Nor is this the Summer of Love
It has become an obsessive fantasy amongst some to look back at the past as a paragon of a more perfect civilization when the “common man” was king and responsible for creating wealth in the form of manufacturing. In such nostalgic dreams, America produced manufactured goods, which was the sole measure of cromulent wealth (according to the labor theory of value), but fell into perpetual decline and civilizational collapse when out economy ceased being dominated by unskilled laborers who could live like kings without those icky college degrees.
This is the nostalgia of those who seek prosperity by trying to recreate an idyllic past which never really existed. By wrecking our current economic situation and forcing the economy to once again be dominated by the employment of laborers in manufacturing jobs, people will be freed from the evil transnational corporations and white collar oppressors by once again elevating the blue collar working class as the ruling class. Case in point:
In 1971, the high water mark for working-class wages, manufacturing was 25% of the U.S. GDP. Today it's 10%. Everything Trump is doing with tariffs and immigration controls is to give the American worker a shot at the American Dream again after half a century of…
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) March 11, 2025
First of all, this is factually incorrect.
This talking point might have worked in 1995 (prior to much of automation and globalization kicking in), but production and nonsupervisory worker wages are up over 40 percent since then.
Chart credit: @MichaelRStrain https://t.co/Pwse9QDfJP pic.twitter.com/6T5MQr42QW
— Garrett Watson (@GS_Watson) March 11, 2025
This is an “imaginary 1971 — one where working-class wages were apparently at their peak, manufacturing dominated the economy, and everything was sunshine and American Dream milkshakes”. This ignores that our economy has moved on from an industrial based one to an economy dominated by information and services. Those manufacturing jobs that remain are higher technology with fewer employees able to do less. To claim this is bad and we must return is to embrace a bizarro Ludditism where industrialization is the idyllic utopia we must preserve and protect. Manufacturing being two-fifths of what it was as a percentage of the overall economy is not a bad thing.
“The fact that manufacturing is now 10 percent of GDP instead of 25 percent doesn’t mean it was “stolen” from workers; it means the economy adapted to consumer choices. And as consumers get wealthier — as they have — they want more services relative to more tangible stuff. How are MAGA leaders going to force consumer choices to change? Or is the plan to mandate that consumers stop consuming services — such as Netflix, afterschool programs for the kids, streaming music, and those related to vacations, health care, and education — and force them to buy more goods? I am serious. What’s the plan here?
“There’s also the fact that as countries develop, their economies naturally shift first from agriculture to manufacturing and then from manufacturing to services. This is exactly what has happened in every wealthy nation on earth. In addition, for a country to become richer — and be able to increase the wages of its population as we have since the 70s — industries across the board must become more productive. This is what happened in manufacturing across almost every nation on the globe. In fact, American industrial output is near its all-time high, which it hit in September 2018, just as Trump’s first round of tariffs was taking full effect. But this production is now done with more and better machines and fewer workers — which is why productivity has skyrocketed and real wages have risen.”
What this is about is nostalgia for a fabled past by people who didn’t have to live it, or at least live all their lives in it. Look at the assumption here: ONLY manufacturing jobs are “working class” jobs. This is blue collar snobbery.
But for this promise of an eschatonic past cum future, some temporary pain must Patriotically be borne by those wishing to fundamentally de-transform America. The easiest way to get manufacturing up from 10% of the GDP is to wreck the other 90%. Sure you may suffer, but that is well worth it for the nostalgic Nomenklatura. Declaring war on 90% of the economy to selectively help 10% is a paragon of elitism.
And yes, they view your pain as a demonstration of love for America’s greater good.
Ungar-Sargon: I cannot get over these business leaders sitting there whining about the quarterly report while President Trump teaches them how to build an economy based on the love of the country and love of your neighbor. We should be listening and watching and saying thank you… pic.twitter.com/UUs5VZdsIq
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 10, 2025
Evil capitalists trying to suppress the vaunted “working class” being overcome by the workers love for their comrades is the type of messaging you’d expect to hear from a Communist country in 1971… not from the U.S. in either 1971 or 2025.
Putting the common or collective good, as divined by our betters, is more than a bit in the corporatist mould, though a more than just a dash of class warfare praxis tossed in with the proletarian being empowered to fight the elites to achieve some nostalgic manifestation of the “American Dream”. And yes, this economy doesn’t need to rely on “quarterly reports” or, ya know, profitability—it will be based on the power of “love”.
We can not return to some idyllic past; this will not become America’s season of “love”.
A little mood music:
