If you want to make it as a nation, you’ve got to make things
“This is the proposition that the basic and irreversible function of an industrial economy is the making of things; that the more things it makes the bigger will be the income, whether dollar or real; and hence that the key to those lost recuperative powers lies . . . in the factory where the lathes and the drills and the fires and the hammers are. It is in the factory and on the land and under the land that purchasing power originates.”
Forbes Magazine Editorial from 1938
(on why America had yet to recover from the depression)
(soure: No Logo)
“Manufacturing’s contribution to the ecpnomic recovery and long-term economic growth extends to other economic sectors, including commodities and professional services, through forward and backward linkages and spillover effects. America’s manufacturing companies also anchor America’s innovation ecosystem, providing demand for American researchers and a supply of R&D in the U.S. Innovation in the U.S. cannot be severed from domestic production; the two belong to an innovation system whose elements benefit each other and flourish or fail together”
from Value Added: America’s Manufacturing Future, 2012
(via Simon Carr)
It’s amazing how often we fail to learn from the mistakes our forebears made.