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Comment by bandrami | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure our manufacturing output exceeded China's for most of the oughts, also. The myth that "we don't make things here anymore" is, well, a myth. We just don't employ people to make things anymore.

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It's a well founded myth based on an extremely high percentage of consumer goods produced overseas.

I can't find hard data on this, but anecdotally it's very hard to find things made in the US unless it's a high end store. Chinese manufacturing filled the burst in consumer demand for budget-level products...

True, but that's a relatively small part of the economy to begin with. We make most of the heavy plant in the world, so we're essentially building the factories China uses to make the plastic crap we buy.

How might one know the truth about this, what could I read?

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure that German machinery exports are higher than those of the US. Couldn't find numbers but remember that Germany was #1 in that segment for quite some time, would be surprised if the US is now leading.

> anecdotally it's very hard to find things made in the US unless it's a high end store

manufacturing output is measured in dollars, not 'amount of stuff' except in very specific cases. producing fewer but more expensive high end goods (like what the US makes) can still result in more output.

That's true most people are surprised to learn this but measured in the value of the goods manufactured the US was the worlds largest manufacture for over 100 years until around 2010 then China edged ahead.

The US manufactures a lot more high value items where as China dominates the cheap junk category. Same way that Apple has all the smart phone profits even though they don't dominate the smart phone market on a number of units sold basis.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/theworldin2011/2010/12/china_...

The article is talking about competitiveness rather than output.

Competitiveness is the thing that has (for example) Apple making things in China.

Now we employ people to make things that make things.

China exceeded the US in manufacturing output in 2010. And while absolute output hasn't gone done, our share of manufacturing output has. The US manufactured 28% of all goods in 2005, and 17% in 2015.

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