Why do you think people are so quick to proclaim the "death of the working class" in the US despite the country being the world's largest manufacturer and manufacturing being the second biggest employer and second highest grossing sector in the US economy?
I don’t agree with it, however there are things we need to take into consideration. You’re right in saying that the United States is the world’s largest manufacturer by the amount of value it creates. However, that doesn’t make it the largest manufacturer by number of workers engaged in the sector. In the United States, productivity has increased at an unbelievable pace, meaning that the United States can produce more than other countries while employing fewer workers to do it. Here are two graphs illustrating this:
Most people think that manufacturing employment peaked in the United States some time in the 1920s. However, the reality is that it peaked in 1979, so this trend only started around 35 years ago. The reason for the decline in manufacturing is twofold. Firstly, manufacturing is the only sector of the economy that can move geographically. Production was relocated internationally to avoid high labor costs in the United States. Secondly, as I said, productivity rose, which necessitated fewer workers to produce the same amount of commodities.
Right now, manufacturing industry constitutes about 8.2% of total employment in the United States, or 11,918,900 jobs.
Leaving aside government employment (because that includes everything from transportation workers to teachers, and I don’t feel like untangling that right now), if you enumerate employment into two major groups, I would say that 41.1% of people are engaged in working class jobs, while 33.2% are professionals.
An additional factor to consider in understanding why it looks like there is no industrial working class in the United States is the
intranational movement of production. Firstly, the bourgeoisie has reclaimed the city as the center of its economic life, pushing the working class into the suburbs and rural areas. This means that manufacturing is no longer located in major urban zones, but in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. Secondly, manufacturing has fled to the Southeastern United States because of its lower labor costs and almost non-existent unions.
Editor’s Note: The discrepancy between the photo’s increase in the 8 Wealthiest Americans and my 8 Richest Americans is likely due to the fact that Alice Walton rose while Michael Bloomberg dropped from the top 8, a shift not reflected above.Figures where gathered via Forbes.
Warren Buffet does give back a lot to good causes
Fuck Warren Buffet AND his bullshit tax-break “giving.” No human being on the planet should have so much when so many have so little. Who gives a shit about a billionaire dropping crumbs when capitalism enabled him to take the whole pantry.
10 Companies That Control Almost Everything We Eat
Oxfam International has made a graphic showing how a handful of corporations control nearly everything we buy at the grocery store.
The graphic focuses on 10 of the world’s most powerful food and beverage companies: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, Danone, Mars, Mondelez International, Kellogg’s, General Mills, Nestle, and Associated British Foods.
Oxfam calls these companies the Big 10 and keeps a scorecard on their environmental impact on a website devoted to the nonprofit’s “Behind the Brands” campaign.
This country is such a fucking joke. Did you know that if we were to divide the income in this country fairly it would be about 300,000 per person. That’s annually. You could give each person in this country 100,000 and still have enough to invest in infrastructure and research. Instead we have people who don’t have water, don’t have their basic human rights fulfilled, because they don’t have enough to pay a bill.
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