[ardit33]

I disagree.... the US was shit at producing weapons before WW2 (apart from Carriers), yet within two years was to able to be the number one mass producer in quantity, and eventually on quality.

When there is both political and economical will, the country will be able to mass-produce again. Right now there is no economic incentive to do so.

[jdietrich]

America had one overwhelming advantage - thousands of miles of ocean separating it from enemy lines. The industrial capacity of practically every other major nation was laid waste by strategic bombing. America also had domestic production of nearly every important manufacturing input, rendering it practically immune to naval blockade.

Post-war, America didn't spend a single cent on rebuilding infrastructure lost to bombing, while the other major powers needed a decade of austerity just to get back to where they started. Britain was still repaying the Anglo-American war loan in 2006.

America did an excellent job of scaling up manufacturing capacity during WWII, but the factors that made it such a dominant force were largely accidents of geography.

[DrScump]

  America didn't spend a single cent on rebuilding infrastructure lost to bombing

... within the continental U.S.

America spent a lot in helping rebuild infrastructure elsewhere.

[kahnpro]

Incidentally this is also a major overlooked factor in the Cold War against the USSR.

America has had 150 years of peace and stability. The Soviet Union was ravaged by a traumatizing war at home and before that a major civil war and revolution.

[forapurpose]

That raises a few questions:

I wonder if that's still possible. The US was an industrial country at the time; they had to convert existing factories to other forms of production (e.g., from cars to bombers). Now, manufacturing is much less prevalent; the US would have to create capacity from scratch.

Also, manufacturing is much less productive than other economic activities - that's why it's done in poorer countries that don't have better options while the US does higher value things (ignoring for this purpose the very important issues of the distribution of those higher returns). I wonder what the blow to the economy would be if the US suddenly had to switch large amounts of resources to manufacturing.

Finally, given that manufacturing is no longer the cutting edge of business, I wonder if it might be easier to build capacity than we think. As an example, t-shirts are mostly made outside the US; I would guess that if there was suddenly a critical need for them, the US could ramp up capacity quickly.

[Regardsyjc]

Not all manufacturing is less productive. It might not be productive to manufacture t-shirts in the US but it's productive to manufacture airplanes.

There's the flying geese paradigm (FGP) that theorizes the rapid industrialization of Asia. It theorizes the movement of manufacturing form country to country as well as a process of industrial upgrading.

For example, manufacturing began in London, moved to the US, and eventually someone built a factory in Japan. In all these circumstances in order to stay competitive - they had to move to a country with cheaper labor or manufacture a more advanced product with a bigger profit margin. However their competitors catch up and they need to do the same thing again. Find a better more complex product to manufacture or find a way to manufacture it cheaper overseas.

The US started to lose its manufacturing jobs and thus its middle class starting from the 1950s. Most of these jobs were replaced by the service industry for half the pay. Today the service industry employs the most poor Americans today, your cashiers and waiters, and they are soon to be eliminated.

I've been researching manufacturing because I want to make some toothbrushes. In China, I could make them for less than 25 cents. I'm not sure how much it would cost in the USA, and a lot of my colleagues tell me that most manufacturers won't even call them back because they're so small. China on the other hand doesn't care - they're happy to sell you 1000 toothbrushes for 25 cents each.

I don't know what's better. To manufacture in the USA and not be able to compete on price - one of the biggest factors in a purchase or manufacture them in China and be competitive... Well I guess the answer is simple, if you want to make a business, you need to be profitable. If it's not profitable in the US, then China might be your only answer.

[Slansitartop]

Didn't a lot of that military production capacity come from repurposing civilian infrastructure, like auto plants and the like?

Also, it would probably be harder to bootstrap 2020s-era manufacturing infrastructure than it would be to bootstrap 1940s-era infrastructure.

[sushid]

It was also the first time we had idle housewives become a prominent place in the workforce. We don't really have that luxury in this day and age.

[rubidium]

"Idle"?

They weren't idle (look into what clothes washing alone used to take), but the war effort certainly shifted priorities and also increased the number of women without domestic responsibilities.