lunes, 4 de abril de 2016

WHY MANUFACTURING MATTERS.




Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/04/2016.

Introduccion.   por Hugo Adan

 Cuando se instaló la globalización neoliberal -a inicios de 1980- el gran capital fugó hacia China o donde hubo labor más barato .. Allí la manufactura fordista o en gran escala dejo sus beneficios;  alivio del hambre a millones de pobres en China, Africa, y AL .. pero dejo también pueblos fantasmas como Detroit en el US o Pasco en Perú.

Lo interesante es que estas empresas que mudaban de un lugar a otro en busca de esclavos más baratos, crearon también a los sepultadores del modelo neoliberal : el labor consumista exigió mayor salario y mejores condiciones de trabajo.

Como China no podía consumir los productos caros que ellos exportaban, crearon los propios y con similar tecnología. Nacieron así los nuevos manufactureros que empezaron vendiendo cosas pequeñas al mercado mundial para avanzar luego hacia la manufactura mediana y la más sofisticada luego. Como esto requería nuevas técnicas el Estado invirtió en educación para crear un nuevo capital humano e intelectual.

En suma, los asiáticos fueron 1ro entrenados  por el capital extranjero allí instalado, y poco a poco dejaron de ser dependientes de la manufactura foránea. Crearon su propia tecnología con su propio tipo de R&D. Hoy China puede crear y vender a su propia población los productos manufacturados que antes importaba de fuera.

Los Chinos, Japon y otros asiáticos fueron aún más allá, el Estado controló la paridad con el dólar para estimular su propia producción, mientras crearon una cadena de comercialización que los hizo totalmente independientes del mercado occidental.

Hoy la manufactura americana no tiene ya los esclavos baratos de china y no pueden ya controlar el comercio mundial. Si los asiáticos cierran su mercado al occidente, este muere,  mientras ellos podrían desarrollar su propio mercado interno. La manufactura fordista o de gran escala cayo en su propia trampa.

Para que puedan vender los carros eléctricos Tesla, el US tendría que destruir las mafias empresariales internas que producen los carros poluter de hoy. Mientras tanto, el propio Tesla Chino o Iranio está ya en camino. Es decir, la globalización neoliberal ha llegado a su final y la producción fordista o de gran escala está siendo ya siendo reemplazad por el mediano capital empresarial.

Pronto nacerán también los bancos medianos que reemplazaran a los dinos de hoy. Y por ese camino las monedas globalizantes serán reemplazadas por monedas regionales. La producción de hoy se orienta cada vez más al desarrollo interno y regional a nivel mundial. Y esto no requiere dinos sino mediano capital productivo.

El federalismo ultra centralizado como el nuestro está en crisis .. El FED es obsoleto. Para sacar los Estado del US de la crisis se requiere orientar todo el capital que malgastamos fuera, en el desarrollo interno de la nación.

Esto es, se requiere desmantelar el imperio, empezando por los silos nucleares .. si no lo hacemos y persistimos en la guerra nuclear .. esos silos nos lo van a reventar en la cabeza. Urge un pacto con RU, China y los miembros  del UN-SC para este desarme. Este cambio si tiene que empezar arriba.      
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WHY MANUFACTURING MATTERS. Por Enrico Matias

A few weeks ago we penned an article on Open Source Ecology, an exciting new manufacturing concept developed by Dr. Marcin Jakubowski and his colleagues. Given its potential to create a multitude of self-reliant jobs and bring about a true manufacturing renaissance in much of the developed world, we thought that it would generate a lot of interest. We were wrong.

We assume that for many of our dear readers, who for the most part live in Western countries, manufacturing is just an afterthought. The future and all the cool stuff is in services right?.
We assume that for many of our dear readers, who for the most part live in Western countries, manufacturing is just an afterthought. The future and all the cool stuff is in services right?

Entire manufacturing facilities were being shut down in the US, earning the dynamic CEO the nickname “Neutron Jack” (everybody was gone when he came around, only the buildings remained). .. GE turned out to be a leading indicator for the entire US economy.  .. The entire developed world was facing the same developments, with more or less the same outcomes. This offshoring is aptly illustrated in the following graph:

SEE GRAPHIC  LOCATION AT: 
  Percent of Value-Added in Global Manufacturing: 1980 – 2012 . Source: United Nations, MAPI.

As cheaper goods imported from abroad started to reduce domestic inflation expectations, the concomitant decline in interest rates since the mid-1980s increasingly steered productive resources of developed economies towards the financial, insurance and real estate sectors (the so called FIRE economy).
For Western policymakers this was something to be encouraged, as it enabled the (partial) absorption and retraining of the increasing redundancies coming from the manufacturing sector. This is how such transition has unfolded in the US:

SEE IMAGE AT: 
Monthly Employees, Seasonally Adjusted (000’s):Jan 1950 – Mar 2016. .. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, BLS.

US manufacturing employment peaked at around twenty million in June 1979, and has steadily declined since. The latest reading is a tad above 12 million employees. On the other hand, the sum of construction and financial activity employment (as a proxy for the FIRE economy) surpassed that of manufacturing in mid-2003.

Things were chugging along, supported by copious amounts of leverage increases in both the public and private sectors, until the 2008 financial crisis exposed the fragilities of this new economic model: the gradual transition to a FIRE economy in the developed world ended up creating systemic risks that could crash the entire global economy – requiring constant vigilance by central banks to this very day in order to avoid a repeat.

Somewhat ominously, GE almost became a victim of its own successful transformation into a financial giant.  .. It’s not the more fickle and systemic nature of the FIRE economy that make manufacturing particularly important. It goes well beyond that.

Some very good reasons of why manufacturing matters a great deal to any economy were convincingly outlined by Prof. Vaclav Smil in his must-read book “The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing” (2013).

For starters, manufacturing brings together many important functions – from accounting to job training, and creates entire new ones, such as global marketing and e-sales. Accordingly, it generates the greatest positive economic multiplier (what you get out from what you put in) out of all the sectors in the “services-oriented” US economy, according to the Manufacturing Institute:

SEE IMAGE AT: 
  Economic Activity Generated by $1 of Sector GDP, 2012 Source: BLS.

These linkages and interdependencies require increased levels of education and intellectual capital, acting as a powerful catalyst for employee training and research and development (R&D). Manufacturing’s unique importance in this regard has also been quantified:

SEE IMAGE AT:
  US Domestic R&D as % of Domestic Net Sales, 2011 Source: National Sciences Foundation.

US manufacturing R&D represented 3.9% of domestic sales in 2011, well above the 2.3% average for nonmanufacturing industries.

Stated differently, the loss of manufacturing means less skilled jobs, reduced economic multiplier effects and less innovation.

That innovation is crucial to generate sustainable economic output, more than simply expanding the pools of available capital and labor (one thing today’s proponents of open door immigration should carefully consider). .. And manufacturing is needed to sustain higher rates of innovation.

We could highlight several other benefits, including on foreign trade, where in the case of the US manufacturing still accounts for the lion’s share of exports, and on more intangible yet equally important factors such as the health and vitality of many urban and suburban communities (Detroit being a notable case study on the social outcomes of the loss of manufacturing, irrespective of the underlying causes).

From this vantage point it becomes easier to understand why the US economy has struggled to generate prosperity across wider segments of the population as its manufacturing base was increasingly offshored in recent decades. On the other hand, China – today’s factory of the world – has become prosperous and a major global geopolitical player since opening its borders to foreign capital AND manufacturing practices. Manufacturing does matter. It is time we start paying attention.
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