not making this type of maneuver illegal. Corporations that move jobs over seas should be taxed aggressively and then be hit again when they try and import those same goods that they had made. The regulations are for the consumers safety as well. Why do you think companies move jobs, one is the slave wages they can pay for the manfuacturing of those products and the second is the complete removal of any safety precautions, both for the workers and the products that are being made. You really need to stop looking at things so narrowly. Broaden your view and you will see the whole picture.
Everyone will be shocked to know that:
1. The US manufactures more now than any other time in its history.
2. The US manufactures more now than any other country in the world.
100% true – don’t take my word for it; do some research online. Hard to believe given the constant implication by the media and articles like above that would lead you to believe we don’t produce anything in the U.S. anymore. It’s simply not true.
Most of the decrease in manufacturing jobs comes from technology. What took 20 men to manufacture 50 years ago can now be done with one man. Robotics and computers have made every industry more efficient including manufacturing.
What the U.S. does need to do is resist the temptation to jerry-rig the economy by forcing companies to do this or do that. That is what will drive companies offshore. We need to make this the best place in the world to do business. Reasonable tax rates and sensible regulations.
Here’s another lie that the media and politicians have been pushing for years: tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. A lot of political ads are pushing that right now. It’s a myth. There are no tax breaks for offshore outsourcing jobs. I know – I own my own business and outsource about 15 positions to Pakistan. I told my CPA after the Bush/Kerry election that I wanted to get these tax breaks I kept hearing about for having jobs overseas. Well, there’s no such thing. It’s unbelievable that this lie continues with no one calling anyone on it. Again, don’t take my word for it, ask a CPA or tax attorney. They won’t be able to tell you what these tax breaks are b/c they don’t exist. It sure sounds good in a political sound bite though.
Demand the truth.
Free trade!! We need more free trade! Only by maximizing the profits to be made by offshoring can we hope to minimize offshoring!
uh, right?
Is there any intelligent life out there??
“The US manufactures more now than any other time in its history”
Not in relative terms
“The US manufactures more now than any other country in the world.”
Not so long ago, the US manufactured more than the rest of the world combined. The US quota of world manufacture has declined steadily.
“What took 20 men to manufacture 50 years ago can now be done with one man”
False. Technology just shifts human work elsewhere.
A fully mechanized production process produces even more entropy than a manual one; that’s the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Entropy has to be dealt with. And since nature will not help with robots — nature likes to depreciate this kind of capital — it falls on human hands and brains to do the the job of keeping the machines humming along. Economists say this is capital intensive to the extreme. Labor has to be used up elsewhere to generate that kind of capital.
The article doesn’t talk about the living conditions or working conditions of those Chinese workers making all of the product for “consuming” Americans. Politicians all talk about ” bringing jobs back to America”. But they don’t make the decisions on where jobs go. CEO’s of major corporations do. And they make those decisions based on global competition. So if we have global competition, then why not have global safety standards (OSHA), global environmental standards (EPA), and global minimum wage standards. The US needs to push for these changes through the United Nations.
I wonder if there is any hope left? The people who built the America we used to know came from the depression and WWII and the Korean era knew hardships. These people didn’t know luxury but only what a meal meant, a warm house, family, and community.I beleive our core values as a nation have been compromised by hollow promises that have never been fullfiled and never will. Today a college education means almost nothing a young person has to have a graduate degree, what is next? Do we all have to make 100,000.00 dolalrs a year? If why? Becasue capitalism has to expand, that is why we have recessions, to adjust the system and begin over. Some people say let it go and start all over, I think this is the only way to wake ourselves up.
Socialism? really? That is the response to someone voicing their opinion that globalism and De-industrialization are not great things for the USA. That is just sad and it shows that those who use the socialism card don’t see a problem with weakening the USA in a time of war. Globalism is treason.