Made in America, Again

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/made-in-america-again/379343/?single_page=true

by prostoalex • 12 years ago

38 44 12 years ago

kijin• 12 years ago

New middle-class jobs might not be an oxymoron after all ... I have seen $17–$20 starting hourly wages at new factories in Mississippi and South Carolina.

That's $40K per year at best. Hardly a middle-class salary in contemporary United States. In fact, it's barely above minimum wages in many other countries.

ch4s32• 12 years ago

Yeah, and those entry level jobs require training and certification that the company doesn't provide. Guess who pay for you to learn how to operate a CNC lathe?

sliverstorm6• 12 years ago

I have met a handful of craftsmen willing to provide training for the right workers (as in, the ones that seem promising and likely to stay a while)

Also community college costs have stayed pretty darn reasonable amidst the inflating costs of four-year degrees.

sliverstorm6• 12 years ago

That's $40K per year at best. Hardly a middle-class salary in contemporary United States

- There's a huge range to "middle-class". Consider whether your idea of "middle-class salaries" is in fact upper-middle-class. Remember that most of the middle class cannot afford to drive Priuses and BMWs.

- In a lot of the United States, cost of living is a hell of a lot lower than the Bay. When your rent is $350/month for a two-bedroom flat and your car cost $5k, $40k might not be so bad after all.

- The figure quoted is starting wage. It goes up from there, and twenty-year-olds don't yet need quite as much to live comfortably as they will later.

llamataboot• 12 years ago

Rents are above 33% of median wages in most cities in the country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/business/more-renters-find...

You can surely get by on $40k a year. With my Master's Degree in Social Work from one of the best schools in the country, my best paying jobs were about $33k, but 2 bedroom apartments for $350 are gonna be hard to come by.

eloisant2• 12 years ago

By definition (of the OCDE) the middle class is the middle 3 quintiles, e.g. people who make more than the bottom 20% and less than the top 20%.

In US in 2011, that meant a household making between about 20k and 100k. So yes the middle class is huge (60% of the population by definition), and 40k is right in the middle quintile (between 38k and 62k). Not upper-middle-class, but not "minimum wage working class" either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

maxsilver• 12 years ago

Where is rent $350/month?

I live in the heart of the "cheap, low cost" Midwest and there is nothing within 200 miles of me that rents below $650/month -- and even at $650, your talking about old, poorly maintained, single bedroom or studio flats.

Yes, there are lots of cheap 50k-100k houses. But what everyone forgets is the upkeep on those houses is enormous. You might have a $800/month mortgage payment on a 3 bedroom house, but also have to pay another $500-$1,000/month upkeep on that house.

My "cheap" Midwest home in Michigan (2br, 1350sqft) costs $1700/month in mortgage+upkeep. An luxury apartment in a downtown Seattle (2br, 850sqft) can be had for $1800/month. 40% higher wages on the coast, and only an extra $100/month in housing costs. (Zillow: http://bit.ly/1sx9LH2)

You won't save a lot of money on rent/living expense in the Midwest, you'll just get a lot more empty house space "for free". That's great if you need lots of empty space (for kids and such). But otherwise, the cost of living difference is not nearly as large as people pretend it is.

Yes, the literal dirt a building sits on is cheaper away from the coasts (land value). But that's literally the only difference in cost -- nearly everything else is more-or-less the same price (including home and building expenses, professional services, food, clothing, electronics, etc).

Some are even more expensive in the Midwest (home repairs and maintenance, nearly all utilities, etc)

beambot• 12 years ago

In Mississippi and South Carolina, you can buy a house in many areas for sub-$100k, for a 1:2.5 salary-price ratio. Compare to Silicon Valley, where good tech salaries of $200k and 2 bdrm homes for $800k give a 1:4 ratio.

$40k is middle class for that part of the country.

Quizz• 12 years ago

But is $40k on offer in these more affordable parts?

ulfw• 12 years ago

Plus with progressive tax rates and high taxes in CA that ratio realistically goes more towards 1:6 or higher

fixedd2• 12 years ago

The difference in costs for everything else is similar or worse in rural areas though. For instance, a 32" TV costs the same on Amazon no matter where you live, but when the water company only has 900 customers instead of a few hundred thousand the cost-per-gallon sky rockets.

prostoalex• 12 years ago

Median household income in the US is $50,054 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

So having two household members earning $40k puts the household in upper-middle-class category.

sp3322• 12 years ago

We used to have only one person working per household, plus maybe a part-time job. Can't we go back to that, preferably without the sexism this time?

randomdata• 12 years ago

When half of all working Americans make less than $30,000 per year[1], I'm sure $40,000 looks pretty amazing. I wouldn't want to go anywhere near SF on that kind of income, but is a lot to work with where costs of living are far more reasonable.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...

rayiner• 12 years ago

In Mississippi and South Carolina, $40k per year is an extremely solid living.

axaxs• 12 years ago

Um, in much of the south 40k is decent money. I moved into my first house and got by fine on 35k just a few years back.

jandrewrogers• 12 years ago

Tech workers have no sense of what it means to earn a middle-class wage. I earn more than most tech workers but I have a frame of reference for that income having lived in many parts of the US that are generally disparaged as "flyover country".

With all due respect, you are ignorant of the economics of many parts of the US. You can live quite well in South Carolina (briefly lived there) and Mississippi on $40k per year. In many regions, you aren't struggling for money unless you make less than $20k. The United States is a diverse country and I have lived in much of it.

In many parts of the US, the cost of living is extremely low and a dollar goes quite far. Believe it or not, there are large swaths of the US where you can buy a house for much less than $100k (cheapest house in a town I've seen in the last decade was something like $12k, out in flyover country, for an actual house, albeit small). You might not want to live there, and I certainly do not, but many people do. If you like the environment, you can live a satisfactory middle-class life on $40k in those parts of the country. Housing is cheap, food is cheap, fuel is cheap, entertainment is cheap, and if your tastes are simple it is easy to save enough money to comfortably retire in those communities.

$40k would definitely be on the low side if you live in a place like Silicon Valley or New York City. And I've lived there too. But the article specified South Carolina and Mississippi. And I've actually lived on less than $40k in Silicon Valley. Down in Mississippi, no one is going to be complaining about a $20/hour manufacturing job. That's a good living for modest effort.

chiph• 12 years ago

Two decades previously, the textile industry was the major employer in the upstate SC area. The Palmetto Exposition Center in Greenville used to be called "Textile Hall" and hosted several trade-shows for the industry where people came from around the world to see the new thread and cloth making machinery. All those jobs went to Central America, China, Malaysia, etc. Not just those of the people running the machinery, but also the jobs that made the machinery too.

Unemployment was a big problem. While the textile jobs weren't all that well-paying (often it was piece-work), at least it was something that put food on the table.

When BMW Manufacturing arrived it was a tremendous boon to the regional economy. Not only were there new jobs at BMW, but new jobs at both local suppliers and newly arrived "feeder" firms. And these were good-paying jobs, even if they weren't always union. A production associate there starts around $15.50/hr, which is $33k a year. More if there's overtime. This is good money for the area. And then there's the benefits - the employees can buy a BMW at cost every few years. That's like a dream come true for them - being able to drive a European luxury car that's brand new.

Animats• 12 years ago

Exporting manufacturing jobs is only cost-effective if the labor is about 4x cheaper. The coastal provinces of China are now at that level relative to the US. Manufacturing is mostly capital cost; labor cost isn't that big a fraction of product cost. Offshoring adds costs; air freight is expensive, sea freight takes forever, and long-distance less-than-container-load land shipping within China works surprisingly badly. Coordination is worse, and quality control is hard.

Made in America, Again

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