Western Europe offshores their factories after WW2 instead of inviting guest workers.

Perhaps most importantly, meanwhile, the infrastructure simply would not exist for the shifting of industrial plant out of Europe to colonies or wherever. Even the most developed areas would have too little infrastructure and too few skilled labourers to make this at all viable.
 
Doesn't make sense economically, countries pass through a transition (broadly speaking) of agricultural > industrial > services. Continental Europe still had plenty of spare capacity to exploit by moving out of agriculture into industry, and it was only after that was done that it became more economical for industry to develop in the semi-periphery nations and services in Europe. European economies have to have a much higher level of economic activity to make offshoring profitable in the immediate post-WW2 era. There's no need to bring strategy into it, it simply doesn't work economically. This isn't even mentioning anything about the target countries, since most of them aren't easily prepared to assume such a role.

I suppose a pithy way to phrase it is that de-industrialization and offshoring can't happen in continental europe following WW2 because there's nothing standing to deindustrialize and offshore...
 
This is not plausible. There is no prospect, in the period of the early Cold War, of Europe deindustrializing. The consequences for their national strength would be critical, while the long-term results would be disastrous.

More, industrial growth was key to the revival of European economies after the Second World War--Europe was simply not developed enough to make the transition to an early 21st century-style services-heavy economy. One would not do much worse by imagining how the Soviet Union could have had a more functional economy with the help of 2017 artificial intelligence software.

I agree completely. I think there's some forgetfulness on the subject as to how badly damaged European economies were in the postwar years and how much physical rebuilding from war damage needed to be done. Moreover, industrial success was crucial to national prestige, which is why you had a postwar auto and/or aviation industry in many countries. You also would have had a massive skills gap between the demands of a post-industrial economy and what people could do, leading to depressed economic conditions being drawn out. There would have been no Wirtshaftswunder in West Germany, for instance. The concept just doesn't work politically or economically. Can you imagine Volkswagen eschewing the building of the large Wolfsburg plant for one in Turkey? I can't; Germany needed the jobs badly and the labor shortages only developed when there was something resembling recovery, at which point what you're proposing is abandoning perfectly serviceable and relatively new physical plant at home for building a new plant overseas. One last point: you're going to have massive supply chain issues trying to do this in the auto industry, where most of the complicated components were manufactured in Europe leading to the question of what gets built domestically and what gets built overseas. In an era before robotics and computers, a component like an engine was basically artisanal in the skill required to build it. You're going to build engines in Germany and ship them to Turkey for final assembly? That makes no sense.
 
the latter is because the free market demands both fast food workers and brain surgeons.

Society needs both equally, and if it wasn't for the large supply, fast food workers would be paid more (just like brain surgeons' wages would be lower if the supply of surgeosn would be higher). If it was only about supply and demand, brain surgeons and fast food workers would eventually earn the same.
 

kernals12

Banned
Society needs both equally, and if it wasn't for the large supply, fast food workers would be paid more (just like brain surgeons' wages would be lower if the supply of surgeosn would be higher). If it was only about supply and demand, brain surgeons and fast food workers would eventually earn the same.
Becoming a brain surgeon takes lots of costly and time consuming education which reduces the supply relative to fast food workers.
 
There is no such thing as a labor shortage. The demand for labor is caused by consumer demand for goods and services. If there is less labor, there is proportionately less demand.

That implies that it is always the same people demanding a service and purchasing said service.

In an effort to increase labor output, countries like the UK began inviting people from their colonies to come live and work in Britain because that is what they wanted. There was a shortage of labor.

If our electricity consumption is rising, it's because we own more things, which strongly implies our standard of living is rising. And inflation measures do not ignore fuel prices, education, or healthcare costs.

Not necessarily.

Electrical consumption can increase from an increase of electronic devices. It seems to say more about our level of technology rather than our standard of living within society. You didn't need to be upper class to own a microwave in the 70s or 80s (when they originally came out), similar to how you don't need to be to own a smartphone now.

But these are increases electrical consumption, not of class status. And while that isn't what you were talking about, I would argue that standard of living is a pretty nebulas thing to try to compare, as that does not imply increase or decrease of expense.
 

kernals12

Banned
In an effort to increase labor output, countries like the UK began inviting people from their colonies to come live and work in Britain because that is what they wanted. There was a shortage of labor.
That was short sighted, because those people from the colonies also need homes, schools, roads, hospitals etc.
 
Politically impossible in 1945. Governments in Europe are looking to rebuild after the ravages of war, shipping their industries to colonies that could be potentially cut off or overrun is not on the agenda, indeed any politician who proposed it would be committing career suicide.
 
That was short sighted, because those people from the colonies also need homes, schools, roads, hospitals etc.

Not to get too off topic, but what?

Roads and hospitals are quite easy services to expand, and the need to expand means more business done, leading to more growth.

Economic and infrastructural growth is “short-sighted” in your mind?

Our level of technology is what determines our standard of living.

So? They were talking about economic stagnation and I’m discussing economic class.

My family’s lower middle class. My dad owned a large brick phone at my age, I own an iPhone. Doesn’t mean wages haven’t stagnated, it just means that we find communication absolutely necessary.
 

John Davis

Banned
I agree completely. I think there's some forgetfulness on the subject as to how badly damaged European economies were in the postwar years and how much physical rebuilding from war damage needed to be done. Moreover, industrial success was crucial to national prestige, which is why you had a postwar auto and/or aviation industry in many countries. You also would have had a massive skills gap between the demands of a post-industrial economy and what people could do, leading to depressed economic conditions being drawn out. There would have been no Wirtshaftswunder in West Germany, for instance. The concept just doesn't work politically or economically. Can you imagine Volkswagen eschewing the building of the large Wolfsburg plant for one in Turkey? I can't; Germany needed the jobs badly and the labor shortages only developed when there was something resembling recovery, at which point what you're proposing is abandoning perfectly serviceable and relatively new physical plant at home for building a new plant overseas. One last point: you're going to have massive supply chain issues trying to do this in the auto industry, where most of the complicated components were manufactured in Europe leading to the question of what gets built domestically and what gets built overseas. In an era before robotics and computers, a component like an engine was basically artisanal in the skill required to build it. You're going to build engines in Germany and ship them to Turkey for final assembly? That makes no sense.

Or what about just partial deindustrualization? Like have engines and transmissions manufactured in Turkey and North Africa and then have assembly done in Europe.
Politically impossible in 1945. Governments in Europe are looking to rebuild after the ravages of war, shipping their industries to colonies that could be potentially cut off or overrun is not on the agenda, indeed any politician who proposed it would be committing career suicide.

Or what about just partial deindustrialization? For example, have car companies produce engines and transmissions in Turkey and North Africa and have assembly handled in Europe.
 
Or what about just partial deindustrialization? For example, have car companies produce engines and transmissions in Turkey and North Africa and have assembly handled in Europe.

Again, not politically possible in 1945. Sending jobs out of the country would be unthinkable. Also as others have pointed out you are putting potentially critical industrial capacity where it might be cut off, and look at the areas you've mentioned, not the most politically stable after WWII and utterly lacking in the infrastructure to support industrialization.
 
This is completely uneconomical at the time due to existing shipping costs. The only area that could make up the difference in terms of industrial capacity at the time was the United States, and it is not as if that would make sense from a labor cost perspective (US manufacturing labour compensation outstripped Europe easily in the 1940s).

Also, there is no way that the post-war European Socialist and Labour governments would consent to this (they would basically be making all of their voters unemployed), and it is very unlikely that the Christian Democratic governments would do this either.
 
Or what about just partial deindustrualization? Like have engines and transmissions manufactured in Turkey and North Africa and then have assembly done in Europe.

In the pre-robotics era, these are the parts requiring the greatest precision. The people building these components are more akin to artisans than assembly line workers. It seems unthinkable that you would export your best jobs requiring the highest levels of skill. Also, you are looking at high shipping costs. You ship all the parts for an engine to Turkey so it can be assembled there and then pay to ship it back? In an era before containerization? At some point you are paying more to offshore while exposing yourself to possible quality control issues and geopolitical risk in your supply chain due to the Turkish penchant for a military coup every decade. No, the better policy -- the one that is a win-win for everyone -- is to give the well-paid and well-protected jobs to your own citizens and import labor for lower skilled, lower paying work. Which is what happened. (This is also why "merit based" immigration policy is bad for domestic workers.) Your native population benefits by being able to move up into better jobs and immigrants benefit by being able to earn more than they could at home. You also increase domestic GDP more this way, as Turkish residents are becoming consumers of domestic goods and services. The economics on this is really pretty settled among mainstream economists. Now the politics can be different -- there can be a definite downside -- but the mechanics of immigration adding to GDP growth is pretty conclusive. Note, however, that there comes a point where manufacturing costs and production issues are overcome and individual firms act in their own interest and start offshoring to maximize profits. But here, that threshold is several decades away.

And if you look at the history of all this, Germany really didn't hit the wall with labor shortages until 1961 when the Wall went up and the flow of East Germans dried up. Turkish immigration began by the end of the year.
 
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