Manufacturing

Here is a little thought experiment and maybe the start of a bad joke you once heard in a bar.
3 islands. The first island is populated only with lawyers, the second island is populated only with physicians, the third island is populated with engineers. Come back in 500 years and which societies are thriving or even exist. My guess is that the lawyer and physician islands died off shortly after the experiment started. I think that only the engineers survived because they can actually make stuff: houses, fishing nets, animal pens, horse drawn carts, et cetera.

So why do this little thought experiment? Basically to insult doctors and lawyers? No. I want to bring to light the importance of making stuff. Over the last half century our economy has shed manufacturing jobs (33% of jobs in the 1950s) whilst simultaneously increasing the number of service sector jobs (see page 49 of the PDF). The number of manufacturing jobs in 2004 was 17.5% and has fallen every since (to about 12%).

Media generally portrays this shift as 1) inevitable and 2) desirable. One has to ask oneself, "What is the desirable ratio of manufacturing jobs to service sector jobs?". How low do we have to go with the number of manufacturing jobs before we realize that we've pre-industrialized our economy?

One problem that manufacturing has is a perception (also here) that making stuff is part of the industrial past rather then the driving force behind technology. Ask any kid: do you want to be a lawyer or make shoes? What do you think they will answer? (I wonder what an executive of Nike Corporation would say?). This perception drives students to choose service industry careers (lawyers, physicians, nurse health care aides, managers of McDonalds, insurance salesman, et cetera) because a life of physics, applied math, and engineering is too difficult, boring, underpaid and not as sexy as having that corner office and a business suit.
While Chinese students flood (also here) our graduate science & engineering schools the number of Americans enrolled in graduate engineering & science education hits new lows.

So why should we care? I'll ask you to walk into Walmart, Target, Radio Shack, CompUSA, or Best Buy. Try just to find one item made in the USA. How does that make us any different than Ghana or Uruguay? What happens when the number of manufacturing jobs hits 1% and China decides to sell what it makes to its own internal markets? What then?