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Originally Posted by Polar cub
Already are.
Whirlpool is selling Chinese made Whirlpools to Chinese consumers. And it won't be long before they ship them here.
This country will have no manufacturing before long. Just a chunk of land with lawyers and fast food workers. Sad.
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Actually, we will have plenty of manufacturing, just not as many manufacturing jobs. According to
Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post:
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From 1998 to 2007, total non-farm payroll employment rose 12 million, and unemployment averaged only 4.9 percent -- despite the 4 million lost factory jobs. In that period, U.S. manufacturing output rose 22 percent.
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This data merely continues a longer-term trend of the country producing more goods, but doing so more efficiently. We like to blame foreigners because then we have a "villain" (the alternate villain being greedy executives); but many of the manufacturing job losses in the United States are due to greater efficiency rather than foreign competition.
Moreover, even to the extent that job losses are the result of foreign competition, it's only because the same goods can be manufactured at a lower cost, which means American consumers (which includes each and every one of us) benefit. Now, it's easy to dismiss the benefits that we consumers receive from lower production costs; however, a bit of perspective goes a long way. Lower production costs mean that more goods are available to more people. And we're not just talking about leisure goods that feed the American appetite for conspicuous consumption. We're talking about advances in transportation, communication, and safety that promote longer, healthier lives. And lower production costs make these benefits available to a greater number of people, especially lower-income people.
Spotting the transition costs of economic competition is easy, because you point to a small town that lost a tire plant and bemoan the plight of the unemployed workers. However, keener minds also spot the benefits of economic competition, remembering, of course, that economic productivity is not a zero-sum game. See
comparative advantage.