The Romance of Manufacturing

Having watched the last couple of debates (vice presidential and last night’s presidential), I am struggling to understand the obsession with bringing manufacturing jobs to the United States.  Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get why we want these jobs.

Having seen the pictures from inside of Foxconn, where iPhones and iPads are made, I am pretty sure there aren’t many here in the US willing to work in those kinds of conditions, much less live on a campus devoted entirely to manufacturing.

There is a good bit of romance tied up in the idea of manufacturing jobs.  I think it probably is still a relic of the heyday of the industrial economy when everyone went to work at a plant, built stuff and watched it roll off of the assembly line.  Real people tightened rivets, put car doors on, and sewed jeans together.  Until machines could do it better and faster.

The labor force of the US has moved up the value chain.  We have far more opportunity in knowledge work, making far better money, than training people to put iPhones together and trying to make that attractive.  When Georgia kicked all of the undocumented workers out of their state, nobody moved there to start picking lettuce and peaches.  Why not?  If we are so desperate for any kind of work, all of those Georgia farmers should have been overrun with people willing to step in.

They weren’t, and the same would be true of some factory in nowhere Indiana making widgets.

Repetitive, non-creative work is going the way of the dodo bird.  Let it go.

If we are going to invest in job training outside of knowledge work, how about the trades?  There is a rapidly approaching shortage of electricians, plumbers, and carpenters.  It’s increasingly difficult to find good ones, and the good ones make a whole lot of money.  I would be thrilled if my kids wanted to be electricians.  No shortage of work there.

I am not suggesting that there isn’t real hardship for the unemployed.  I know people who have not been able to find good work for a long time.  It’s real pain.

I don’t think the answer is to have those people sewing dresses.  Let Foxconn make the iPhones and pay their workers $2 an hour.  I want us focused on creating the next iPhone.  The value created is exponentially higher.