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Us rust belt1/3/2024 ![]() ![]() In the north-west, wages tended to be higher. One reason for this shift within the US was comparative labour costs. Whilst the rust-belt lost jobs, some US manufacturing jobs shifted to the south. The US economy saw a decline in manufacturing as a share of GDP, but rise in services. The decline in manufacturing is mirrored in other western nations, such as the UK. Textile industries were in difficulty well before the 1970s. ![]() With rising real wages in the post-war period, labour intensive manufacturing industries became less competitive compared to new industrial nations in Asia. It was one of the highest populated areas in the US with large-scale manufacturing – in particular, steel, coal and manufacturing What caused the area to become a rust belt? In the Twentieth Century, this region used to be known as the manufacturing belt of the US. Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, ending in northern Illinois, eastern Iowa, and southeastern Wisconsin.The Rust belt stretches from west New York to the mid-west around the Great Lakes It includes: For example, in the UK, the 1980s also saw a declining manufacturing sector in north-east England, south Wales and parts of Scotland. Social problems associated with structural unemployment.Īlthough the rust belt refers mostly to the mid-west of the US, it can refer to any area which experienced a decline in heavy manufacturing industry around the 1980s. ![]() Cities and regions affected tend to have: There was a "crisis of profitability" in the US in the '70s.The rust belt is an area of mid-west US dominated by declining manufacturing industry. You can be nostalgic all you want, but those days aren't coming back. Yes, well, what can you do? The past is past. I used the phrase "American industrial prosperity" to evoke the era of general welfare provided by stable factory jobs. But that doesn't mean jack for the working class. Are you arguing that developed countries can be suitable sites for manufacturing given a completely automated production process? Because sure, there certainly are such factories here today. There are likely American manufacturing companies with millions in revenue that have maybe 10 employees on the shop floor. It is but not with many workers, especially direct manufacturing workers. Capitalism will always orient itself towards profitability -> Developed countries are not suitable sites for cheap manufacturing -> American industrial prosperity is not sustainable under capitalism. I want to close with a little provocation: the only way the rust belt could have avoided rusting out is if Labor had risen to the occasion and overthrown Capital. In a sentence, making stuff in the US got to be too expensive, so capitalists boosted profits by relocating production to cheaper sites. And yes, automation also played a role in this process, though it must be noted that automation began displacing labor in the 1950s (hitting black workers first, with harrowing implications for the social crisis as signaled by Watts in 1966). Therefore, capital sought to increase profitability by relocating production to cheaper manufacturing centers (China, Mexico, etc.). Capitalist firms profit rates declined from the post-war golden age due to:ġ) Overseas competition, most importantly from Japan and West Germany, which had rebounded from the warĢ) Rising energy prices (see: "OPEC embargo," "US conventional oil production peak")ģ) Rising domestic labor costs due to, yes, labor power There was a "crisis of profitability" in the US in the '70s. Surface rust is commonly flaky and friable, and provides no passivational protection to the underlying iron, unlike the formation of patina on copper surfaces. Given sufficient time, any iron mass, in the presence of water and oxygen, could eventually convert entirely to rust.
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