Everyone Says They’ll Pay More for “Made in the USA.” So We Ran an A/B
Everyone Says They’ll Pay More for “Made in the USA.” So We Ran an A/B
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Everyone Says They’ll Pay More for “Made in the USA.” So We Ran an A/B
20 comments
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Reminds me of the wild gap between approval ratings for returning manufacturing jobs to the U.S. and the percentage of people who say they'd take one of those jobs when polled.
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TBH I think that's the wrong takeaway. That polling result showed something like 25% of those polled would want to work in a factory if they could. If that result were valid for the entire US, that would be something like 50 million (out of ~210 million working age). For reference, peak manufacturing employment in the US was in the late 1970s with around 20 million people working in manufacturing out of ~110 million working age.
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The problem is that there is a reality between people who claim to want to take those jobs, and the real actual jobs that exist on a modern factory floor. I need to keep reiterating this to people because the propaganda is so thick, but there are manufacturing jobs in the U.S. the problem is that most of them are third shift and under some pretty shitty circumstances even for factory work and they don't pay near equivalent to what they did in the 70's, none of which is solved by 'bringing manufacturing jobs back'. The problem is what first world people want for 'factory work' fundamentally does not exist under global capitalism, even if it is still a pretty easy way to make some decent money if you can hack it.
As I keep telling people irl, bringing jobs back is admirable, we should be producing closer to our areas of consumption, but who is going to work them if we can't fill the lines on the factories we already have?
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So I mean… when you’re a business and you’re looking to build a new factory you look at unemployment in the city and the surrounding cities, along with base pay for similar work in those cities, and many other things. So it’s not like bringing more manufacturing jobs here are gonna be built directly next to existing factories and only offer 3rd shifts. I agree there are plenty of other things we need but like, it at least isn’t something bad for us?
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Yes, and my point is that people have been looking at that in the U.S. for years, and the only way for them to get large facilities in the states has been to literally give them tax free status for a decade, and even then it does not always work or follow through. The unemployment just isn't there, and underpaid factory work doesn't solve the main problem of the U.S., which is underemployment, which we are seeking to solve primarily by defunding education, which is an incredibly backwards way of doing shit.
Asking for a major shift in the economy, which has been a primarily service economy for decades now, is extremely difficult. What we actually need a huge expansion of social spending and de-privatization and de-monopolization with some level of onshoring of basic consumer goods.
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Ahhh that's a much higher number than I remember. I stand corrected.
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That’s… you realize not everyone only wants jobs to exist because they want the job themselves…. Right?
Like I’m pretty sure everyone would agree we need garbage trucks and janitors but boy do I have a surprise for you about how many would take those jobs.
Really we need public works projects, like nationalizing the internet and paying to expand access to it instead of allowing ISPs to gouge the fuck out of everyone for years. But I mean, manufacturing also probably would not be bad so we can be less reliant on people we like to try and piss off.
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Yeah and people fucking mistreat those workers too and say they shouldn't be allowed to strike, etc.
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I.... what? Like... yeah... most jobs still fucking suck. we need a lot of improvements. I never said the jobs were perfect, pay was perfect, unions were perfect, or anything. Just that... yeah there are jobs that exist that people would agree are important even if they themselves do not wish to do them, and 20-25% of the country being willing to do them (even if half of those aren't real) is still like 20 million people getting jobs.
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Maybe I'm reading your posts wrong but you're interpreting the discrepancy in "want factory jobs" and "will work factory jobs" charitably while I understand it as American treatlerism and part of a pattern of Americans wanting their treats at the expense of others, such as like how they want fire fighters, ambulances, 24 hour shopping, etc. and then also usually treat them like shit on top of that as part of class domination/exploitation.
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I mean… idk I don’t expect 80% of the country to do one single type of job? That’s very silly? But I can see people think we should have less reliance other countries, while not necessarily wanting to do that themselves, but also 25% of the country is still… a lot of fucking people.
But yes, people do treat workers like shit in this country a lot which honestly baffles me to see people cannot understand people working are still people.
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20 comments