Light On Dark Water

Pat Buchanan on the Decline of American Manufacturing

One reason I don't talk about politics all that much, and don't talk about economic matters very much at all, is that they're mostly too complex to deal with in a blog post. I think almost all the contending factions have at least some part of the truth, and generally find myself wanting to argue with anyone who seems to think he's gotten hold of the one idea that explains everything. 

But this is not to say that all ideas and insights are of equal importance. This short piece by Pat Buchanan in The American Conservative does not fully explain the difficulties of the American middle class, but it is an important part of the story. In a nutshell, he says that the movement of American manufacturing to places where labor is much cheaper has put millions of American workers out of work or into much lower-paying jobs. This seems pretty obviously true. And he thinks we made a big mistake in allowing this to happen, and I'm inclined to agree with him there. 

And yet to stop with saying, as Buchanan does, that "capital crushed labor" does not take into account some of the most significant forces at work in the process. One of these, and perhaps the most important, is that most Americans consented to and participated in it, by means of their eager purchasing of cheap foreign-made goods. Just as the voters of a democratic nation are ultimately responsible for the quality of their government, so the consumers in a market economy are ultimately responsible for the businesses that provide them with goods and services. It isn't only the manufacturers, distributors, and retailers who look for the cheapest suppliers. It's all of us. 

I see this complaint about the loss of good-paying American manufacturing jobs all the time, and, like I said, I think there's a great deal of validity in it. But how many of us would actually be willing to pay the higher price for, say, a DVD player or a mobile phone, that would be required to support American workers manufacturing those things? Higher prices and, sad to say, quite likely lower quality: look at the way Detroit failed for decades to match the Japanese auto manufacturers in quality. I think we know the answer, because"Buy American" campaigns seem to fail almost completely. 

In economics as well as in politics, the search for the sources of many of our problems has to include a look in the mirror. 

Maclin Horton

20 responses to “Pat Buchanan on the Decline of American Manufacturing”

  1. resident film & theology expert

    I think it is reasonable to buy a foreign car if it is better made. A sad thing is happening in Germany now, which is that beautifully crafted (and thus expensive) German tools are taking second place, in German markets, to cheaply made foreign tools. I strongly subscribe to the opinion that buying designer clothes keeps an Italian family in business and your money will not go towards the owner of a sweat shop as it will if you buy high street clothes 🙂 IE, seriously, I don’t think anyone has a patriotic duty to buy homemade junk, but if you actually want craftsmanship to survive in your home country, and it exists there, you would simply be acting against your own interests not to buy it when you can.
    I am reading Wolfe’s book, Beauty will Save the World, with some enjoyment. It is not great, but it is good.

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  2. Mac

    Yes, it is reasonable, or if the quality is comparable and it’s cheaper. That’s part of the problem–it’s too reasonable, in a sense: who’s going to make the deliberate choice to buy something that is more expensive but of equal quality, or even possibly more expensive and of lesser quality, in the interests of national solidarity? Almost nobody. In cases like the German tools it’s a little different–a lot of people will be willing to spend more for higher quality. But a lot will say the cheaper one is good enough.
    I don’t expect to read Beauty Will Save the World very soon, although it is on my list. I am only just now getting back to your 1 Sam book, after being diverted to another.

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  3. Janet

    Did you ever read Rocking Horse Catholic?
    AMDG

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  4. resident film & theology expert

    I read The Reed of God while I was in Mass (can’t spell it), and it is fantastic. I am reading the poems a little bit at a time, and enjoying them. When I get down my book pile a bit, I’m going to order Rocking Horse Catholic from abebooks. I was slightly deterred because a friend, seeing me read The Reed, said it is her best book. I’m torn between passing it on and re-reading it very soon.

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  5. resident film & theology expert

    I can’t imagine we have a moral duty to buy something more expensive and less quality. More expensive and equal or greater quality, yes. Otherwise, I don’t buy the moral obligation.

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  6. Mac

    No, I haven’t, Janet, and thanks for the reminder. It’s so short, I should be able to work it in.
    I don’t think it’s a binding moral obligation, but you could certainly make an argument that in some circumstances, and looking at the big picture, it’s in everyone’s best interests.

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  7. Janet

    I keep forgetting RHC myself. Every once in a while, I see it on the table and pick it up and read some.
    AMDG

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  8. Anne-Marie

    A friend who lived in a city with a big GM plant told me of a popular bumper sticker that read, “Buy the car your neighbour helped to build.” He said he always wanted one that read, “Build the car your neighbour wants to buy.” When my husband’s grandfather chided him for buying a Honda, he claimed he was doing his patriotic best to help the US car industry learn what kind of car to design.

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  9. Mac

    Funny, I was thinking something very very similar a little while ago, prompted by res-ex’s saying it wasn’t a “moral obligation.” I was asking myself whether my response–that it wasn’t necessarily that but “in everyone’s best interest”–didn’t in fact suggest a moral obligation. And then I thought, “well, maybe it does. But there’s an equal obligation on the seller’s side”–exactly as you state.
    Some time back I read a review of a book on the decline of the U.S. auto industry which sounded as if it would be very thorough and balanced, and seemed to have plenty of blame for both labor and management. Unfortunately I now have no idea at all what the name of it was.

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  10. resident film & theology expert

    I will be a bit strident (for this blog) and say I can’t see a difference between buying a dud and expensive car for patriotic reasons and buying an unexceptional and expensive shampoo for ecological reasons.

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  11. Mac

    No need for the warning/disclaimer–I agree that the principle is the same in both cases. One can argue about whether the actions really have the intended effects, etc. (is this shampoo really going to benefit the environment?) but in both cases the idea is that you’re doing something that’s not optimal for you but has big-picture benefits.
    We have a couple of unsightly bins in our house where we put paper, glass, and plastic for the once-a-week recycling pickup. Same thing–not only no direct benefit to us whatsoever, but the contrary in fact–it’s a big pain–and I sometimes wonder whether there’s any at all.

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  12. Marianne

    Yeah, all that sorting of items for recycling and most of it is probably not actually being recycled but ending up in landfills. But I guess it all provides jobs.

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  13. Mac

    Not to mention making people feel good.:-)
    I read something a while back about the domestic demand for recyclable paper being so low that it’s being shipped to China (or somewhere). Hard to see how that could be a net environmental benefit. I don’t think my town’s recycling gets dumped in the landfill…

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  14. Anne-Marie

    The Toronto Star ran an article a while ago about recyclables being shipped to China. In this case, it was not so much because that’s where demand for them was but because that’s where they could be processed–i.e., where labour costs are low enough to make hand-sorting viable. Imagine the job of picking apart weeks-old piles of tuna fish cans and soggy newspapers!

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  15. Anne-Marie

    RFTE, I agree those are both irrational economic decisions. So much of our (collective western middle-class) spending seems even more irrational, though: ad-driven, brand-conscious, debt-fueled, and superfluous. In comparison, paying more for less as a means of helping to provide a job for a neighbour, reduce local poverty, and sustain civic well-being seems like a pretty innocuous choice.

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  16. Mac

    I’ve had a feeling that the recycling thing might not bear close inspection. I ought to check into what my town does. 85% of our recycling (my household’s) is newspaper. I guess that’s going to disappear in time, as the paper keeps shrinking.

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  17. resident film & theology expert

    In GB, recycling became compulsory a few years ago. The council gives you a box for paper and cardboard, a box for glass and plastic, and everything else goes in the bin. You could not do it, but the problem is that the refuse collections were moved to fortnightly, and it is impossible to fill only one bin unless one separates the stuff out. So I’d been doing it for a few years before I came to the USA. It became a habit. Since I came to the USA, I really don’t like returning to putting my cardboard and bottles in the general trash. It feels wasteful and wrong. That is not rational at all, it’s just my experience. Because I don’t yet have a car, I buy a lot of stuff online. I have a mountain of cardboard boxes going up to the ceiling in the store room. I hate cutting them up and putting them in the trash. Bottles are the worst, though I do expel those.
    I always buy local food where there is a choice between that and something imported from elsewhere in the USA or anohter country. To me it’s a no brainer: if you want there to be local farmers, you must buy their goods. But there’s a big financial difference between cucumbers and a car! I am not at all sure that when I come to buy a car I will feel any moral inclination to get a US made one.

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  18. Mac

    I hate dealing with the boxes, too, though I don’t usually let them stack up that high. “It feels wasteful and wrong.” Exactly, so it would be painful to me to learn that recycling is actually counter-productive. I don’t find the paper/glass/plastic/aluminum separation burdensome, apart from the way the bins look and the space they take up in our small and already cluttered house.
    I think the car thing is more settled now, and at least in my mind doesn’t in fact present the same question that it once did, since so many foreign companies now build their products in the US, and the US companies do continue to sell a lot of cars. Or SUVs, anyway. Also, I guess it was never quite as dramatic as some other situations, because although Japanese workers probably weren’t paid as well as Americans they did (do) ok–it was still a competition between two industrialized/modernized countries, not between American suburbanites and desperate peasants being paid 25 cents a day to make shoes or something.

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  19. Anne-Marie

    “if you want there to be local farmers, you must buy their goods.”
    And if you want there to be local working-class guys supporting families, you must buy their goods. Or if you want there to be Indonesian factory hands a few more cents away from starvation, you must buy their goods. I don’t know which I should want most!

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  20. John Briggs

    Great post on a topic I am currently writing a book on. Please check out my blog on this subject at simply-american.net. I hope you find some posts on great American firms and issues around American manufacturing that will interest you.

    Reply

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