Manufacturing realities

I watched a piece the other night about a small town in the South that had basically dried up due to the manufacturing plants in the town that began to shrink and eventually just cease to exist.  The storefronts were vacant, the diner was vacant and there was absolutely a blanket of sadness through out the community.  No doubt, absolutely terrible.

We have moved our manufacturing jobs overseas because the labor is cheaper.  The labor needs to be cheaper so the price of the products can be less expensive.  The price of the products need to be less expensive because that is the price that the market will bear.  The consumers want the product for a particularly price.  Those consumers are us. 

In essence, we can't have our cake and eat it too.  We can not expect to pay low prices and have that product manufactured in America.  It can work in some instances where the manufacturing plant has super high end technology and needs less people to field the assembly lines but it can not work in plants that are no different now than they were in 1970. 

It is a catch-22.  What is heartbreaking is all the people who are out of work and do not have the skills to do something different.  The economy is shifting.  We should be spending money on educating laborers to move to other jobs.  Or the Governnment should be spending money building other parts of our country such as roads where those laborers can shift their skills and continue to bring in a paycheck.  That is a win win for everyone. 

I just find it disturbing when the whole picture is not told.  The economy is shifting, jobs that were once an important part of our economy are no longer and a lot of that was created by our desire to buy products are affordable prices.  Those prices don't add up when laborers are making more per hour than the product actually costs.