Is it too late to save the manufacturing sector in America? I hope not. A lot of people have earned a good living doing manufacturing jobs over the years. My dad was one of them. That job put food on the table, clothes on our backs, and a roof over our heads. He didn't work in the plant running a machine or assembling the products. He was a tool and die designer working in manufacturing engineering, primarily working with stamping equipment. Most of his jobs were working in the appliance industry or with air conditioning and heating equipment, designing the dies used in the large stamping presses that form steel sheet.
A typical factory has a machine shop that cuts steel or castings to make equipment used in the plant. Some plants are just large machine shops that cut the various products they sell from steel bar or aluminum or iron castings. The various machines used in these plants are purchased from other manufacturing companies, and in the past, these machines were primarily made in the USA.
Various technical disciplines are needed to support the manufacturing equipment. These employees perform maintenance and repairs. When components wear out those are purchased from manufacturers of bearings or seals or hoses, etc. that were also generally other US companies in past years. Salesmen for many different companies call on these factories and sell them lubricants, belting, steel bar, brass forgings, screws, wire, and everything else required to keep the plant operating. The plant itself employs engineers and draftsmen that perform R&D and design new products. The manufacturing engineers figure out how to use machines and tooling to efficiently manufacture the products at the lowest cost possible, while maintaining quality standards. Marketing works with engineering to develop specifications for the new products and design literature or other forms of advertising to promote the products to target customers. A sales force sets up sales calls and shows the product features and benefits to these target customers.
Of course, all plants have a large support staff that are employed as well. That includes human resources (or the personnel department as they used to be called), accounting, information technologies, computer operations, logistics, purchasing, inside sales, and stenographers or secretaries. There were also truck drivers and mechanics and electricians and machinists.
A lot of these folks that used to work in manufacturing didn't care what the minimum wage was. They made more than minimum wage. If they had a skilled technical or professional career, their salary was well above minimum wage. They all got a lot of benefits as well. Health insurance, life insurance, dental insurance, disability insurance, and a pension and/or 401K plan were the norm. These folks didn't collect benefits from the government to get by. They paid into the system with income taxes. Successful companies earned a profit, so they paid taxes as well. The employees didn't generally begrudge the company a healthy profit. After all, a profitable employer meant job security and expansion of the workforce. There were opportunities for advancement.
Today, we hear about excessive profits. The liberal politicians love to talk about the high cost of medical insurance or gasoline or any other the products of any industry under attack. They pontificate about how the high cost is caused by the excessive profits the industry earns, because they charge too much for their goods and services. The large corporations that our parents and some of us worked for are now vilified on a regular basis. Capitalism is the evil they blame for all of our economic woes. All you hear about is that small business creates all of the jobs today. Can small businesses do what used to be done by the large corporations?
Small businesses aren't a bad thing. They perform a lot of services for large corporations, doing things that used to be done by employees of the larger company but now are "farmed out" to more efficient smaller organizations. They employ a lot of people as well. However, offering all of the benefits that employees of the large organizations have is not economical.
Certain types of products aren't feasible to be manufactured by small companies either. These products require a significant investment in R&D. The R&D requires a large staff of engineers and scientists, laboratories with test equipment, and years of development time. Then, a large sales volume is required to amortize the costs of R&D. The manufacturing equipment also requires a very large capital investment and large sales volume to justify the investment. A small corporation doesn't have the capital to make these products happen.
If the politicians running our federal government don't figure out the value of large corporations in America, our standard of living will definitely suffer. This country has a lot of people that used to work in manufacturing. Today they are unemployed or working in low paying, unskilled jobs in the retail sector. Instead of paying a lot of taxes and taking care of themselves, they are suffering. Can this MessAPolitico be stopped? As long as the politicians can blame someone else for their sins, they have no motivation to stop it. They love to have constituents that are beholden to them for everything they have. The main problem with politics today in America is that politicians aren't public servants. They will implement any MessAPolitico that gets them re-elected.
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