Is bringing Fordism back even possible?

"At its core, the promise of Trumpism, at least in its idealized forms, is supposed to be all about the idea that working people have gotten screwed by a rigged economy for a half-century, and that to rectify this, Trump will end the elite gaming of it. But the new tax break for wealthy investors smuggled into the GOP bill—the same one that takes a hatchet to programs benefiting working people—perfectly epitomizes exactly this sort of elite rigging." - Greg Sargent, The New Republic

"The model used to be that of Henry Ford, mass production and ruthless efficiency to create high quality cheap cars with low profit margins, underpinned by machine tooling. You’d get rich by deploying a lot of capital, selling a lot of units, and being ruthless about productive efficiency. Today, the model is to do something that doesn’t require a lot of investment, so software or advertising or finance, essentially leveraging someone else’s capital. To do something like make screws for a low margin, you can just go to China, which seeks lower returns on capital. Indeed, we’ve been leveraging China’s capital for a long time.

There are many downsides to our model, but one of them is that high profit margins without discipline ends up causing bloat. Procurement consultant Rich Ham described the dynamic in corporate America, which is wildly inefficient, masked by excessive and persistent profit margins.

All of these dynamics are a result of law. I’ve gone over this dynamic many times, the basic idea is that a lot of the policies we implement, like strong patent rights, financial deregulation, and low corporate tax rates, are designed to ensure very high profits on any dollar of invested capital. Just having skilled labor and machine tooling around doesn’t fit in that model...."

Matt Stoller @ BIG

From a Fordist manufacturing economy to financial speculation economy, a process hastened by neoliberal financial deregulations during the 1980s and '90s. This really happened. 

But I'm much less sure about the possibility of any big revival in manufacturing. Some manufacturing in chips, weapons production, medications, stuff like that will be revived, a process that was already started by Biden. Big corporations have been offshoring their cheap labor needs since the 1980s and now it turns out some of that manufacturing should be done here for national security reasons. That will increase manufacturing jobs some. But manufacturing jobs as a percentage of all available jobs appears to be falling everywhere, like agriculture before it. Thomas Friedman talks about the development of dark factories in China, so automated they operate without lighting. Bringing back the motor city manufacturing boom of the mid-20th century is probably not realistic.  

Nonetheless, the neolib rationales for NAFTA and the rest of the globalizing free trade agreements were always bad. Basically, stiffing the working classes, wage workers, laborers, to goose corporate expansion in global trade. Move American labor up the value chain, offshore cheap manufacturing labor for better jobs in global trade and the financial sector, the free trade economic rationale went. It sounded good if you didn't think about it too much but it didn't pan out, unfortunately. One job in trade and finance was added for every four living wage union jobs in manufacturing were lost; and a Great Lakes rust belt grew to eventually engulf nearly all the flyover states. 

And, sure, blame the Dems for NAFTA. They contributed to this corporate fascist mess we're in for sure. Weak, dithering, sold out, Lucy and the football, all there, but still never as cravenly bigoted and corrupt as the repugs. Or not since Nixon at least, anyway. 

I've heard a Trump voter insist that Trump may do some bad stuff, hurt people's feelings, but he's not as bad as the Dems. My own view could not be more polar opposite of this Trump voter; another example of the extreme political polarization Ezra Klein talked about in his last book. The cruelty may be popular but not with me and, I'd argue, it does not promote economic prosperity or law and order and will never make America great again. 

At any rate, to believe Trump or the republicans will revive living wage jobs or reduce the cost of living for working people even if they could is preposterous and so oblivious to the actual historical record or positions republicans have taken on jobs and wages and reducing the cost of living for workers since, I don't know, forever?! 

Workers have been screwed by a rigged economy over the last half century. But to imagine Trump as someone who is going to end the elite-gaming of the economy?! He is the aristocratic progeny of the elite-gaming of the economy. He is a Frankestein creation of the neoliberal rigged-economy. 

He promised to drain the swamp but that isn't even his biggest hit, either. His greatest hit is obviously blaming the rigged economy on an invasion of non-white immigrants and foreigners ripping us off. The Christian Nationalists and rural bigots love scapegoating people, immigrants, LGBTQ+, women, the poor, and Grump is the bigot insult artist as Reality TV POTUS. These regular skits they're doing now with foreign dignitaries are talk show grotesques but, apparently, playing well enough with his X/Fox base. 

And the anti-DEI stuff is pathetic. White supremacists always have to be punching down at somebody to reassure themselves that they're above somebody else. This might be the essence of the paranoid style in conservatism. It goes way back in American history but has perhaps never been so popular or so big of threat to democracy and the rule of law.