As it turns out, I'm in contract manufacturing so I keep a close eye on what is going on with that field. After reading these posts, it's pretty clear that most people have no real concept of just how much stuff is NOT made here. I wrote a paper on this very topic 7 years ago. It was bad then and it is much worse now. My challenge to anyone would be to make a list of 10 non related items and then try to find them as a US manufactured version. If you find 2 of 10, it'll be amazing. If I recall, we had lost close to 5 million manufacturing jobs from 1980-2003. I'm sure it is double that by now.
We have not only lost the jobs, we have lost the knowledge and skills that we had accrued over several decades. It takes almost 20years to train and staff a country to be highly skilled in manufacturing and it will take us that long, too. Most of the skilled, knowledgeable workers are either retired or closing in on it. Our economy is unhealthy because we have nearly lost the middle class, and we have lost the middle class because we have lost manufacturing.
There's a great article in The Atlantic right now about Bob Lutz, the car guy, and how he thinks MBAs ruined the American economy, and that we would do better if we put engineers in charge. Engineers used to be more equals, if not superiors in American corporations, back when our #1 concern was making the best quality products we could. That era ended in the 70s, in Lutz's opinion, and corresponded with the rise of MBAs and the introduction of serious number crunching into corporate America.
It's that thinking that led to leveraged buy-outs and buying companies to break them apart to make money. Of course, this kind of number crunching has also delivered true value in terms of how efficient supply chains and logistics are today. It's mind boggling, really, what companies accomplish in that regard.
But finance's role in the economy has been growing ever since, and it's gotten to the point that financial services - and not products - are the heart of what we produce as a nation. It's false wealth, driven by over-reliance on financial trickery to show profit and hide loss, and manipulate the swings in markets, rather than looking to make something outstanding. One of the few "modern" companies Lutz looks up to is Apple, because they just make an outstanding product, with a relentless focus on giving the customer the best possible experience, not just an "ok" one, with a product that's good enough, cheap enough, bland enough.
Very good read. Sorry not to provide a link, but those of you who are interested know how to type "The Atlantic" into google or your browser window.
