POST-INDUSTRIAL AMERICA IS FINALLY BEING CALLED A TOTAL DISASTER
Gary Ater
September 07, 2011
...Abandoned American Factories
Do those of you over 40 years old remember the promises that were made to us back in the 70īs and 80īs as to what the future American business world would eventually look like?
This previous vision came to mind when an old book, written in 1972 by a sociologist named Dan Bell, was brought back to my attention. In his book, "The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society", he anticipated "a future of service jobs, rising consumption, compensatory entitlements and wars over taxes".
In some areas, Mr. Bell was correct, but not in any way as he had prophesized.
Yes, we are having a "war over taxes", but today the battle is involving the corporations and the wealthy paying zip in taxes, while the average American worker picks up the nationīs tab.
And when industrialists such as General Electricīs, former CEO, Jack Welch realized back then that he could get a college educated engineer in India to do their work at half the price of an American engineer, that became the beginning of the end of the then manufacturing behemoth that America had become.
Decades ago, as those defenders of American manufacturing suggested that the nation should require a "domestic American content standard" within the goods we in the US bought, they were beaten down by nearly every economist and editorial writer in the land.
Today, millions of "weapons of mass destruction", are coming from the vast American military industrial complex. And yet it is very hard to find the things that we need, for living from day to day in America, actually being manufactured in the US.
The Wal-Mart and Target economy of today, combined with the off-shoring of millions of factory jobs, is currently offset by low-paying jobs in the service and retail sectors. And all of this is happening as the banks continue to extend credit to American consumers so they can keep "buying", despite their stagnating incomes.
What most Americans do not understand today is how the average working manīs job has changed over the past 50 years, (not to mention the addition of so many women into todayīs American work force).
Today, the share of working-age men holding full-time jobs has fallen from 83% to 66% between 1960 and 2009. The inflation-adjusted median annual income of working-age men with full-time jobs has shrunk by about $5,000 since the mid-ī70s. These two declines are the reasons that the earnings of American men havenīt been this low since Dwight Eisenhower was president.
Due to todayīs American so called, "Service Economy", according to a Milken Institute Review, it reveals that the median earnings of men ages 25 to 64 declined by 28% between 1969 and 2009. Within this age group, the median earnings of men who completed high school, but did not go on to college, their incomes fell 47%. But even the median earnings of male college graduates of the same age has also declined by 12% during that same period.
Finally however, there is beginning to be some realism that we not only need "jobs" in America, this nation needs to once again focus on bringing back a manufacturing economy. This nation has lost 50,000 factories over the past 2 decades. Yes seriously, 50,000 factories that employed 500 or more employees are AWOL in the US. We probably will never see those jobs coming back to the US. But it is starting to be understood that a nation that doesnīt build things that people want and need, that nation cannot survive.
Today, Democratic groups such as the Progressive Policy Institute, the Third Way, and including the conservative Hoover Institution's, Nobel laureate Michael Spence, are starting to come around to that same conclusion. Even the chief executives and former chief executives such as Dow Chemicalīs Andrew Liveris and Intelīs Andy Grove, their new words for Americaīs future, regardless of how difficult it may be to get there, are: "We need American manufacturing."
The reality is that post-industrial America has turned out to be a total disaster.
The time for a new "industrial America" has now arrived. And there isnīt much time to waste in making it happen.
Copyright G.Ater 2011
Follow me on Twitter: gater01
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