Making It
Why Manufacturing Still Matters
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- 13,99 €
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- 13,99 €
Publisher Description
A veteran New York Times economics correspondent reports from factories nationwide to illustrate the continuing importance of industry for our country.
In the 1950s, manufacturing generated nearly 30 percent of US income. But over the decades, that share has gradually declined to less than 12 percent, at the same time that real estate, finance, and Wall Street trading have grown. While manufacturing’s share of the US economy shrinks, it expands in countries such as China and Germany that have a strong industrial policy. Meanwhile Americans are only vaguely aware of the many consequences—including a decline in their self-image as inventive, practical, and effective people—of the loss of that industrial base.
Reporting from places where things were and sometimes still are “Made in the USA”—New York, New York; Boston; Detroit; Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, Indiana; Los Angeles; Midland, Michigan; Milwaukee; Philadelphia; St. Louis; and Washington, DC—Louis Uchitelle argues that the government has a crucial role to play in making domestic manufacturing possible. If the Department of Defense subsidizes the manufacture of weapons and war materiel, why shouldn’t the government support the industrial base that powers our economy?
Combining brilliant reportage with an incisive economic and political argument, Making It tells the overlooked story of manufacturing’s still-vital role in the United States and how it might expand.
“Compelling . . . demonstrates the intimate connection between good work and national well-being . . . economics with a heart.” —Mike Rose, author of The Mind at Work
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Manufacturing in the United States "is not dying," Uchitelle (The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences) argues in this slim, fact-packed book about how factories have declined but not disappeared in the U.S. Reports of manufacturing's demise may be somewhat exaggerated, but there's no question that the sector has shrunk dramatically as a share of the U.S. economy, displacing generations of high school graduates who depended on industrial jobs for middle-class lifestyles. Uchitelle convincingly debunks explanations that blame supposedly unskilled workers for their own plight, instead pointing to the rise of multinational corporations, a lack of federal government subsidies , and destructive competition among U.S. cities to attract factories that haphazardly relocate jobs from point A to point B. Uchitelle's book is strong on nostalgia, history, and honesty as he concludes that, despite all his credible arguments about the value of manufacturing jobs, offshoring from the U.S. isn't likely to be reversed. If industries that offshored manufacturing brought some of that production home, Uchitelle writes, "American would be restored as a manufacturing giant." Could that happen? "The answer," he says, "is no. It's too late." Though repetitive at times, Uchitelle's book is an elegant swan song for a lost era of U.S. manufacturing greatness.
