Harold Meyerson has a column in the Washington Post today. As Brad DeLong continually points out, the Washington Post does not have long to survive given the quality of the columns that it publishes.
Harold Meyerson is certainly giving it the old school try in attempting to prove Professor DeLong correct.
Firstly, to start, have a look at that chart to the right there (and up a bit perhaps). It is the Manufacturing Output Index for the United States for the years 1951 to 2007. Yes, it does indeed take account of inflation so no, we are not looking just at a chart that tells us that everything is getting more expensive. What we are looking at is a chart which tells us how much stuff we're making in the economy in each of those years.
There are a number of different ways of measuring this, we can quibble about whether we include construction, or mining, whether we measure in 1951 dollars or 2007, should we measure value added or just output? But all of them will give us essentially the same shape as this chart above.
The striking thing about that shape being that as time passes, it gets higher. You see that, yes? Over the years the US has been manufacturing more. Yes, that's right, with a few stutters here and there for recessions, since 1950 the US has been manufacturing more and more stuff.
Good, now you know more about manufacturing statistics than does the columnist for the Washington Post, a certain Harold Meyerson. Mr. Meyerson also works at the American Prospect but that is more understandable, we don't expect anyone there to quite grasp matters economic. For here is what Mr. Meyerson states in his column today:
"Oh, right: America still made things then." We don't any more -- at least, not like we used to.
That, at least, is true we don't make things like we used to. We make more things than we used to for a start.
For one thing, the decline of manufacturing presents
What decline of manufacturing is that? The chart rises over time, does it not?
The long-term decline of American manufacturing
What long-term decline? See how the squiggly line goes up to the right? That is what is known in technical terms as "an increase".
So, Mr. Meyerson is worrying about something that is not happening.
What is happening though is that manufacturing is declining as a percentage of our economy. This is not because manufacturing is in decline (see squiggly line above) but because services are growing even faster. Very much the same thing happened when we'd only just discovered manufacturing and agriculture (no, not the nice sort in a suburban pretend farm, the real, "grow damn you wheat or we all starve this winter" kind) was what everyone did. Manufacturing output grew faster than agricultural output while said agricultural output was still growing. Thus manufacturing grew as a share of the economy even while food output also rose.
There is one more thing to note: the number of people employed in manufacturing is also falling. Yes, even while output grows, the number of people making that output is falling. This is known as "rising productivity" and is generally thought of as a good thing. For it means that we can still have all those manufactured things, the things we can drop on our feet, and yet there are now several tens of millions of people who can do other things, things other than making things for us to drop on our feet.
Like, oooh, tending to the sick, comforting the bereaved, writing computer code to allow us to mock Washington Post columns on these intertubes, you know, the important things in life.
But what is really terribly annoying is that Russ Roberts has been making these points about Mr. Meyerson and his strange ideas for years. And yet he still gets to cash a check for making the same nonsensical points as he did last time. Anyone at the WaPo want to let us know why?
Comments
First, I can absolutely guarantee that Brad Delong is not speaking about Harold Meyerson when he bemoans the decline of the Washington Post.
Second, I fail to see what it is in Meyerson's article that is so worthy of contempt. He makes what would seem to most of us to be the unarguable points that U.S. manufacturing has been in long-term decline, and that we have no national "industrial policy" for dealing with that decline. The blog post does not disagree with the second point, for it believes that we have no need for such an industrial policy. As for Meyerson's first point, the rebuttal is simply that total manufacturing output has increased since 1950. Output of what? It is true that we (and every other nation) make more widgets than we did fifty years ago. But I am at a loss to understand why that negates Meyerson's point that our manufacturing base has been hollowed out. I can't believe that anyone familiar with the American rust belt would dispute that point.
"As for Meyerson's first point, the rebuttal is simply that total manufacturing output has increased since 1950."
Umm, yes, pointing out, out here in the real world, that manufacturing output is 7 times what it was in 1950 is usually taken to be a rebuttal of the point that manufacturing has shrunk since 1950.
Try tuning into the universe soonish...
Putting aside his now-characteristic ad hominem attacks, Worstall's reply continues to puzzle. "Output" has increased since 1950, but output of what? Cars? Microchips? Safety pins? Worstall still won't say. Why not?
Lets assume that fifty years ago a thousand factories in Buffalo employed 25% of the workforce, and produced a million units of, widgets, but that today only a single factory is left and that only 5% of the workforce is employed in local manufacturing, but that, because of productivity gains, the single remaining factory produces 2 million widgets. Worstall would say that this was evidence that manufacturing in Buffalo was thriving. Most of us would would, to the contrary, say that it was evidence of decline. Or put it this way: if you, as a reader of this blog, believe that manufacturing in America has declined in the past half-century, Worstall would characterize you as "clueless" and as having failed to "tune into the universe."
howard:
all you did is restate meyerson's points ("long-term decline", "manufacuturing base has been hollowed out"). if you're going to leave a comment at the end of a post like this, at least make an attempt to refute the argument he makes. his point is this: when meyerson says things like "the decline of american manufacturing" he really should say "the decline of the number of american manufacturing jobs" because americans manufacture more today than they ever have using fewer employees. the same is also true of food (we produce more food with a fewer number of farmers).
"he really should say "the decline of the number of american manufacturing jobs""
Yes, he should. And then we would all realise that this is a good thing.
"Lets assume that fifty years ago a thousand factories in Buffalo employed 25% of the workforce, and produced a million units of, widgets, but that today only a single factory is left and that only 5% of the workforce is employed in local manufacturing, but that, because of productivity gains, the single remaining factory produces 2 million widgets. Worstall would say that this was evidence that manufacturing in Buffalo was thriving. Most of us would would, to the contrary, say that it was evidence of decline."
Yes, that would be clueless. Getting all our widgets from the labor of fewer people is a good thing, not a bad thing. We get all our food from the labor of 2% of the population. This is a good thing. We get our widgets from fewer people than we did in the past. This is a good thing.
Paul Krugman gets this, why cann
And the data source for the chart you cite? This question could be phrased as: 'How much of that manufacturing output reflects actual DOMESTIC output.' Hint: "Actual domestic output" means products manufactured here, within the United States. It does NOT mean products manufactured in China or Mexico by companies which just happen to have an office suite located in Sacramento.
BTW, DeLong has problems with Washington Post economic status quo stooges like Robert Samuelson, not with progressives like Meyerson. Try to be honest, at least. Thanks in advance.
"And the data source for the chart you cite?"
Bureau of Economic Analysis: Federal Reserve Board.
And yes, it's domestic production.
Tim,
The problem that your commenter and Myerson have is that the things we manufacture are not the things they buy when they visit the local Best Buy and so to them, we don't "manufacture anything" anymore. More accurately we don't manufacture a lot of the things that people buy on a daily basis because the mix of our manufacturing has changed. Obviously, it is a good thing that our manufacturing is based on higher value added goods, but they can't see that. We manufacture semiconductors but the computers get assembled in Asia and all they see is that the computer has a made in China label. They miss the fact that the computer can't be manufactured without the semiconductor.
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