Manufacturing may be capital intensive, but it also produces something tangible that can be traded. Having a wide diversity in available jobs in an economy has to be a strength. Some people aren't meant for service jobs, management jobs or white collar jobs. Some people work best with their hands. I would think than an efficient economy would have outlets for as many of the citizens as possible to be as productive as possible. An unproductive citizen is a drag on everyone else, isn't he?
I agree with the first half of your first sentence. But the rest doesn't follow from it.
Are manufacturing jobs necessarily good? I don't think so. I think being productive is good. Who here wants to give up working on their turbostations and hanging out in their underwear all day to go make widgets or paint cars? No thanks. I make a lot more money without having to put my shoes on, because I have a high level of productivity. The barriers to making money online are so low, you don't even need a diploma, degree, good credit, connections, or training, membership or a grant to get started.
Should an economy have enough diversity for everyone to have jobs they are best suited to? Sure. But most of us are pretty well suited to be pro-gamers or porn site testers. I'm not sure an economy of people jerkin the gherkin or making bad rap mixes, or posting political rants is one where the goods produced, are the goods in demand. People still like their garbage picked up, their clothes dry cleaned, and their produce fresh at the market.
But we run into hard limits. Labor is a huge cost. Competition drives producers to find cheaper sources of labor. They close a factory in the US and open one in China. Prices drop in half, but now we have fewer people employed in the US.
Sure, fewer people are employed. But they are getting cheaper goods by shifting production to where labor is cheaper. The idea is not to work more. It is to produce more. Ideally, we should all be working a 20 hour work week by now, but everyone has to pay for interest on debts, wars and welfare. We are more productive now than any time in human history, and yet families have 2 and sometimes 3 jobs to make ends meet. Something isn't right with this notion that full employment solves all problems. It solves all government problems, because the tax base grows, people don't have time for tea parties and welfare demand goes down, so those favors can be allocated away from the declining people in need to the people who need political favors (corporate subsidies).
Economies have to adjust. We don't make or consume or desire the stuff we made 50 years ago. It's not as simple as taking a trip back to 1960. Everything is cheaper now and we have more of it, because we aren't trying to make things at the highest cost, but at the lowest.
When you're unemployed, you have to get a new job. If there are no jobs, you need to start your own business. If there are no jobs, and you can't start your own business, then either regulation is out of control, or your standards are too high. No one has a right to a high wage at a job they like. That stuff still has to be earned for the same reason that giving people welfare (paying them to do nothing) isn't a right either.
The problem with that is that wages don't rise with productivity. Someone who could balance books well in the past could make a good living because their skill was relatively rare. Any monkey could be trained to use quicken. So why not outsource that job to a country where we have little brown people chained to a desk and we can pay them peanuts?
Sure, they made money because their skill was scarce. But as demand for their skill increased, there was competition, innovation (software development) and the price came down. Capitalism. Your argument is almost an argument against progress. I'm not saying that is what you intended, but that seems to be your issue. That if things were more expensive, and there was less competition then we would be richer.
Competition drives profits towards zero. It is the ultimate tool of economic progress, particularly for the poor whose smaller amount of purchasing power benefits most relative to prices falling. As prices reach near zero, an industry is mature, and investors start to invest elsewhere, to drive high prices in other markets down by grabbing a piece of the action. This is how the market dynamically allocates capital investment. The rate of return. As more capital is attracted, profits shrink, and the new capital looks for other areas to rape profits until the profits are so low from competition, they have to move on again.
Unions and collective bargaining units are often the only thing preventing abusive owners/managers from running roughshod over the workers who need the jobs. I work in a union shop and appreciate the protection and due process my employer is required to go through in order to fire me because I made fun of his stupid hat.
Sure, you are in a union, and it benefits you. That's not unexpected.
But what it does is artificially raise your labor rate above the rate in the competitive labor market. It makes it harder for people outside the union to compete with you for your job. Again, great for you. Shitty for your out of work neighbor who is willing to do your job for 9/10 of your wage. Ultimately, bad for your employer, who will eventually get tired of the union, and close/move the shop.
100 years ago, unions served a social purpose at times. In the progressive era, Unions were an important voting block, so they were painted as heroes by the politically directed education establishment. People also forget they murdered scabs and destroyed company property when their demands were not met. Unions have a history of violence which matches the violence of bad businesses. But now, with all of the labor regulations, how can anyone in a union say with a straight face that they will get abused in their job without the union, when 80% of the economy is not unionized?
Are people everywhere being exploited? I don't believe so.
The last problem with unions, is that they keep wages high in the union, which means that labor costs can't come down for the firm. All non-union sources of labor can out compete a union source over the long run. This means the firm can't expand by adding more employees (because their unit cost per employee is higher) plus, their employees may be less productive, because they hide behind "due process" and other such nonsense to protect themselves when they do not perform at a level acceptable to their managers.
Again, unions are great if you are in them. They are a poison pill if you are a business owner (notice, unions almost never buy their own shops and run as co-ops, better to destroy someone else's investment). They are a valuable voting block if you are a politician. And they can be a barrier to entry/wage depressant if you are unemployed or a worker with low productivity (little education, savings or experience).
