
How Does America “Reshore” Skills That Have Disappeared? - hownottowrite
http://craftsmanship.net/reshore-skills-disappeared/
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joezydeco
If you want Americans to reenter the manufacturing workforce, you need to
convince _everyone_ that manufacturing is a decent path to a good wage and
lifestyle. And then you need to make it actually happen.

Unfortunately, over the last 25 years the US has decimated vocational
education in the high schools while simultaneously convincing families that a
4-year college degree is the only way to a viable lifestyle. So we cram
college-prep and AP classes down everyone's throats while we auction off the
drafting tables and auto shop tools.

It's for the best, since there's nowhere for a voc-ed student to go after
graduation other than community college. Meanwhile we've moved on to
dismantling unions and apprenticeships and all the other things that tracked
workers into the factories and guaranteed them living wages.

I'll let our European friends explain how they don't have this same problem.

~~~
x0x0
I think decimated vocational education is a symptom not a cause.

If manufacturing paid a living wage, we'd figure out a way to get people
prepared to do it. It doesn't, and baring unions, never will again.

~~~
douche
Actually, voc tech careers _do_ pay a pretty healthy wage, for certain things.
Welders, electricians, plumbers, HVAC, mechanics, those are all still decent
paying jobs. Hard, more dangerous than white-collar work, but you can make
respectable money doing them. It's getting so the certifications are getting a
little onerous, but it's still better than dumping tens or hundreds of
thousands of dollars into a college education.

Especially for those that don't have the wherewithal or temperament to do
school

~~~
x0x0
I can verify that's not true for electricians, at least in WI -- father is an
electrician. For his generation, it was true. For the current generation, it's
no longer the case.

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Animats
By training people, of course. If you want good welders, you need to set up a
welding training course, hire people who can't weld, and teach them to weld
properly. There's a corporate mindset that companies should have a "flexible
workforce" available to them. This means expecting people to show up with the
desired skills at some arbitrary location for a job with no job security and
pays slightly above the minimum wage.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It usually only makes sense to invest in a good you own. An employer might
train a worker, only to have the worker jump ship to a competitor immediately
after receiving training.

Historical labor force norms made it more difficult to change jobs which
mitigated this problem. In a sense the employer owned the worker and training
made sense. Workers now own themselves, so it's up to the worker to invest in
their own training.

Do we really want to go back to the older era?

~~~
nradov
No we don't want to go back, but there is a middle ground. The employer can
_loan_ workers the money to pay for training, and then forgive the loan after
the worker completes a year or two on the job. That's how my former employer
funded part of my graduate school tuition and it seemed completely fair to me.

~~~
NeutronBoy
It's fairly common. Employers are often more explicit - they'll pay for the
training, but if you leave the organisation with 6 months-1 year of completion
of training then you have to pay them back for it.

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bsder
The answer is simple.

 _Pay_ _them_ _money_.

Why is it businesses never seem to see capitalism as the answer when it means
they have to write checks instead of cash them?

~~~
handedness
Because customers will ultimately pay a higher price for the goods in
question, which is fairly terrible for a consumption-based economy.

Manufacturing will always happen where labor costs are lower (assuming the
other requirements are in place), or lowest: automated. And American companies
are already well into the process of moving production from Asia to Mexico.

~~~
sundaeofshock
Why does it always seem that the only solution to higher wages is to increase
the cost of the good? How about this solution: pay the workers higher wages,
keep prices flat, and take a lower profit.

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ChuckMcM
As others have said, the answer to the question is simply training. But the
better question which is hinted at in the article is "How should America
_rethink_ skills that disappeared?"

One of the things that "drove out" manufacturers in the Bay Area were a slew
of environmental regulations which added cost to the process with no customer
visible benefit. That pushed manufacturers to use the same process where they
didn't have those costs. And surprisingly places that witnesses the
environmental impact of these practices didn't preemptively implement those
controls themselves. So we have identical environmental damage elsewhere which
was regulated out in the US.

So a more interesting question for me is how do we rethink this stuff in a way
that understands the external costs of the activity and works in a way that
makes those costs containable?

~~~
rayiner
The answer is simple. Tax imports in an amount equal to the avoided costs of
environmental and labor regulations from producing things abroad.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Heh, always important to remember Mencken though :-)

Looking at the historical effectiveness of tariffs suggests they are not
effective at solving this particular problem, although if you were proposing
something different, such as a national sales tax which would be applied to
different products based on their country of origin then I would agree that
hasn't been explored. But more specifically, using the power of the state to
impose taxes as a means of repricing the effectiveness of capital can only
work when capital is itself priced on the same basis. Arbitrarily adjusting
the exchange rage for Reminbi to account for price differentials can (and
does) happen.

What is worse, applying the tax allows practices such as child labor to be
"priced under the tax" which does nothing for the children at all. Effectively
rethinking the system such that a good can be manufactured in the US or nearby
at a cost that both allows the humans involved to have a living wage, and one
which makes sweatshops impractical, solves both problems, both increasing the
standard of living for workers here and removing the market forces that
enslave children far away.

I recognize however the essential truth in your suggestion which is the limit
on anyone's ability to make systemic changes in a market can only reach so
far. Altering the economics through taxation or tariffs is achievable through
fiat and one has to weigh that against the negative incentives it creates.

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swamp40
I think the bigger problem is how does America compete with $1.50/hr wages for
skilled workers?

If we could, the companies would pay for any necessary training. It doesn't
cost much in the long run.

But of course we can't compete with that.

And it's not changing any time soon, with the yuan pegged to the dollar, and
the existing trade agreements.

That's why Steve Jobs told President Obama _" Those jobs aren't coming back"_.

~~~
whistlerbrk
I haven't the faintest idea why you're being downvoted when you're the only
one who actually hit the real issue directly.

Free trade isn't free. We can not possibly compete fairly with countries who
employ indentured servants or slaves compared to our working condition
expectations and wages. Nor should we.

We need fair trade if we want to keep manufacturing in the country. Further,
I'd say it needs to be sustainable if we're going to ever correctly price in
the true cost of a product into the retail price. That by definition includes
the cradle-to-grave life cycle of a product and all of its constituent parts
and raw ingredients.

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alvern
I rent out rooms in my house to two peers that are both college dropouts. Both
work jobs that net less than $12/hour. I keep telling them to go to trade
school but they never follow through.

I got a 4 year degree, realized it was worthless (BFA in Digital Art), and
proceeded to go to trade school for a certificate in manufacturing.

Manufacturing sucks. For a hacker it is easy. I could quit today and be
employed again by next week. The pay is good but not great.

For someone votech was meant for, I don't think they have the same mobility as
I do.

Personally I keep looking to jump into development but I just haven't found
the opportunity yet.

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WalterBright
Change regulatory and tax policy to make it less expensive to hire.

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RGamma
While classical manufacturing jobs may be on the decline in the western world,
there's actually a programme in Germany to counteract this
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_4.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_4.0))
whose premise is production of customisable products at scale, whereby the
focus is on automation engineering instead of manual labor (that programme is
very much a WIP right now; I know the article mentioned it briefly, but I feel
it could be a viable way to retain/regain competitiveness in manufacturing).

Siemens, VW and others made short videos on this (e.g.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPRURtORnis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPRURtORnis)
or
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTl8w6yAjds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTl8w6yAjds))

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wmccullough
I think the answer is to incentivize people to get back into those skills.
Likewise, the corporations need incentive to keep those jobs here. We, as a
nation, can't do this if everything like those jobs gets sent over seas.

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andrewjl
One option is for a group of large manufacturers to come together and sponsor
a paid apprenticeship program. The program would have performance standards
just like a real job would.

Besides the PR benefits, it could be a cost effective way to determine which
workers to hire in a way that is less risky than just hiring them outright.

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_ph_
A robust economy needs a proper amount of manufacturing. While Wall Street
might post revenue numbers a manufacturer can only dream of, the financial
crisis of the past should show clearly enough that finance and services alone
cannot sustain a national economy. The good news is though, that globalization
is a two-way road. In our day and age, manual labor becomes a constantly
smaller part of the industrial production costs. This means, that even at
higher wages, production can be competitive, if it is balanced by quality,
less transport cost and being closer to your customer.

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pc2g4d
Note: the article seems to conflate the U.S. trade deficit with the U.S.
federal debt.

Not crucial to its argument, though.

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ThomPete
Thats not how its going to work.

It's no issue getting production back to the US is just wont be with any
workers in there.

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alphydan
Program robots with those skills?

