8 Reasons Manufacturing Is Great for America
It’s critically important to create successful policy solutions for manufacturing to help this job machine thrive.
In a scathing rebuke of the importance of U.S. manufacturing in The New Yorker (“What’s So Great About Manufacturing?”) James Ledbetter attempted to dismantle the benefits of manufacturing in our transformational age. Ledbetter, who is editor of Inc. Magazine and this website, is wrong. Here are 8 reasons U.S. manufacturing is great for America and critically important to focus policy solutions to help this job machine thrive.
1. Manufacturing creates strong middle-class jobs.
Despite Ledbetter’s claims manufacturing jobs are “decidedly unpleasant,” they create middle class wages (average pay is $77,500+ per year including benefits) and 95% of the jobs come with health insurance. Any job is a good job however factories pay better than retail and food service. Not everyone can be a doctor or a scientist or even a writer in Manhattan.
2. Manufacturing jobs create dignity.
In my hometown of Baltimore, we have pockets of the community that have over 30% unemployment. When people have no job, they have no hope and have to accept handouts to pay their bills. Manufacturing is a way out for many. We are an industry that bootstraps people out of poverty. Many manufacturing jobs do not require four-year college degrees but pay well. Everyone of one my employees owns a car and more than half own a home with access to health insurance, vacation and 100% education credit. Does The New Yorker offer that to all of its employees?
3. Manufacturing creates wealth for a nation.
Buying imported goods and consuming imported products makes a country poorer. Creating products that are sold the world over (think Boeing airplanes or Caterpillar tractors) makes our nation stronger because we get more hard cash. My company, MARLIN STEEL, exports to 39 countries and imports nothing. This is how a country gets economically stronger.
4. Manufacturing is critical during wars.
Enemies will not provide goods for us during wars. When we unfortunately find ourselves in another war, our adversaries will not provide sustenance. We have to make it here, better and faster than them–or we will lose the war. Our factories were the arsenal for democracy during World War II, supplying the tanks, airplanes, guns and bombs for our own soldiers and all of our allies to beat the Nazis and the Japanese. Do we have enough factories to support the world again when the inevitable happens?
5. Factories are safer than ever before.
At my factory, we have gone over 2,422 days without a safety incident and our teammates are not “wusses” if they wear safety gear. Nationwide, U.S. factories are embracing worker safety and making it Job No. 1. Mr. Ledbetter should peruse OSHA’s list of SHARP factories that have created a culture of worker safety. There was a time when safety was not of paramount importance, but we have come a long way since then, along with other advances in medicine, transportation and the Internet. Times change and this is a positive development for the U.S. worker.
6. U.S. factories are the clean ones.
Chinese factories spew smog in the air and toxic waste into the rivers. In contrast, U.S. factories are clean and getting cleaner. In fact, our chrome plating has less nickel and chrome in its effluent than the tap water we drink. The world would be a cleaner place if we bought more from U.S. factories rather Chinese factories. Cleaner water and cleaner air from U.S. factories meet Ledbetter’s aspiration of “promoting social goals.”
7. Workers with good jobs are more likely to be healthy.
Contrary to Ledbetter’s assertion that manufacturing workers have higher rates of alchoholism, workers with good jobs are more likely to be healthy. Why? They have hope and a place to be every day where you have to be sober. It is more depressing to be unemployed than to be working.
8. Manufacturing research is a creativity machine.
U.S. manufacturing generates 75% of private-sector research and development. Innovations generated by manufacturers keep our nation competitive and enable us to be on the forefront of new technologies and create a moat around the lucrative manufacturing jobs we created.
Manufacturing supports one in six private-sector jobs and, if taken alone, would be the ninth-largest economy in the world. Our mission should be to identify ways to grow this pie. Despite Ledbetter’s embrace of Karl Marx quotes, U.S. capitalism and our middle class desperately need a strong growing manufacturing sector.
I heartily agree with the author of this rebuttal…Who is this “dissenter” of the “Great Experiment” our nations forefathers established. Ledbetter?!? Obviously, of a class of people that think they are “entitled” every time the bottom falls out from under the American people. We as a nation exist so close to the edge I often have to struggle to control the horror of what would happen like Russia with her surrounding countries that exist in anarchy. Our history might not be the most pristine, but it is far from the blood-bath and carnage that is going on in the so called “ancient civilizations” that are struggling in the mid-east. That environment is where Mr. Ledbetter is finding his “competitive” labor market. Alcoholism indeed! Benefits? Find a doctor over there, much less the supplies to tend the sick and needy. Sounds like Mr. Ledbetter needs to travel, see new places, and meet new people. If he survives.
I am gonna throw this out there to help people come to grips with the future of manufacturing. Like it or not, reseach it, and you will agree. You may not like it, but you will see the uncomfortable truth. First, I agree with all 8 reasons and they have been proven true. But back when these reasons were being cemented, America had the only undamaged plants after WW2, and the largest surviving workforce. But our competitors rebuilt and fairly, or unfairly, began to compete. At first we were arrogant and relied on old grudges with former enemies, and the fact the our products were better, and they were. But over time, their stuff got better and cost less, and the hate from the war faded. There were many who sounded the warning alarm that the competition was producing better products for less. And that we should do what was needed to compete. But nobody wanted to work harder or faster for the same, or less money. And investors threatened to move on if earnings dropped. So America relied on “Buy American” and “Union Yes” slogans, and it worked great, for a while. But while this slogan war raged, the rise of the machines began, limited only by the available software. As the needed software was slowly being developed, offshoring started filling the demand for lower overhead cost, and as more poor countries competed for the work, the cost dropped and offshoring looked to be a permanent solution. But two fronts starting to converge to create the new storm. Rapid software advances, and politicians promising Nationalism by “Bring back jobs”. Plus manufacturers are growing tired of lodgistics of offshoring. This has lead to an unpleasent truth of future manufacturing. Manufacturing is coming back to America, but it will be performed by workers at $10.00 to $12.00 per hour. Or it will be done by machines. At the current moment in time, most manufacturing jobs can cost-effectively be performed by machines at rates above $12.00 per hour. So it is my belief that all this bellowing by polititicans running for office, or trying to hold on to their office, is just “cake and circus” for the masses to distract from what I have just explained. Research and you will find many re-opened factories in America only employ a fraction of the worker it had before it closed, but they are producing more product than before. So please research and plan for the future accordingly.
Greed and Tax initiatives,greed mostly ,was not mentioned as the biggest reasons manufacturing jobs left this country.Why pay a worker $20.an hour for making a product in America when the product can be made in a poor country(i.e. Mexico,India,Pakistan just to mention a few)for .50 to a dollar an hour,bring said product back to the good ole’U.S.A. and charge what ever the traffic will pay.Oh,and lets not forget the countries America went to war with and lost many,many,many lives over and yet today cars and trucks imported from Japan,and Korea are being bought ,not by just everyday people but mostly by our veterans. When people buy foreign vehicles instead of American made,they become part of the problem not the solution.American manufacturers are struggling to keep their products made in this country and more and more are surfacing but almost the only way to find Made in America products is on the web.I am a label reader and I absolutely do a dance when I find a piece of clothing or towels or sheets made in America,it gives me hope,hope that the American public will start to pay as much attention to labels ,and where the goods they buy come from, as they do Pokemon Go and Facebook. I feel like screaming ‘wake up america,realize where your food,clothes,vehicles even furniture is coming from.’ So,yes,I believe this country can reclaim manufacturing jobs again BUT the American people have got to do their part by seeking out American made products as they become available and buying them first.
The only way we can assure that the consumer “Buys American” is to make the best, and the best price. Slogans only work until the quality check and price comparison, this has been proven. I am over 50 years old and I still remember the “look for the union label”,”Buy American”, “Buy American, before it’s too late”, “Build it like you are going to put your name on it”, “Pearl Harbor 2”, and so on. If these worked, we would not even be talking about offshoring. The real issue is the replacement of human labor (Biological labor) with automation/robotics (Mech labor). Yes, I believe if a certain candidate wins the election, more manufacturing is coming back to the states. But, it will be $10.00 to $12.00 per hour, or it will be automated as much as possible. It is already happening. I believe if you search you can find a story about a steel mill in Pittsburg that reopened. It is producing more than ever, with a fraction of the workers it had before it closed. I am worried the politicians are just setting up people who are despirate for high paying factory jobs for disappointment. Manufacturing in America will never be what it was. That is unless some world event destroys manufacturing capabilities in the rest of the world, and we are the only option, like after WW2. Also, I have noticed through out that Anti-Foriegn goods people who bring up the Wars issue only rail against stuff from Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. But have no problem with German products, or even Italian. As far as I remember, it has been this way. Wonder why? I will also admit, I will buy a Foreign Brand made in America, before I will buy an American Brand made in an Foreign country. My Thundra and Highlander was made in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and the Silverado I considered was either made in Canada or Mexico. I am Pro-American worker, regardless who owns the company. I see no value to my fellow workers in buying a Briggs and Stratton engine that is made in China. So, I say in the spirit of the WW2 generation, “Stand up, Stop complaining, and Get IT Done”. We must compete, not complain.