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More work to be done in the new year
January 7, 2008
1. The end of Western Civilization? Well, just when you thought things couldn’t get any dumber, the Wall Street Journal runs this idiotic piece on Lou Dobbs, the intellectual pornographer masquerading as a newsman. The “source” quoted in the story as supporting Dobbs as a candidate is from Americans for Legal Immigration, which at best is one of dozens of right wing nut farms floating through the political landscape these days. Lou says there’s a good reason he wouldn’t run for president: "I haven't got the personality or nature to be a politician." Which is odd, because he doesn’t have the personality or nature to be a newsman either, yet there he is each night, polluting the airwaves. But there’s a very good reason Lou won’t run for president. He knows if he announced, CNN would pull him off the air in five minutes. Lou’s ego couldn’t stand it.
2. It wasn’t a good week last week: The data from the Institute for Supply Management showed a drop in manufacturing below the magical 50-point threshold that signaled a slowdown in manufacturing, which signals a recsssion. The stock market sold off like crazy. Unemployment jumped to a two-year high of 5.0% and the Commerce Department figured showed a net 2007 loss of 212,000 manufacturing jobs. That brought this comment from Scott Paul of the Alliance for American Manufacturing: “The real shame in the continuing decline of U.S. manufacturing employment is that these are good-paying jobs that can’t really be replaced. Manufacturing jobs contribute much more to the economy than service sector jobs. Congress and the Administration must take clear action to strengthen American manufacturing and enforce existing U.S. trade laws. Otherwise, more U.S. factories struggling to compete against illegal, subsidized competition from overseas will close and more American workers will lose their jobs.”
3. A better view of manufacturing’s future: John Byrd, the president of the Association for Manufacturing Technology, is one of my new heroes. His clear-headed view of what’s really wrong with manufacturing (which you won’t find on Lou Dobbs’ nightly CNN infomercial) will be excerpted in the February issue of Plant Engineering. He evokes a little of John F. Kennedy with this insight: "At the end of the day we must recognize that this …competitive disadvantage was caused by the laws that were enacted by our state, local, and federal governments, not by the Chinese government, or the EU. And we’re the only ones that can change it. So that’s the question we must answer. It’s not what everyone else in the world should do to help U.S. manufacturing. It’s what the U.S. should do to help U.S. manufacturing.”
4. Or as one reader put it: In response to my most recent blog post, there was this comment: “Hear, hear. ‘You just roll up your sleeves and get at it.’ Stop the stupid finger-pointing blame game. Break down the walls of fear.”
5. So there’s work to be done: Productivity continues to climb. The New York Yankees have spent more money than any team in baseball in the 21st Century and have no World Series titles to show for it. Like the Yankees, our biggest problem in manufacturing is attitude. Since we’ve been the world’s leading manufacturer for decades (and we still are, incidentally) there is this sense that we somehow “own” the right to continue in that role. We own nothing. We have to go back out and earn it every day.
Posted by Bob Vavra on January 7, 2008 | Comments (1)
