The usa is still the 2 or third largest manufacturer in the world, it is just all concentrated in high end industrial stuff and pharmaceuticals. The idea that "Chiner stole ALL er jerbs!" is a over exaggeration, a majority of job losses have been to automation. The real big thing us that investmen in NEW low end manufacturing ceased because the yield on capital investment is too low for it in the US.
There is probably a point to be made about the geographical concentration of this higher-margin manufacturing though. While you used to be able to find a low-scale contract machine shops in nearly any industrial park, I hypothesize that each successive economic crisis has lead to many of those being shut down, with the following "recovery" focusing exclusively on high density coastal regions located around arterial shipping hubs. So on paper, each year we're making more stuff than we did the previous year, but vast swaths of the country have been demoted to surplus population status at the same time.
Oh yeah that has unquestionably been happening, but the idea that the US would be in a position where it would literally not have access to capital if china closed off its economy is not the case. It would have to retool massively to accommodate a change like that, but it 'could' do it. This is incomaprison to current third world counties that literally dont have the capacity to industrialize in an international economy.
The usa is still the 2 or third largest manufacturer in the world, it is just all concentrated in high end industrial stuff and pharmaceuticals. The idea that "Chiner stole ALL er jerbs!" is a over exaggeration, a majority of job losses have been to automation. The real big thing us that investmen in NEW low end manufacturing ceased because the yield on capital investment is too low for it in the US.
There is probably a point to be made about the geographical concentration of this higher-margin manufacturing though. While you used to be able to find a low-scale contract machine shops in nearly any industrial park, I hypothesize that each successive economic crisis has lead to many of those being shut down, with the following "recovery" focusing exclusively on high density coastal regions located around arterial shipping hubs. So on paper, each year we're making more stuff than we did the previous year, but vast swaths of the country have been demoted to surplus population status at the same time.
Oh yeah that has unquestionably been happening, but the idea that the US would be in a position where it would literally not have access to capital if china closed off its economy is not the case. It would have to retool massively to accommodate a change like that, but it 'could' do it. This is incomaprison to current third world counties that literally dont have the capacity to industrialize in an international economy.
Correct.
Also, the share of capital gains in the economy at large is relevant.