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> People say we're one of the top countries in manufacturing output, but the reality is that this is due to high dollar items like airplanes and weapons systems.

In 2015, US manufacturing generated $2.17 trillion.
Total 2015 defense and aerospace revenue (domestic and foreign sales) was less than one third of that at $682 billion.

Since NAFTA passed, US manufacturing output has increased by 70%. So even if we completely toss out all defense and aerospace and pretend there was zero such spending in 1990, that's still 16% growth.

> t I would definitely like to see all the manufacturing come back

It is coming back, reshoring has been a growing trend since the great recession. But much of it is automated, the industry is coming back but the jobs are not. Or more accurately, the jobs that are coming back require more education than the jobs that left since NAFTA.

We have no real manufacturing capability

Hogwash. American factories produced goods worth more than two trillion dollars per year. That is about 20% less than China, but still the second highest in the world, nearly as much as Germany and Japan combined. Manufacturing output in America is at an all time high. American manufacturing employment has declined, but improved productivity has more than compensated for that.

Manufacturing left America because China et al are cheaper

Completely off topic and completely wrong. Manufacturing is very strong in America to the tune of about $2 Trillion per year and for every dollar spend in US manufacturing it results in an additional $1.32 to the economy. The US manufacturing sector by itself would be one of the ten largest economies in the world - approximately the same size as the entire GDP of Russia even without considering the multiplier effects. The US presently has about 1/5 of global manufacturing activity. Some products are not manufactured in the US anymore (mostly high labor content low margin products) but any claim that "manufacturing left America" is completely false.

The only way you're bringing manufacturing back...

Manufacturing never left. If you think it did then you have no idea what you are talking about.

They have stolen all of the US's manufacturing and are stealing our intellectual jobs, so no jobs for us in the US

Just keep telling yourself that Mitt.

http://www.nam.org/Statistics-And-Data/Facts-About-Manufacturing/Landing.aspx

Manufacturing in general is losing jobs. Not only in the US but in third world countries like China and Mexico because of efficiency increases.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRI4bAft7Xw4

It's a reprise of what happened 50 years earlier when farms became mechanized. It is an inexorable inevitable trend that machines will replace humans in routine tasks.

The fact is that manufacturing as an economic sector in the US is doing fine. To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of demise are much exaggerated.

The US is easily the world's most productive manufacturing nation in terms of output value per hour, and also has the largest manufacturing economy in the world.

http://www.nam.org/Statistics-And-Data/Facts-About-Manufacturing/Landing.aspx
http://www.seeitmarket.com/u-s-still-in-the-business-of-making-things/
http://business.time.com/2011/03/10/can-china-compete-with-american-manufacturing/

The United States of America achieved the highest Output Value Per Hour of all countries in the world by doing one thing - making super high valued items - like Stealth Fighter planes, Nuclear Submarines, Super-computers, and CPUs.

Except for the last item, which is produced by the millions, the rest of those super-high-valued items are not mass-produced - at least not mass produced to achieve the economy of scale.

That lies the problem.

The USA may be the biggest exporters of the world because there is still a great demand for those super-high-valued items - especially the weapons

And others are catching up.

Take the CPUs - Intel has been raking in truckloads of $$$ by producing CPUs that are worth much more than their weight in gold, since the 1980's.

Nowadays, however, Intel is increasing feeling the heat - competition is heating up. No, not from AMD, but from other companies which made ARM chips, and there are a lot of them - From TI of USA to Samsung of Korea to Nvidia of Taiwan to Allwinner of China

There _are_ competitors to other super-high-value items produced by USA, but fortunately, for the time being, the competitors aren't very well financed or don't have the required technology yet.

But that doesn't mean the competitors don't play catch up. They do, and they are catching up, fast.

Nowadays USA is not the only one capable of producing stealth fighters. Russia, Japan, Europe and China all have their own versions of stealth fighters.

What does that leave USA, then?

To innovate? Or to destroy their competitors, before they can play catch up?

If USA were to be run by those who is running Apple, Inc., no doubt the choice would be the latter.

Fortunately, the USA government hasn't yet completely relinquished its sovereignty to Cupertino.
 

Manufacturing in general is losing jobs. Not only in the US but in third world countries like China and Mexico because of efficiency increases.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRI4bAft7Xw4

It's a reprise of what happened 50 years earlier when farms became mechanized. It is an inexorable inevitable trend that machines will replace humans in routine tasks.

The fact is that manufacturing as an economic sector in the US is doing fine. To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of demise are much exaggerated.

The US is easily the world's most productive manufacturing nation in terms of output value per hour, and also has the largest manufacturing economy in the world.

http://www.nam.org/Statistics-And-Data/Facts-About-Manufacturing/Landing.aspx
http://www.seeitmarket.com/u-s-still-in-the-business-of-making-things/
http://business.time.com/2011/03/10/can-china-compete-with-american-manufacturing/

Read my post again, and you'll see I mentioned what sort of manufacturing *does* occur in the US. I do have some experience with manufacturing for big box retailers in the US, and know what companies and segments still make stuff here in the US. Of all the consumer goods out there, it's basically niches. Most mass market retailers buy stuff in Asia and don't even want to talk to you if you make stuff in the US anymore. Buyers want to meet with their suppliers in China. Hell, if you want to buy plastic molding machinery or any number of other major manufacturing equipment types in the US, you basically have to get second hand equipment because the people who used to make the manufacturing equipment have gone out of business and the market has been so flooded recently with second hand equipment that you have to go that route to be competitive.

And as for automation, yes, the only companies that manufacture in the US rely heavily on automation. However, you have to generally load up with debt to finance all that equipment for automation, and you still have very carefully cost out automation investments relative to what an Asian competitor spends on labor. In other words, your volume has to be high enough for the allocated cost per unit added by your automation machinery is less than the labor cost of a Chinese guy turning a wrench, or else Chinese competition will put you out of business. So yes, automation works, but it works much better in some industries than in others.

Furthermore, I have seen these statistics before and I highly suspect that they vastly misrepresent the amount of manufacturing activity going on in the US relative to a place like China. If manufacturing output in measured in dollars, but every dollar spent here on manufacturing could be replaced by 10-20 cents spent in Asia, the measure will be inherently distortive.

Additionally, if you look at the National Association of Manufacturer's data, the largest manufacturing industries in the US as of 2007 are Chemical and Food/Beverage/Tobacco products. Not what you traditionally think of as manufacturing at all. The chemical industry has no assembly work to speak of and is very automatable (thus its strength in the US). Food/Beverage/Tobacco has fairly strong economic barriers to import (not that there aren't plenty of imported foods and beverages, it's just hard to import cost effectively to compete with bulk market goods). The next category down is computer and electronics - which has gone from 14% to 8% of the US manufacturing output in the last 7 years. After that is fabricated metal products, then machinery, then motor vehicles. And I'd be willing to guess fabricated metal products and machinery consists in large part of companies that service the defense, aerospace and automative industries (which are highly protected industries), however I haven't been able to find information on that.

Finally, we are now only the 3rd largest manufacturing exporter in the world, after the EU (combined exports out of EU) and China.

See the NAM's report for the source of my statistics.

Anyway, the basic difference in interpretation is that I don't believe that all manufacturing in the US has magically become super-efficient. Rather, it's that only the manufacturing that was easy to automate or legally or structually protected has stayed here in the US, and I think the statistics seem to back me up on this. The stuff that couldn't be easily automated has moved to places with lower labor costs.

Until now, the obstacles to production seemed overwhelming. The crude oil is locked away in rocks that are buried miles underground in the Bakken Play, a field that stretches into Montana and Saskatchewan, Canada. But times have changed. High oil prices and new technology make it worth the effort.

Pharmaceuticals, food, computers, fabricated metals, ... Manufactured goods accounted for nearly $1T in 2006 . More than double services. I agree that US manufacturing is in bad shape, but it's not non-existent.

Dona Ana County is a relatively poor and bleak swathe of desert in southern New Mexico with fewer than 200,000 residents. But voters passed a 0.25% increase in the local sales tax to help contribute to the cost of building Spaceport America. Sir Richard Branson has signed a long-term lease with the state of New Mexico to make the new spaceport the headquarters of his Virgin Galactic space tourism business.

Ah, cue the great lie that tax incentives to draw corporations "create" jobs.

Let's think about how absurd this is: a man worth about $7.8BN (which represents about 11% of New Mexico's GDP) just got one quarter of his spaceport paid for by people who make on average $29-33k, so that people with multi-million-dollar net worths can blast themselves into space?

Let me put the numbers in proportion for you: if Branson took one third of his net worth (percentage-wise, not too out of line with what the residents of the county just did for his little corporate venture) and divided it amongst ALL the people of the county, he would effectively raise the median income by 50%.

I'm sure in such a poor county that the level of education can't be that great, but seriously- how could people so poor be so stupid as to think this was something in their favor? As The Great American Job Scam points out, corporations are routinely handed millions upon millions of dollars by state governments, with the promise of creating X number of jobs which will NEVER come even remotely close to putting that much money in wages?

How many jobs will this spaceport actually bring in that residents in the county within commuting distance will be qualified for? And don't they realize that the spaceport will bring in a lot of much higher paid people (engineers, technical staff, etc), who will drive property values through the roof as they snap up land for McMansions? Cue the trickle down economics comments.

US manufacturing output is rising. There are fewer *jobs* in the field, but that's largely because of automation, not foreign competition. China is losing manufacturing jobs too. As productivity rises, fewer workers can produce more. While this is often bad for those who lose their jobs, it's a net benefit to society; consider buggy whip makers, phone operators, secretarial pools, etc.

either the first-world country's costs and standards of living are going to sink, or the third-world's are going to rise, and the former is a whole lot easier and a lot more likely than the latter

Considering the consistent worldwide economic growth in the last several centuries (when not ruined by totalitarian regimes), which today is being accelerated by Moore's Law, the latter seems much more likely to me.

Take a look around: you're witnessing the decline of one of the world's great empires

The US may lose its hyperpower status though any number of causes, but that's independent of whether standards of living rise or fall. The sun now sets on the British Empire, but I'd rather live in London today than in 1907.

Most of you will be buying your entertainment from telco's in 10 yrs. or less.

Telco's are creating a "national overlay" which will get them into the entertainment business. Here's a hard-spinning link that lays out the so-called "benefits." I'm too lazy to find something more objective http://www.nam.org/s_nam/doc1.asp?CID=161&DID=2371 22

fsck em all.
-Sell your giant screen whatever,
-tear down the "media center" shelf system
-get rid of the ring of couches,
And replace it with book shelves and a table you can do -anything- on. (as in even accidentally drilling a hole through the thing)

You'll wonder what in the hell you were wasting your time with.

A 19" tv and dvd is much better, because entertainment is good sometimes and you aren't -drawn- to it as much as a monstrous TV. When you want to watch it, you sit around the table and watch.

I am curious about the organizations that oppose network neutrality. The article has a list which seems to match the list on a fake grassroots site run by telecoms.

Is the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation really a group representing Black Americans? If so, why would stand aganist network neutrality? Their web site doesn't list Network Neutrality as an issue anywhere that I can find.

How about the National Association of Manufacturers?Net neutrality isn't on their list of key issues either, but a search reveals a misguided report showing how they don't want network neutrality because it would stifle companies from laying new fiber. I can see manufacturers not liking that, but since network neutrality has nothing to do with laying of fiber, I only assume that someone there is misinformed.

The whole list of supporters seems this way. Is anyone here a member of one of these organizations who can shed some light on the views of these organizations?

I am curious about the organizations that oppose network neutrality. The article has a list which seems to match the list on a fake grassroots site run by telecoms.

Is the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation really a group representing Black Americans? If so, why would stand aganist network neutrality? Their web site doesn't list Network Neutrality as an issue anywhere that I can find.

How about the National Association of Manufacturers?Net neutrality isn't on their list of key issues either, but a search reveals a misguided report showing how they don't want network neutrality because it would stifle companies from laying new fiber. I can see manufacturers not liking that, but since network neutrality has nothing to do with laying of fiber, I only assume that someone there is misinformed.

The whole list of supporters seems this way. Is anyone here a member of one of these organizations who can shed some light on the views of these organizations?

Good for you; I do the same with US news funilly enough. However, the fundamental problem is that for most folk who's news is censored/filtered for whatever reasons, they just don't realise it. The most effective censorship is invisible; if it's not then it's next-to-worthless.

Find out who owns your stations. Then ask yourself; when was the last time you heard anything remotely negative about them or their other industries? If you can't remember, switch station. This is one of the things I like about the BBC, it reports on itself third-person, which is kinda weird to listen to, but probably the most ethical media outlet available. I'm not saying it's 100% neutral, but it's lightyears ahead of the Murdoch owned news channels Fox & Sky News. Their coverage of anything done by the BBC is laughable.

Remember the old expression: If working towards freedom, prepare for war.

Ironic, you directly quote propaganda in a rant about censorship and totalitairian governments... ;-) look here more more similar propaganda. Interesting stuff. Whatever side of it you are, you're getting played either way...

Because American industry wants cheap slave labor.