Free Republic

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Sending me many suggestions, readers have beseeched me to revive the "nothink nation" theme that I developed in six columns during April and May of 2002. I doubt that editors have that big a stomach for the subject, but I will risk one more column. My target is Bruce Bartlett's syndicated column of Aug. 14, "Manufacturing is not in trouble " (duplicate thread) Like neocons who label people concerned with the facts of the case for the invasion of Iraq as "anti-American left-wing extremists," Bartlett labels me a protectionist "on the...

In a recent column, I argued that the manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy is in relatively good shape, despite the sharp decline in manufacturing employment. I clearly touched a nerve with this column. Not only did I receive a great many e-mails, but my fellow columnist and mentor Paul Craig Roberts took me to task as well. I can't respond to everything I heard, but following is a response to the most frequent criticisms. One common complaint is that U.S. companies are simply reselling goods actually manufactured in China. This is just a misunderstanding of how the gross domestic...

<p>Back in 1995, right in the middle of a nine-year economic boom, Louis Uchitelle co-authored an absurdly downbeat series of New York Times articles on "The Downsizing of America." That series was full of opinion polls, as though popular illusions could substitute for facts. More recently, there has been hope that scandals at the New York Times might have given new editors at least a casual interest in factual accuracy. Apparently not. A couple of weeks ago, the unrepentant Mr. Uchitelle wrote yet another weirdly apocalyptic piece claiming, that "manufacturing is slowly disappearing in the United States."</p>