‘How Do You Build Factories and Make Things Without Materials?’

Ali Velshi of MSNBC was filling in Friday night (as he often does) for Lawrence O’Donnell, and while I don’t remember his exact wording it was essentially the question posed in the title of this piece.  It’s a provocative question and for a couple of reasons. It’s not just raw materials like steel, the ingredients to make concrete, bricks/blocks etc. but also the equipment that would have to fill the space in factories to actually manufacture goods.  Some, and often much of that can be U.S. in origin but not all of it. Not even close when you’re talking about well over a thousand (perhaps even two thousand) factories overseas factories that make and ship goods that are sold here!

I’m a senior citizen now, and during my life watched the transformation which was mostly the closing of factories and/or the offshoring of jobs. (Please indulge me some personal thoughts as the same thing has happened in thousands of places in this country) I grew up in a small southern Illinois town of 10k which was actually larger than typical back there.  We had some blue collar manufacturing that was important. The loss of the Stecher’s Brewery before I was born hurt but the town got by. It was the loss of the Brown Shoe factory that dealt what would turn out to be the mortal blow to my hometown. “The Shoe Factory” as we called it had over 600 employees in the 1960s making mostly Buster Brown shoes and RedWing boots. That’s an awful lot of jobs in a town that size. When it suddenly shut down in the 1970s there was hope of finding something new to come in and utilize all that space. Instead, it sat empty year after year, silent as a tomb.  Over time it would become the tomb for the town’s dreams of being able to survive.  My hometown is dying, like so many others across this country.

That’s just one town as I said, but places that manufactured many other goods including vehicles, machines (washers/dryers, refrigerators etc.) and electronics all wound up being sent to other countries experienced the same thing. A process put on steroids during the Reagan years. Executive Suite arrogance got so bad that just shutting down a successful factory because it didn’t fit the ‘corporate model’ took place. In an appalling example of corporate culture assholery GM bigwigs finally fulfilled their dream of destroying their own highly regarded (by customers, more than enough to keep things going) Saturn division. From scratch the experimental division built an impressive manufacturing facility in Tennessee that didn’t include just the automobile plant with assembly lines, but smaller units that made many of the items that went over to that big assembly line building and into/onto the cars!  But it got shut down by GM and if I’m not mistaken much of it was razed to the ground.

Getting back on point, as this article from CNN Business explains bringing back manufacturing the way us old folks remember it is a pipe dream. It’s not just about building facilities (or refurbishing old ones) and setting up supply chains for raw materials/parts but that manufacturing itself has drastically changed.  However let’s go to something basic. 50(+) years ago roughly a quarter of Americans held jobs in the manufacturing sector. Today it’s only 8%.  What’s more, as I began to talk about the nature of many of the manufacturing jobs left has changed!

Automation, using increasingly sophisticated robotics to perform tasks that used to be performed by human workers had already caused a sea change. More and more factory jobs were about maintaining the machines than actually hands-on making stuff or performing assembly steps by hand. Even much of the inspection of a finished product started to be done not by a human being, but by machines!  Automation has been a source of conflict in union negotiations with management for decades now.  If all that wasn’t enough we have AI which introduces a whole new level of increased capability for machines to do what humans could/can do.

Actual people have to be paid wages. And benefits. Even non-union manufacturing employees get the benefit of a strong union presence in their area.  Human employees require employers to cover worker’s compensation for injured workers, and of course health care and retirement benefits. Compare that to machines which do wear out and/or break down and need replacement or fixing. That’s often not as much as worker’s comp. and health care costs. But machines don’t require a dime of company money for retirement benefits.

The end result is that there’s more truth than people realize in the line from Springsteen’s My Home Town when he mournfully sings about the boss saying ‘Boy these jobs are going, and they ain’t coming back.  So, even if we rebuilt/refurbished factories to replace the literally thousands that were lost in the eighties, nineties and beyond it simply wouldn’t be the same as it was when I was growing up and reached adulthood. THAT manufacturing world is gone forever.

That leaves us with the original question. Even if there wouldn’t be nearly as many jobs, and the bulk of those that were created were much different and required not necessarily college degrees but significant technical training the fact is you have to build the places where all the stuff would be manufactured!  And, as I said earlier acquire the machinery and robots and the infrastructure in many instances to move raw materials in and finished products out!  The United States was blessed with abundant natural resources but we simply don’t have everything we need in the modern age.  Or, much of it, steel and parts, robots (and parts for them), even minerals (especially for tech industries) is much cheaper if from other countries. And in some cases, especially materials including critical minerals they can only be acquired from other countries!.

What we are left with is one of those things that sound good – ‘Recreate manufacturing here in the U.S. like it used to be’ that in reality simply isn’t going to happen.  We CAN and should bring back a lot of jobs and the last administration created the means to do so. For a “bumbling, foggy-minded old guy” President Biden engineered and rammed through some awfully complex legislation. However under the best of circumstances building the modern factories to make say computer chips and other electronics takes YEARS.  Even simpler factories for making materials to make clothes and making the clothes themselves can take years.  And if you were to create a factory in the U.S. to replace everything we buy that’s made overseas you’re talking about HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars of investment. Maybe up over the trillion mark.

From where I sit, the people with the actual money will whenever they can string things along and wait for the ‘Bring it all back home’ sentiment to fade.  Decades ago they created a system of providing goods to consumers at places like Wal Mart, Home Depot etc. at a lower cost by having so much of what was sold overseas. People got “hooked” on the drug of lower prices.  How many in small towns like mine decried the closing of old family businesses on Main Street, yet could be seen at the Wal Mart out on the edge of town? The fact is, making everything in the USA will mean cost increases I don’t believe Americans are willing to accept. If what I just wrote about Wal Mart (and other chains) doesn’t convince you think about the last election.

Even if Biden hadn’t stepped aside the harping on inflation had Democrats in trouble and in for a rough ride in November. Even after it was clear inflation was coming down and headed towards normal levels. Voters were pissy, even angry and by god were going to make someone  (as in politicians they saw as responsible for it) pay, even if it meant giving Trump another shot. Despite the fact HE PAINTS HIS FACE ORANGE every day.  If next month five hundred or more factories sprung up out of the ground fully ready to make stuff it would mean higher prices because American workers making that stuff would make more than the foreign ones who’ve been keeping prices low!

Then there’s this from the linked article. Unemployment remains low as it was last year. Yet there were 482,000 job openings in manufacturing according to a recent look-see.  Not good, but things get worse. It’s estimated that number will climb to 1.9 Million by 2033, less than ten years from now.  It’s a different world in many ways that we grew up in and that’s as true of manufacturing (whether at home or abroad) as anything else.  The plain fact is, workers including in factories are going to need more than ‘entry level’ skills.

When I graduated high school fifty years ago acquaintances lucky enough to have connections to get a union card to work in coal mines simply bought a lunch bucket and went to work doing mostly manual labor. Tasks that could be learned in a day or two, sometimes a week or two and they made several times what I’d make as a college graduate. It was a different time, and it’s long gone.

Investments in US manufacturing would likely push the number of unfilled jobs even higher.

Many modern manufacturing jobs will require knowledge of software, data analytics and coding, Lee said. Other positions will require workers who can repair the robots on a factory floor. While many of these jobs won’t necessitate a college degree, they do require certifications and training, she added.

“There’s no one kind of manufacturing job, but the thing that is common to every one of these jobs is that they will require skills,” said Lee. “The majority of the jobs in the sector are not entry-level jobs that have no skills.”

So where does that leave us?  The answer to the title question is we CAN’T get all the materials we need from here in the U.S. We will have to get some of what we need to build all those factories and operate them from other countries. And they know it.  Raw materials from steel (and the ingredients to make it), things like wool and cotton, chemicals to make plastics/synthetics (not just for clothing but for things like the fake wood flooring in my apartment, or countertops) can’t all be obtained, at least in the quantities needed from here at home.

Even if we had all we needed here in the U.S. we don’t have a work force able to work in those new factories!  Nor one that seems willing to acquire the skills. Western Kentucky was only 45 miles from where I grew up. I recall a federal program to retrain coal workers, both miners and coal truck drivers at community colleges for trade or technical work. Even with subsidies, longing for ‘what they had’ most dropped out.  To nothing. Just plain ole stubborn folks who wanted things to be  how they had been.

In the end, the situation is that we live in a global community and international trade is the lifeblood. With smart, COMPETENT leaders trade agreements can give most countries most of what they need, and even much of what they want. “Trade Deals” are a dirty word to many but like blood they are sticky and messy but essential.  However, with dumbass, INCOMPETENT leaders like the United States now has gaping wounds in the whole system are being opened.

If Congress doesn’t step in and soon those wounds are going to be even worse than they already are. Other countries won’t forget the choice Republicans made by re-nominating Trump, or for just enough voters rejecting Harris to put him back in the WH. Knowing from the first quarter of this new century how self-absorbed, clueless and selfish so many American voters are (Bush 43, and then Trump) every four years all bets are off.  Our one chance to mitigate the damage and at least keep a seat at the adult’s table is for Congress (looking at YOU Republicans!) to step up and take back its own damned power from the idiot egomaniac in the WH who is with each passing day showing signs of becoming MORE of a “Mad King.”  At least we see voters, including Republicans  giving Congress Critters hell these days. ALL of us need to keep it up and encourage each other.

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