Abandoned tracks, Port of San Francisco, 2005
t r u t h o u t – In Spite of Growth, American Industry Continues to Decline — Interesting article translated from LeMonde.
The American economy has taken off over the last two years. Doped up by monetary and fiscal stimulants, it overcame the 2001 recession, the September 11 attacks, the bursting of the Internet bubble, two wars, bankruptcies, and other Wall Street scandals. Average growth has been over 4% since July 2003 and should be sustained over the coming months. Yet, one sector remains that has not emerged from the crisis and continues to drop jobs: traditional industry.
For sometimes different reasons, the auto, steel, metallurgical, machinery (apart from information technology), plastics, textiles, paper, furniture, mass electronics, and toy industries … seem like the lost and forsaken of the American economy. De-industrialization continues to accelerate, and some of these activities seem doomed to disappear.
In spite of a favorable economic climate and the strong drop in the dollar against the Euro and the Yen in the last three years, American industry keeps losing market share in the export market and even in the domestic United States markets.
We don’t produce consumer goods anymore. We import them.
Please, don’t anyone rail on about American cars or [especially] motorcycles. Try to make one go around the block without imported parts. A Harley becomes a very heavy scooter.
The economy looks great on Wall Street. Consumers continue to suffer with declining purchasing power, negative real income. Folks with sufficient — ain’t gonna notice it and probably don’t care.
But, it’s the standard automation response, amplified by outsourcing:
Factory owner: “How are you going to get these robots to join your union?”
Steward: “The same way you’re going to get ’em to buy your widgets.”
What makes anyone think that a job will provide the means for living beyond subsistence in the future? There are between 1 and 3 billion people in the world who would consider the most menial job in the United States or Europe to be a high-paying, desirable job. Global networks and information technology are going to allow these people to train for and get these jobs. One result of this could be a global “New-Feudalism” with multi-national corporations acting as “lords of the manor.” Another alternative is for more widely distributed ownership of the means of production. An approach to this solution is given at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm. Are you part of the solution or part of the problem?