Manufacturing Jobs On Decline Around the World (ampproject.org)

Reader Koreantoast writes: The New York Times posted an interesting thought piece (paywalled, this link could help) on the changing nature of manufacturing globally and the impact it has on modern politics and economic development. Although manufacturing productivity has jumped tremendously over the last several decades, the overall global pool of manufacturing jobs is shrinking as automation and new industrial technologies has increased the production and supply of manufactured goods with fewer people at a rate faster than global demand can absorb. The analogy is the agricultural revolution of the last several centuries where greater amounts of food are being produced by fewer and fewer farmers, displacing many of them. How will industrialized nations manage the growing number of displaced, blue collar labor? Bigger impact globally is that the shrinking pool of manufacturing jobs globally is closing the traditional route of export-oriented manufacturing economy that many nations, particularly in East Asia, were able to use to lift their nations out of poverty. What happens to those nations that missed the boat?"The likelihood that we will get a manufacturing recovery is close to nil," Professor Stiglitz said. "We are more likely to have a smaller share of a shrinking pie."

Comments

Re: Only one way

[mspohr]

The greatest advance for the US economy and expansion of the middle class was in the 50s and 60s when the top income tax bracket was 90%. That was pretty effective in putting a limit on income and providing government with sufficient funds for infrastructure, etc.

That's exactly what happened

[rsilvergun]

when the industrial revolution started causing mass unemployment. One problem though, it took 50-100 years for science to catch up and make that revolution to happen. In the meantime there were decades of completely unnecessary war, death and misery. An entire generation lost to it really.

That's where the Luddites came from. Believe it or not that word is more than just a slur. They weren't just a bunch of fuddy duddies, they were real people facing a real problems that were beyond the current technical means for anyone to solve. It could have been solved with social means, but we didn't do that. Now that we're facing down the same problem are we going to do the same thing all over?