The McCain Way: Forget Everything You Know
Posted by SCapozzola on March 12th, 2008All right, it’s time to take John McCain to task again. He’s gone and done it once more—said some things that just don’t add up.
In a Town Hall meeting yesterday morning in St. Louis, the good Senator made a very revealing remark: “The moral of the story is…we’re not going back to the old manufacturing base of the economy.”
But what exactly does that mean?
In the past 150 years, the United States amassed the greatest concentration of manufacturing capability in the history of the world. In 1860, our economy was half that of Great Britain’s. By 1913, it was more than double.
In World War II, the United States became the “Arsenal of Democracy,” building more than 300,000 airplanes in five years. In the years since 1945, the United States has generated much of the world’s wealth and served as protector and benefactor for many struggling countries.
Does anyone believe this would have been possible without a massive industrial base?
Consider some statistics:
-Manufacturing creates wealth: it generates $1.6 trillion for the U.S. economy—12% of GDP.
-Manufacturing supports millions of good-paying jobs: it employs 14 million directly, with another 6-8 million related jobs throughout the rest of the economy.
-Manufacturing accounts for nearly three quarters of the nation’s industrial research and development.
-Manufacturing provides the military hardware necessary to maintain our national defense.
But if we’ve lost 40,000 factories in the past 10 years, shed 3.5 million middle class manufacturing jobs since 2000, and are “not going back to the old manufacturing base,” just exactly where are we headed? Is there some greater, even more prosperous route to be found in a nation of burger flippers and cash register attendants?
But it doesn’t end there. In the same St. Louis speech, McCain also said, “I do not believe in isolationism and protectionism.”
Fine, if true. But it contradicts everything Senator McCain has wrought in his elected career. Inexplicably, he has blocked every U.S. effort to tackle China’s protectionist trade practices, including illegal currency manipulation.
And so, his comments about “old manufacturing,” like his inconsistency on China, reveal troubling hypocrisy in a would-be president. They also demonstrate a simplistic disregard for history at a time when the United States is financially and militarily overextended throughout the world.
To suggest that manufacturing is an antiquated part of the economy defies both common sense and the irresistible laws of commerce. Like gravity, job losses tend to weigh us down, not build us up. It’s doubtful, though, that Senator McCain gets the point.
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March 13th, 2008 at 6:50 am
McCain can say anything he wants but he isn’t God and can’t make value lost reappear. The only reason manufacturing won’t come back is from some sort of manipulation of the market which is unsustainable. You can’t add 2 billion people to the free global market without driving down all wages.
Manufacturing will come back when American wages are balanced against foreign wages. And in fact in a free economy this should occur. It would only not balance in a communist economy that has large amounts of fraud or manipulation.
If global wages were allowed to balance it would come back very quickly. As long as currencies and politicies funk with the system it won’t come back until they destroy the system. And so far it looks like he and his buddies in Washington and Wall Street are all for destroying the system even if they don’t realize it yet.