The US Is Building Factories At a Wildly Fast Rate (businessinsider.com) 98
Factory construction in the United States has experienced significant growth, with construction spending by manufacturers more than doubling over the past year. Insider reports: For April 2023, the annual rate reached nearly $190 billion compared with $90 billion in June 2022, with manufacturing accounting for around 13% of non-government construction. [...] Factories are being constructed everywhere from deserts to resort towns as the US tries to bring back manufacturing of goods commonly imported from lower-cost countries. Many battery and electric vehicle factories have popped up in the Rust Belt, while solar panel and renewable energy factories now span much of the South and Southeast. The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers per the May Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report (PDF). However, according to the National Association of Manufacturers, the manufacturing skills gap -- caused by the labor market's struggle to find workers with highly technical and manual expertise -- could lead to 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030.
Manufacturing, though, has accelerated its move back to the US from other countries over the past year. According to Kearney's 2022 Reshoring Index, 96% of American companies have shifted production to the US or are evaluating reshoring operations -- a spike from 78% in the 2021 index. The sudden rise in factory construction corresponds with passage of the CHIPS and Science Act in July 2022, which provided $280 billion in funding to boost manufacturing of semiconductors, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. The IRA has sought to create new jobs in manufacturing, construction, and renewable energy, estimated to create up to 1.5 million jobs by 2030. Construction spending in most areas of the US economy has fallen in contrast, including office, health care, and educational construction. Residential construction has also declined amid a big cooldown from the pandemic housing market boom. Census Bureau data reveals manufacturing construction spending has escalated from January 2020 until April 2023 in every region except New England and the Mid Atlantic.
Manufacturing, though, has accelerated its move back to the US from other countries over the past year. According to Kearney's 2022 Reshoring Index, 96% of American companies have shifted production to the US or are evaluating reshoring operations -- a spike from 78% in the 2021 index. The sudden rise in factory construction corresponds with passage of the CHIPS and Science Act in July 2022, which provided $280 billion in funding to boost manufacturing of semiconductors, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. The IRA has sought to create new jobs in manufacturing, construction, and renewable energy, estimated to create up to 1.5 million jobs by 2030. Construction spending in most areas of the US economy has fallen in contrast, including office, health care, and educational construction. Residential construction has also declined amid a big cooldown from the pandemic housing market boom. Census Bureau data reveals manufacturing construction spending has escalated from January 2020 until April 2023 in every region except New England and the Mid Atlantic.
Just duck (Score:2)
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Not American but remember when politics was about policy?
As an outsider, why persecution of trans is the #1 issue of the 2024 election just seems totally bizarre.
Re:Just duck (Score:5, Interesting)
Populists need a group to blame for all the woes real and imagined they're claiming they'll fix. This group must be relatively small, have fewer protections and can be easily identified. A negative connection must be made, which is typically that they are undermining society and leading to a degradation of morals. The best moral panics are the ones that involve children, preying on the most basic human fears. If you can include the ick factor, which is very critical, all the better.
So trans are perfect targets for populists to ramp up their moral panic.
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Re:Just duck (Score:4, Insightful)
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...the actor du jour in this case being a President who attempted to remain in office after losing an election that was as fair as the one that put him there in the first place, and who BTW, has a life long history of conducting nefarious deceptions in aid of his business career, so, yes.
Re: Just duck (Score:2)
Wait a minute. Persecution of transexuals isn't the number 1 issue. Transexual rights is the number one issue. One side argues they need much more, the other side much less. Only one side would call it persecution.
I agree that with all the problems that need urgently addressing this issue is overblown. Yes human rights are important but how many rights will people have if Ukraine turns into a nuclear war or we all die from global warming.
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Re: Just duck (Score:2)
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Sucks to be the EU right about now, trying to be good little globalism supporter
How do you figure? They're going to be able to buy artificially cheap goods, courtesy of US taxpayers. They'll be able to take those artificially cheap inputs and make products which underprice items we could have made here but chose not to because we were building subsidized factories.
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The EU isn't exactly free of state aid. It gives a shit ton of subsidies to various industries about as much as the US. This includes tax breaks and deals for EV factories (Tesla Berlin, soon perhaps Tesla Spain), batteries, solar, etc. 21st century manufacturing. China is, of course, an outlier in how much State aid it gives to its domestic companies (a shit ton).
This ultimately isn't incompatible with globalism. States can pump what $$ they feel like into industries that it views as important to keep dome
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Government owned does not mean government run. ...
Look at EDF e.g. or Deutsche Bahn
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We do not have a "tax break concept" in Europe.
Does not really make sense to give a "tax break" to a company that is not making any profits in the next decades, anyway. You know: tax is on profit.
Re: Mercantilism, it works (Score:2)
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Excellent news for the USA (Score:3)
"96% of American companies have shifted production to the US or are evaluating reshoring operations", this is an amazing statement. Strategically it is a huge win.
And "the labor market's struggle to find workers with highly technical and manual expertise", it could mean that people who make things in the USA will get a good living wage.
Re:Excellent news for the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Automation to the rescue!
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Dunno.
Been reading a bit on the labor movement, and I'm not convinced we are any wiser than when things like the Ludlow Massacre happened (certainly holding power to account is a great deal worse). A multi-national has no allegiance.
When the winds shift, people will be left holding the bag again (and factories will be moved to Mexico).
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"96% of American companies have shifted production to the US or are evaluating reshoring operations", this is an amazing statement.
You're looking at the seen. How about the unseen? For instance, how many software developers could we hire with the money we're throwing at battery factories? How do we know that's a better long term investment?
That's the problem with subsidies, Absolutely those will make the subsidized industries grow bigger than they would have. What we can't know is what we gave up in order to fund that subsidy. What I'm quite confident of is those other uses were better, otherwise the greedy people running companies wou
Re: Excellent news for the USA (Score:2)
Funnily enough, the manufacturing sector has been on a bit of downturn for the past few quarters. The Covid backlog we accumulated has been more or less worked through, so now we have to deal with flagging consumer demand due to tighter spending.
https://www.advisorperspective... [advisorperspectives.com]
Whether there will be buyers for all the goods these factories produce is the big question. With us having cut off much of our trade with Russia, and are likely going to do the same to China soon, Europe is looking to either make or
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With us having cut off much of our trade with Russia,
Trade with Russia...
In 2020, 0.3% of total U.S. exports were shipped to Russia while 0.7%of total U.S. Imports were delivered from Russia during the same period." [doc.gov]
You could drop it to zero and hardly anyone would notice.
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Obviously Russia cares about it a lot and it's very important to them. It's a trivial almost zero amount for the US though. Russia's economy is tiny by comparison.
Acer isn't American anyway, it's Taiwanese.
Re: Excellent news for the USA (Score:2)
Sanctions are like political antibiotics. In small doses they can be highly effective. But in large doses they actually only make targeted countries stronger as they force them to become more trade-independent/reliant on other partners.
Helps having China at your border as well for all your hi-tech needs.
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Battery factories make hard assets that reduce global warming and it would be done in the USA instead of offshore. That's worth an awful lot of programmers.
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Those two parts of your sentence aren't connected. Battery factories certainly reduce global warming. That is a good thing. Being done in the US has no clear benefit to climate change. In fact one could argue more batteries could've been made in another country further combating global warming.
And the programmers in the US could've made the software for those factories to be even more efficient.
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Re: Excellent news for the USA (Score:2)
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...Honestly we put way too much value in software development.
You're missing my point: to subsidize a battery factory or EV plant, we had to give up building something else. Could have been software for the next self-driving car, or a wind farm, or a cure for cancer, or a TikTok competitor. That's the unseen and unseeable cost to industrial policy.
Re:Excellent news for the USA (Score:4, Interesting)
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Inflation is just what happens when demand exceeds supply.
Stop using that word, you do not know what it means [npr.org].
"Inflation is just what happens when..." (Score:2)
Re:Excellent news for the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking of the reasons for it, personally. It's simple enough. Evaluate the cost differences between the offshoring craze starting in the '90s and today.
There are roughly three factors: Labor, transportation, and regulatory.
Labor: This was where China was winning. But over the last couple decades, I remember reading that their wages have been doubling roughly every 3 years.
Transportation: Shipping by boat from China to the USA takes roughly a month. Not only do you have to pay for the boat, but you also have already paid for the manufactured goods. Which means that you're effectively paying interest on those goods - IE it increases the costs by a few percent. Lastly, because you're making it in China then shipping it over, if you overestimate sales, it's 30 days before you can shut the pipeline down, making your overproduction that much worse. Same token, if demand is higher than expected, it'll be a month at least before you can ramp up production. With a factory in the USA, that's more like a week or even days to respond to demand changes.
Regulatory: Dealing with production in China means dealing with the Chinese government, chinese companies, etc... It's not insurmountable, but that's a ~12 hour time difference in communications, a language, different regulatory goals, etc... Plus, well, pollution. China is starting to get serious about pollution regulations. Labor and everything else.
A final part is that expanding automation has made labor costs less important per unit. Machines cost about the same no matter the country.
So add all this up, it's now cheaper to produce in the USA again. Fewer regulatory hurdles(1 country vs 2), wages aren't as different anymore, lower shipping, faster responsiveness, etc...
Basically, wages and regulations have risen to the point that China is looking to outsource, India is a bit behind(in my opinion) but not by that far, and there just isn't anywhere else that is cheap and stable with the population, with the entire world looking to do it.
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Good points. Also China has become a much less reliable business partner over the past 1-2 years. Exit bans on US, Australian and Canadian citizens for no good reason. Arrests staff members of businesses that evaluate Chinese companies.
https://thehill.com/policy/int... [thehill.com]
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One thing I see interesting is that 3D printing companies (Slant 3D is the most vocal, but there are a number of others) coming up as an alternative to injection molding in China. A few years ago, anyone wanting injection molding done would be talking with an overseas counterpart, making a mold, and then having the Chinese guys stamp the parts out, put them on a ship and get them to you.
Now, with 3D printers going from a curiosity to being able to be managed in large farms (such as Ultimaker, Prusa's AFS,
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> Now, with 3D printers
What makes you think you can build and run a 3D printer in the US for the same price as China?
Literally every step along the line is cheaper there, from building the printer to the input plastic stock.
Re:Excellent news for the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
That was actually part of my theory as the GP. Put in transportation, regulation, quality control, and such for stuff that is 12 hours off for communication and 30 days for transportation, and a US 3D printer doesn't have to be as cheap as China.
Not everybody is willing to wait 30 days for half price. Stuff from China is a lot more "buyer beware". Etc...
By the time you wait 30 days for it to be shipped - which means you have to forecast your needs 30 days further out, which like the weather generally decreases in accuracy the further out you go. You can predict next week much better than you can next month. It also means that if there's a problem, such as with quality control, if you don't have somebody in country actively checking, and a problem slips through, you end up with a month's production potentially ruined or needing rework in the USA to fix the defects. I once talked with a guy who's job is essentially fixing crap that arrives "broken as manufactured" from China. If it wasn't for the unpredictability of this, it'd be cheaper to make in the USA just from that.
Made in USA: Production problems found and fixed fast.
Made in China: Found a month later. Months worth of production potentially lost. Everything from just delivering all the never used or unboxed product directly to recyclers and landfills depending upon the specifics due to shit like children's toys found painted with lead based paint, to being reworked in US shops. It should be obvious that for all but the simplest of reworks that it would have been cheaper to make in the USA correctly the first time, even at the price premium.
Hell, sending it BACK to China for rework isn't unheard of - but again, you're looking at product you NEEDED(due to "just in time" production) this month, being delayed for 2 more months if you do this. So you'd need quite a product stockpile for this to be an option. Or spin up US manufacturing to address the shortfall.
Not necessarily Great (Score:3)
"96% of American companies have shifted production to the US or are evaluating reshoring operations", this is an amazing statement. Strategically it is a huge win.
That depends on why they are doing this. If it is because improved technology has made it just as cheap to make things in the US as it is in historically much cheaper countries then great! If not, and it is due to nationalistic zeal overriding economic factors then you are going to have a serious economic problem on your hands in the future.
Just remember that those of us who are non-American are not going to buy goods made in the US if they are more expensive than those we can buy elsewhere.
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From a link in the article; https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
"Almost four in five corporations companies have already shifted production to the US and at least 15% are considering it due to high tariffs and ongoing supply chain challenges"
We've been paying higher prices for years due to these reasons. Apparently the benefits of off-shore manufacturing have been erased.
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Strategically it is a huge win if it reflects the underlying economic reality properly. If it is funded by a government that is already running a huge debt, and if it ignores the said reality, it will be hit the same way Soviet Union was hit in the end. It remains to be seen if "AI" will have the impact that the Internet had.
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Outstanding debt is mostly irrelevant, see Japan, unless politics make it relevant through the debt ceiling. Debt+inflation funding vs taxation is a political choice, there is a danger politics loses all discipline but as of yet government budget relative to GDP in the US isn't that bad, relatively speaking.
With debt funding there is a chance of being driven into trade balance by foreign powers, but the US trade deficit vs GDP ain't that bad either relatively speaking.
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There's no struggle to find those people. There's a struggle to find those people who are also willing to work for minimum wage in dangerous and abusive conditions.
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> "96% of American companies have shifted production to the US or are evaluating reshoring operations", this is an amazing statement. Strategically it is a huge win.
You understand that this will cement inflation and high interest rates, right?
The reason inflation has been low for the last 25 years, m and interest rates along with it, is because we offshored everything to countries where products could be produced for less money, and strongarmed them through ever-increasing purchase quantities to keep tho
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According to the links in the article;
"Almost four in five companies have already shifted production to the US and at least 15% are considering it due to high tariffs and ongoing supply chain challenges"
This implies that prices would at least stabilize if manufacturing is domestic and possibly drop in the future.
I share your concern about the price of housing, but I don't see how that is connected to the on-shoring of manufacturing.
Re: Excellent news for the USA (Score:2)
Any sensible company that has production anywhere will always be evaluating the alternatives.
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Yes but what is unusual here is that many American companies have pulled back onshore over the past couple of years. Obviously they did it for reasons.
This potentially reverses decades of hollowing out. In my opinion it is a very good development for the security and economic status of the USA.
War (Score:3)
Honestly - this is likely a preparation for the general feeling from the US that there will be a war with China in the near future.
Too much manufacturing has been moved to a country that we may engage in conflict with, and in any war between major powers a major factor is who can outproduce the other. Whatever your military is in peacetime will not be enough to sustain your through a war. You need replacement planes, tanks, guns, bullets, and supplies (food, clothing, etc) for soldiers.
During World War 2 the US was a manufacturing powerhouse. To the point that even before our official entry into the war we were still supporting countries with material supplies.
Re:War (Score:4, Insightful)
The cheap labor is no longer worth the hassle of doing business in China. Add that to the increased transportation costs and the tariffs assessed on some items coming from China.. it just doesn't work out.
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Why does it have to do with war and not simply that China is a crappy trade partner?
Maybe it has something to so with China floating warships around Japan and Taiwan. Also, Chinese PLAAF fighters bumping into USAF and USN recon jets flying in international airspace. Then there's China warning ships flagged as American being warned of crossing Chinese waters while in a "law of the sea" open shipping lane.
China has been building artificial islands out in open waters that are supposedly equipped for civilian use. Things like way stations for rest and repair of fishing and shipping vessels,
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> Maybe it has something to so with China floating warships around Japan and Taiwan.
They have been doing that continually since decades before anyone reading this was born.
The only difference now is that it gets in your news feed because China is suddenly bad.
> Also, Chinese PLAAF fighters bumping into USAF and USN recon jets flying in international airspace.
Google "burning hand flights" and Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
History and doomed to repeat it.
Re:War (Score:5, Insightful)
China’s previous generations of leaders followed a strategy of “hide your strength, and grow powerful quietly”. A very successful strategy that Xi has abandoned 50 years too early. Most Chinese people will never get enough education to understand just how badly his hubris will hurt China in the coming years. They’re not getting any more help from other countries - they’re gonna have to stand on their own two feet and they don’t have what it takes to get out of the middle income trap. It’s a shame, really. A richer, more enlightened China could have been an enormous benefit to the world
Re:War (Score:5, Insightful)
Had China just shut up, denounced Russia, stopped the saber rattling of Taiwan, and focused on wooing Europe as opposed to demanding concessions from the EU, China would have their belt and road extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It only was a few years ago that Europe was giving the middle finger to the US and throwing Cisco stuff in the garbage for Huawei network gear and Huawei servers. Had China just kept on as a quiet trade partner, they would have had to do very little except watch the US implode. 5-10 years from now, China would have been able to wrest control of the PacRim from the US with relative ease, perhaps without a shot being fired.
However, Xi decided to go full cold war too soon. Now, the Chinese economy isn't looking too good due to COVID and an economic decline (which is self inflicted by Draconian COVID measures that didn't work, and caused shortages which forced buyers to look elsewhere... something that before 2020 would not have even been thought of, because China was the absolute best place to have manufacturing and shipping.) China is now in bed with the bad guys of history (Iran, Russia), so companies have to pull out or face trouble from their home governments, and China is cutting their nose off to spite their face by wanting to start a trade war. Because China started too soon, the US Navy has gone to helping with operations in the Middle East to being ready for anything China might do, and if China does want a hot war, the US has had a couple years to prepare and go from zero readiness to being able to handle anything China can throw at them. It will be a messy war, perhaps a Pyrrhic victory, but the US would win it, as it would be RCI versus a coalition of countries. Had China just played the honorable trading partner, they would have been gifted Taiwan on a silver platter in the latter half of this decade, and handed the role of the lead company with all money traded in yuan rather than dollars without a fight, similar to how the US took over being the main currency provider from Britain in the last century.
tl;dr, China and Russia screwed the pooch. Had they just waited a few years, Putin would have Ukraine without a fight, and China would not just have Taiwan under their sway, but global dominance while the US would be an also-run on virtually every single front. Now, battle lines are drawn, and China is paying for their own belligerence.
Re: War (Score:2)
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> PacRim from the US with relative ease
Twaddle. People in the region have been hating China for a thousand years. Are you as ignorant of this history as McNamara?
And I'll take Japan over China straight up any day. Don't talk about numbers, Russia's current performance illustrates that fallacy.
> However, Xi decided to go full cold war too soon.
The country is facing a personnel crisis like few other nations. They don't have time to wait before their current methodology breaks, and they are completely aw
Re: War (Score:2)
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Peacetime military spending will continue no matter how many bogeymen there are or aren't.
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It isn't the US MIC flying jets over Chinese territory. This is definitely a theater of Chinese aggression. Read Taiwan's defense force's twitter account on how often China does incursions into Taiwanese airspace with military jets, and China doing war games near Taiwanese waters.
Sorry, but that propaganda won't fly, so please stop that. You know better.
Inflation Reduction Act (Score:3)
The EV and battery factories are mostly due to the Inflation Reduction Act creating huge incentives for domestic production. That's a huge win, especially considering that we're at the start of a huge shift in technology from ICE to EV, and without the IRA, most of that battery production would have been in Asia.
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Eh? We've had battery plant starts since before covid. Lots of them.
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Yes, but look at the number announced after the IRA. It's a huge increase.
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Correlation and not causation? I'm just not convinced that the "Inflation Reduction Act" has anything long-term to do with that. There was already a big push for EVs, and those plant starts probably would have happened on their own without government funny money.
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The EV and battery factories are mostly due to the Inflation Reduction Act creating huge incentives for domestic production. That's a huge win, especially considering that we're at the start of a huge shift in technology from ICE to EV, and without the IRA, most of that battery production would have been in Asia.
If I want EVs to replace ICEs, wouldn't it be most important to produce the batteries and cars where it's least expensive? Why is it a win to produce them in an expensive location (hiding the cost with subsidies)? And what makes you so sure producing batteries is the crucial thing as opposed to producing the robots do to final assembly, or building the actual final assembly plant? Or writing the software to manage the battery temperature and auto-driving? Or developing the sales and financing infrastructure
COVID / Supply Chains (Score:2)
Many companies got burned with supply chain disruptions as COVID caused wild swings in demand that they generally failed to predict, combined with unpredictable factory closures and overloaded ports. You can be certain that every large company has at least looked into alternatives for their supply chains. And with automation, factories aren't as labor intensive, so the cost of production isn't necessarily that much higher here anymore.
Well, don't get too excited just yet..... (Score:2)
The big 3 are building large facilities to build EV's and batteries. Unfortunately, that isn't 'new' volume. It's replacement volume that takes the place of units that are in manufacturing facilities right now.
For instance, at the end of last year, Ford idled the Romeo Engine Plant in Romeo Engine, who used to produce the 6.2L engine, the 3.5L engine, the 5.4L supercharged GT500 engine, and others. Transmission plants and other powertrain plants will be going through
no duh (Score:4, Insightful)
Hand out hundreds of billions of dollars and companies will take it. Once it runs out the factories will go right back overseas. I'm not even being cynical, companies have said this is why they're building here now.
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Just recently I bought the same brand/model of shoes that I learned to like over decades. The "manufacturer" is a UK company. The first pair I bought decades ago was made in Portugal (a relatively low-inco
"the factories will go right back overseas" (Score:2)
Never mind whether they're sincere. They're hardly ever sincere about anything. Just be grateful they're throwing us this bone right now.
When a factory has been built, the factory exists. That's a start.
If you seek peace, prepare for war (Score:1)
I remember from my history classes how nations thought the more economically entangled they were the less likely they were to go to war. By being interdependent these nations threatened their own well being if they were to separate themselves by declaring war upon each other.
There's a couple big flaws with this thinking. One is that this economic interdependence was never going to be equal. Perhaps the southern states in the USA produced oranges, tobacco, peaches, and cotton, which the states in the nort
We know who to blame (Score:2)
Biden.
Logistics anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in Europe now. I order most everything from China or other areas of Asia because the US lacks logistics for transporting small or big items cost effectively outside of the US.
So far as I know, there is no known method, slow or fast of moving small packages from the US to anywhere else in the world for reasonable prices. For comparison, when checking prices on USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, the cheapest method of shipping 0.5KG to my location from the US is $35. On the other hand, from China, I can find $3-5. It's slower, but I don't care about fast, I care about getting it there. In fact, it's cheaper to ship from South Africa, India, Australia... the only place that seems more expensive to ship from is Japan.
Manufacturing in the US is a fool's errand. So long as the government makes it impossible to move product, you might as well just give up.
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Well, do you supposed that with the diminishment of the number of factories, there's no reason for all that trackage? And do you suppose that, with the resurgence of American industry, the tracks will be rebuilt?
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Well, do you supposed that with the diminishment of the number of factories, there's no reason for all that trackage?
No.
It doesn't matter if you're manufacturing goods and exporting them, or not manufacturing goods and importing them, either way the rail is more efficient than roads. However, the rail lines were bought up and shut down in order to promote automobiles and trucking, for profit over efficiency. They should have converted it to passenger rail, if anything, but that would have conflicted with bus, car, tire, and fuel sales (the reduction in efficiency means much more fuel is needed.)
And do you suppose that, with the resurgence of American industry, the tracks will be rebuilt?
Tracks which have actually
The chicken and the egg. (Score:2)
Plenty of blame to go around. Don't be sparing with the blame - but do try to fix things.
Meanwhile there's media spam saying the opposite. (Score:2)
Not profitable to export misery anymore? (shocked/ (Score:2)
Externalities were more hidden in the past. And now we're more of a global economy, so I assume the differences in costs are shrinking.
And they can't ignore pollution from transport (a previous externality) as easily. Makes building local better.
Trump started this trend (Score:1)
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Trump and Putin combined. If Putin hadn't gone full retard, Biden would probably have gone back to globalist status quo.
Democrats would have never sunk the TPP and crippled the WTO ... but now it's done, they are happy with the new paths opened up.
"the manufacturing skills gap" (Score:2)
Well, the industries involved just might have to train-up a few blokes like they used to do with union apprenticeship programs. That's right, the evil unions used to provide skilled tradesmen for industries, but now that union penetration is so shallow, it is going to be difficult for training to happen that way. So, the companies are going to have to do it. People just don't borrow a pile of money to become skilled millwrights to maybe, eventually get a job at a factory that is rumored to be coming to
output fell (Score:2)
Industrial output in the US fell in 2022. The biggest gains were in the health care and social services sector.
Folow the $ (Score:2)
There's no political or cultural reason for the change. US companies went abroad for cheap labor. Well with all the IT and other workers out of work (mostly by H1B), college educated tech people are working menial jobs. The cost of labor in the US is now CHEAPER than abroad. We as a nation have done nothing, while the billionaires double their wealth each year. The middle class is gone. They are now working in the new factories at wages barely above minimum rage. It's our own fault for rolling over a