By David Harsanyi
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
During every election season, populists in both parties
offer some variation of this cliché about American manufacturing: “We don’t
make anything anymore.”
“We” still make plenty
of things, actually. There are manufacturing jobs available (some of them high
paying, specialized, and, no doubt, rewarding). And there may well be new,
unexpected, and astonishing things to build in the not-so-distant future.
But still, it’s worth pointing out that manufacturing
isn’t the same as manufacturing jobs. And it’s really time we stop venerating
both.
Here’s GOP frontrunner Donald Trump the other day
grumbling about having to buy thousands of televisions manufactured in South
Korea and then wondering why the United States would defend a nation that sells
these reasonably priced products. (I own two Samsung televisions, and I can’t
think of a better reason to defend
South Korea):
“I don’t think
anybody makes television sets in the United States anymore. We don’t make
anything anymore.”
Similarly, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee,
Rick Santorum, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Hillary Clinton have, to one extent
or another, lamented the shrinking of the American manufacturing base and
threatened our economic well-being by promising to bring those jobs “back.”
It’s a bad idea.
The Veneration of
Widgets
For starters, isn’t it a bit archaic to act like
assembling a car is more honorable or useful than being a teacher, a lawyer, an
entrepreneur, or an engineer; working in finance; or making a living in the
service industry? Perhaps there’s something about the tangibility of seeing a
widget being put together by a line of workers that offers voters some
affirmation that, indeed, things must be going well. But it doesn’t work that
way.
It’s not only about the quantity of jobs that politicians
promise to bring back, but the quality of those jobs. Most “lost” manufacturing
jobs do not entail high levels of craftsmanship or the use of great innovation.
You’re not ‘working with your hands’ in any meaningful sense. There is no shame
in labor, but low-value, low-wage jobs requiring intensive and repetitive labor
isn’t exactly the kind we should be clamoring to save.
In the 1950s, these kinds of jobs may have offered the
security and pensions that people sought — considering the other options.
Today, Americans have easier access to education and far more vocational
diversity. There is no need romanticize a far less dynamic time in American
history.
Evidently, presidential candidates have no problem
imagining a future where other people’s
grandchildren toil on assembly lines slapping together cheap toys or solar
panels. None of them will say, “When elected president I will make it a top
priority to create more underpaid busywork for all Americans!” Yet, that’s
exactly the sort of counterproductive policies they typically propose, and the
kind voters tend to gravitate towards.
When politicians says we’ve outsourced manufacturing
jobs, they mean the labor has become too expensive. Most voters probably
understand that China, Mexico, Malaysia, “steal” jobs because American workers
can’t compete with someone making a dollar an hour. The result is that
consumers may enjoy lower prices and, theoretically, should be moving on to
more rewarding and higher paying work. Instead, liberals and right-wing
populists, promise to save those jobs: They do so by supporting artificially
raising wages. By opposing free trade agreements to protect those artificially
high wages. By rescuing companies and industries that refuse to innovate or
subsidizing those that agree to make things no one really needs.
Rage Against The
Machine, But It Won’t Make A Difference
But even the above agenda can’t really stop progress.
When politicians contend that manufacturing jobs have “vanished,” they mean
that advances have been made that make certain manufacturing jobs highly
productive — necessitating fewer workers — and others completely obsolete.
Fact: robots are better than humans at assembling things.
In 1975, nearly 30 percent of Americans worked in the manufacturing sector. By
2010, it was only around nine percent. During that time, the GDP tripled and
productivity soared, in part, due to automation. Robots don’t get hurt. They
don’t have pensions. They rarely make any mistakes. They don’t take vacations.
They don’t join unions. Their cost continues to drop. And robots are definitely
not going to uninvent themselves.
This kind of transformation happens to the economy at all
times in various forms. A century ago almost 50 percent of Americans made their
living in agriculture. One farmer fed around seven people. Even in the 1980s, a
cultural movement emerged to romanticize the plight of the small farmer, who
was already often subsisting on welfare. But 30 years later, only two percent
of the American workforce works in agriculture, while productive it up
thirtyfold.
When we have presidents who blame ATM machines and other
efficiencies for unemployment and a Republican frontrunner who argues the
country must be hermetically sealed from competition, that tells us, as always,
there’s a deep-seated suspicion of innovation. Many experts argue that
Americans living in 2015 face a unique set circumstances that prohibit them
from recovering from the ravages of creative destruction. Experts claim that
one in three jobs will be taken by software or robots by 2025 and that by 2030
as much as 90 percent of jobs will be at risk of replacement.
If experts excel at anything, it’s being awful at the
prediction business. We have no clue what new industry will emerge a decade
from now. The more we innovate, though, the more it seems we need human
creativity and ingenuity — at least until the post-scarcity world of
singularity. Certainly, there’s no guarantee our skills will remain viable in
perpetuity; not in a world where an advance can decimate entire industries in a
few years. In the real world, we get this. Yet, in the political world, we
continue to vote for a bunch of Luddites who believe America greatness is
contingent on reinstating an antiquated factory-based economy.
No comments:
Post a Comment