"For a generation we've been tapping on plastic keyboards, entering data into databases, inventing financial instruments that are abstract, complex and unconnected to any see-able reality. Fortunes were made in the ether, almost no one knows how; there's a sense that this was perhaps part of the problem. Workers tapped on keyboards and produced work they cannot see, touch or necessarily admire. They'd like to make their country better, and stronger, in a way they can see."
--Peggy Noonan, Rectitude Chic, WSJ
But these instruments they can't see! These products may never be! Manufacturing is not chic. Is that why we couldn't give The Big Three a rescue package? Is that why the Treasury Department did not assist The Big Three when it could have done so without the showdown on Captial Hill? But what about poverty? Is poverty chic? How about a two-tier rapidly changing Chinese society? Manufacturing may not be chic, but it is without doubt elevating a people. Where is your shirt made?
Merry Christmas!
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