Mastodawn

❝ Back in 1987, the economists Stephen Cohen and John Zysman warned: “Lose manufacturing and you will lose – not develop – high-wage service jobs.” …Everywhere factories have fled, social rot has followed. Since then, wage growth for most Americans has been stagnant. For those without a college degree it has declined. The promise of a “service economy” was built on the myth that jobs in services could simply replace jobs in manufacturing, without any real trade-off.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/02/american-reindustrialization-manufacturing

The case for American reindustrialization

Walking through the US’s deindustrialized zones is a bit like walking through Dresden after 1945. We can rebuild better than before

The Guardian

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John 22h ago

@blogdiva

Something I've read is that it's not as simple as "bring back manufacturing jobs". Modern manufacturing is highly technical, requires hard-earned skills to operate precision tooling, and doesn't have the same margins for error that it used to.

While it's absurd that neoliberal policy put us here, and most US politicians are still dyed in the wool neolibs, the "solution" can't just happen overnight.

And we don't like paying for people's education or training, because we're nutbags

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Franceska Mann 22h ago

@blogdiva @johnzajac

Why would any globalized corporation bring their manufacturing into the United States? It is expensive for businesses to hire Americans because they have to pay for our healthcare. It's a HUGE tax. So corporations give us the shittiest healthcare possible. Or they go to another country and hire workers there. Either way, we lose.

Initiating universal healthcare would have brought manufacturing jobs back to the USA without the pain.

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John 22h ago

@FranceskaMann @blogdiva

Well, we have the problems of not having a skilled workforce anymore (50 years of destroying unions and manufacturing facilities will do that to a nation), having a strong currency, and having a crumbling State infrastructure.

In the parlance of capitalism, we simply cannot compete.

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your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦22h ago

the writer’s point ―who is also a labor union official― is that a nation of makers is more econonically prosperous than a nation of servants.

this is more than a historical fact. humanity is built upon our making, creating, inventing.

the problem he doesn’t mention is capitalism itself.

re-industrialization doesn’t have to be capital-intensive. the problem is that neolibs hate mom & pop shops and small businesses in general because they’re human-sized & people-centric.

I guess I'm trying to say that it was missing some important context that is material to the argument.

Absent free training and education and healthcare, the US just isn't competitive when it comes to manufacturing jobs and the skills they require.

Neolibs love to say that blue collar work is "unskilled labor", but that's a lie that serves their interests.

As for facilities, modern manufacturing takes years to build and calibrate.

It's not as easy as saying "let's reshore this"

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your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦20h ago

@johnzajac i get what you are saying but you’re not getting my point: economic development should not revolve only around the needs of Wall St. there is a lot of manufacturing that can happen at local scales that has been intentionally wiped out in this country.

you assume there aren’t clothes & shoemakers, furniture makers, hsrdware engineers in shitty jobs because they’ve been redlined out of commercial real estate and loans by the banks colluding to protect the investment monopsony…

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your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦20h ago

@johnzajac this is what blows my mind: there used to be different regional styles of furniture, fabrics, even paper, well into the 1970s and then Reaganism happened.

all manufacturing has been transformed by computers but NOT all of it is so highly technical, you need “reeducation”.

USA doesn’t need shitty jobs, regardless of whether they’re in service or manufacture.

makers should own the means of their production. FDR & Johnson made it possible. Reagan Bush & Clinton destroyed that.

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Paul SomeoneElse 21h ago

The state is collapsing. Maybe it needs to. But for the state to survive it cant' continue
to be beholden to debt. The US should nationalize everything and employ people to
do the business of a state, like infrastructure.

Even the "left" politicians are predominately capitalist. There is no capitalist way
out of this. I don't mean that like "as a revolutionary" i mean it's just collapsing
under it's own weight. The snake is eating it's tail.

CC: @johnzajac@dice.camp