19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America

[Duncan]

The decline in manufacturing is real. It is a recent issue with the National Security Oversight Committee in which the decline in manufacturing capability is addressed as a matter of national defense.

Information here

Hearing on Made in the USA: Manufacturing Policy, the Defense Industrial Base, and National Security

Question to all :
Play the game with me for a min.
If we could back Step in a time machine .
1942 Pearl Harbor .. we Declare War on Japan ... then Germany .
With the industrial base of 2010 and the manufacturing technology of 2010 .. not the military tech but the manufacturing technology 2010 .

Could we produce enough to win WW2 ?
Bearing in mind that one of the reasons that we won was the ability to out produce the enemy in numbers of equipment .

Thanks
Duncan

 

[Joe Williams]

We couldn't build enough when Pearl Harbor happened to win WW2.

We had to build the factories, the we had to staff them with our women to have enough people to make them work. I cannot see a reason why, if the need were there, we couldn't do so again. It would appear, though, that we do not have a need for the excess manufacturing capacity, nor the desire to maintain it. We did so for years, accompanied by screeching from the left and libertarians about the evils of the "military-industrial complex." Now, they've gotten what they yammered for all those years, and are complaining about it.

Some folks just can't be made happy.

 

[Blackhawk2001]

We couldn't build enough when Pearl Harbor happened to win WW2.

We had to build the factories, the we had to staff them with our women to have enough people to make them work. I cannot see a reason why, if the need were there, we couldn't do so again. It would appear, though, that we do not have a need for the excess manufacturing capacity, nor the desire to maintain it. We did so for years, accompanied by screeching from the left and libertarians about the evils of the "military-industrial complex." Now, they've gotten what they yammered for all those years, and are complaining about it.

Some folks just can't be made happy.

At the beginning of WWII, it would have taken a significant amount of time to amass the ability to invade the US, and two weeks or more to get the invasion force across either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. Nowadays we can be hit with a devastating attack in less than an hour.

Also, lead times for training men and getting war-fighting technology on line have grown. The P-51 was developed - drawing board to first flight - in months; the F-22 took 15 years. We may not have time to ramp up our capabilities if we're ever involved in a war for our national survival.

 

[Phil502]

With this high unemployment, people are wondering if we lost a lot of manufacturing jobs? Go ask the guys that used to work at US Steel Southworks, Wisconsin Steel, Republic/LTV Steel, General Mills (cereal company) all within walking distance from each other on Chicagos south side. Damn right manufacturing is down.