Re: President Obama To Announce Details of Afghanistan Strategy On Wednesday
eh?
If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate country, it would be tied with Germany as the world's third largest economy. It would also be larger than the entire economies of India and Russia combined. As much as we hear about the "demise of U.S. manufacturing," and how we are a country that "doesn't produce anything anymore," and how we have "outsourced our production to China," the U.S. manufacturing sector is alive and well, and the U.S. is still the largest manufacturer in the world.
Industrial restructuring, which has been characterized by a decline in manufacturing and growth in the service sector, affects the distribution of workers across industries, occupations, and geographic regions. In addition, deunionization and the declining value of the minimum wage in recent decades have affected worker access to health care and other employee benefits.
(snip)
Global corporate restructuring and other trends in the U.S. labor market also have the potential to exacerbate wage inequality. Corporate restructuring creates pressure to contain total compensation for many low-wage and
mid-level workers but increases returns to managers at thehighest levels where compensation may be linked to profits. In addition, the demand for higher-educated workers combined with technology will continue to widen the
wage gap between the highly educated and the less skilled.
http://www.prb.org/pdf08/63.2uslabor.pdf
Charting The Unprecedented Decline In U.S. Manufacturing, And Other Economic Tidbits From Morgan Stanley
Charting The Unprecedented Decline In U.S. Manufacturing, And Other Economic Tidbits From Morgan Stanley | zero hedge
When Factories Vanish, So Can Innovators
Losing an industry or ceasing to manufacture a particular product, in this case stainless steel flatware, has indeed become a fairly frequent event. Just in the last few years, the last sardine cannery, in Maine, closed its doors. Stainless steel rebars, the sturdy rods that reinforce concrete in all kinds of construction, are now no longer made in America. Neither are vending machines or incandescent light bulbs or cellphones or laptop computers.
Less noticeably, American manufacturers are importing more of the components that go into their products. The imported portion has risen to more than 25 percent from 17 percent in 1997, according to Susan Houseman, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute in Kalamazoo, Mich. The Boeing Company, to consider one striking example, once bought all of its components from American suppliers, or made them in its factories here. Now the wings of several of its airliners are manufactured by Japanese subcontractors and shipped across the Pacific in giant cargo planes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13every.html
You may have to think this through a little more than usual.
:coffeepap
