From the article: This is a remarkably good history and public policy essay. It explains the current failures of both Left and Right U.S. institutions to honestly articulate the impacts of...
From the article:
In 1973, the United Steelworkers union and the major steel producers negotiated one of the most generous labor contracts in U.S. history, making American steelworkers among the highest paid industrial workers on the planet.
A decade later, many of the beneficiaries of that agreement were out of work.
Beginning in the late 1970s, and accelerating throughout the 1980s, the steel industry in my hometown of Pittsburgh (and beyond) collapsed. Between 1980 and 1983, roughly 95,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in and around the Pittsburgh area. Mills that had employed thousands of people, providing a pathway to middle class status for generations, closed up shop, most of them permanently.
What happened between 1973 and 1983 that changed the fortunes of steelworkers – and of the cities and towns that lived and died by the steel industry? And why does it matter today?
.
.
.
In 1950, 32% of all U.S. employees worked in manufacturing. By 2019, the share had fallen to 8%.
In the popular political imagination, the decline in industries that had once employed large numbers of Americans – from steel to electronics to automobiles – is the result of competition from lower-cost producers overseas. And that has certainly played a big role. But there is no country in the world today – not even China, which has been engaged for the last several decades in its own version of the western world’s postwar building binge – that employs as great a share of the population in manufacturing as the U.S. did in the 1950s.
Yet, the idea that public policy can bring back some semblance of the golden days continues to persist, despite decades of failed economic development schemes aimed toward attaining the holy grail of “good jobs.”
This is a remarkably good history and public policy essay. It explains the current failures of both Left and Right U.S. institutions to honestly articulate the impacts of automation, outsourcing, pollution, and softening demand for ever more stuff. "Good" blue-collar manufacturing jobs will never return in the numbers of post-WWII American peak; our best option is to make all jobs "good".
He points out later it was tried in flint; it’s also being done in Bethlehem. They have a casino there now, and are converting one of the old buildings into an aquatic park. Bethlehem is another...
to the absurd (converting an abandoned mill into a theme park called Mill World).**
He points out later it was tried in flint; it’s also being done in Bethlehem. They have a casino there now, and are converting one of the old buildings into an aquatic park. Bethlehem is another town like Pittsburgh that is finding new success, albeit smaller and with more inequality.
It’s a great article. Time ti move from a performance economy to a needs based version.
I got a front-row seat for the collapse of the auto industry in Michigan, so the article has some extra personal resonance. Dutzik's most significant point for me is the local, national, even...
I got a front-row seat for the collapse of the auto industry in Michigan, so the article has some extra personal resonance. Dutzik's most significant point for me is the local, national, even international blindness or dishonesty of institutions in failing to prepare for or ameliorate postindustrial dislocation.
I remember the 1980's finger-pointing about robotics and Japan, the crushing collapse of living standards, the business and employment destruction. Detroit-area unemployment peaked over 16%, and none of the people I knew in school stayed in the state. It's not that industrial jobs were particularly good for people or the environment, but there was a weird Calvinist social recognition that physically/mentally damaging, awful jobs merited good pay and benefits. Tell that to Amazon warehouse workers, wait staff, home health aides, delivery drivers, data entry clerks, garment workers...
It sounds like they were hoping for an entertainment-based economy? I like seeing a use found for old buildings, and it will require creativity. But the new uses have to make sense economically...
It sounds like they were hoping for an entertainment-based economy? I like seeing a use found for old buildings, and it will require creativity. But the new uses have to make sense economically and might not create that many jobs.
I was happy to see a shoe factory in my home town that’s been abandoned for 40 years converted into lofts.
Great article, thanks for sharing. It seems like our reliance on cars is yet again at the heart of our problems. That and endless material consumerism mixed with planned obsoletion and...
Great article, thanks for sharing.
It seems like our reliance on cars is yet again at the heart of our problems. That and endless material consumerism mixed with planned obsoletion and enshittification.
I asked myself a couple times throughout this article - why can’t the USA get buy-in on trains or public transit ? And came to the conclusion, “we don’t like being around other people or compromising any amount of comfort or control over timeliness.”
That being said, I thought we would be super into driverless cars then - if we can’t get rid of cars, let’s repurpose cars. But I guess the USA doesn’t really like that either.
It's not just about cars, or even steel. We're talking about a fundamental material transition of societies, as much of a shock as the mechanization of agriculture. Once, it took half of humanity...
It's not just about cars, or even steel. We're talking about a fundamental material transition of societies, as much of a shock as the mechanization of agriculture. Once, it took half of humanity to produce enough food for everyone, and even that was uncertain. Now it's down to about 1% of labor, in most industrialized countries.
History reveals that the agrarian/industrial transition was messy and violent, with tremendous human dislocation from farmland to industrial cities, and a fall in living standards for generations. In a (very reductive) way, the U.S. Civil War was about whether machines or (enslaved) people could more efficiently supply society, and mechanization won.
Once, it took a third of Americans to produce enough material goods for everyone (granting the immense wastage of world wars), and comparable percentages in other industrialized countries. As the article mentions, even in vastly overproducing China, it's only about 10% of labor in manufacturing, and falling. Automation, more efficient use of materials, adaptable manufacturing, are all squeezing out the human makers. And now we've got ML squeezing out the human servants.
So what happens to all the people who aren't directly making things or providing services, when the demand for material goods and services is satiated and/or those people aren't participating in the distribution of wealth needed to acquire them? Last time around, it took a Great Depression and a deadly world war to sort out the inequality of access to decision-making power and resources.
Chinese manufacturing still isn't as productive per unit of labor as in the U.S. or Germany because Chinese labor is still comparatively cheap. Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, is right behind. When India catches up and African nations start producing for their own material needs, we will all be hip-deep in excess (including excess warfare and pollution of all kinds) if everyone can't get smarter about how to manage the changes.
Trade protectionism doesn't work well, and it impoverishes everyone. National champion industries stagnate and rot (see Boeing for the most recent U.S. example). Low-training service workers are treated as fungible units of labor, who can also become fungible military units if belligerence isn't restrained. The ur-capitalist Jay Gould once remarked, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half", and that's just as true today.
Heck, I'm blathering on about one of the little anxiety subprocesses in my brain.
From the article:
This is a remarkably good history and public policy essay. It explains the current failures of both Left and Right U.S. institutions to honestly articulate the impacts of automation, outsourcing, pollution, and softening demand for ever more stuff. "Good" blue-collar manufacturing jobs will never return in the numbers of post-WWII American peak; our best option is to make all jobs "good".
He points out later it was tried in flint; it’s also being done in Bethlehem. They have a casino there now, and are converting one of the old buildings into an aquatic park. Bethlehem is another town like Pittsburgh that is finding new success, albeit smaller and with more inequality.
It’s a great article. Time ti move from a performance economy to a needs based version.
I got a front-row seat for the collapse of the auto industry in Michigan, so the article has some extra personal resonance. Dutzik's most significant point for me is the local, national, even international blindness or dishonesty of institutions in failing to prepare for or ameliorate postindustrial dislocation.
I remember the 1980's finger-pointing about robotics and Japan, the crushing collapse of living standards, the business and employment destruction. Detroit-area unemployment peaked over 16%, and none of the people I knew in school stayed in the state. It's not that industrial jobs were particularly good for people or the environment, but there was a weird Calvinist social recognition that physically/mentally damaging, awful jobs merited good pay and benefits. Tell that to Amazon warehouse workers, wait staff, home health aides, delivery drivers, data entry clerks, garment workers...
It sounds like they were hoping for an entertainment-based economy? I like seeing a use found for old buildings, and it will require creativity. But the new uses have to make sense economically and might not create that many jobs.
I was happy to see a shoe factory in my home town that’s been abandoned for 40 years converted into lofts.
Great article, thanks for sharing.
It seems like our reliance on cars is yet again at the heart of our problems. That and endless material consumerism mixed with planned obsoletion and enshittification.
I asked myself a couple times throughout this article - why can’t the USA get buy-in on trains or public transit ? And came to the conclusion, “we don’t like being around other people or compromising any amount of comfort or control over timeliness.”
That being said, I thought we would be super into driverless cars then - if we can’t get rid of cars, let’s repurpose cars. But I guess the USA doesn’t really like that either.
Oh, bother. :(
It's not just about cars, or even steel. We're talking about a fundamental material transition of societies, as much of a shock as the mechanization of agriculture. Once, it took half of humanity to produce enough food for everyone, and even that was uncertain. Now it's down to about 1% of labor, in most industrialized countries.
History reveals that the agrarian/industrial transition was messy and violent, with tremendous human dislocation from farmland to industrial cities, and a fall in living standards for generations. In a (very reductive) way, the U.S. Civil War was about whether machines or (enslaved) people could more efficiently supply society, and mechanization won.
Once, it took a third of Americans to produce enough material goods for everyone (granting the immense wastage of world wars), and comparable percentages in other industrialized countries. As the article mentions, even in vastly overproducing China, it's only about 10% of labor in manufacturing, and falling. Automation, more efficient use of materials, adaptable manufacturing, are all squeezing out the human makers. And now we've got ML squeezing out the human servants.
So what happens to all the people who aren't directly making things or providing services, when the demand for material goods and services is satiated and/or those people aren't participating in the distribution of wealth needed to acquire them? Last time around, it took a Great Depression and a deadly world war to sort out the inequality of access to decision-making power and resources.
Chinese manufacturing still isn't as productive per unit of labor as in the U.S. or Germany because Chinese labor is still comparatively cheap. Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, is right behind. When India catches up and African nations start producing for their own material needs, we will all be hip-deep in excess (including excess warfare and pollution of all kinds) if everyone can't get smarter about how to manage the changes.
Trade protectionism doesn't work well, and it impoverishes everyone. National champion industries stagnate and rot (see Boeing for the most recent U.S. example). Low-training service workers are treated as fungible units of labor, who can also become fungible military units if belligerence isn't restrained. The ur-capitalist Jay Gould once remarked, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half", and that's just as true today.
Heck, I'm blathering on about one of the little anxiety subprocesses in my brain.