That's bad enough, but the political ones are worse.
I had just finished reading an item by Andrew McAfee on employment in manufacturing in China when I saw a Romney ad on the same thing. I have no idea as to the veracity of Romney's figures, but I have an idea that he's just as clueless about manufacturing now as when he was running Bain Capital.
Check out Technological Unemployment: Not Just for the US by McAfee posted on Sept. 10.
"In a talk I attended the other night, Larry Summers mentioned that manufacturing employment in China peaked in 1996. I found this hard to believe, so did a little Googling. Lesson #1: don’t doubt Larry Summers’s command of the facts.
"Lesson #2: companies all over the world are automating rapidly. Even though hourly manufacturing labor costs in China are only 4% of those in the US, it’s still attractive for Chinese factories to replace people with technology over time. This allows them to turn out more stuff with fewer people. How much more, and how many fewer?"
Yep. The relentless trend to gain more production with fewer people—a trend that began in agriculture and warfare some 4,000 years ago—has reached even the vaunted China. This is just the way the world works. Even through Medieval times in Europe—the so-called "Dark Ages"—technology continued to progress.
The only question is, where will all the displaced workers go to earn middle class incomes? Or can they with our current management style of driving down wages?
