The murder of US manufacturing

[bemildred]

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First, Wall Street believes that financial services and other services can take the place of manufacturing, and that the United States can remain a prosperous economy thereby. Second, it believes that manufacturing tangible products is an intrinsically low-skill and uninteresting operation, so that the US would do much better to specialize in "symbol manipulation". Third, it believes that the decline in US manufacturing was and is inevitable, so that decline would have happened whatever strategies management had adopted, and whatever resources and attention it had devoted to manufacturing activities.

The inevitability of manufacturing's decline is in some ways the most interesting question, which has not been addressed much elsewhere. Most large-scale events of this nature appear inevitable in retrospect, yet if examined in detail can be shown to have been triggered by a series of decisions that could have gone the other way.

Management decision-making, like most human activities, is a slave to fashion: whichever guru has captured the attention of business academics and the business press at any given time is likely to have an inordinate influence on management decisions.

In the 1920s through the 1950s, the production engineering of Frederick W Taylor was fashionable, and the United States built the first mass-production economy. In the 1960s, MBA-credentialed top management was thought able to run anything, and so both conglomeration and strategy consulting came into fashion. From the early 1980s, it became received wisdom that all organizations could usefully be "downsized" and that the traditional corporate welfare protection of employees was wasteful. All these theories had their virtues; the reality however is that they cannot all be universally true since they are largely mutually incompatible.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JF18Dj01.html

[NoFederales]

1. What is preventing an entrepreneur from starting up a manufacturing business?

I find it hard to believe that a Wall Street "inertia" daunts this activity. I have been critical of my community's ability to attract business/industrial bases. Part of the problem in my County is the lack of planning and zoning, but we have an economic development director; I guess his job is too hard? This County sure is hell-bent-on-building carwashs and banks, though.

NoFederales

On Edit: Spelling; Also, I'm thinking small scale perhaps, but employing 40, 50 or more people is important, too.

[Cassandra]

3. Right now, a lack of capital and customers.

My small business is languishing. I get offers of loans from banks frequently but without customers, why would I bother to expand? Other people have great ideas but without a loan, their only option is often to sell out to a big corporation, which might just bury their idea to protect their own core product. We've siphoned off too many of the smartest students to manipulate money instead of making things. People who don't care about labor and have contempt for it aren't likely to start a business that actually makes something.

[NoFederales]

5. "...smartest students to manipulate money instead of making things." I guess this is true,

but "making things" is critical and small business needs incentives and help. Maybe a new Dem admin can address this.

NoFederales

[Bob Dobbs]

4. Capital is preventing entrepreneurial industry startups.

And until the American worker will settle for what can be paid in the Third World, capital will resist reindustrializing America.

[NoFederales]

6. I sure hope it doesn't come down to "third world wages". There is bound to

be some equalization in a totally global economy.

Resource ownership worries me the most coupled with rampant cutthroat capitalism--no regulations whatsoever seems a very bad practice.

NoFederales

[Phred42]

2. Interesting coming from the ASIA TIMES !

Everyone recognizes the problem EXCEPT the Republican American Elite

[bemildred]

8. Late stage empires always think they can rely on pure bullshit for an economy.

They are always wrong in the end. Of course, the end can take a long time. But I don't think it's going to take that long with US.

[Phred42]

10. Agree - Unfortunately

We're screwed

[hedgehog]

7. Did anyone else catch this statement?

GE chairman Jeff Immelt has now put GE Appliances on the sale block so that GE can focus on higher-margin businesses. The appliance side has attracted interest from China's Haier Group but is expected to be less interesting to South Korea's LG, because LG manufactures appliances of a higher price and quality.

[pauldg0]

9. Next will be clean green and blue manufacturing by the United States.....

.....Ask Warren Buffett. He has said that this administration will result in an explosion of new technology and new jobs.

Clean products will be in great demand worldwide and we had better lead the way not only in production/manufacturing and of course engineering, but in setting the example for the rest of the dirty industrial world like backward industries in India, China amongst others.

This is urgent and must be done swiftly