Automation Nation

June 15, 2011

There are sound economic reasons why jobs are vanishing in the US.

Economically speaking, to remain competitive, manufacturing companies must reduce their overhead, and lower product cost to the consumer.

The problem with lost jobs in the US is the politics, which stirs up a storm of ignorance when the blame is put in the wrong place. Due to politics, when jobs in the US are farmed out to foreign workers, American workers scream bloody murder and blame China, India or Japan.

Then recently, I read a piece from the Daily Ticker “Made in America”: The Comeback that revealed (without meaning to) the real reason so many jobs have been lost and may never come back even if China, India and Japan vanished tomorrow.

The Daily Ticker said, “Since 1972, U.S. manufacturing output has risen nearly 2.5 times, according to Boston Consulting Group (BCG)…. However, U.S. manufacturing employment has fallen nearly 25% in the same period.”

If American manufacturing output has risen nearly 250% since the 1970s, and the population only increased by 50%, why has manufacturing employment fallen nearly 25%?

The answer is “automation”. If you want to learn more, watch the two embedded videos.

In addition, today 80% of the work force in the U.S. is employed in the service sector. This sector, like manufacturing, is threatened by not only cheap labor overseas but automation technology as well.

Even if the manufacturing sector were to increase in the United States, human labor would still be replaced by automation technology.

Soon, there will be only the wealthy and the machines that serve and pamper them. The rest of of us will be obsolete. What do you think will happen to the unemployed then?

Instead of getting angry at workers in other countries, shoot a machine. Then after cooling down, discover the reasons low and/or unskilled labor jobs have gone overseas or have been automated.

One of those reasons is the three kinds of illiteracy.

Low and/or unskilled jobs that do not require literacy are easy to move overseas where there are hundreds of millions living in severe poverty willing to work for much less than most workers in the US.

“The United States Department of Education estimates that functional illiteracy, incompetence in such basic functions as reading, writing, and mathematics, plagues 24 million Americans. Thirteen percent of American seventeen-year-olds are illiterate, according to a recent issue of Time; the estimate for minority youth is an astonishing forty percent.

Then there is cultural illiteracy — “To be culturally literate is to possess the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world.”

The third is moral illiteracy.  “In generations past, parents were more diligent in passing on their principles and values to their children and were assisted by churches and schools which emphasized religious and moral education. In recent years, in contrast, our society has become increasingly secular and the curriculum of the public schools has been denuded of almost all ethical content.” Source: Reformed.org

Discover The End of Cheap Labor from China

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.


Printing Books in China

March 4, 2010

I read a post about printing books in China at Chicken Scratchings, and this was my response.

If American’s stopped buying products made in China, Americans at home would lose jobs.  Since Wal-Mart has more than ninety percent of their products manufactured in China, Wal-Mart might go out of business or shrink (which might be a good thing).  But many low wage people that work for Wal-Mart in the United States would be unemployed like American autoworkers.

Most Chinese products are manufactured for American companies.  Some of Apple’s products are manufactured outside the country like iPods in China. Try to buy a car, any car, that’s 100% manufactured in the United States.  Does it matter where the jobs go?  They are still gone. People in India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc. are manufacturing goods that are sold in the United States. China isn’t the only country that does this.  Yet China seems to get all the blame.

Many products may be built in other countries but an American puts them on the shelf, sells them and gets paid for it.

To understand the situation better, I recommend reading China’s Cheap Price Structure at  http://wp.me/pN4pY-2R
and/or Doing buisiness in China at  http://wp.me/pN4pY-2Y