Obama's speech
"I don’t want to see solar panels and wind turbines and electric cars made in China. I want them made right here in the United States of America. I don’t want to buy stuff from someplace else. I want to grow our exports so that we’re selling to someplace else — products that say “Made in the U.S.A.”
Amen! Hope he means it and pray that he can deliver it.
Showing posts with label Manufacturing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manufacturing. Show all posts
Monday, September 6, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Listen to Andy Grove, now!!
Pointless debating when the obvious has been obvious for years, now its imperative we as the people and our government as our representative and also responsible for our well being listen to Andy Grove, as not listening to him is continuing committing suicide. We've been fed a myth and Mr. Grove refutes it, baring the truth, that outsourcing manufacturing is not a panacea that it's made out to be but a guillotine that we created and use daily to kill our jobs and standard of living. So listen to Andy Grove, and Make it in America and buy Made in America, and also question (the motives and loyalties of) those who advocate job exports in today's day and time.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_28/b4186048358596.htm
"Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn't been creating many jobs of late—unless you're counting Asia, where American tech companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.
As time passed, wages and health-care costs rose in the U.S. China opened up. American companies discovered that they could have their manufacturing and even their engineering done more cheaply overseas. When they did so, margins improved. Management was happy, and so were stockholders. Growth continued, even more profitably. But the job machine began sputtering.
That means for every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods, and iPhones. The same roughly 10-to-1 relationship holds for Dell, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology (STX), and other U.S. tech companies.
But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work—and masses of unemployed?
How could the U.S. have forgotten? I believe the answer has to do with a general undervaluing of manufacturing—the idea that as long as "knowledge work" stays in the U.S., it doesn't matter what happens to factory jobs. It's not just newspaper commentators who spread this idea. Consider this passage by Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder: "The TV manufacturing industry really started here, and at one point employed many workers. But as TV sets became 'just a commodity,' their production moved offshore to locations with much lower wages. And nowadays the number of television sets manufactured in the U.S. is zero. A failure? No, a success."
I disagree. Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today's "commodity" manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow's emerging industry.
The rapid development of the Asian economies provides numerous illustrations. In a thorough study of the industrial development of East Asia, Robert Wade of the London School of Economics found that these economies turned in precedent-shattering economic performances over the '70s and '80s in large part because of the effective involvement of the government in targeting the growth of manufacturing industries.
Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars—fight to win.)"
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_28/b4186048358596.htm
"Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn't been creating many jobs of late—unless you're counting Asia, where American tech companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.
As time passed, wages and health-care costs rose in the U.S. China opened up. American companies discovered that they could have their manufacturing and even their engineering done more cheaply overseas. When they did so, margins improved. Management was happy, and so were stockholders. Growth continued, even more profitably. But the job machine began sputtering.
That means for every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods, and iPhones. The same roughly 10-to-1 relationship holds for Dell, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology (STX), and other U.S. tech companies.
But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work—and masses of unemployed?
How could the U.S. have forgotten? I believe the answer has to do with a general undervaluing of manufacturing—the idea that as long as "knowledge work" stays in the U.S., it doesn't matter what happens to factory jobs. It's not just newspaper commentators who spread this idea. Consider this passage by Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder: "The TV manufacturing industry really started here, and at one point employed many workers. But as TV sets became 'just a commodity,' their production moved offshore to locations with much lower wages. And nowadays the number of television sets manufactured in the U.S. is zero. A failure? No, a success."
I disagree. Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today's "commodity" manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow's emerging industry.
The rapid development of the Asian economies provides numerous illustrations. In a thorough study of the industrial development of East Asia, Robert Wade of the London School of Economics found that these economies turned in precedent-shattering economic performances over the '70s and '80s in large part because of the effective involvement of the government in targeting the growth of manufacturing industries.
Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars—fight to win.)"
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Why is Manufacturing Essential for American Well-being
Noam Scheiber - The New Republic
Noam Scheiber's "Why we should cry for our shrinking Manufacturing Sector" should be required reading for Policy Makers and All Americans - as many if not most (Americans) do not realize the impact of globalization and loss of manufacturing jobs on everyday life in America.
Since coming to the US in mid 80's I've personally experienced and observed a steady decline of income across mature industries. Each closed factory means not only displaced workers but also factory owners, who cannot or have not been able to make a transition from making towels and nuts to building a Google. I am not sure if there is an agency counting numbers like me who once were American middle class and now struggle to find jobs, but I know there are many treading bleak spaces, which will remain bleak unless we start making more things locally for our own consumption and ALSO sell in world markets because selling Boeing is not enough to offset the American trade imbalance.
Trade imbalance is a threat because in our case it equals shrinking employment base.
Wine, cheese, fashion, iPod, iPhone, small batch Bourbon prove that there is a whole lot of American enterprise and creativity creating products that China and India cannot make based on knowledge and cultural factors, therefor the key to is to develop small manufacturing across sectors to repair and rebuild the American Dream.
The proof that manufacturing and economic growth thus prosperity are related is India reporting 7.9% growth in its economy for 2009; and China going gangbusters, in these hard times - both large, diversified manufacturing nations.
Since coming to the US in mid 80's I've personally experienced and observed a steady decline of income across mature industries. Each closed factory means not only displaced workers but also factory owners, who cannot or have not been able to make a transition from making towels and nuts to building a Google. I am not sure if there is an agency counting numbers like me who once were American middle class and now struggle to find jobs, but I know there are many treading bleak spaces, which will remain bleak unless we start making more things locally for our own consumption and ALSO sell in world markets because selling Boeing is not enough to offset the American trade imbalance.
Trade imbalance is a threat because in our case it equals shrinking employment base.
Wine, cheese, fashion, iPod, iPhone, small batch Bourbon prove that there is a whole lot of American enterprise and creativity creating products that China and India cannot make based on knowledge and cultural factors, therefor the key to is to develop small manufacturing across sectors to repair and rebuild the American Dream.
The proof that manufacturing and economic growth thus prosperity are related is India reporting 7.9% growth in its economy for 2009; and China going gangbusters, in these hard times - both large, diversified manufacturing nations.
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