BOB writes:

The entire free trade discussion is wrong-headed. We are in a transition in manufacturing technology that will eventually eliminate almost all manufacturing jobs. Someday, working in a factory will be as common as working on a farm. The real economic question is, how do we distribute the wealth created by manufacturing if there are no workers in the factories?

Jeff W. writes:

As a native of the formerly industrial Midwest, it has pained me for many years to have to listen to such statements as these:

– Your industries are outmoded smokestack industries.

– You live in the Rust Belt.

– It’s a service economy now.

– High tech is the future.

And, finally, the point Bob is trying to make: In the future there won’t be any manufacturing jobs.

I believe that much of this propaganda comes from multinational corporations and their allied banks and politicians. Such corporations as General Electric and Apple have strong financial incentives to
overpower people such as myself who want to preserve manufacturing in the U.S.

It is simply not true that manufacturing jobs are disappearing. When manufacturing jobs move to China, they do not disappear; they relocate.

Currently China has about 112 million manufacturing jobs and the United States has about 12 million. Under different trade rules the U.S. could have 25 or 30 million manufacturing jobs.

If the U.S. had fifteen million more manufacturing jobs, the unemployment rate would be about four percent, as opposed to nine, and our country would prosperous. Instead we live in a dysfunctional and near-bankrupt country where people believe many things about the economy that are untrue.

Laura writes:

The issue of competition with China is also discussed here, here and here.

Art writes:

One cannot deny the importance of automation. In many cases today China and India are simply forestalling automation of labor intensive manufacturing, and they may begin outsourcing soon. (See The End of Cheap Labor in China.”)

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