Those who argue moving massively to services explained that as agriculture went, so manufacturing. Let others do it. We are already short of people and land.
As I read this article on the CES by the WSJ I wondered to myself an obvious question I never bothered to ponder the obvious answer. Who makes these gadgets? Why are they important. Deeper thought reveals that manufacturing is fundamentally different from agriculture. You really want to make some things or you cannot secure your means of creating wealth. This is not true with agriculture and food.
No longer merely a truism, I am now totally convinced in the importance of this sector for our economy.
Of course as is often the case with this government, they explained the case for manufacturing pretty poorly. Rarely do they ring a bell with me any most of my friends. In politics you are toast if you cannot convince people.
Making things is wealth creation.
ReplyDeleteThe rest is wealth management. We have moved into wealth management in a big way. Banking , property and the rest. We forgot to ask who's wealth ?
Making things is fruitless if the items are out of reach financially for those who need them and only enrich the very rich. Yesterday was the 8th anniversary of Plutonomics. And thankfully Robert Frank at WSJ remembers that - lest we forget or worse, never ever know of it - and the "bane" of most of our economies today
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/01/08/plutonomics/
We have a tendency to ape the west. Is this next change for us??
ReplyDeleteHow Nonemployed Americans Spend Their Weekdays: Men vs. Women (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/06/upshot/how-nonemployed-americans-spend-their-weekdays-men-vs-women.html?abt=0002&abg=1&smid=tw-nytimes
Nonworkers spend much more time doing housework. Men without jobs, in particular, spend more time watching television, while women without jobs spend more time taking care of others. And the nonemployed of both sexes spend more time sleeping than their employed counterparts.
In one of the chart, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., about 10% of men are consistently spending time on education. That could mean that many men spend a small portion of their days — albeit at different times — on education, or it could mean that about 10 percent of men spend nearly all of their time on education. Whichever, it tells a lot of where the brain matter has headed off to!