Want a Manufacturing Renaissance? Here’s How
by ilene - October 7th, 2010 4:38 am
Want a Manufacturing Renaissance? Here’s How
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
The keys to launching a renaissance in manufacturing and industry in the U.S. are not just financial.
Given the widespread angst over the dwindling role of manufacture and industry in the U.S. economy, you’d think commentators and pundits might actually know something about manufacturing. Remarkably, they don’t.
I see precious little evidence that anyone on either side of the issue--those bemoaning the loss of industry, and those who brush aside the whithering as a positive consequence of globalization, wage arbitrage and free capital flows--has ever worked in a factory or even toured factories in various countries to see for themselves.
The standard-issue pundit/academic may well have glanced through the viewing window at some high-tech factory with robots and workers in clean jumpsuits, and this one slice of manufacturing colored their scanty experience: this must represent all factories nowadays.
Only it isn’t so.
Others (again, with no direct experience with manufacturing) are quick to point out the huge wage differential between Chinese workers (who have received substantial raises in previous years) and U.S. workers and pronounce the eventual death of all U.S.-based manufacturing just on the basis of wage arbitrage.
It isn’t that simple. And what exactly is that wage differential? Few note that the dorms and food services provided to workers at large-scale factories in China are subsidized and thus constitute an additional "wage."
Today we look at issues which rarely if ever see the light of day in the mainstream media.
I happened to see two video clips filmed inside Japanese and German factories on TV recently, on the Japanese English-language channel NHK and on the German English-language channel DW.
As we all know, Japan and Germany are the world’s powerhouse exporters of advanced machine tools and other high-technology equipment and goods.
In the Japanese plastics factory in Nagano Prefecture, neatly uniformed workers were shown cleaning plastic parts by hand.
In the German packaging factory, neatly uniformed workers were shown guiding cardboard boxes onto a conveyor by hand.
To the observer who knows something about either nation, both personally and as a mercantilist culture/economy, there is a wealth of information in these two short videos.
1. A staggering amount of "manufacturing" in advanced mercantilist economies still involves human labor.
2. Factory work is respected and not denigrated culturally.
factory work in the U.S. is widely viewed…
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Japan Redux: A Video Case Study Of The Upcoming U.S. Lost Decade
by ilene - August 7th, 2010 9:56 pm
Interesting video--argues for eventual hyperinflation in the US. – Ilene
Japan Redux: A Video Case Study Of The Upcoming U.S. Lost Decade
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
Whether one believes in inflation or deflation, one thing is certain: in many ways the current US experience finds numerous parallels to what has been happening in Japan for not one but two decades. While major economic, sociological and financial differences do exist, the key issue remains each respective central bank’s failed attempts to reflate its economy. While long a mainstay of Japan, if the first failed version of our own QE, which pumped $1.7 trillion of new liquidity into the system, is any indication, future comparable efforts by our own Fed will be met with the same outcome (and hopefully with the same political result: the half life of an average Japanese prime minister is 6 months – if only our career politicos knew their tenure in office could be capped at half a year…).
There is of course the "tipping point" optionality discussed earlier by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, when comparing the hyperinflationary timeline during the Weimar republic, which noted that it took just a few months for the economy to slide from a period of price stability to outright hyperinflation. Either way, for an ironic look at the Japanese deflation scenario, targeted more at novices although everyone will likely learning something from it, we present the following informative clip from, ironically, the National Inflation Association, which asks whether Japan is a blueprint for America’s imminent lost decade(s).
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Michael Hudson: Europe’s Financial Class War Against Labor, Industry and Government
by ilene - June 20th, 2010 2:25 am
Excellent interview by Guns & Butter with Dr. Michael Hudson on Europe’s Financial Class War Against Labor, Industry and Government. - Ilene
H/tip Leo Kolivakis, Zero Hedge
Interview with Dr. Michael Hudson
"Europe’s Financial Class War Against Labor, Industry and Government" with Dr. Michael Hudson. Economic crisis in Europe created by predatory lending; European Central Bank stranglehold on the Eurozone; the Euro; foreign banks decimate Greece’s social structure; Marx’s industrial capital versus fictitious capital; Latvia as a model for the rest of Europe; Hudson’s financial and fiscal plan for Latvia; the Cold War and its ruinous effect on progressive economic thought. Guns & Butter.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site