I have been thinking a lot about the feeling I have that “US manufacturing jobs” has become a political myth, and that real decay is setting in.

I have been ordering CNC machined parts from a machine shop in China. The only US organization I priced from is Plethora which probably isn’t the cheapest but their prices were much, much higher than China.

Of course Chinas prices have been lower for a long time, but in the past my simplified understanding is that there was a large volume of cheap labor that suffered a poor standard of living. But China has grown leaps and bounds in the past three decades. I suspect that now for many machine shops in China the standard of living for their workers is probably on par with that of workers in the US. It could even be better, I wouldn’t be surprised.

So now it’s cheaper in China just because they took manufacturing seriously. In the US we let MBA’s sell off all our manufacturing capability to foreign nations. Which seemed to work great for increasing profits. But the lack of higher level planning has left us with a vulnerability. Selling your business to China works great in peace time. But China has power over us now.

I am hopeful that the article is correct, and our horrendous military spending is coming to a close. But I worry about what will happen in the US to make us finally understand the need to change our ways.

I think the best outcome would be for the US to end its posturing against China and learn to benefit from collaboration.