[A. Pole]

"Most innovation does not come from some disembodied laboratory," said Stephen S. Cohen, [...] "In order to innovate in what you make, you have to be pretty good at making it — and we are losing that ability."

Free trade bump

[DB]

You can't design things if you don't know how to make them.

If we design it, we still know how to make it.

The bottom line is who makes the lion share of the profit, the owners of the ideas or the manufactures of other peoples ideas. I think there is strong evidence of the former.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Solutions please.

[Sandreckoner]

"The United States is still a powerhouse in manufacturing, and the output of the nation’s factories continues to rise."

But wait, I'm assured on FR (and pretty where everywhere else in American and non-American media, blogs and society in general) that we don't make anything any more, that we're also-rans industrially, even despite having an industrial sector that alone would be the third largest economy on the planet.

I have no problem with folk getting together to discuss the issue decades before it becomes an actual problem, mind you. But this article is just another in a very, very long line that vastly oversimplifies the issue (not just the problem) and provides little beyond Ominousspeak.

[redgolum]

Free trade assumes that those who actually do the work and make the products are stupid.

One of these days, many of those who cheered as their country lost the skill and means to support itself will be out of a job along with those they stomped on.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

"In order to innovate in what you make, you have to be pretty good at making it — and we are losing that ability."

My father is a woodworker, and highly skilled. He renovated a 110 old house to period, can build kitchen cabinets without giving it a second thought, has made many, many pieces of furnishings... I could go on. He started out as a teenager making duck decoys. And then progressed from there.

At one point he was trying to explain to a group of people what a knife for a lathe was, what a router was and how it worked... and how a woodworker must CUT the plank of wood to the right shape, sand it, stain it, varnish it... as well as assembly.

These people looked at him dumbfounded. They didn't know people MADE things like that. They thought that if you wanted cabinets, you ordered them at Loews.

It makes me laugh because people don't realize the amount of work that goes into making something. First you have to have the idea, then design it, then try to make it... THEN you can spend countless hours "tweeking" it until it works properly.

Things don't just snap together on their own. And if your dining room table is just a snapped together piece of cardboard, why waste your money? Eat over the kitchen sink instead... THAT'S more practical, right?