Brewed Fresh Daily

I'm not sure how many of you read the comments readers leave. Check out this great microcontent. From Don Iannone:

George, don't get "bummed" about manufacturing. Trust me that Ohio is known by Ohioans and people from elsewhere for more than its manufacturing base. The state economy is actually quite diversified--far more so than it was a quarter century ago. The problem is that people are comfortable in their world of generalizations and they don't take the time to look beneath the surface at what we really have here. This is a case where a little appreciative inquiry would come in handy. I don't think we should be ashamed of our manufacturing heritage. It's a rich and innovative heritage that stretches back to the mid-19th century and even before. 62% of all private R&D in America occurs in manufacturing. In the 13-county NEO region alone, manufacturing puts bread on the table of 345,000 households. That's a lot of bread. Right now we have no other industry sector that could support this segment of the population if these jobs were lost. Texas, George W's home state, is known to many as an oil and cattle state, but everyone knows that there is far more to the state, including Austin's tech hotbed, Dallas and Houston's advanced service industries, and many other things. We can have manufacturing and other industries (including new tech industries) in Ohio and NEO at the same time. It's not an either/or situation, rather there is a need for both. My Manufacturing in the Knowledge Economy (M@KE) framework allows us to see the economy in a more integrated way -- that's what we need. There are those that use manufacturing as a disparaging term. There will always be a need for things in society, and somebody somewhere will make them. I do think we need to change the "product mix" that is produced here. That would help. The truth is that manufacturing has steadily become a smaller share of total employment in both Ohio and NE Ohio since 1970. It's share of gross state product (GSP) and metropolitan economic output (MEO) are dropping as well. There are plenty of other states and communities that are dead-set on recruiting away our manufacturing base. For one, I look how many long established Ohio manufacturers have relocated across the Ohio River to Kentucky in the past decade. Other states would be quite happy to have what we have in place. Now, let's talk about the politics here. The truth is that this opast economic downturn has escalated the decline of manufacturing jobs and businesses across the nation, and the White House has done nothing to help. That arrow was properly aimed. Now, to buy votes, George W. is barking about manufacturing job losses in Ohio. Lousy trick, but as they say that is politics. What good politician, or even bad one, wouldn't do the same? If we are smart, we will turn this one back on the President and ask him for $100 million to invest in economic diversification and stabilization in Ohio.

Bill Callahan writes:

I agree with Don I.'s comment entirely. Let me add one thought: Greater Cleveland is the 15th or 16th biggest metropolitan consumer market in the U.S. We spend something like $50 billion a year to buy things, but make almost none of them ourselves. With all our talk of entrepreneurism -- and all the new tools and processes offered by IT -- why do we have no startup firms looking for ways to make bluejeans and home electronics competitively, to sell in our own malls? Jane Jacobs describes the growth of city economies as a process of import substitution eventually creating new exports, with new product ideas sprouting from the competencies of existing firms and industries. (That's a bad summary of stuff in her book The Economy of Cities.) Cleveland still has a large, diverse manufacturing sector. Why aren't local firms rushing in to recapture a piece of the area's huge market for consumer products? Is it really impossible to organize a business that can pay decent wages and still put good-quality blue jeans on local shelves for $20 to $40 a pair?

John Ettorre leaves us this:

Those are two pretty high-powered and insightful comments. One fascinating little sidelight that I always noticed over several years of writing about Cleveland manufacturers--typically mid-to-large and either privately held or part of a venture-backed "rollup" combo--is how very many of them founded and still headquartered here turn out to have most or perhaps even all of their actual manufacturing operations elsewhere, in less-unionized southern states, typically, while continuing to do the top management and much of the back office here. It's a development/trend/dynamic that I've never seen treated either in the media or the academy, but which I know makes this whole idea of manufacturing job retention/job loss more of a gray and complicated subject than it might otherwise seem...

Thank you gentlemen for leaving these, and thanks to all my readers who continue to participate in this discussion, as well as the discussions they start on their own internet sites.