I'm reminded of Georges Doriot, who started the first venture capitalist firm, funded the start of DEC in the late 1950's, and taught his famous "Manufacturing" course at the Harvard Business School. To Doriot, manufacturing wasn't simply plants and production lines, it was the essence of business. It was the way value and wealth and progress was created. Manufacturing created durable wealth, as opposed to Wall Street "wealth" with fortunes that can vanish in an instant with a change of sentiment.
With the departure of manufacturing from the US, we have lost the ability to create our own durable wealth. As a service economy, we focus on things that have fleeting value, or arguably no value at all.
It's not just a problem with high-tech; the very first industries to be outsourced were heavy industries like steel, machinery, and shipbuilding. Most of the tool and die industry is long gone from the US; dominated now by Japan, Korea, and Germany. High-tech was the final bastion of US manufacturing, but the rest of the world is now at parity with the US, if not ahead. There is no product in the US, from CPU to auto to aircraft to leading-edge pharmaceutical, that cannot be manufactured outside of the country in quantity and with first-rate quality.
We are left with industries like "Finance" which are nothing more than giant casinos where some players come out on top simply because they make their own rules. Then we have the legions of restaurant workers and valet parkers who live off the leavings of the privileged few.
Where our fathers and mothers provided us with stability and a chance to grow, today we have grim outlooks, a failing education system, and immense debts. This is the legacy we leave our children.
Is offshore manufacturing causing the U.S. to lose the cornerstone of innovation? Intel senior adviser Andy Grove says yes, arguing that the de-emphasis of manufacturing can actually do more harm.
Without manufacturing, the U.S. is no longer the foundation of the high-tech industry, he said. That translates to lost jobs and lost opportunities for the U.S.
In a SmartPlanet post titled, “US high-tech manufacturing base erosion breaks ‘chain of experience,’” Joe McKendrick digs deeper at Grove’s comments and reminds us this that isn’t just a problem in the tech industry.
Read the full post on SmartPlanet
