Not at all: https://www.nam.org/state-manufacturing-data/2019-united-sta...
Semiconductor manufacturing is a component of the second-largest US manufacturing bucket in 2017, and was only #8 of the top 10 manufacturing buckets for job growth in 2018. It is certainly an important sector for economic and strategic reasons, but you are significantly overstating its importance.
But I'm not talking about jobs, at all. The US needs a robust manufacturing sector so that it remains economically competitive. Figuring out how to translate that economic competitiveness into material benefits for individuals is a separate problem. Confusing the two is itself a risk to our economic competitiveness. (To make this point is a somewhat hyperbolic way: if the goal is jobs, build a canal through the center of the country. Using spoons.)
Also, I think the manufacturing output numbers alone miss something important from my original post. Losing semiconductor manufacturing as a core competency also threatens the most profitable and important components of the US services sector.
Why, then, did you ignore the other chart I pointed out that specifically dealt with the economic value?
> Also, I think the manufacturing output numbers alone miss something important from my original post. Losing semiconductor manufacturing as a core competency also threatens the most profitable and important components of the US services sector.
I agree that losing this competency would be damaging. I disagree that it represents a threat. The threat is the continued consolidation of certain types of semiconductor manufacturing into an ever-shrinking pool of companies. While it would be slightly better if that pool were partly concentrated in the US, the size and diversity of that pool is a much bigger issue than where its members are located.
The only other chart lists "Computer and electronic products" as the second-largest manufacturing sector, which seems to confirm my assertion that semiconductors have been an important source of growth. It's the second largest category and has had annualized real growth rates 2x+ the rest US manufacturing for decades.
I don't see any breakdown of semiconductors/not-semiconductors for that category, and this is a 2017 snapshot as opposed to longitudinal data, so it's hard to say anything more specific using the data you linked to.
> The threat is the continued consolidation of certain types of semiconductor manufacturing into an ever-shrinking pool of companies. While it would be slightly better if that pool were partly concentrated in the US, the size and diversity of that pool is a much bigger issue than where its members are located.
Sure, I agree. (Caveat of course that geopolitical diversity matters too. N separate SOEs would increase diversity in a way that wouldn't be particularly helpful to the USA, for example.)
In any case, this is actually something I more-or-less agree with, and hence the last sentence of my original post.
It also causes a huge vulnerability.
as the developing world improves their standard of living, so does the same decrease for people in the developed world, because these developing nations are no longer dependent on the developed one's.
It was always just a question of time with globalization in effect.
personally, i think that this is a good thing though. we in the developed world have been living unsustainable lives for generations, living off of the developing nations.
though thats most definitely not the only reason why everything has been getting harder for the working population. automation, higher efficiency, extreme concentration of wealth and more do their part in the current situation as well.
>According to a study by consulting firm McKinsey & Company, 76 percent of China’s urban population will be considered middle class by 2022. In 2000, just 4 percent of the urban population was considered middle class.
https://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-middle-class-is-explo...
Meanwhile, in America:
>Fewer millennials in 2019 are middle class compared to baby boomers when they were in their 20s
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-middle-class-is-sh...
Also, valuearb is kind of right. Except that the right solution is more efficient onshore manufacturing, not offshoring.
Of course it does. They do have that extra trillion people to bring the average down.
However, moving the manufacturing jobs from here to there has certainly raised their average standard of living while reducing our own.
The unemployed here are not better off.
In addition, a Walmart cashier, Starbucks barista or Uber driver does not have the same standard of living that a UAW member once did.
People are, on average, worse off than the preceding generations, all in the name of higher profit margins for the few.
>Across Western Europe and North America, the middle class is shrinking, according to a new report by the OECD. With each new generation, a smaller share of the population find themselves earning middle incomes.
When the Baby Boomers, who were born between 1943 and 1964, were in their twenties, some 68% were in middle-income households. Only 60% of Millennials, who were born between 1983 and 2002, could say the same at a similar time in their lives.
https://qz.com/1592826/the-middle-class-is-shrinking-generat...
But that's not really the point. The point is, look at those numbers sans semiconductors and you see a pretty scary decline in manufacturing output.
It is totally fair to point out that this has been a strategic choice to focus on profitable industries, and that that's even a good thing. That's sort of the point here: the choice has been made, semiconductors are now a key industry for the US manufacturing sector, and AFAICT we don't have any plans for what would replace semiconductors.
IDK if we have a healthy amount of manufacturing output, but it's pretty clear that losing leadership in semiconductor manufacturing would be quite bad for the USA.