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"20 Sad Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America"
by Epic Economist
"The decline of the U.S. industrial sector has been accelerating at a frightening pace over the past decades. Millions of manufacturing jobs have been shipped to overseas markets and a large share of our production has been offshored to China. The shift has been so intense, that some argue the United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe. But all of this happened with a cost - and for American workers, that cost has been massive. Yearly wages for manufacturing jobs range around $48,000 to $60,000, allowing workers to support middle-class lifestyles, and granting them medical insurance and retirement benefits. But especially after the 2000s, Americans have been losing job opportunities in the manufacturing sector and being left with limited low-paying options that do not provide any benefits nor promote financial stability.
In the 1940s, the United States was the largest producer in the world. In fact, by 1945, more steel was produced in the state of Pennsylvania alone than in Germany and Japan combined. This belle epoch, the glory days of ‘Made in America’, ran well into the 1990s, but after that, the American industry steadily declined. By the turn of the century, the US’s global domination in mass-scale industrial production, technology, and efficiency was lost. Long-standing issues culminated between 2000 and 2010, when the US lost over 30% of its manufacturing jobs. “This was a very tough decade, a very dramatic shift,” explains William B Bonvillian, a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Millions of jobs just disappeared.”
Deindustrialization also leaves the U.S. supply chain in a very risky position. Since much of the products we buy and consume are produced outside of the country, one single disruption in shipping or manufacturing in foreign nations can lead to shortages, price increases, and port congestion in the U.S. Even worse, if America were to enter a global conflict, sanctions on exports from Eastern nations could completely break our domestic supply chains and trigger an unprecedented amount of chaos all over the country. Unfortunately, it seems that we won't be reversing this trend any time soon.
Today, we gathered some telling statistics that illustrate why deindustrialization is becoming a national crisis.These numbers expose that a deindustrialized America doesn't have any kind of viable economic future. While our domestic production declines, we continue to be the largest consumers on the planet, and that has been expanding the U.S. trade deficit to alarming levels. As the most powerful economy on the globe, we shouldn't be putting ourselves in such a vulnerable position and especially not leaving our workers with jobs that only allow them to live paycheck to paycheck. Our national debt has become way too big, and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was. Outsourcing our production is a strategy that will come back to bite us in a moment when we need it the most. America's future is in deep, deep trouble. Now more than ever, it is time to wake up."
On a PPP basis, the Chinese economy is at least one-third larger than the US economy. In manufacturing, China is at least 50% larger than the US, accounting for 30% of the world's manufacturing capacity. Also, China's economy is growing 3 times as fast as the US economy.
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