Say Anything Blog

Tom Blumer

More lying leftie propaganda exposed:

The powerful “manufacturing is in decline” meme won’t go away soon, but it should.

It apparently isn’t enough that the Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Index has read “expansion” in 48 of the past 50 months. It has become an article of faith among reporters and opportunistic politicians that American manufacturing has been, and continues to be, in a long-term decline.

The fact is that government reports also show the exact opposite. Why apparently no one, including the sector’s supporters, has done, or at least published, the simple math involved to debunk the myth of “deindustrialization” is indeed a mystery.

There has been support by anecdote. For example, on August 6, Joel Kotkin, a presidential fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal ("The Myth of Deindustrialization”; link requires subscription). His column led as follows:

It’s been a quarter-century since author John Naisbitt blithely described manufacturing as a “declining sport” that Americans could easily offshore to Asia. Since then obituaries for U.S. manufacturing, both mournful and enraged, have been written many times.

The reports of death are premature. Many of the most vibrant economic regions in this country—from the deep South to the Pacific Northwest—are still making and transporting real goods. The success of America’s “material boys” suggests that the old economy and its blue-collar workers—so often patronized and pitied—can still more than hold their own in today’s global economy.

[...]

When’s the last time you read somebody bemoaning the “de-agrification of America”? And who will say that it would be a bad thing if, over the next few decades, we’re able to get ever more value out of manufacturing with fewer people as long as overall unemployment stays low?

Read the whole thing.

Take away the Left’s constant scaremongering, and they have nothing to offer.

BTW, for those of you who need graphs, there’s one at the link.  Enjoy!