The Decline of Manufacturing in USA

[Arnold Schnitzer]

Vince, that's an excellent treatise. I'd like to add this, having spent about ten years in the personnel business: Companies used to treasure their productive employees, and try to hold onto them. After all, the company had invested a good deal of time and money into training them and looked forward to a nice long-term payout. And companies could be seriously hurt by a key person defecting to the competition. But nowadays, with accountants (and lawyers) in charge, employees are seen only as a necessary evil; after all, it's expensive to pay a person, help with their benefits, and absorb payroll taxes. Many corporations will do nearly anything to avoid having a single employee they might be able to do without. And to shield companies from potential harm, most employees are given limited tasks to perform, so they don't know so much as to become indispensable. And there are few truly American companies left--globalization is more the norm than the exception now. The "new" business model seems to be: Come up with (or steal) a concept; pay an outside consultant to develop it; contract with a firm in Asia to produce it; pay a representative a commission to sell it; and farm out customer service to a boiler room in India. (Pardon my rant.)