Are we an industrial nation?

The word, "industry" has many meanings, but in my trusty 1997 Random House Webster's the first one is "the aggregate of manufacturing enterprises in a particular field: the steel industry."

Accepting that as the traditional definition of "industry," do you consider the United States to still be an industrial nation?

Stick to that definition.

That's supposed to be a good thing, right?

As long as McDonalds keeps providing jobs.

The definition is "the aggregate of manufacturing enterprises." McDonalds processes food -- that's agricultural or service in my view.

But then again I'm not sure of the actual definition of the term.

US exports are #3 in the world (behind China & Germany).

So "yes" the US is an industrial nation.

Where do we manufacture?

What portion of our exports is agricultural?

If a large portion of our exports is agricultural, then I would say that we are an agricultural nation.

large appliances, plastics etc.

What appliances do we make?
What plastic products?
We make few automobiles and planes and when we do make them we import a lot of parts.

If we aren't manufacturing goods, why are we allegedly using so much energy? Is it because so many homes and offices are air conditioned? What are we using so much energy for?

Someone here quoted something like that

Seems to me that they are the industrialized nations these days.

But they are also moving into the knowledge economy. China for example has high-speed trains, computers, robots and are in space.

I recommend delving into the work of Fritz Machlup, who long ago foresaw the demise of the US as a primary industries nation as we switched to moving information. Here's something The Google gives us:

The Price of Mother. Last week Machlup published a massive study titled The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States (Princeton University Press; $7.50). In words as witty as his statistics are weighty, Machlup argues that knowledge spreading is indeed a definable industry, which in 1958 produced goods and services worth $136.4 billion. Machlup breaks it down into five subindustries with 52 branches. He includes not only publishing, broadcasting, research and development, but even religion, a $2.5 billion item for everything from clergy to construction. Machlup even puts a price tag on mothers of preschoolers : the pay they give up by staying home, or roughly $4.4 billion. All forms of education (including mothers) cost $60 billion, or almost 13% of the 1958 gross national product. The total knowledge industry, says Machlup. accounted for 29% of the G.N.P.—and is now growing about 2½ times faster than the industries that produce all other kinds of goods and services.
As Machlup sees it, all this contributes to a growing U.S. labor crisis. First, machinery slashed the need for muscle laborers; then automation began displacing mental laborers such as file clerks. As a result, the U.S. confronts "creeping unemployment" among the least educated, while crying for ever brainier people to run computers and other "thinking machines." The urgent need is "a drastic improvement of school programs that raises the lazy and unambitious to higher levels of accomplishment."


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,940171,00.html#ixzz0bIMzJUSf

Happy New Year

Remember industry concerns "the aggregate of manufacturing enterprises . . . ."

The knowledge industry has relatively little impact on the environment -- some, but not nearly as much as steel manufacture or the manufacture of things made from steel, for example.

The knowledge industry, the knowledge economy is great, but without a solid manufacturing base, it is a fool's paradise. That is because you have to have manufactured things in order to develop knowledge.

On edit, I have to say also that the second definition in my dictionary is industry meaning and area of business. That is the meaning you have used. Redefining the word begs the question.

The question that underlies my OP is whether the U.S. should really be classed as an industrial nation at this time. We are a consuming nation, but when you compare our consumption with our manufacturing, I think we are more on the level of a developing nation. There is no balance between our consumption and our production.

You just can't eat information. You can't sit on it or drive it or do much with it without things that are manufactured. A knowledge economy in which people live in caves or tents and cook their meals on open bonfires is unlikely. I realize we are not yet living in caves and tents (even tents have to be manufactured as do the materials they are made of), but we are headed that direction very quickly.

I think we are in a post-industrial society all right. And I think that we will discover in maybe 25 years that our living standard is drastically lowered to that of many third world countries today.

NAFTA took most manufacturing jobs outside of America. We are now a retail nation. Most jobs available are in retail nowadays.

we're on the road to undoing that.

And service industries are no way to run a railroad, economically-speaking.

However, that's not necessarily the worlds greatest definition - actually I'd say we are a post industrial nation.

Bryant

Can I take your order please? Can I clean up this mess for you? That will be $95.98 please.

But we're not the industrial nation we used to be.

I think that term specifically refers to a country with a strong manufacturing sector. I realize that "industry" can have other meanings, but when we speak of an industrialized nation, we aren't talking about the Cayman Islands which has a financial industry worth a lot or Saudi Arabia which enjoys a relatively high standard of living based on its natural resources.

An industrialized nation is a nation with a well developed manufacturing base.