
Manufacturing is returning to America - ph0rque
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/manufacturing-is-returning-to-america-648616/
======
ef4
Manufacturing never left. The US outputs a greater total value of manufactured
goods today than at any point in history.

China's manufacturing sector is only 3% bigger than the US.

What disappeared were the unskilled jobs, and they are never coming back,
because they are rapidly becoming obsolete.

Once upon a time almost everyone worked in agriculture. Now it's about 3%, and
that 3% produces more food than ever. Expect the same thing to happen to
manufacturing.

~~~
cageface
The implication here is that the kind of manufacturing work that helped lift
China out of poverty may never migrate to the rest of the world's developing
nations.

It may turn out that the time window in which a developing country could ride
the outsourcing train to prosperity was actually only a few decades wide.

~~~
thenomad
Manufacturing isn't the only outsourcable work, though. Customer service,
programming, and other things less easily replicated by 3D printing and robots
will still be outsourced for a while yet.

~~~
icebraining
Both of those are much more skilled jobs, though.

------
sunir
Manufacturing output in the United States generally increases over time, but
output is generated through gains in productivity from automation (e.g.
robots). Therefore, the absolute number of jobs in the manufacturing sector
has been steadily declining as well and will continue to do so both here and
in China.

[http://mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output-
vs-j...](http://mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output-vs-jobs-1975)

In fact, Foxconn itself is rapidly increasing its robot workforce from 10,000
robots to a goal of 1 million robots by 2014.

[http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-07/30/c_131...](http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-07/30/c_131018764.htm)

~~~
hkmurakami
Manufacturing capacity is a matter of national security imo and it's important
for the country to maintain and increase it. However I'm wondering about the
very basic manufacturing / raw material production capacity within the United
States. Yes, there is Alcoa, the largest Aluminum producer in the world, but
does the country actually have the ability to produce basic building blocks
like nuts, bolts, sheet metal, steel beams, wiring, etc from the ground up if
such a need came up in the future? (though one would hope that such a need
would never arise in the future)

------
zacharycohn
So this article suggests we're bringing manufacturing back to America, but
it's pretty light on pointing out that none of these methods will create any
of the types of jobs that the departure of manufacturing took away - which I
suspect is one of the root causes of a lot of the issues with things made in
China.

------
nhebb
I get the sense with Vivek Wadhwa articles that he takes a few anecdotes and
generalizes them into a larger trend. He's an imaginative guy, but many of his
theories are wildly speculative and lack data.

~~~
ballooney
Well done for commenting though (I mean it, no snark coming). A lot of the
current crop of singularity-ey, TED-ey, 'digital revolutionary'-ey mouths seem
to get away with all sorts of logical crimes and unimpeachabley general
proclamations. A lot of them are basically posers and pseuds. As the
excitement and breathlessness and novelty start to wear off, we should be
applying a little more intellectual rigour to the output of these people.

There was an amusing frontpage HN story a couple of weeks ago which was a
refreshing voice to see in a forum like this:

[http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-
arts/magazine/105703/th...](http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-
arts/magazine/105703/the-naked-and-the-ted-khanna)

Note: I'm not saying it's all guff, just saying we should apply the same
critical process to this material as with anything else.

------
prbuckley
"Google just announced that it will produce its highly-acclaimed Nexus 7
tablet in the United States. " wow! I didn't know Google was doing this. The
fact that they can sell that tablet at such a competitive price and make it in
the USA is saying a lot.

~~~
justanotheratom
I could not find any references about Google's announcement to produce Nexus 7
in US. On the other hand, Nexus Q is indeed manufactured in the US. Is it
possible that this is a typo on the part of the author?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/technology/google-and-
othe...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/technology/google-and-others-give-
manufacturing-in-the-us-a-try.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
NoPiece
Another Times article has some more info on the Q (it is being made somewhere
in San Jose), but the exact location is being kept secret. Would it be
surprising if they outsourced the 7 to the same manufacturer?

"Google uses a contract manufacturer to make the Q. Last week it was being
assembled in a large factory 15 minutes from Google headquarters. The company
declined to say how many people were employed at the plant, which can run as
many as three shifts each day. However, during a brief tour, made with the
understanding that the exact location would not be disclosed, it was clear
that hundreds of workers were involved in making the Q."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/technology/google-and-
othe...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/technology/google-and-others-give-
manufacturing-in-the-us-a-try.html)

------
fdr
A more detailed set of articles about this are in a large spread from The
Economist a little while back:

<http://www.economist.com/node/21552901>

Considering the boldness of the economic claims, it fills in a little more
background and necessary information to make this claim believable.

------
mparlane
Who would 3d print uniforms?

~~~
vacri
Lego minifigs?

~~~
mparlane
Chinese Olympic Lego minifigs!

------
bazookaBen
where are the charts? i'm not buying an article without numbers

