This article is EXTREMELY useful and I will forward it to some friends in the PA Legislature who are worried about our country's economic situation. The fact that container ships leave China full and return empty should be appalling, and it is a sign that the United States will soon be a has-been country unless things change quickly. The same for the fact that China makes eleven times as much steel as the U.S., and consumes far more cement and so on.

"Here are some telltale figures. With only 19 percent of the world’s population, China consumes 53 percent of the world’s cement, 48 percent of the world’s iron ore, 47 percent of the world’s coal, as well as a majority of almost every major commodity. In 2010 China produced 11 times more steel than the United States."

I think that, in the not too distant future when the United States has turned into a has-been country like Spain (anybody remember the Spanish Empire?) this statement will rank with Alfred Thayar Mahan's observation that the discovery of gold in the New World ruined Spanish manufacturing by encouraging the country to buy instead of make what it needed--with the effect of developing the manufacturing industries of its rivals England and Holland.

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement suggests that people are fed up with lost jobs, low wage jobs, and so on; in other words, they are asking questions but they need answers. The answer is that we cannot run an economy by importing Chinese-made goods, marking them up to made-in-America prices, and reselling them. I saw a brand name men's shirt with an original price tag of $80, and it was of course imported from China. Putting a brand name on the garment does not transform it into something made by American, French, or Italian workers (the latter countries are known for their garment industries). It simply consists of putting a fancy label on Chinese-made goods, and most people cannot afford to lay out $50 or $60 extra for labels.

The poor perception of Chinese quality is however justified in my opinion, and could be used to prompt a pushback by American consumers. The first thing that comes to mind is the idea of letting cheap foreign-made retail goods that have been stamped with "Made in America" prices rot on the shelves until December 26 and then buying them for roughly what they are worth: 50 to 75 percent off. I am not sure why the health of the retail sector is overly important to the U.S. anyway, noting that holiday sales do little to promote American manufacturing jobs. Who cares if brand name clothing companies have a good year or a bad year; it's nothing to the American worker, who does not make the products in question.

The quality profession can doubtlessly provide the "Occupy Wall Street" movement with real answers as opposed to "wave red flags and get out the guillotine" (the latter recommended by Roseanne Barr). The real answer consists of Henry Ford's proven observation that there are exactly three ways to create wealth: grow it (agriculture), mine it, or make it in a factory. Lean manufacturing was invented in the U.S. for the express purpose (as shown by the introduction to Frederick Winslow Taylor's "Shop Management") keeping high-wage jobs in the United States. Henry Ford in fact had all the answers so the sign-wavers are simply looking in the wrong places (e.g. blaming "greedy capitalists," although Ford also noted that people whose eye was always on the dollar and not the job were not fit to run much of anything). The sign-wavers need to understand that they cannot have something for nothing, but also that a change in our country's economy--specifically an all-out effort to recover our productive industries--will give them what they want.

We could probably fix our country very quickly if Henry Ford's "My Life and Work," minus the chapter with anti-Semitic content that Ford later repudiated, was made required reading in high schools and colleges. It tells us everything we need to know about how to run an economy, and it was written for front-line workers and not MBA graduates.

Hi Jim,

Great article! 

Please notify me when you write the article I'm looking for i.e. "America: A Call to Action." America can benefit from your experience if you honor my request to write this article.

Regards!

Guru

(Gurbachan Chadha)