Why Are Politicians So Obsessed With Manufacturing?
From an economic perspective, however, there can be no revival of American manufacturing, because there has been no collapse. Because of automation, there are far fewer jobs in factories. But the value of stuff made in America reached a record high in the first quarter of 2016, even after adjusting for inflation. The present moment, in other words, is the most productive in the nation’s history.
.. One of Trump’s keynote proposals is to encourage domestic production by taxing imports — an idea more likely to cause a recession than a manufacturing revival.
.. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 64,000 steelworkers in America last year, and 820,000 home health aides — more than double the population of Pittsburgh. Next year, there will be fewer steelworkers and still more home health aides, as baby boomers fade into old age. Soon, we will be living in the United States of Home Health Aides, yet the candidates keep talking about steelworkers. Many home health aides live close to the poverty line: Average annual wages were just $22,870 last year. If both parties are willing to meddle with the marketplace in order to help one sector, why not do the same for jobs that currently exist?
.. The manufacturing boom of the postwar years was an oddity, and there will be no repeat of the concatenation that made it happen: The backlog of innovations stored up during the Great Depression and World War II; the devastation of other industrial powers, Germany in particular, which gave the United States a competitive edge.
.. The old working class still controls the megaphone of the labor movement, in part because unions have struggled to organize service workers. Manufacturing was, logistically speaking, easier to organize. There were lots of workers at each factory, and most knew one another. Service work is more dispersed and done in smaller crews.
.. The Harvard economist Lawrence H. Summers estimates that by midcentury, one-third of men in their prime working years, between the ages of 25 and 54, will not be working.
Why Trump Won’t Save the Rust Belt
Mr. Trump has his reasons for focusing on manufacturing, though. They don’t all have to do with economics. He ignores the fact that many of Michigan’s auto industry jobs were lost to automation, or to foreign manufacturers operating in the right-to-work South, because depicting the Chinese, Japanese and Mexicans as job-stealing alien villains better fits his America First narrative.
.. Mr. Riddle is skeptical of Mr. Trump’s promises to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States: “If other presidents couldn’t do it, how can he?”
.. He’s also ahead among voters ages 50 to 70, who came of age when a factory job was still a birthright, and share his nostalgia for those years.
.. Reagan Democrats — in 1980, they were 65 percent of the electorate, compared with 36 percent in 2012 — but Mr. Trump has tailored his politically incorrect alpha male persona and his protectionist message specifically to them.
.. As Lansing’s mayor, Virg Bernero, has noted, G.M. can build the same number of cars with 5,000 workers as it did with 25,000 in the 1950s and ’60s.
.. The Trump conundrum is that his campaign is about loss. His appeal is strongest among people who feel their social, economic and political influence slipping away, but he appeals to them specifically because their numbers are dwindling, thus making them less effective as an electoral coalition.
This Republican mayor has an incredibly simple idea to help the homeless. And it seems to be working.
Next month will be the first anniversary of Albuquerque’s There’s a Better Way program, which hires panhandlers for day jobs beautifying the city. In partnership with a local nonprofit that serves the homeless population, a van is dispatched around the city to pick up panhandlers who are interested in working. The job pays $9 an hour, which is above minimum wage, and provides a lunch. At the end of the shift, the participants are offered overnight shelter as needed.
.. In less than a year since its start, the program has given out 932 jobs clearing 69,601 pounds of litter and weeds from 196 city blocks. And more than 100 people have been connected to permanent employment.
.. The program hasn’t weeded out all panhandling in the city, and supporters say that’s not really the point. It’s connecting people who would otherwise not seek help to needed services. And it’s showing them when they are at their lowest that they have real value, and that others are willing to show them kindness to help them have a better life.