I am going to have to cut and paste this in instead. Senate odd couple target U.S. manufacturing losses They'll travel the country looking for input from companies and workers. By Margaret Talev -- Bee Washington Bureau Published 2:15 am PDT Wednesday, June 15, 2005 WASHINGTON - Is America's vanishing manufacturing sector a big and bipartisan enough concern to bring together two politicians with very different politics and a nasty history over a little something called impeachment? Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, who has topped polls among potential Democratic presidential candidates for 2008, and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a conservative Republican who in the House of Representatives helped manage the impeachment proceedings against Clinton's husband when he was president, think so. They announced Tuesday that they have formed and will lead a Senate Manufacturing Caucus, and they plan to travel the country in the coming months seeking input from companies and workers. Their 19-member caucus, seven Republicans and 12 Democrats, includes Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. The United States has lost 17.4 percent of its manufacturing jobs over the past four years, or about 3 million jobs, and Graham said South Carolina has lost 21 percent of its manufacturing jobs over the same period. The nation's trade deficit also has shot up. The senators said they did not yet have legislation in mind, and that they would examine an array of issues: trade abuses by China and India, the burden health care and pensions place on employers, relationships between labor and management, what types of products the nation ought to be manufacturing versus what products might make more sense to import, and whether the United States is retaining enough domestic-based weapons manufacturing capabilities for its national defense. As unlikely an alliance as Clinton and Graham might seem, this is not their first joint endeavor. The two in the past year also have called for expanding the military and improving benefits for National Guard and Reserve forces. For Graham, the manufacturing alliance with Clinton comes only weeks after he created a stir among conservatives by joining a breakaway bipartisan group that blocked Republican Senate leaders from calling a vote on a plan to stop Democrats from filibustering President Bush's conservative judicial nominees. "If we want to be a country that doesn't make anything, and that outsources our national security and doesn't really have the capacity that makes the products that defend us and that provide the standard of living that Americans expect, well, that's a choice," Clinton said Tuesday. "But I don't think that's a conscious choice that most Americans would make. But that is the kind of the unconscious choice that we're making, that's the road we are traveling down." Said Graham, "A nation that's unable to produce the component parts of the weapons systems that keep it free has weakened itself. And I think we're on the road to weakening ourselves as the manufacturing jobs continue to be lost."
As an engineer I find this type of news scary. However, this trend will continue in the future. Manufacturing, that was traditionally the strongest sector of the economy in both US and Europe, now is losing its priviledged position to the service sector. We better get used to it. After all, many of the concepts and ideas we use for manufacturing are later implemented in the service sector as well so we could be recycled. However, Clinton has a point. From an economic point of view, it is better for the US to import something if it is cheaper than to make it. But then there is the strategic component of this type of decisions. The US cannot have its position weakened by having defense contractors overseas. I seriously doubt though the US give sensitive defense contracts to firms abroad.
All the result of fuzzy thinking in the B-schools. When I was an MBA student in the early 1990s, the average B-students and the average B-school profs said unto themselves, "What do I care if manufacturing jobs are lost? I most certainly would never want a dirty menial factory job so go ahead and ship those jobs overseas!" Much as I tried to point out that we need good-paying manufacturing jobs in order to have a sturdy middle class with which to maintain the sort of economic prosperity we've known, my pleas fell on deaf ears. "You can't change things! You just have to live with it! Roll with the punches! Adapt or die," they shouted. Well, long story short, then came the Bush I Recession, and arrogant hoity-toity yuppie MBAs started to get laid off, downsized, and what have you. "Oh, this is so unfair," they cried. Who was the theologian who once said (approximately), "First they came for the Jews, but I did not stand up for I am a Christian. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did not stand up for I am a Protestant. Then they came for the homosexuals but I did not stand up for I am heterosexual. Then they came for me ... and there was no-one left to stand up."
Re: Re: Interesting article on Manufacturing jobs Ahh! how right you are broheim Ted! These are my precise pensaments. I could not have said better myself. Take care, Abner P.S. In my line of work, I have seen the staunchest Right Wingers cry for more government programs when they are laid off!.
Re: Re: Re: Interesting article on Manufacturing jobs Yes. And I have often wondered why my Republican parents ever filed for disability in my behalf after eight years of my telling them, "Don't you dare do that; it will ruin me!"
Re: Re: Interesting article on Manufacturing jobs Martin Niemoller. He seems to have made a post-war career of repeating versions of that.
Gosh! And I thought manufacturing jobs were on the increase! Maybe that was just because McJobs were re-classified as burger construction!
