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Name:
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MartiniMan
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Subject:
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Serious Suff
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Date:
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9/2/2009 4:28:38 PM
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I know I am guilty of confirmation bias at times. I think we all do and that's why you have to really understand your audience when making a presentation. In our business my partner and I call this the "Law of Unintended Consequences". We try very hard to imagine what they all could be and then am not really surprised when we learn we missed quite a few that the more ingenious minds come up with.
Now onto my confirmation bias about this story. We really need to examine the reasons that we are losing manufacturing jobs in the U.S. because it has such far-reaching long term impact on our standard of living. The liberal template is evil, greedy corporations are just looking for cheap labor and less regulations. While that is most certainly part of the answer, I would maintain that it makes them neither evil, nor greedy. We want our corporations to run as efficiently as possible and the profit motive is one of the greatest motivators in driving innovation and production, something that benefits us all.
I think America needs to decide where it wants to be vis-a-vis its manufacturing base. We can wish it weren't true, but globalization is here and we can't pretend that its not. Consequently, American businesses have to respond to the various cost issues that impact them with domestic production versus going off shore. Put simply, consumers are not generally willing to pay a lot more for a product simply to keep jobs in the U.S. If they were, we would still have a textile industry that for the most part is totally gone. And if we allow ourselves to get to the point where government tries to tell us that we must be willing to pay more, or that businesses must be willing to lower prices or whatever, we are doomed. We had price controls with Nixon and saw how that worked out. We had Smoot-Hawley and other trade protection schemes and saw what a disaster that was when other governments retaliated.
We also have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed and undeveloped world. Other than the EU (which has also lost a lot of manufacturing) we have some of the highest regulatory burdens (permitting, labor, environmental, safety, etc.). I am not saying these are wrong for us to have these regulations but we have to accept the unintended consequences....manufacturing jobs moving overseas. We also have a government that at times is downright hostile to business and need to recognize that there are governments in the world that are not as hostile.
I guess my main point is that our collective actions have consequences and it is no wonder that we are losing manufacturing jobs or even that manufacturing jobs move to states that are more amenable to business.
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