America is a sick society

[David Horn]

(08-01-2017, 10:39 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(08-01-2017, 09:14 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-31-2017, 02:56 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Flyover country was on track to a better developed future with higher educational attainment, prior to being decimated by globalism.

I don't think so.  Globalism would have been replaced by automation, leading to the same end.  Industrialization impacted society in much the same way, but there was a safety valve in all those industrial jobs industrialization created.  We don't have that this time.  Working smart is good for those who have the inclination and ability.  I think the ability is there.  I'm less certain about inclination.

Automation was being embraced by the Flyover workers. For example, the component stuffer learned first to operate the pick and place machine and then later how to program it. All of that was undercut by cheap humans, initially in Mexico and later in China. So even with automation assisted labor, the Flyover factories could not match the slave labor price point. Much later in the game, the non US places finally embraced automation. Had we kept it all here we would have been much further along with automation than the Mexicans and Chinese. We would have become the global experts in automation not to mention Boothroyd-Dewhurst.

Yes and no.  Offshore has the added cost of transportation; factories are returning as automation has improved.  Labor cost is less an issue now than it was just a few years ago.  If offshoring had been avoided, those few years would have delayed but not prevented the inevitable.  Automated production just needs many fewer workers, and they can be picky about who gets those fewer jobs, leaving the majority still in need of good paying work. 

I worked in a tech company (Ericsson) that had a design center collocated with a production facility.  In the 1990s, the factory automated rapidly, building cellphones  and cellular infrastructure.  The cellphone plant had fewer workers every year.  Only the infrastructure production needed a consistent level of human input, and they were all highly trained technicians and engineers.  Not much there for the high school graduate with no advanced training.