10 ms·

US manufacturing still tops China’s by nearly 46 percent

100 points by cwan 16y ago

beoba 16y ago
"Measured in constant dollars, America’s manufacturing output today is more than double what it was in the early 1970s." What's a 'constant dollar'? Is that nominal or inflation-adjusted? Over that timespan the two could mean very different things.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  "Constant dollars" = inflation-adjusted.
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    However that raises the larger question of whether these inflation-adjustments are accurate. See: http://www.shadowstats.com/article/primers_intro http://www.shadowstats.com/article/primers_intro
    - nostrademons 16y ago
      You can say that about any statistic. The purpose of statistics is to abstract away a large amount of raw data into a summary that people can understand at a glance. Of course it's going to throw away information - some of which might be important - in the process. But those errors are as likely to be on the upside as on the downside. I never would've guessed as a kid that I'd be able to take a phone with me anywhere, with 4G of storage, and a built-in GPS, and the collected information of humanity at my command, for a day's worth of wages for the phone and an hour per month for the service. The cost of a college education has skyrocketed far more quickly than inflation, but it's also never been easier to learn things yourself through the Internet and then demonstrate to potential employers that you've learned them. Health care is far more expensive in constant dollars than it was a generation ago, but that's largely because for many of the most expensive treatments today, the alternative back then was "Die".
ojbyrne 16y ago
"The growth of productivity — output per unit of input — is the fundamental determinant of the growth of a country’s material standard of living." http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Productivity.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Productivity.html
jseliger 16y ago
A lot of people don't understand this. I'm an English grad student, and one of my more, uh, politically-minded professors said in a seminar that the U.S. doesn't manufacture anything anymore. I sent him this e-mail: When I mentioned the bit about the U.S. continuing to manufacture a lot of stuff, I wasn't just trying to be a pain, as it's actually true; see Dept. of Labor Data on the subject here: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/MANEMP.txt http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/MANEMP.txt or a post on the subject here: http://blog.american.com/?p=8593 http://blog.american.com/?p=8593 ("Amazingly, if the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate country, it would be tied with Germany as the world’s third-largest economy."). CNN even points out that "China's manufacturing sector is on the brink of passing that of the United States, according to a report released Monday," (http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/21/news/economy/china_us_manufacturing/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/21/news/economy/china_us_manufa...) but that it hasn't yet. What has happened is that the U.S. manufacturing sector represents a much smaller part of the overall U.S. economy—mostly because the rest of the economy has gotten so big. When you stop believing in polemics and conventional wisdom and start trying to look at what really is, you'll find a lot of unusual stuff.
- uytrhyujkujhy 16y ago
  It's not necessarily good though. A multi-billion $ weapons system built in America for the US taxpayer, even if it is never deployed or even abandoned, counts as a $Bn manufacturing output. As a famous economist said - from a GDP point of view the ideal person is someone undergoing cancer treatment during an expensive divorce
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - gscott 16y ago
    And many of those components going into these products come from elsewhere. A manufacturing company I worked with bought parts from all over the world and had few US parts. When I tried to increase the number of parts they were using from the US they said good luck and I failed because nothing was available and no one wanted to make what I wanted (for example I wanted 1,000 metal tubes bent, to make them into legs... there were plenty of places that I visited could do it but they didn't want to so it ended up being done in Mexico).
3pt14159 16y ago
While it is true that North America still manufactures great quantities of luxury and high tech stuff, that isn't what is pissing off the populists. They couldn't care less if our manufacturing doubled in terms of dollars of output. What they really want is a return to the highly paid, unionized, tradesperson. To them robots making Chevy trucks matters just as much to their lives as nerds writing software. As productivity increases continue, demand for noncerebral labor declines as a ratio for demand of cerebral labor. Even if the average tradesperson is better of today than 40 years ago (they have cars with AC, for example) they want their relative standing to increase. They used to be paid, say, half of what the engineer made, now its a fifth. That really, really pisses them off, so they take it out on China. Combine that with the fact that 40 years ago "mom" stayed home, converting (tax free) raw ingredients into delicious food, as well as watched the children and mended the clothes. Now they buy less healthy instant food and need to find a way to pay for daycare, as well as a second car to get to work, and if they are American, substantially inflated healthcare costs. I'm not envious of their position.
- hartror 16y ago
  It depends on the economy, Australian tradespeople make the same if not more than good coders right now. We're growing so fast the demand for those skills is high and shows no signs of dropping off.
  - MarkSimpson 16y ago
    Yeah. My brother just finished his apprenticeship in cabinet making and is already on more than me, a programmer. Unions don't have anything to do with it, either - I don't think he's even in one - it's just that the demand for tradesmen is so high over here. Hence the rise in cashed up bogans.
    - Dramatize 16y ago
      More so with our natural disasters creating huge demand for tradies.
marshray 16y ago
Gee I remember when it seemed the US's manufacturing output was orders of magnitude beyond China (and Japan seemed like it was where China is today). Good for China for bootstrapping their economy so effectively, but no one would claim that the US trade deficit was irrelevant to the process either. Even if you believe that China's output is now approaching parity with the US (46 percent is nearly equal on the long term graph), is it not reasonable to ask at what point they're going to start buying some of our stuff in return? Or if they're not going to spend their dollars with us, the least they could do is let their own currency valuation happen in open markets.
- sunsu 16y ago
  Let's hope the US changes it's ways before the Chinese "start buying some of our stuff". When that happens it will mean China has finally developed its own consumer class. At that point, China wont be so dependent on US consumers to buy their goods and there wont be much incentive to hold on to our continuously growing debt.
  - shrughes 16y ago
    What are they going to do, sell it? Gosh, this will push the interest rates slightly higher! That would be so scary.
- rdouble 16y ago
  Even if you believe that China's output is now approaching parity with the US ... is it not reasonable to ask at what point they're going to start buying some of our stuff in return? They have bought 20% of the US Debt... Edit: 20% of the US debt owned by foreign countries
  - grav1tas 16y ago
    That's incorrect. They hold 20% of US Debt held by foreign countries. In the total scheme of things I think it amounts to somewhere between 6-9% of the total US debt.
  - 16y ago
bugsy 16y ago
I was reading about how the US now considers McDonalds hamburgers to be part of US manufacturing output, whereas in the past that was credited as service since it was a restaurant. So we must ask. Does the claim made by boston.com include hamburgers?
- uytrhyujkujhy 16y ago
  It also misses a lot of chinese industry. It's somewhat harder to track the business operations of a Chinese army owned construction company than a US NYSE listed engineering firm. In $ terms there is also a big gap. The Boston big dig costs $22Bn, while a similar project undertaken by chinese army conscripts is likely to cost 1/100 of that, it doesn't mean that the US industry is 100x bigger or better - just 100x as expensive
- dtc 16y ago
  That's nonsense. This never happened. If you are going to make an extraordinary claim like that, take a moment to find a source.
  - bugsy 16y ago
    Citations: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/20/politics/main601336.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/20/politics/main60133... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/business/in-the-new-economics-fast-food-factories.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/business/in-the-new-econom... I await your apology.
    - dtc 16y ago
      No where in those articles does it state that making hamburgers has been treated as manufacturing. In fact the cbs article says "The report does not recommend that burger-flippers be counted alongside factory workers." There was a report that discussed definitions and how they affected things like tax breaks. The news articles had fun speculating how it would help labor statistics if they did start counting these as manufacturing jobs. But it was just speculation. Wild speculation.
joelmichael 16y ago
I am skeptical of this article because I just looked up this data a month or so ago -- opened the UN's Excel document and everything -- and found that China had recently surpassed the US in manufacturing output. Unfortunately I am limited to the iPhone right now, so can't re-investigate the data myself until later. I have no interest in diminishing the American economy nor in over-valuing the manufacturing sector, but facts are facts and I'm legitimately confused now.
- joelmichael 16y ago
  OK, I am back at my computer. My source is the following website, specifically the second link listed: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnllist.asp http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnllist.asp If you open that up, scroll down to the United States, go to the Manufacturing row, and scroll all the way over to the right (2009) you will find $1.78T dollars. If you search for China and do the same, you will find $2.05T. You may also note that China, with its high rate of growth, only first surpassed the US in 2008. The next highest country after China and the US is Japan with $1.05T. Edit: Interestingly, the corresponding spreadsheet for "2005 dollars" shows the US at $1.68T and China at $1.48T in 2009. Now I'm even more confused. Shouldn't the difference between 2005 and "current" dollars scale proportionately?
D_Alex 16y ago
Measuring manufacturing in $$$ might be a bit misleading. If China makes 4 $10 business shirts for every one $50 business shirt the US makes ... ?
- uytrhyujkujhy 16y ago
  Then that shows that the US industrial output is bigger. That's why Germany makes $50,000 cars and Mexico makes $15,000 ones
- ars 16y ago
  How else could you possibly compare them?
  - Zpirate 16y ago
    Purchasing power parity in local currency?
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      You didn't answer ars' question, you simply deferred the answer to whoever is defining PPP.
  - D_Alex 16y ago
    You could compare them in many ways, and $$$ is possibly the best single measure. But the OP article is uncritically self-congratulatory, which is not altogether appropriate given that same products of equal quality do cost a lot less if made in China.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- brc 16y ago
  yes, back in the old days they used to measure an economy by tons shipped. It doesn't apply anymore due to higher value things being lighter, and tracking air-shipments would be a problem. However, it does underlie a point - tracking the value of shipments by a currency value can easily obscure important facts.
brc 16y ago
Interesting enough - but what's the trend? Is growth in US manufacturing growing at the same pace as China? Or is it continuing to decline, and will cross at some point.
gersh 16y ago
Some would disagree "The US remained the world’s biggest manufacturing nation by output last year, but is poised to relinquish this slot in 2011 to China – thus ending a 110-year run as the number one country in factory production." http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af2219cc-7c86-11df-8b74-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1DEyzhNBC http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af2219cc-7c86-11df-8b74-00144feabd...
gxs 16y ago
I think it's great Americans have a healthy fear of the Chinese. Keeps them from resting on their laurels.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  Why can't they have a healthy respect for them instead? One nation's people fearing another rarely leads to good things.
pitiburi 16y ago
A commenter in the original article said it better than anyone: "We don't get to qualify as a manufacturing giant just because the defense department gets suckered into paying billions of dollars for a fancy piece of equipment that is built by a small number of folks in a few isolated pockets of the country." Then again, the numbers (that seem to be incorrect, go check the commments in the original) are however about the money it is made from the manufacturing. Then this is even more worrisome for USA, because that would mean that China has been growing steadily at 9-10 per cent each year, while USA makes MORE money from manufacturing but all it does is barely grow, and produce the biggest debt the world has ever seen.
Frojo 16y ago
I thought, that a large percentage if not the majority of US 'manufactoring' is actually agriculture.
known 16y ago
Small companies create jobs within America. Big companies create jobs in China/India. Hence Govt must break big companies into smaller companies.
wmeredith 16y ago
I forwarded this on to my father who did some excellent source fact checking. I just had to share with HN. An interesting editorial and comments. I think the Boston Globe is a legit publication, but I was not familiar with Jeff Jacoby. Although he writes well, I became wary at his first reference to the American Enterprise Institute, so I did a little research. I must admit that my suspicions were confirmed. The sole purpose of the AEI, and similar type organizations on both sides of the political spectrum, is to espouse and promote an ideology. The introduction (Message from the Chairman and President) to their 2010 annual report state, “AFI is showing that liberty, opportunity, and entrepreneurship are not only good economic principles, but moral imperatives.” I have learned to beware whenever anyone claims to know the Truth and talks about “moral imperatives” Such rhetoric has been used to justify the worst atrocities and most hateful acts of terrorism in human history. I was also unfamiliar with Mark Perry, one of the moral authorities cited by Jacoby. In addition to being a “visiting scholar” at the AEI, Perry is a member of the Board of Directors of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, an orthodoxy right-wing “think tank” based in Michigan. According to the Michigan Education Association, "The role of the Mackinac Center is to change public opinion and move public policy toward the political right. The Mackinac Center does not conduct neutral or objective scholarship. Rather, it provides the media and government officials with publications designed to promote and advance its conservative agenda." If any doubt remains about Jacoby’s objectivity or the reliability of his sources, a visit to the AEI website reveals their Board of Directors includes none other than The Honorable Richard B. Cheney. Based on what little I was able learn, Jacoby, a rightwing taking head who was recruited by the Globe to add balance (or the appearance of balance) to their otherwise liberal editorial page, would feel at home in the company of the former VP. In fairness to Jacoby, he is neither a journalist nor a social scientist. His writes editorials that express a point of view. His job does on included conducting scientific research with the intent of objectively depicting reality. In other words, consider the source. There's nothing more that the captains of industry would like to peddle more than American manufacturing is great. The real story is the jobs have been sent over seas and the executive pay has been increased at the top for efficiency.

100 points by cwan 16y ago

beoba 16y ago

"Measured in constant dollars, America’s manufacturing output today is more than double what it was in the early 1970s." What's a 'constant dollar'? Is that nominal or inflation-adjusted? Over that timespan the two could mean very different things.

nostrademons 16y ago
"Constant dollars" = inflation-adjusted.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  However that raises the larger question of whether these inflation-adjustments are accurate. See: http://www.shadowstats.com/article/primers_intro http://www.shadowstats.com/article/primers_intro
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    You can say that about any statistic. The purpose of statistics is to abstract away a large amount of raw data into a summary that people can understand at a glance. Of course it's going to throw away information - some of which might be important - in the process. But those errors are as likely to be on the upside as on the downside. I never would've guessed as a kid that I'd be able to take a phone with me anywhere, with 4G of storage, and a built-in GPS, and the collected information of humanity at my command, for a day's worth of wages for the phone and an hour per month for the service. The cost of a college education has skyrocketed far more quickly than inflation, but it's also never been easier to learn things yourself through the Internet and then demonstrate to potential employers that you've learned them. Health care is far more expensive in constant dollars than it was a generation ago, but that's largely because for many of the most expensive treatments today, the alternative back then was "Die".

ojbyrne 16y ago

"The growth of productivity — output per unit of input — is the fundamental determinant of the growth of a country’s material standard of living." http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Productivity.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Productivity.html

jseliger 16y ago

A lot of people don't understand this. I'm an English grad student, and one of my more, uh, politically-minded professors said in a seminar that the U.S. doesn't manufacture anything anymore. I sent him this e-mail: When I mentioned the bit about the U.S. continuing to manufacture a lot of stuff, I wasn't just trying to be a pain, as it's actually true; see Dept. of Labor Data on the subject here: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/MANEMP.txt http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/MANEMP.txt or a post on the subject here: http://blog.american.com/?p=8593 http://blog.american.com/?p=8593 ("Amazingly, if the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate country, it would be tied with Germany as the world’s third-largest economy."). CNN even points out that "China's manufacturing sector is on the brink of passing that of the United States, according to a report released Monday," (http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/21/news/economy/china_us_manufacturing/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/21/news/economy/china_us_manufa...) but that it hasn't yet. What has happened is that the U.S. manufacturing sector represents a much smaller part of the overall U.S. economy—mostly because the rest of the economy has gotten so big. When you stop believing in polemics and conventional wisdom and start trying to look at what really is, you'll find a lot of unusual stuff.

uytrhyujkujhy 16y ago
It's not necessarily good though. A multi-billion $ weapons system built in America for the US taxpayer, even if it is never deployed or even abandoned, counts as a $Bn manufacturing output. As a famous economist said - from a GDP point of view the ideal person is someone undergoing cancer treatment during an expensive divorce
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- gscott 16y ago
  And many of those components going into these products come from elsewhere. A manufacturing company I worked with bought parts from all over the world and had few US parts. When I tried to increase the number of parts they were using from the US they said good luck and I failed because nothing was available and no one wanted to make what I wanted (for example I wanted 1,000 metal tubes bent, to make them into legs... there were plenty of places that I visited could do it but they didn't want to so it ended up being done in Mexico).

3pt14159 16y ago

While it is true that North America still manufactures great quantities of luxury and high tech stuff, that isn't what is pissing off the populists. They couldn't care less if our manufacturing doubled in terms of dollars of output. What they really want is a return to the highly paid, unionized, tradesperson. To them robots making Chevy trucks matters just as much to their lives as nerds writing software. As productivity increases continue, demand for noncerebral labor declines as a ratio for demand of cerebral labor. Even if the average tradesperson is better of today than 40 years ago (they have cars with AC, for example) they want their relative standing to increase. They used to be paid, say, half of what the engineer made, now its a fifth. That really, really pisses them off, so they take it out on China. Combine that with the fact that 40 years ago "mom" stayed home, converting (tax free) raw ingredients into delicious food, as well as watched the children and mended the clothes. Now they buy less healthy instant food and need to find a way to pay for daycare, as well as a second car to get to work, and if they are American, substantially inflated healthcare costs. I'm not envious of their position.

hartror 16y ago
It depends on the economy, Australian tradespeople make the same if not more than good coders right now. We're growing so fast the demand for those skills is high and shows no signs of dropping off.
- MarkSimpson 16y ago
  Yeah. My brother just finished his apprenticeship in cabinet making and is already on more than me, a programmer. Unions don't have anything to do with it, either - I don't think he's even in one - it's just that the demand for tradesmen is so high over here. Hence the rise in cashed up bogans.
  - Dramatize 16y ago
    More so with our natural disasters creating huge demand for tradies.

marshray 16y ago

Gee I remember when it seemed the US's manufacturing output was orders of magnitude beyond China (and Japan seemed like it was where China is today). Good for China for bootstrapping their economy so effectively, but no one would claim that the US trade deficit was irrelevant to the process either. Even if you believe that China's output is now approaching parity with the US (46 percent is nearly equal on the long term graph), is it not reasonable to ask at what point they're going to start buying some of our stuff in return? Or if they're not going to spend their dollars with us, the least they could do is let their own currency valuation happen in open markets.

sunsu 16y ago
Let's hope the US changes it's ways before the Chinese "start buying some of our stuff". When that happens it will mean China has finally developed its own consumer class. At that point, China wont be so dependent on US consumers to buy their goods and there wont be much incentive to hold on to our continuously growing debt.
- shrughes 16y ago
  What are they going to do, sell it? Gosh, this will push the interest rates slightly higher! That would be so scary.
rdouble 16y ago
Even if you believe that China's output is now approaching parity with the US ... is it not reasonable to ask at what point they're going to start buying some of our stuff in return? They have bought 20% of the US Debt... Edit: 20% of the US debt owned by foreign countries
- grav1tas 16y ago
  That's incorrect. They hold 20% of US Debt held by foreign countries. In the total scheme of things I think it amounts to somewhere between 6-9% of the total US debt.
- 16y ago

bugsy 16y ago

I was reading about how the US now considers McDonalds hamburgers to be part of US manufacturing output, whereas in the past that was credited as service since it was a restaurant. So we must ask. Does the claim made by boston.com include hamburgers?

uytrhyujkujhy 16y ago
It also misses a lot of chinese industry. It's somewhat harder to track the business operations of a Chinese army owned construction company than a US NYSE listed engineering firm. In $ terms there is also a big gap. The Boston big dig costs $22Bn, while a similar project undertaken by chinese army conscripts is likely to cost 1/100 of that, it doesn't mean that the US industry is 100x bigger or better - just 100x as expensive
dtc 16y ago
That's nonsense. This never happened. If you are going to make an extraordinary claim like that, take a moment to find a source.
- bugsy 16y ago
  Citations: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/20/politics/main601336.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/20/politics/main60133... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/business/in-the-new-economics-fast-food-factories.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/20/business/in-the-new-econom... I await your apology.
  - dtc 16y ago
    No where in those articles does it state that making hamburgers has been treated as manufacturing. In fact the cbs article says "The report does not recommend that burger-flippers be counted alongside factory workers." There was a report that discussed definitions and how they affected things like tax breaks. The news articles had fun speculating how it would help labor statistics if they did start counting these as manufacturing jobs. But it was just speculation. Wild speculation.

joelmichael 16y ago

I am skeptical of this article because I just looked up this data a month or so ago -- opened the UN's Excel document and everything -- and found that China had recently surpassed the US in manufacturing output. Unfortunately I am limited to the iPhone right now, so can't re-investigate the data myself until later. I have no interest in diminishing the American economy nor in over-valuing the manufacturing sector, but facts are facts and I'm legitimately confused now.

joelmichael 16y ago
OK, I am back at my computer. My source is the following website, specifically the second link listed: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnllist.asp http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnllist.asp If you open that up, scroll down to the United States, go to the Manufacturing row, and scroll all the way over to the right (2009) you will find $1.78T dollars. If you search for China and do the same, you will find $2.05T. You may also note that China, with its high rate of growth, only first surpassed the US in 2008. The next highest country after China and the US is Japan with $1.05T. Edit: Interestingly, the corresponding spreadsheet for "2005 dollars" shows the US at $1.68T and China at $1.48T in 2009. Now I'm even more confused. Shouldn't the difference between 2005 and "current" dollars scale proportionately?

D_Alex 16y ago

Measuring manufacturing in $$$ might be a bit misleading. If China makes 4 $10 business shirts for every one $50 business shirt the US makes ... ?

uytrhyujkujhy 16y ago
Then that shows that the US industrial output is bigger. That's why Germany makes $50,000 cars and Mexico makes $15,000 ones
ars 16y ago
How else could you possibly compare them?
- Zpirate 16y ago
  Purchasing power parity in local currency?
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    You didn't answer ars' question, you simply deferred the answer to whoever is defining PPP.
- D_Alex 16y ago
  You could compare them in many ways, and $$$ is possibly the best single measure. But the OP article is uncritically self-congratulatory, which is not altogether appropriate given that same products of equal quality do cost a lot less if made in China.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
brc 16y ago
yes, back in the old days they used to measure an economy by tons shipped. It doesn't apply anymore due to higher value things being lighter, and tracking air-shipments would be a problem. However, it does underlie a point - tracking the value of shipments by a currency value can easily obscure important facts.

brc 16y ago

Interesting enough - but what's the trend? Is growth in US manufacturing growing at the same pace as China? Or is it continuing to decline, and will cross at some point.

gersh 16y ago

Some would disagree "The US remained the world’s biggest manufacturing nation by output last year, but is poised to relinquish this slot in 2011 to China – thus ending a 110-year run as the number one country in factory production." http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af2219cc-7c86-11df-8b74-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1DEyzhNBC http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/af2219cc-7c86-11df-8b74-00144feabd...

gxs 16y ago

I think it's great Americans have a healthy fear of the Chinese. Keeps them from resting on their laurels.

JonnieCache 16y ago
Why can't they have a healthy respect for them instead? One nation's people fearing another rarely leads to good things.

pitiburi 16y ago

A commenter in the original article said it better than anyone: "We don't get to qualify as a manufacturing giant just because the defense department gets suckered into paying billions of dollars for a fancy piece of equipment that is built by a small number of folks in a few isolated pockets of the country." Then again, the numbers (that seem to be incorrect, go check the commments in the original) are however about the money it is made from the manufacturing. Then this is even more worrisome for USA, because that would mean that China has been growing steadily at 9-10 per cent each year, while USA makes MORE money from manufacturing but all it does is barely grow, and produce the biggest debt the world has ever seen.

Frojo 16y ago

I thought, that a large percentage if not the majority of US 'manufactoring' is actually agriculture.

known 16y ago

Small companies create jobs within America. Big companies create jobs in China/India. Hence Govt must break big companies into smaller companies.

wmeredith 16y ago

I forwarded this on to my father who did some excellent source fact checking. I just had to share with HN. An interesting editorial and comments. I think the Boston Globe is a legit publication, but I was not familiar with Jeff Jacoby. Although he writes well, I became wary at his first reference to the American Enterprise Institute, so I did a little research. I must admit that my suspicions were confirmed. The sole purpose of the AEI, and similar type organizations on both sides of the political spectrum, is to espouse and promote an ideology. The introduction (Message from the Chairman and President) to their 2010 annual report state, “AFI is showing that liberty, opportunity, and entrepreneurship are not only good economic principles, but moral imperatives.” I have learned to beware whenever anyone claims to know the Truth and talks about “moral imperatives” Such rhetoric has been used to justify the worst atrocities and most hateful acts of terrorism in human history. I was also unfamiliar with Mark Perry, one of the moral authorities cited by Jacoby. In addition to being a “visiting scholar” at the AEI, Perry is a member of the Board of Directors of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, an orthodoxy right-wing “think tank” based in Michigan. According to the Michigan Education Association, "The role of the Mackinac Center is to change public opinion and move public policy toward the political right. The Mackinac Center does not conduct neutral or objective scholarship. Rather, it provides the media and government officials with publications designed to promote and advance its conservative agenda." If any doubt remains about Jacoby’s objectivity or the reliability of his sources, a visit to the AEI website reveals their Board of Directors includes none other than The Honorable Richard B. Cheney. Based on what little I was able learn, Jacoby, a rightwing taking head who was recruited by the Globe to add balance (or the appearance of balance) to their otherwise liberal editorial page, would feel at home in the company of the former VP. In fairness to Jacoby, he is neither a journalist nor a social scientist. His writes editorials that express a point of view. His job does on included conducting scientific research with the intent of objectively depicting reality. In other words, consider the source. There's nothing more that the captains of industry would like to peddle more than American manufacturing is great. The real story is the jobs have been sent over seas and the executive pay has been increased at the top for efficiency.