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My opinion: Globalization smashed American manufacturing. Globalization is a consequence of the elimination of tariffs and cheap shipping which will be even more economically efficient.

Yesterday I saw that it currently costs $500 for an average cargo container to be shipped from Asia to Europe. They are now building container ships that hold 18,000 containers. Those in current use only haul 14,000 containers.

My average current cost for an HVAC service technician is $46 an hour, including health insurance, cell phone, uniform, employer matching SS and Medicare, unemployment insurance, and worker's comp insurance. I am not a union contractor. Since I am in service and not manufacturing my company does not have to compete with a service company in Maylasia or China or India. I doubt a manufacturing company in the US could pay minimum wage with no benefits and get its hourly cost down to double that same cost in China.

Not until we decide to impose tariffs will the factories and manufacturing jobs reappear here. Blaming our current loss of manufacturing on greedy unions or slothful young people or greedy capitalists is in error if you believe that market forces work. So now we buy our manufactured consumer goods at Walmart, and really cheap at that. My shirt was made in Sri Lanka, my pants in India. Many of the tools in my garage were made in China.

Last year I hunted bobwhite with a friend on his family ranch. They were drilling oil wells every two hundred yards or so in one area. Must have been a hundred. I was shocked to find out that the pump jacks on newly completed wells had been manufactured in China.

I think this is what Pogo said: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Mike, your opinion is accurate. Union membership is declining. There's downward pressure on wages in all OECD countries, whether they have strong or weak unions. Globalization is a greater factor than unions.

I'm pro-worker, pro-labour but within a context of markets. Without markets, innovation and enterprise, there are no jobs. The share of income going to labour has fallen almost everywhere. Industry everywhere is hurting.

You're seeing it in the service industry. A Canadian runs the Bank of England. Can you imagine the US handing over the US Reserve to a foreigner to make independent monetary policy?

Mike, here's globalization writ large, coming to a place near you: James Meek's essay of London Review Podcast, in part:

"Does it matter that the power Britain relies on to make the country glow and hum no longer belongs to Britain? After all, the lights still shine. The phones still charge. Does it matter that the old electricity suppliers of eastern and north-west England and the English Midlands, the coal-fired power stations of Kingsnorth, Ironbridge and Ratcliffe-on-Soar, the turbine shops at Hams Hall, the oil and gas stations on the Isle of Grain, Killingholme, Enfield and Cottam are the property of E.ON of D�sseldorf? Is it of significance only to sentimental Little Englanders that the former electricity boards of Tyneside and Yorkshire, the power stations at Didcot in Oxfordshire, Fawley in Hampshire, Tilbury in Essex, Littlebrook in Kent, Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, Little Barford in Bedfordshire and Staythorpe in Nottinghamshire belong to RWE of Essen (the last being the only one the German company built itself)? Is it a sign of some atavistic hostility to the Other � nationalism, chauvinism, even racism � to find it strange that the one-time public purveyors of electricity in North Wales, Merseyside and southern Scotland, along with another set of large power stations, are owned by Iberdrola of Bilbao? Are you an enemy of liberal principles if you question the fact that, when local electrical engineers dig up the roads in London, they�re working for East Asia�s richest man, the Hong Kong-based Li Ka-shing? In north-east England, they work for Warren Buffett; in Birmingham, Cardiff and Plymouth, the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company; in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool, Iberdrola; in Manchester, a consortium of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and a J.P. Morgan investment fund.

"More than anyone, you�d think, it would matter to the people who made these arrangements possible in the first place. What has happened is not what they promised or intended when they put Britain�s state-owned electricity industry on the block. Before this year is out, politicians, regulators and corporations will make a set of decisions determining the electric life of Britain for the next half century. They will decide how the country keeps the lights burning and the wheels of industry turning for the next fifty years without severely affecting the climate or impoverishing us. But as a result of actions taken a generation ago by Margaret Thatcher�s Conservatives � a party whose nationalist programme promised independence from Europe � the decisions aren�t Britain�s alone. Thatcher promised less state involvement in industry but the future of Britain�s energy supply now hinges on state-owned French companies based in Paris: Electricit� de France, better known as EDF, and Areva, maker of nuclear power stations. Will EDF and Areva build a fleet of new nuclear reactors in Britain or won�t they, and if they do, how much will it cost the British and French public?

"Defending her record in Parliament on the day she resigned in 1990, Thatcher spoke in patriotic tones of how, with millions of people buying shares in former state industries, privatisation was giving �power back to the people�, and how competition at home and open markets in Europe would free British enterprise to lead the world. Now, in 2012, it�s clear that the result of electricity privatisation was to take power away from the people. Small British shareholders have no influence over the overwhelmingly non-British owners of the firms that generate and distribute power in Britain. The fact that individual households and small businesses can choose to switch from the confusing tariff of one oligopolistic supplier to another doesn�t protect them from sharp, unpredictable swings in prices. In overseas chanceries the Thatcher doctrine came up against ambitious leaders who were no less patriotic, but not so arrogant and naive. Unlike Thatcher, they didn�t assume that if their country levelled its playing field, others would level theirs. The problem with the ideal of competition is that there are winners and losers. The electricity competition has now been held. It is over, and Britain lost. From the point of view of technology and capital, electric Britain is no longer a centre. It is another centre�s province."

I think you make good points also, but do you really think unions are a typical market force. Your last union story made it sound made it sound like you're in the market to give away a truckload of freebies.

I wonder how long that market would hold up, but apparently the left is pushing to foind out. Maybe, we really don't want to bring back the manufacturing of the cheapest widgets. If your guesstimates are right, who's going to pay for the 2 1\2 to 3 times price increases.

King, I wouldn't put a whole bunch of stock in what Meek's has to say, wasn't he an engraver.

Mike:
I'm going to say I agree with much of your post but I will disagree with your statement regarding unions. The unions here ran wages and benefits up so high that jobs began to migrate overseas back in the 70s. Please go back and read some of my earlier posts on this thread where I covered this subject in more detail.
Had wages and salaries here stayed competitive with what was being paid elsewhere these jobs would never have been lost.
The last I knew, and this was years ago, it cost over $700 more to produce a car here then elsewhere and this was primarily due to the difference in labor costs.
No one in manufacturing could pay that kind of overhead differential in the long run and survive.
The Libtards on this forum I'm sure are denying any of this as they really don't have much use for factual information to begin with.
The primary reason we can still manufacture cars here at all is due to factory automation which also eliminated a lot of construction jobs in the automotive industry.
Jim

Unions and Taxes. Both deplete Capital, and reduce profitability. Now, costly regulations are also in the mix for many as well.

Basic Economics. What was it that Hillary once said? (para?) "I can't be responsible for the failure of every undercapitalized business in the Country"..Yeah, "Pantsuit Obama", but the sociopathic, religious ideology of your Democrat Party has done it's part in the 'War on Capitalism".

Average wage - China: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/wages - about $4.40 per hour (edit - I incorrectly had $3.30 per hour as the average wage in China. Todays exchange rate is 6.19 Yuan to the Dollar)

Average wage - Mexico: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/mexico/wages As of today there 15.5 pesos to the dollar so that works out to about $2.40 per hour.

Averge wage - United States: http://www.mybudget360.com/how-much-do-americans-earn-what-is-the-average-us-income/ Or about $13 an hour.

All costs do matter. But a US manufacturer would have to violate the minimum wage law to get just his "on the check" costs down to twice what Mexico or China pay.

My opinion is still that extremely low shipping costs have combined with the practical abolition of tariffs to decimate manufacturing here.

But the lefties here are blaming the loss of those manufacturing jobs here on greedy, unprincipled capitalists. Had those capitalists not moved those jobs offshore their competitors would have kicked their brains in.

And no matter what unions or benefits or regulations we eliminated for manufacturing we could not have gotten down to the even double the hourly wage in China. Our minimum wage is about two and one half times China's, about three times Mexico's.

So blame the elimination of tariffs, blame the new global shipping container economy, blame ourselves for loving to buy on the cheap. But the problem was not evil corporations or demanding unproductive unions or regulation.

(edit - I incorrectly had $3.30 per hour as the average wage in China. It is about $4.40)

Certainly a valid aspect. However, labor costs can be significantly reduced by automation. Look at how robotics are now used in the Auto Industry. Compare how many welders are employed now as opposed to 30 years ago. Capitalism always tries to find a way. If protectionism had been used 30 years ago, it never would have happened as the Union goal is to employ as many members as possible. If protectionism had been used in the High-Tech field, and if the prices had been government regulated, a PC would cost $4000 now, instead of $400.

NYC recently replaced giant 18 ton valves in the upstate reservoir. The valves were cast in China, and machined in England. Environmental restrictions, as well as lower wages sent big equipment production like this out of the US. People say more police are needed in the inner cities---no, jobs are what's needed!

I don't think I am arguing for protectionism. I think I am arguing that it is incorrect to blame greedy mill owners for the offshoring of their fabric factories. If they hadn't offshored they would have gone broke.

I don't think I am arguing for tariffs. I am arguing that it is incorrect to blame milliner unions for the offshoring of fabric manufacturing because they could not have lowered their wages enough to compete with a $2 an hour Sri Lankan mill worker.

There is no doubt that increased automation makes a country's average wage less important. But automation is not what moved those manufacturing jobs offshore starting about fifteen years ago. Extremely low labor costs were. And there was nothing those union factory workers could have done to prevent it. And there was nothing those open-shop factory workers could have done to prevent it.

The root cause for our manufacturing decline was globalization. Globalization was possible because our nation chose to eliminate tariffs and because the cost of shipping goods across the ocean has become terribly cheap. So if blame is to be assigned, assign it to "us".