I have resisted taking this blog to WordPress. I'm on the original blogging tool written by Dave Winer. But in the last 10 days I've lost a bunch of posts. I have three blogs at WordPress now, so don't be surprised if I wind up moving this one.
What started this thought process was a post I saw on Walt Boyes' blog about the political candidates coming to the conclusion that manufacturing job losses have less to do with outsourcing and more to do with automation. Followed by a mea culpa Twitter tweet from Jim Cahill. I wrote a post on that early last week--and it's gone. "@sharilee" on Twitter was watching the conversation. (Sorry Shari, but I think I'm a different persuasion from you.)
At any rate, yes, one thing that drives the economy is productivity--getting more output per person. Sometimes (if there aren't enough sales, or the market is too small, or management is clueless) productivity means fewer people to operate the production. That's what we do. Automation is a produtivity driver--or at least it should be.This isn't rocket science. And, it isn't new. The same thing happened in the agriculture industry over a hundred years ago.
There are two things at work that interest me here. One is that jobs are migrating from direct manufacturing to the automation suppliers. Not so much unskilled work, but definitely engineering and project management jobs.Not sure how that is counted in government statistics--or politicians' rhetoric. The other thing is the challenge--if we want more manufacturing jobs, we need to do more manufacturing. That means entrepreneurs who are searching out markets that aren't served and designing and manufacturing products to meet those needs. In other words, we need vision and action--not recrimination and finger pointing.
Sorry, I have a bias toward action. Two terms on a school board ended my political ambitions ;-)
Oh, if I lost you on Twitter and tweet, go to http://www.twitter.com/garymintchell and check it out.
7:24:42 PM 
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