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snousleI hear, fairly often, and as recently as this morning, phrases like "America doesn't manufacture anything anymore". This typically comes from the mouth of right-wing rah-rah patriots who, in theory, care about America's image and international prestige.
The problem, as anyone who ever looks at the numbers already knows, is that this isn't true; the US remains, by a small margin, the worlds largest manufacturer, at about $1.7T compared to China's $1.3T (2010). And, as we might recall from the USSR during the 60s, communist nations have a habit of exaggerating their economic output. JUST A LITTLE.
Even if China did manufacture more than the US in nominal terms, making a big deal out of that would still be propagandistic; US manufacturing output per capita is still much larger than China's, in part because US workers are more productive. (Per worker, the US productivity advantage is enormous; wages here are correspondingly higher, but you get what you pay for.) The trend, I agree, is not encouraging, since the size of the US manufacturing sector is going slowly down, while China's is indisputably growing, and if we take the numbers at face value, China will indeed take first place in the next few years. But even looking far into the future, the US manufacturing sector will be a long way from "nothing".
So what we have in this statement is a morsel of explicitly anti-American propaganda dressed up as a right wing talking point. The question is, why? What is it that gets certain ideas labeled as anti-American and others not? It seems to me that unfairly disparaging American manufacturing capacity is directly subversive to American economic interests, yet this sort of crankiness routinely gets a pass.
This is a very, very strange country.
The problem, as anyone who ever looks at the numbers already knows, is that this isn't true; the US remains, by a small margin, the worlds largest manufacturer, at about $1.7T compared to China's $1.3T (2010). And, as we might recall from the USSR during the 60s, communist nations have a habit of exaggerating their economic output. JUST A LITTLE.
Even if China did manufacture more than the US in nominal terms, making a big deal out of that would still be propagandistic; US manufacturing output per capita is still much larger than China's, in part because US workers are more productive. (Per worker, the US productivity advantage is enormous; wages here are correspondingly higher, but you get what you pay for.) The trend, I agree, is not encouraging, since the size of the US manufacturing sector is going slowly down, while China's is indisputably growing, and if we take the numbers at face value, China will indeed take first place in the next few years. But even looking far into the future, the US manufacturing sector will be a long way from "nothing".
So what we have in this statement is a morsel of explicitly anti-American propaganda dressed up as a right wing talking point. The question is, why? What is it that gets certain ideas labeled as anti-American and others not? It seems to me that unfairly disparaging American manufacturing capacity is directly subversive to American economic interests, yet this sort of crankiness routinely gets a pass.
This is a very, very strange country.
