(06-19-2011 08:57 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote: (06-19-2011 08:35 PM)RobertN Wrote: Can you name ONE thing in your house that is made in the US(besides you and your family-though I don't know your family so they might not have been)?
Ammunition. And that's just 2 feet from where I'm currently typing. I didn't have to look too far for that at all.
The U.S makes more stuff now then ever.
I hate this "America doesn't make stuff anymore" narrative. It's pervasive, and it's also wrong
If you only look at consumer products, I guess more of those tchotches are made in China, but most manufacturing is
industrial and clearly the U.S. has every other country beat. Dollar for dollar the U.S manufactures more stuff then any other country. In 2010 the U.S. made more stuff then Germany and China put together. Almost as much as China and Japan combined.
Here is a very off the top of my head so rather incomplete list:
Aerospace - even Airbus avionics are mostly sourced stateside. And orbital stuff, like satellites? USA.
Software - American software culture is waaaaay different than it is other places. Coders start out as cowboys, renegades who shoot from the hip, shipping sloppy product that's jaw-dropping in its innovation early in their career, and wind up as craftsmen, refining architecture and fixing he mistakes of youthful colleagues. This culture has not been successfully exported to other places.
Hardware - Name a microprocessor architecture not designed, refined and brought to market in the USA that has any marketshare at all, outside of the UK's ARM. Name a computing or networking platform that doesn't owe its existence to West Coast or Boston developers.
Cars - US factories are insanely productive, easily beating out European, Asian and South American factories in terms of units-per-manhour. Only the Australians come close. The problem with American cars has always been American management, which is some of the worst in the world in long-term strategy.
Aircraft Carriers (heh)
However if you only think in terms of specific products like the above, or looking at a specific city like a declining Detroit, that's just not going to get a very reliable estimate.
The aggregate industrial manufacturing base of the United States is enormous.