Posted on 05/19/2015 10:31:18 AM PDT by Lorianne
In the 1950s, every region of Britain had industrial clout. Then came postindustrialism, a disastrous intellectual fad that has proved to be no substitute for advanced manufacturing ___ Anyone puzzled by Scotland’s increasing disaffection should take a look at a book called British Enterprise. Written by Alexander Howard and Ernest Newman, and published in 1952, the immediate afterglow of the festival of Britain, it consisted of short descriptions of each of more than 100 then world-beating British manufacturing companies.
It strikingly illustrates how much more geographically balanced the British economy was in those days. In common with latterday Germany, every region of 1950s Britain had plenty of industrial prowess to boast of.
The Midlands had the British car industry, the world’s second-largest by total output and No 1 in exports. Wales had toys, steel, and domestic appliances; Nottingham had bicycles; Newcastle and Belfast led the world in key areas of heavy engineering; and, of course, Lancashire had cotton.
Then there was Scotland. Its rollcall of exporting titans included Renfrew-based Babcock and Wilcox, which made boilers for the world’s power stations. Other major Scottish exporters included North British Locomotive and the William Beardmore castings company. In Dundee there was National Cash Register’s major British subsidiary and in Kirkcaldy the Nairn linoleum company.
The list went on and on, and at the top was the John Brown company. Although then one of the world’s most technically advanced manufacturers, John Brown is largely forgotten today. Its products, however, are not. They included the Lusitania, HMS Repulse, the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, the QE2 and others. John Brown was the cornerstone of a Clydebank shipbuilding industry that built nearly a third of the world’s ships.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Remember how the libs told us that replacing “dirty” manufacturing with “GREEN!” financial and service industries was helping to save the planet?
Remember how the media trupteted the “Irish Economic Miracle”? as the new “Green!” utopia?
How many of those 100 companies went belly-up after being nationalized?
It will never occur to the Guardian that militant trade unionism did more to destroy British industry than an “intellectual fad” called post industrialism. Much easier to blame a stupid idea than their fellow Marxists.
In all seriousness, this can’t end well. And the end is very near.
When you stop making things, your economy dies.
Trading paper and haircuts is not a way to prosperity, it is only a way to feed off of the bones of your former manufacturing economy.
Even the middleman merchantilist needs something on the front end, and the receiving end.
A post industrial economy in the US is a national dead-end. We devolve back into a third world colony, just like we were over two hundred years ago.
This time around, our new masters will be the asians, the chinese, and all of the other nations that we sold our sovereignty to for short term financial gain.
Sleep well free traders, and know that your personal gain came at the expense of one of the greatest nations on earth.
Well said!
To be fair, a lot of those companies were on their way to going belly up when they were nationalized.
You mean actually making something useful is a way to increase wealth? Who knew?
Yep this free trade carpola starting with NAFTA was really the beginning of the end for the USA. We have to bring back manufacturing. I have to say that Donald Trump if he does decide to run for President is going to get a lot of support for running on jobs and bringing back the business to the US. He will certainly contrast himself to the rest of the field.
People are sick of being out of work.
So the left-left-wing Guardian has finally caught on.
You would be surprised at how much manufacturing is still here. Problem is you can’t find people that want to work in a manufacturing facility. Everyone has been sold on the college educated white collar world as the only type of job that has any dignity.
I have a theory about that. I believe, theoretically you could have a prosperous economy based on haircuts. The trouble is, you are dependent on random customers for your business. If you could line up a steady stream of customers, and could be continually busy, you could convert your resources into greater wealth. Unfortunately, the nature of the business of barbering conspires against that. The difference between selling haircuts and selling automobiles is that you can build cars that no one has yet contracted with you to buy. As long as you have the capital, labor and other inputs gathered in one place, you may as well build up an inventory of value for later sale. You cannot build up an inventory of stored value with haircuts. That is why manufacturing seems so vital to a growing economy. There aren't a lot of idle workers sitting around waiting for a customer to come through the door. Of course, this process can also lead to much greater losses if no one ultimately buys the surplus cars.
I believe you are correct. Observing current events has turned history into a very grim study.
Well said.
Lorrianne, good article.
See Guardian what happens when your high taxes and unions get together and see what they do to your country. Did you seriously not think that they had anything t odo with it?
Then in Jefferson's words "The unthinkable happened". Europe cut us off. Jefferson came to realize that a strong manufacturing base was essential to defend a free state.
A product of free trade is international competition. Over time certain firms will do better, some worse.
From near bankruptcy in the 50s, BMW has prospered by being excellent, at what it does.
Here is the history of British Mini motorcars, now owned and built by BMW.
BMW in turn operates around the globe, manufacturing in Austria, and in South Carolina.
History of Mini:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_(marque)
History of Magna Steyr:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Steyr
Eventually the strongest firms, using the best workers, will prevail.
Words like “strongest” and “best” can be defined many ways.
My guess is former Pontiac workers would insist theirs were excellent products. Near the end, Pontiac openly claimed they wanted to replicate BMW, down to twin kidney grill styles.
Another company that BMW bought was American DesignworksUSA, based in Ventura County, California.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DesignworksUSA
“”You would be surprised at how much manufacturing is still here. Problem is you can’t find people that want to work in a manufacturing facility. Everyone has been sold on the college educated white collar world as the only type of job that has any dignity.””
Nowhere near the number of manufacturers here as compared to 40 years ago.
In less than a day, I can drive to over 100 small towns that used to have at least one major manufacturing facility. It is what the town was built around, it fed, clothed, housed, and educated the town folk. Every one of those plants are now gone for good.
We are making big ticket items at very few locations now. Places like Seattle and Charleston are showing large output in dollars, that is easy when your product sells for over 100 million per item., But the other 99.9 percent of the former mill towns are withering away.
Did you know many plant employees were paid to disassemble and crate up the manufacturing equipment when their plant shut down? It was all shipped to China. These plants did not die due to poor demand for their products. Denim used to be an exclusively American product, now you might find a small boutique fabric mill turn out some every now and then, the rest is made overseas, on US machinery.
Not only are agriculture, mining, construction, and manufacturing all engaged in the production of goods, but also all of the so-called service industries center on goods. There is the cleaning, repair, and maintenance of goods. There is the transportation of and communications concerning goods. There is the industries performed in connection with facilitating the production, distribution, or ownership of goods.There are industries that depend on the use of goods in their rendition.So, even when a large part of the population is employed in services, manufacture and production of goods is still important.
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