The left hates history
- Thread starter Diogenes
- Start date
That is wrong as usual. line jobs took a lot of training. Can you imagine doing the same phyisical repetitive job for 8 to 12 hours a day? Don't be dismissive, How much would you want to do that job?The auto manufacturers were making enormous profits, Automation gives you a higher quality product due to consistency.
Auto workers and most people could make a decent living working on the line, Auto workers still do, but there are not as many of them as there once was,
Now they make about 40 K a year.
T. A. Gardner
Serial Thread Killer
And when you include benefits that go along with that wage, it jumps to about $94,000 a year.
That is incorrect. The company was folding in secretarial hours into that wage, They were folding guards and parking. Nobody ever did that before, Auto workers make 20 to 25 an hour,
Nordberg’s core claims in the thread (on deindustrialization / Rust Belt decline) are partially accurate on motives and environmental arbitrage, but oversimplified and factually off on key details like Big 3 profitability and the $70/hour figure.
On offshoring motives and environmental arbitrage — largely correct. Cost competition (labor + regulation) was a major driver of manufacturing shifts from the Northeast/Midwest to the South, then Mexico (maquiladoras), then China and elsewhere. Lower wages, weaker unions, and laxer environmental enforcement were explicit attractions. Jack Welch (GE CEO) did say something very close to the “barges” line—“Ideally, you’d have every plant you own on a barge”—reflecting the desire for mobility to chase lower costs. Pollution dumping in early Mexican border plants was real and widely documented; U.S. environmental rules (post-1970 Clean Air/Water Acts, etc.) raised compliance costs relative to many foreign jurisdictions.
On “enormous profits” at the Big 3 — overstated / incomplete. The industry was cyclical. The late 1970s–early 1980s featured severe crisis: oil shocks, Japanese competition, quality problems, and near-bankruptcy for Chrysler (which required federal bailout aid and major UAW concessions). Profitability recovered strongly in the mid-to-late 1980s boom years, but structural labor-cost and productivity gaps versus Japan and later transplants remained a constant pressure. Portraying continuous “enormous profits” ignores the periods of heavy losses, plant closures, and forced restructuring.
On the $70/hour figure — Nordberg is right that it was not take-home pay; the popular claim was misleading. Contemporary data show straight-time assembly wages in the mid-to-high teens by the late 1980s (roughly $13–16 range depending on year and classification, plus COLA). Fully loaded employer costs (wages + benefits + pensions + health) were substantially higher. Later iterations of the “$70–$73/hour” talking point (especially around the 2008 crisis) explicitly folded in retiree legacy costs spread across active workers, which inflated the number dramatically. Nordberg’s correction that the figure was not pure wages is accurate; his recalled $10–15 range is in the ballpark for base pay in the relevant period (exact numbers varied by year and job).
On “owners are uncaring and evil” — rhetorical, not analytical. Capital follows return on investment. High fixed costs, rigid work rules, rising benefit/pension obligations, and regulatory compliance in older industrial states reduced competitiveness against lower-cost locations. That is standard economic behavior, not unique malice. Unions extracted high compensation for the skill/education levels involved in many assembly jobs; when those costs could not be passed on (due to import competition and productivity differences), capital exited. Gardner’s counter-examples (skill mismatches among displaced workers, European parallels) are also directionally correct.
Multiple forces operated simultaneously: automation/electronics reducing the need for dense factory labor concentrations, the shift to just-in-time and global supply chains, Japanese quality/productivity advantages, energy costs, and domestic right-to-work/Southern migration of industry. Blaming only “maxing profits” or only “unions + blue-state government” is incomplete. Both sides of the thread cherry-pick.
The thread title (“The left hates history”) is not really developed in the visible Nordberg posts; those focus on the industrial-decline sub-debate. Nordberg’s strongest points are the recognition of cost arbitrage (including environmental) and the correction on the inflated wage figure. His weakest are the blanket profitability claim and the moral framing of owners.
Nordberg’s main claims
- Corporations moved jobs to states (and later Mexico/China) for cheaper costs, weaker labor protections, and fewer environmental rules. “There was nothing wrong with the cities we built, except they were not maxing profits.”
- The Big 3 (and auto suppliers) were making “enormous profits” / “making bank.”
- Most owners are “uncaring and evil.” He cites the head of GE wishing he could put plants on barges to chase the best deal; they effectively did so by moving South → Mexico → China → other low-regulation places.
- The much-cited ~$70/hour UAW figure from the late 1980s was not actual worker pay. It was fully loaded employer cost (wages + benefits + overhead like secretarial, equipment, parking, etc.). Actual worker pay was more like $10–15/hour. He says he worked in the Big 3 and recalls a GM plant moving to Mexico with open dumping into the river.
- We should not have matched third-world labor/environmental standards.
Assessment
On offshoring motives and environmental arbitrage — largely correct. Cost competition (labor + regulation) was a major driver of manufacturing shifts from the Northeast/Midwest to the South, then Mexico (maquiladoras), then China and elsewhere. Lower wages, weaker unions, and laxer environmental enforcement were explicit attractions. Jack Welch (GE CEO) did say something very close to the “barges” line—“Ideally, you’d have every plant you own on a barge”—reflecting the desire for mobility to chase lower costs. Pollution dumping in early Mexican border plants was real and widely documented; U.S. environmental rules (post-1970 Clean Air/Water Acts, etc.) raised compliance costs relative to many foreign jurisdictions.
On “enormous profits” at the Big 3 — overstated / incomplete. The industry was cyclical. The late 1970s–early 1980s featured severe crisis: oil shocks, Japanese competition, quality problems, and near-bankruptcy for Chrysler (which required federal bailout aid and major UAW concessions). Profitability recovered strongly in the mid-to-late 1980s boom years, but structural labor-cost and productivity gaps versus Japan and later transplants remained a constant pressure. Portraying continuous “enormous profits” ignores the periods of heavy losses, plant closures, and forced restructuring.
On the $70/hour figure — Nordberg is right that it was not take-home pay; the popular claim was misleading. Contemporary data show straight-time assembly wages in the mid-to-high teens by the late 1980s (roughly $13–16 range depending on year and classification, plus COLA). Fully loaded employer costs (wages + benefits + pensions + health) were substantially higher. Later iterations of the “$70–$73/hour” talking point (especially around the 2008 crisis) explicitly folded in retiree legacy costs spread across active workers, which inflated the number dramatically. Nordberg’s correction that the figure was not pure wages is accurate; his recalled $10–15 range is in the ballpark for base pay in the relevant period (exact numbers varied by year and job).
On “owners are uncaring and evil” — rhetorical, not analytical. Capital follows return on investment. High fixed costs, rigid work rules, rising benefit/pension obligations, and regulatory compliance in older industrial states reduced competitiveness against lower-cost locations. That is standard economic behavior, not unique malice. Unions extracted high compensation for the skill/education levels involved in many assembly jobs; when those costs could not be passed on (due to import competition and productivity differences), capital exited. Gardner’s counter-examples (skill mismatches among displaced workers, European parallels) are also directionally correct.
Broader context the claims miss
Multiple forces operated simultaneously: automation/electronics reducing the need for dense factory labor concentrations, the shift to just-in-time and global supply chains, Japanese quality/productivity advantages, energy costs, and domestic right-to-work/Southern migration of industry. Blaming only “maxing profits” or only “unions + blue-state government” is incomplete. Both sides of the thread cherry-pick.
The thread title (“The left hates history”) is not really developed in the visible Nordberg posts; those focus on the industrial-decline sub-debate. Nordberg’s strongest points are the recognition of cost arbitrage (including environmental) and the correction on the inflated wage figure. His weakest are the blanket profitability claim and the moral framing of owners.
The competition for lower wages was created by the BIG 3 moving plants to Mexico and then China.They did not have factories waiting for auto companies.
