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]

You start looking at a universal basic income.
If their are not enough jobs, you need to ensure that everyone can afford food, housing and health care even if they don't have a job.

Re:obviously

[PopeRatzo]

The black people who worked in the factories are now out yelling about how black lives matter.

And white people who worked in the factories are collecting disability and hanging around Trump rallies.

Re:Only one way

[fyngyrz]

Well, with most Libertarians being grumpy aging men

Guilty.

But the only parts of libertarian thought I consider valuable are the bits that say no one has any justification in interfering with the personal and consensual choices of others with regard to non-macroeconomic and non-contractual behaviors. The rest is, as far as I'm concerned, bunk.

All for Basic Income. Furthermore, I see it as inevitable. The various attempts at analysis in the context of the type of economy we have now are, IMHO, missing the core issue by a very wide margin: when goods are available without your labor, you will not be laboring. Basic Income looks squarely at this inevitability and suggests a means to address it.

Underneath it all, there is a quickly eroding relationship between work and a happy life. Used to be you had to sweep the hearth with a broom. You had to make the broom, too. And there was every reason to look upon this as both worthy and fulfilling. Because it was necessary. Then others, much more efficiently, made the broom. Then came vacuum cleaners. Then came the Roomba and brethren. This is the path. This is not the end of the path. Trying to consider the issue as if the path stops here breaks any analysis at the starting line. The same thing will apply, and in the same ways, to truck driving, serving food, maid/butler roles, manufacturing, farming... the path will go on until there is no material need left to automate.

I do not, and I suspect few others do either, regret the loss of having to sweep the floor. I will not regret not having to clean the catbox, not having to mow the lawn, not having to shop, etc. There will be no existential crisis in my home due to increasing automation of labor. There will be no guilt when I employ my wholly-machine-made-widgetry, although if the capitalist-fixated manage to derail Basic Income and all suitable stand-ins for that economic functionality, I will certainly feel bad for the people they have screwed out of a very bright future.

I'm pro-personal and consensual choice, and wish to hell there was a decent formal mechanism to determine "informed" to back those concepts up. The future, indeed, seems to me to call loudly and obviously for shades. But that doesn't mean I'm not grumpy. Oh, I'm damn grumpy. :)