Professor Elam

Thursday January 20, 2011

Yesterday in the cost class I explained the reason that class exists. The reason is the decline in the US role in manufacturing. During World War II the US gained a world lead in manufacturing. By the 1970s it was gone. Click on the hyper link to see how it has shrunk just since 2001. 

The text often assumes we are manufacturing particularly in the chapter on budgets in Whitecotton. This is unrealistic in my view. Lately manufacturing employment has picked up. But frankly employers now view American employees as a liability, they simply cost too much money. And so the jobs go elsewhere. All iPads are built at Foxconn a Chinese company where workers have been so stressed they have committed suicide. There are now bars over the windows to keep people from jumping from the buildings. Yet Apple of course has no plans to bring that production back here.