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R Mercer's avatar

My takeaway for decades has been that Americans would happily put their fellows out of work so that they could pay less for things.

And that is what happened--which is why manufacturing went offshore.

And Americans are still unwilling to pay more for stuff. Which is why manufacturing is not coming back, unless it is subsidized by the US government for defense/strategic reasons.

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max skinner's avatar

I wouldn't put that all on American consumers. The big business types want mega profits and they couldn't get them without moving manufacturing off shore. They managed to kill off union labor in the clothing manufacturing industry and by moving their manufacturing plants of hard goods to Southeastern states they were able to get non union labor. But even that was not cheap enough. So moving offshore was the way to go.

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Sko Hayes's avatar

It's very encouraging to see unions coming back.

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SandyG's avatar

Agree.

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Badger1848's avatar

Exactly. Try telling Joe Sixpack that he can have US manufacturing back stateside but that means he can no longer buy a TV at Walmart for $300. There are trade-offs for everything. Americans always vote with their wallets.

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zedsdead's avatar

Remember when Trump allowed the Arabs to flood the market with oil to drive the cost of Oil down ? meanwhile driving almost 500 American oil and Gas companies out of buisness ? American only cared about sub $3 oil a gallon while destroying 100s of thousands of American jobs.

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No Sympathy, No Charity's avatar

The thing is American manufacturing hasnтАЩt gone anywhere. Our manufacturing output is higher now than it has EVER been. The jobs werenтАЩt lost to other countries, they were lost to automation.

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R Mercer's avatar

What we actually manufacture has also changed.

And automation is about to extend to non-manufacturing jobs, through AI.

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No Sympathy, No Charity's avatar

Okay, maybe. But again claiming that jobs went off shore is simply not true.

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R Mercer's avatar

LKet me then rephrase nd say that the US jobs were eliminated in favor of cheaper alternatives.

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SandyG's avatar

Did they know that's what they were doing to their fellow Americans, buying cheap Chinese products? Didn't manufacturing go offshore because of financial markets' pressure on big companies in the 1980s to "get rid of their [US] workers and plants and move away from being vertically integrated companies in which everything took place within the company itselfтАЭ? (https://www.investmentmonitor.ai/manufacturing/who-killed-us-manufacturing/?cf-view).

Agree what things cost is the most important thing to American consumers, not the health of the national economy or the prosperity of their neighbors.

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Apr 11, 2024
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R Mercer's avatar

Which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about American culture/society.

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Alondra's avatar

I remember getting a government check in the mail after Bush Jr & Co started the Shock and Awe War. The clear massage - go spend while young Americans are dying, loosing their limbs and health, Iraqi civilians are dying, sacrifice at home is for suckers, your real duty as an American is to spend.

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SandyG's avatar

In a consumption-based economy, if you don't spend, you hurt the economy and we all depend on a good economy.

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Apr 11, 2024
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Sko Hayes's avatar

And remember when we got COVID checks and Trump held them up for weeks because he wanted his signature printed on them?

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Spencer $ Sally Jones's avatar

In the 90тАЩs the saying was, тАЬJapanese (Chinese) are Producers, Germans are Savers, and Americans are Consumers.тАЭ

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SandyG's avatar

We've been a consumption-based economy since the 1920s. "Over the course of the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff" (https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/a-brief-history-of-consumer-culture/#:~:text=The%20notion%20of%20human%20beings,principal%20role%20in%20the%20world).

Shopping runs our economy, so of course they said that. Not to show the world our freedom, but to assure we didn't have an economic collapse.

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Apr 12, 2024
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SandyG's avatar

You are most welcome for the article, Mr. Pants (should I just call you "Cranky"?), and thank you for the Bernays link.

I was first introduced to the notion of "conspicuous consumption" during the anti-Viet Nam War years where my generation rejected the norms of the 50s and early 60s and that included the materialism recounted in Galbreath's "The Affluent Society" (1958).

In my later years, I learned about journalist Samuel Strauss who said in the mid 1920s, "Formerly the task was to supply the things men wanted; the new necessity is to make men want the things which machinery must turn out if this civilization is not to perish" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1924/11/things-are-in-the-saddle/648025/). Apparently, Bernays was influenced by Strauss.

As to your last paragraph, I think the desire for status, that the consumer economy exploits, exists in the un-self-reflective human being. Advertisers figured that out. It drives more of our behavior than relationships.

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Apr 13, 2024
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SandyG's avatar

Good point re software, Ms. P. Tell me more about "the aware and self-reflective are manipulated by the digital economy". I'm curious as to how you know this? Two of my friends got their enlightenment training with me in the 1970s. It stuck for me, but I've seen them falling for the manipulation in the last few decades.

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Apr 14, 2024
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SandyG's avatar

Looks fabulous, thank you, Ms. Pants.

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