It's a myth. See this for example: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-outpu...
Living standards have not improved for decades and there's lots of research showing that it actually has slightly declined.
Somewhere this profit must end up, it can't just vanish? What I believe is they count stuff like manufacturing of iPhones in China where the profits never arrive in the US.
Also a comment below the article points something out that I'm going to quote:
"The gross value of production in 1986 (T50030) is $2,214,450,700,000. Today, it's $3,641,055,400,000. So it hasn't doubled or tripled at all. In fact, that's only 75% of what we were producing in 1986, because when you adjust the 1986 figure for inflation, we would have to be at $4,870,130,000,000 JUST TO BE EVEN! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. In 1986 we imported $986,522,790,000 (adjusted for inflation) in goods. This year, we are on track to have $2,892,000,000,000 in imports. That extra $2T in imported goods are goods we used to make here in the US. So in an economy with a total output of $16.8 trillion, we've handed $2T of our industrial production off to other countries. That's $2T in manufacturing output, or 38 million jobs with a starting pay of $33k. "
His numbers are correct: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GVIPT50030S
And then the article states something that I find very concerning:
"The crude oil may come from Canada, Saudi Arabia or North Dakota, but it’s refined right here in America.
Refined petroleum products — such as gasoline, fuel oil, jet fuel and liquefied refinery gases — are America’s top manufactured product, with a value of shipments going out the factory door of nearly $700 billion in 2014, more than four times as much as the No. 2 product: light trucks."
If that is true, then the US is in even greater troubles than I had thought, because it doesn't seem to be an industry that is so hard to copy that Saudi Arabia couldn't do it themselves if needed.
There are many comparisons that you can draw between the US and fallen empires that had to rely on mercenaries before they finally collapsed internally.
The last time Western civilisation collapsed at a large scale (Roman Empire) it took the West almost a thousand years to recover from it.
Because these particular wars are pointless and immoral? Your segue from briefly discussing mercenaries on to gender roles, marriage, Trump, the EU, etc. just doesn't follow. It's obvious that your steering the conversation toward a certain set of talking points. The last 3/4 of your comment probably would've been arrived at no matter the topic at hand.
I'm obviously biased as everybody else is. So I interpret the direction our society is moving towards (and articles like these) according to this bias. You can enter a discussion or ignore my comment, it's up to you.
But what I'm definitely sure of is that we don't really need to discuss why needing mercenary armies is bad for a society. Most people will agree that mercenary armies are a bad thing.
It's better to discuss why we do we need them in the first place and what can we do about it. The article suggests legislation to ban this, but you can't simply legislate societal trends away that created the problem in the first place.
Someone will eventually have to do this job, it's just that there aren't enough persons willing to do it. So if you ban use of mercenaries some other entity will likely take power where we left a power vacuum. (like ISIS did in Iraq)
And if at some point we can't even find enough volunteers to provide internal security (which could happen) then we are probably all finished.
Edit: Btw I agree that most of these wars have been immoral and wrong.
In the US though the reason I think that this explanation is wrong is that the recruiters are verrrry aggressive in High School, and so I question if any of the big-picture men's role issues come into play.
It is an attractive argument in my mind but I also have to say that in many wars governments had to somehow convince its men to take part in an immoral war. How could they pull that off? Is it just propaganda and have we somehow lost the ability to successfully propagandise or did we consciously choose not to use this tool anymore?
For example here in Austria we convinced many men to take part in WWII and the conduct was in many cases horrifying. When talking to older people here many acknowledge that yes, there was rampant Anti-Semitism but many also knew some Jews personally from their community that they felt were decent people.
People here generally knew what was being done to their Jewish neighbours and most of them didn't approve of it but they still went along. Why? The Nazis restored the economy in a way that allowed them to work and put some food on the table of their families after the Germans experienced crippling hyper-inflation.
People had a future again and something to work for, at least they thought so at the time, so they rationalised their evil actions away.
The US empire certainly is not even close to the viciousness of the Soviets or the Nazis, whatever disagreements we all might have with the current foreign policy of Western countries. (and there is a _lot_ that I would criticise about our foreign policy)
So why can't we find volunteers? The Germans knew what was really going on, so did the Soviet people, yet they mostly went along even though what they did was far worse than what the US did.
That's why I believe that this can't be a sufficient explanation. A far better explanation is that there is a trend that vast amounts of people don't see any future for them in this society and the decline in formation of traditional and lasting families is to me an obvious reason.
We can see for example that in almost all Western countries the birth rate is far below the rate necessary to keep population size stable. We also see that single parents are soon to be the norm in Western societies. (which hurts first and foremost the children)
It can't be a good sign if our society can't even produce enough children on its own to sustain itself. And this I believe must have some kind of effect on men and women in our society. (likely negative)
I literally haven't come across a single young person in my life here in the West that believed that they will be able to have a life long stable marriage. I also have never spoken to a young person that believed that they'll be able to retire when they're old. So why participate in anything? Let's just all be hedonists and have a party as long as we can because we can't do anything about it anyways. (that's the kind of mentality I mostly see today)
Edit: Just ask yourself: What would you be willing to do for your country and how hard would you be willing to work if you knew that there is a very high chance that immediately after high school education or college you'll be able to A) afford to buy a home while being able to pay off the debt in 5-10 years and B) if you're able to attract a women you can enter a marriage that will very likely last for the rest of your life? (and not end in divorce and bankruptcy) This is actually the kind of situation our grand parents found themselves in.
Another reason is the proliferation of high-quality at-home entertainment (compared to what was available say in the fifties) which allows you to get through life without much human connection (and not feel totally empty and lonely).
Of course that’s not sexist, it’s just a list of facts. This however:
>Don't get me wrong, I highly value marriage but I'm not willing to enter a deal where I'm having to give up everything to her and can not expect to get anything in return for it. For example if we married and divorced (without children) she would be entitled to 40% of my net income as long as I am alive.
is. It shows that in your world view, men make all the money and women don’t work. After all, if you were a stay-at-home dad and your wife had a career, would the roles not be reversed?
I have no problem with that because someone needs to raise children and still it's mostly women doing it. (which is one of the most important jobs someone could possibly do)
> After all, if you were a stay-at-home dad and your wife had a career, would the roles not be reversed?
That's all fine, someone has to do it after all if we want our civilisation to still exist in 100 years. I'm just pointing out the fact that men still at this moment mostly do the work that provides their families with necessary resources.
Every couple should be able to find a private arrangement that suits them best without being attacked for it.
Its not that all men work and women don't. Its that in his case, under current law, he would lose a lot in a divorce. Please read more carefully on such a sensitive topic.
But instead of following this thought and asking why there are not enough volunteers he proceeds to teach us why using mercenaries is bad for a country. (as if we didn't know)
It would be important to widely discuss this and get to the bottom of this problem because I believe it is caused by very bad government policies of the last decades that ultimately could lead to the downfall of Western civilisation itself.
My personal opinion on that is that we have basically removed all incentives for men to do what traditionally was their role in society - building and maintaining civilisation itself and protecting the society from threats.
Call me sexist but the fact is that roads, houses, airports, planes and all kinds of infrastructure is built and maintained almost 100% by hard working men. So is internal (police) and external (army) security.
So why do men have no incentive anymore to do this important work for society and instead choose to withdraw to some escapism like excessively playing video games, using drugs or watching porn?
Traditional families as a goal in life was or is in the process of being destroyed and bad economic policies have on top of that created an environment where most men, even if they wanted to, can't acquire the necessary resources to support a family anymore.
Even if you get a great education you'll start your life with massive debt that barely enables you to pay rent if you get a good job. So men withdraw from society, almost nothing is manufactured anymore in the West (wealth creation) and the economy enters a fatal downward spiral.
And for people that are still successful the outlook isn't much better. I myself came from a former Communist country to the West and made it to the top 1% in the EU country I am in even though I started out with nothing. But I am not willing to marry my girlfriend (and I have told her this) because we have here laws that would basically give her the power to dominate and destroy me at will if she ever felt like it.
Don't get me wrong, I highly value marriage but I'm not willing to enter a deal where I'm having to give up everything to her and can not expect to get anything in return for it. For example if we married and divorced (without children) she would be entitled to 40% of my net income as long as I am alive.
If I then decided that it's not worth it anymore to work so hard just to have all profit taken away from me (or god forbid, my business could fail for other reasons) the government could punish me (literally put me in prison) because I intentionally do not make the kind of money I made before that she is for some reason entitled to.
And that only covers what could happen to me if she played fair. Divorce lawyers would likely suggest to her that she accuses me of abusing her physically to extract more money out of me.
So sadly for me starting a family is currently out of question in the West. Maybe Trump wins in the US and turns the ship around (by ending Socialism and promoting Patriotism and Capitalism again) and I'll cash out here and go through the legal process of moving there, or I move at some point to Russia because they are right wing Capitalists there too.
But the EU is pretty much beyond saving in my view, there's no perspective to have a normal life here anymore. If there was no perspective for me to cash out and move to a better place in the future I would have stopped working so hard already. I could easily survive by working only 10 or 15 hours a week because I personally don't need much and slaving away to have more resources only makes sense if you plan on starting a family. I definitely don't, at least not here.