Where’d American Industry Go?

Here is a scary thought, and it is brought to us today from Akio Morita, founder of Sony Corporation. After advising Third World countries that their best opportunity to become a nation-state is to develop a manufacturing capacity, he also lends a word of caution: "That world power that loses its manufacturing capacity will cease to be a world power." It is eerily prescient for our own future, with our manufacturing sectors decimated from decades of globalization and free trade. America grew and prospered, first and foremost, on the backs of our industrial sectors. We led the world, at one point, in oil production, gold, silver, copper, cotton, corn, steel… it was these core, physical industries upon which we leapfrogged the rest of the world to become the pre-eminent country. Our society was rich from the profits of these industries.

However, as time moved on, these industries became less and less important to the economic power we had created. After WWII, we tried to pry open markets around the world, lowering tariffs and trade barriers to halt the advance of communism. Free trade was heralded as the way to open markets, to generate new jobs for our workers and the open markets would thus prevent the spread of communism. But somewhere along the way free trade took over open and free markets. In order to have a free trade situation that works, you need to implement labor rights, property rights, environmental rights, judicial rights – all of which are conditions for a prospering economy. When Greece and Portugal wanted to enter the Common Market, the member states utilized around $5billion over five years to help their markets reach maturity before free trade was initiated. When China joined the WTO, the pact did not enforce trade, dumping, or environmental laws. It was a boon to big business.

But having opened markets worldwide, the United States is not at the mercy of this global capitalist monster. The jobs have been at a steady outward flux, first coming from the very industrial entities mentioned above. Not to worry, the US is a more service-based economy now. Then call centers, admin staffing and dispatches moved over seas. Still, the United States has its high tech market, the R&D workhorse of the world. But with those facilities also leaving, one can ask, “What is left?”

The company environment has been altering as well. Companies have grown in the rich medium of American capitalism for decades, sometimes centuries, as we created the conditions ripe for them to grow. Now they are metamorphosing into transnational entities. They are shedding this protective cocoon, and we run the risk of becoming the discarded husk of a nation. How did this happen?

The penultimate mistake, as I have long believed, is allowing business into the political arena. Companies are good at one thing, and one thing only: making money. They are designed purely to turn profits out of raw inputs, and with capitalism they have shown they are extremely adept at doing just that. However, companies have no clue how to run a country. But we have allowed them into our politics, and this has caused a disruption of a natural check-and-balance system. Companies, for example, don’t care about worker safety. They are willing to work people as hard and as dangerously as they can still turn a profit. This is not a failing, it is in their economic genetics. It is up to the government to provide for the workers, make sure they have adequate protections and guarantees for their wellbeing.

But if you let in corporations into a political system, you can start to spell disaster. They get influence over the politics and policies of a region, and they are main drivers in policy decisions that might not be the best for the people who live there. Through corporate donations, they are able to insert themselves into nearly any political debate, their lobbying firms strong to protect their interest. Once upon a time, it was in their interest to protect their profits from competition. So America enacted tariffs, blockades, restrictions, quotas, a whole army of regulations aimed at keeping American companies intact. But now, with the companies becoming transnational, they do not look to America to protect them anymore. Actually, they are working against those same legislations they wanted so desperately in the past, because it dilutes their power to do business on a global scale. They were able to secure tax breaks for incorporating offshore, and so now are robbing the United States of nearly $70 billion a year in tax revenue.

And the political parties, as they stand now, are powerless to stop them. They are dependent on these companies for contributions and donations to keep their short-lived spotlight of fame, and in doing so sell out the demands and desires of their constituents, the people. The citizens of this country become marginalized at the expense of the corporate profit machine.

I do not have all the answers as to how to solve America’s disappearing act with respect to jobs, but I can guarantee that it is a good first step to have the people take over our politics once more. With a government looking out for us as a nation first, and company profits a distant second or third, then we can start to build a strong nation. The demise of our industrial sectors may indeed be a premonition of impending decay, as Morita suggested. We should take heed to ensure that his words don’t ring too true.

Make Sure you Read the Byline

In a capitalistic society such as our own, the dollar is always key. And, in the advent of the 20th century consumption patterns and tremendous growth following the industrial revolution, a company’s relationship to the public is the key ring that enables the company to reap the wealth their stockholders seek. A lot of this perception to the public is done through TV commercials, sponsorship of sporting events, magazine and newsprint ads, and the like. However, a more sure-fire way to sell your product is if you have studies confirming your product is superior to others. And, as companies have found out, it is possible to fund exactly that sort of research.

While general advertising has always been present, and there has always been research into which products work better for specific applications, it has become a subtle tool of the marketing strategy to utilize scientists, doctors, environmentalists, and other groups to create studies that support their own marketing claims: i.e., their product is superior to others. And this has dangerous consequences for our own scientific integrity as well as consumer wellbeing.

A recent example , taken from the headlines a couple weeks ago, relates to a new set of dietary requirements. The panel, which is headed up by such prominent people as Dr. Walter Willet, chairman of the Harvard School of Public Health and Dr. Benjamin Caballero, an obesity researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, came up with some startling opinions. At least at first they were surprising. Amongst others, they recommend that unsweetened tea or coffee can have a safe consumption level of 40 ounces a day. For you Starbucks fans, that is as much as three tall cups of joe. They limit fruit juices to 8 ounces a day, but give men reign to drink as much as 24 ounces of beer daily. Beer got a higher recommended daily allowance than soda, juice, and milk.

All of this sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? Yes, until you start to look at who authored the study. Not the scientists and doctors, but the company sponsoring the research. Unilever provided the financial backing for the study. One of Unilever’s companies is Lipton Tea, which received a huge boost from the report. This creates not so little suspicion about the results of the study. Even more so when you consider that Lipton took out an ad in the USA Today, extolling the study’s findings and offering a coupon for their tea products.

It gets even murkier in another study revealed in December . This involves the same researcher from Stanford University who is reporting about preventative measures for cardiovascular disease. The first one reported that “aspirin is not used more because lipid-lowering statin drugs get greater priority from doctors. That’s even though statins are no more effective at reducing cardiovascular risk than aspirin – and a heck of a lot more expensive.” That is an interesting finding, but even more so was at the bottom of the page. The study was paid for by a grant from aspirin giant Bayer Pharmaceutical Corporation.

Wait, it gets better. The previous May, the same researcher submitted an article describing how “doctors fail to prescribe statins as much as they should to patients at risk for cardiovascular disease, and more aggressive efforts are needed to get patients to use them.” This report, extolling the virtues of statins, was provided financially by Merck, a major manufacturer of statins.

So, if you look at these two articles, the research is saying that doctors need to recommend more patients take statins, but in doing so are marginalizing aspirin use, which is just as effective and cheaper and therefore also neglected? So which is it?

Companies sponsoring research a study is dangerous. Most often it leads to information, which may still be true, but becomes skewed during the reportage. After all, the researcher wouldn’t want to jeopardize his relationship with Bayer, who paid a nice $48,000 for the study, by repeating the findings he had previously verified to be true (and in the process earn his $90,000 from Merck). Maybe statins and aspirin are both under-utilized. That is not at issue. What is at issue is groups and companies utilizing a relatively anonymous source of publicity to make their case to the world of consumers. It has been done a long time by the tobacco industry and oil industry. They create non-profits groups like Citizens for Responsible Futures or something and use that group to campaign for the benefits of their products. It creates this dangerously benign surface for their ad campaigns, and dilutes a lot of the common citizen’s ability to rationalize the data that is being presented. After all, if Phillip Morris came out with a study that said second hand smoke doesn’t kill you, you’d laugh all day long. But if the Concerned Americans for Tobacco Regulation said the same thing, you’d stop and think twice. After all, they’re concerned about us. It’s in their name. And they’re not some company saying this, but an independent group reporting. That carries more weight.

Consumers need to be wary of all reports that come out, no matter what the source. Blindly trusting reports that come out is dangerous, for it can be (and recently, quite often is) a company funneling their own PR information through another channel.

Yet Another Facet

In my un-ending analysis of all things wrong with the American educational system, which I consider key to the future of this country both as a technological, economic, and social model for the rest of the world, I turn to a new facet of this conundrum. One which I have considered for a long time, but have yet to write on. And this new article from the USA Today prompted me to finally break the silence. Today I focus on student work ethic.

There has been a lot of blame assigned to various aspects of the educational system in this country. And most have some merit to them. Do we have a large proportion of teachers who are unfit to educate youngsters? Yes. Do we have a large bureaucracy in the administration of the schools which hampers teacher effectiveness? Yes. Are schools under-funded and often overlooked in budgetary concerns? Most definitely yes.

However, there is ample reason to also point out that the kids themselves are at least partly to blame for their own poor academic performance. It has become almost a given in this society that students who go to class and do the work earn an “A” in the class. However, we forget that just doing the required work satisfactorily should not earn you an “A,” but rather a “C” – for average. Anyone who has gone to college knows that if you just do what the teacher requires of you, you will end up with a C in the class. College professors pull no punches when grading, for they could care less whether you pass or not. There is not the same level of self-responsibility enforced in earlier education, and that is where it starts to hurt us as a nation. Students are allowed to get away with mediocre work, without demanding more from them as people or even as students. If they receive low grades, they can go complaining to their parents, who in turn pressure the schools to ease up on their kids. After all, they did go to class, didn’t they? It is not always the teacher’s fault for this poor performance if they grade fairly. After all, they are there to teach the students, to inspire them. But there is some aspect of self-motivation that needs to begin within the student and the student’s home in order for that education to have an impact.

Going to class, merely being a body in a seat is not sufficient to receive good grades, nor is it enough to elucidate a good education out of the public school system. Students need to be challenged, pushed, and they need to know that it isn’t going to come easy. So often students have the ability to opt-out of classes that they decide are too difficult. Look at physical education (PE) for a moment. Can’t run a mile? Ok, then you don’t have to try to run at all, just walk it. In fact, don’t even bother changing into your gym clothes, just waltz around the track talking to your friends with your backpack still on. What an example of lowering standards to the bottom level! I’m not saying that every student should be an athlete; some are just not built for it. But as PE is a class, the students need to learn to push themselves (physically, in this case) and to accomplish what the teacher puts before them. If you can’t run a mile, that’s fine. Run what you can, walk if you get tired, and then get up and run some more. [Note: fail them in PE… imagine being withheld a diploma, or even forced to repeat a grade, due to your inattention and lack of motivation in physical education] If you allow students to rest at the bottom of your expectations, you end up with a collection of students that are fundamentally unable to compete in the world. And not just because their education is sub-par, but also because they are unwilling to take the responsibility to better themselves and their situations. Their attitude leaves the responsibility of their performance at the feet of other authority figures (teachers, principals, counselors, etc.) to ensure the students make it where they want to go.

And the counselors, teachers, etc. most definitely do want the students to achieve; that is why people get into teaching in the first place (for it certainly is not for the wealth or glamorous lifestyle teaching affords). But they are so tied up – teaching material to a vast number of students, dealing with the red tape, maintaining discipline in the class, and several other projects simultaneously – that they are not always able to motivate students. The lack of motivation arises, I think, from a variety of symptoms, the breadth of which is too expansive to illuminate here. Maybe it is the parents not spending enough time with them (a remedy for a lot of social ills of young people, I think); maybe it is not enough ability to concentrate due to a gross overindulgence in television and video games. There is definitely a pressure put on children that being smart is not “cool.” The nerds are never the trendy ones, and the stereotypes of smart people are almost overwhelmingly negative. There needs to be a way, outside of school, to start children caring about their education, their future.

How to achieve this is anybody’s guess. I could start with a variety of prescriptions, such as spending more time with your children, ensuring they spent a good amount of time doing their homework, helping them whenever possible doing projects and reports (without actually doing the work for them). Some parents I knew promised their kid financial or other physical rewards for performance in school. While the carrot method might work, there is also a deeper cultural change that needs to take place. And a lot of that culture, as mentioned above, has to do with how an education is perceived as forwarding yourself in life. For too long in American society has achieving a good education dimmed as the best way to make your way as an adult. Other, get-rich-quick schemes such as professional sports, acting, popular music have been emphasized continually. Also, the pressure to make money forces students to look no further in their education than what is mandated by law. Out of high school, time to get a job. And since those jobs traditionally are not of great quality or intellectual demand, why bother trying to do well in school, when you won’t even need it or use it? These qualities are dangerous, and have lowered the drive of students as a whole to receive, even demand, a good education.

If you have any doubt about this being a cultural aspect, look at the disparities between American children and immigrant children, even those children born of recent immigrants. There is always a big deal made about how Asian students do so well, even Asian American students. Why is that? It is not some miraculous genius gene born into their race. It is that there is an aspect in that culture that demands that children do well in school. They see education as the way to make something of yourself as an adult, to better yourself, your family, your future. It is not just Asians – immigrants from Europe, Africa, Latin America, all have children with a strong sense of drive to achieve. And they hit the marks, even exceed, far above their American counterparts. In the article sited above, the author mentions this difference: “When asked to identify the most important factors in their performance in math, the percentage of Japanese and Taiwanese students who answered "studying hard" was twice that of American students. American students named native intelligence, and some said the home environment. But a clear majority of students put the responsibility on their teachers. A good teacher, they said, was the determining factor in how well they did in math.”

That, I think, encapsulates this whole argument. The students expect a teacher to just hand them their education. No regards to studying, working, trying. There is a need for students to be driven to work hard. And not driven in a slave-sense, but driven in a sense that they are self-motivated to get an education for themselves. Schools and parents, and society, have been conditioned to see an education as a right of being here, and a diploma as a natural result of sitting in classes for 12 years, whether you put forth the effort or not. It is time to make it apparent that an education in this country takes work. It will not be easy, yet there will always be people there to assist you if you want it. Make the students work for their education, and they will appreciate it and all that it can do for them. Let them rest at the bottom, and you will brew a whole new generation of problems for this country to solve, without a motivated populace to solve them.

On this One, Point the Finger the Other Way

Thank goodness Hugo Chavez is in the political arena. He certainly keeps things interesting. At a time when so much in politics is the same drivel (read: “ubiquitous scandals, voter apathy, selfish politicians”), trying to follow the news and stay current can be a bit, well, boring. Seriously, how many times do we have to listen to people re-hash the Cheney hunting accident? It was an accident, numerous people get hurt every year in hunting accidents more foolish and more preventable than the one the Vice President was involved in. But the Venezuelan president provides a lot of unexpected plot twists in the areas of foreign policy, energy politics, and regional disputes. The latest volleys have been fired over his donation of heating oil to several northeastern US states and communities.Venezuela, though its state-owned subsidiary Citgo, has offered substantial discounts to low-income residents to help offset the high price of heating oil for the winter time. The discount amounts to about 40%, with other charitable organizations, such as homeless shelters, receiving free heating fuel. There has been a lot of speculation behind his reasoning for this. Grandstanding, polishing his image, or genuine concern are some of those most frequently sited. However, belligerent is not a description one would use to describe these actions.

Yet that is exactly what members of the US Congress have done. Rep Joe Barton, R-Texas, called Venezuela’s actions as “part of an unfriendly government’s increasingly belligerend and hostile foreign policy.”It is no secret that Venezuela’s current president has had issues with our own, and a variety of words have transpired between the two governments. He has warned Condeleeza Rice that he “bites” and has rankled this administration with various allegations of coup support, militarization, spying, and other transgressions. This, however, is different. This is about helping those who are in need. These harsh words should not fall upon Chavez, but instead upon our own government.

Aiding the poor should not be some socialist’s “hostile” agenda in America. Rather, it should be the responsibility of our own government to help ensure that people who are less fortunate. That is one of the basic tenets of a central government, especially one that is as prosperous as the United States. Yet we have turned our back on this, one of many social programs that is hurting. And it is not as if we are unable to fund it. The administration, according to Time magazine, is about to clear a $7 billion tax break for oil companies drilling on government lands.

We should not castigate other members of the world community for supplying our needy with what is essentially foreign aid. It is embarrassing to be forced into this situation, and for the necessity of this step. But to let this shame over cloud the reality of the situation, and for the members of the US Congress to point the finger at Chavez and accuse him of hostile foreign policy, is really ridiculous. I’m sure the poor residents in the east coast would not agree with that image of him. If the members of Congress do not want Chavez doling out aid to American citizens, then they should create an environment where that sort of aid is not needed. Perhaps the best assessment of this situation comes from Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who was asked by the governor to look into the legality of the sale. Regardless of the politics played by Venezuela in this transaction, “there is also sound reason to be critical of Congress whose ill-advised neglect makes [the assisted heating oil] necessary.”