It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes. It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II. But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America. Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period. The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little. Do you know what our biggest export is today?
Waste paper.
The slide show (available at the link) is interesting and depressing. Even more depressing is their slideshow 19 iconic products that America doesn't make anymore.
We don't even make our own national league baseballs. It seems US companies would even outsource Mom's Apple Pie. It's difficult to imagine what kind of economic recovery we can expect if we don't make anything here.
(Neofeudalism doesn't count as recovery.)
cross-posted at MainSt/workingamerica.org
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