Understanding the root causes and agreeing in principal with a broad set of imperatives is a still a far cry from the relentless resolve that we feel will be necessary of the U.S. to revitalize its industrial performance. Regrettably, the kind of will and purpose that we believe will be required is not yet pervasive, even though much progress has been made. Perhaps it is too early, and a few more economic tragedies must take place before the process of awakening becomes widespread.

Are we there yet?

“Made in America” is the report of the commission appointed by MIT President Paul E. Gray in November 1986 “to identify what happened to US industrial performance and what we and others might do to help improve the situation.”

It’s an analysis of US industrial problems, with detailed recommendations on how to help the US regain our productive edge. And guess what! There’s an industry study on the auto industry. In the first paragraph in the study, they ask the question

How did the auto industry, a bulwark of the American economy, lose it’s strong competitive position?

In retrospect, it appears a crucial event was Detroit’s decision to concentrate on the “family-size” car, which allowed overseas competitors to capture other market segments. The most important other segment was that of compact cars, imports of which grew rapidly after the oil crisis in the early 1970s.

The bold is mine. Deja vu all over again.

In an article on the release of the report (1989), Prabhat Mehta writes

The culmination of a two-year, eight-industry study, Made in America examines the causes of the recent slowdown in US productivity growth and makes recommendations for improved economic performance. It cites six problems relating to productivity performance: outdated strategies, short time horizons, technological weakness in development and production, neglect of human resources, failures of cooperation, and government and industry at cross-purposes.

Recommendations for improvement include specific proposals for industry reform and larger macroeconomic imperatives. Focusing upon international markets and the importance of technology and education, the macroeconomic recommendations call for a focus on “the new fundamentals of manufacturing,” the cultivation of a new “economic citizenship,” a blend of cooperation and individualism, adaptation to an emerging world economy, and provision for the future through investment and education.

This is a great book, and tragically, still absolutely relevant. Besides the mea culpa issues for the auto industry that are parroted in the media and on Capital Hill, the authors cite major productivity weaknesses, including short-term research and development horizons, neglecting technological best practices and improvement, neglecting education and training (a topic Krugman has championed for coping with a global economy), and government and industry at cross-purposes in the use of tariff and trade laws. There’s plenty of blame for the auto industry, but plenty to go elsewhere too, like universal health care, which our competitor businesses don’t pay for; like an education system that addresses the reality of a changing workforce in the face of global free trade; and like a government that doesn’t leave critical, long-term R&D to to the profits-focused free market. Just to start…

Update: Read on MIT’s website, “With over 300,000 copies in print in eight languages, Made in America is the best-selling title in the history of MIT Press.”)

Reverend Billy in Times Square

Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir believe that Consumerism is overwhelming our lives. The corporations want us to have experiences only through their products.

Our neighborhoods, “commons” places like stoops and parks and streets and libraries, are disappearing into the corporatized world of big boxes and chain stores. But if we “back away from the product” – even a little bit, well then we Put The Odd Back In God!

For more “odd in god” see the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and be touched by his noodly appendage…

Feeding America says one in eight Americans are struggling with hunger—and it’s only going to get worse. I’ve given up exchanging Christmas gifts in favor of giving what I can to local food banks. All of you struggling with what to get me, just follow the link!

In answer to your question on Zeitgeist, the movie…I have recently been touched by the noodly appendage (and the FSM, ha). I am now a Pastafarian.

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I believe.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/search-online-photo-album
http://slideshowpro.net/news/archive/2007/10/oliver-peoples.php
http://www.couloir.org/js_slideshow/#2
http://slayeroffice.com/code/slide_show/

http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menu/art_gallery.html#nogo
http://www.layersmagazine.com/flash-slideshow-image-gallery.html
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex14/fadeinslideshow.htm
http://www.javascriptkit.com/dhtmltutors/dhtmlrotate4.shtml
http://www.e2interactive.com/e2_photo_gallery/demo.php

BrandSpankingNew’s crossfader script. It’s great, you put some text and images—even links— in some divs and voilà—it all fades in a timed transition.

Mike-o-Matic’s uses Script.aculo.us.
Benjamin Keen’s Flash image scroller is attractive and flexible.
Emrah Baskaya’s custom scrollbar is cross-browser compatible, degrades nicely, and is easy to use—he also has photoshop tutorials and other web development projects (like image swapping with no HTML markup).

Slideshow, content sliders:
http://www.ndoherty.com/demos/coda-slider/1.1/#1
http://opiefoto.com/articles/photoslider#example
http://benjaminsterling.com/jquery-jqgalscroll-photo-gallery/
http://css-tricks.com/examples/FeaturedContentSlider/
http://www.artviper.net/mooHorizonSlider/mooSlider.php
http://www.efectorelativo.net/laboratory/noobSlide/
http://smoothgallery.jondesign.net/showcase/timed-gallery/
http://www.electricprism.com/aeron/slideshow/

Some fifteen years after Summers’s stint in the Reaganomics war room, he reappears as one of the key villains fighting to suppress the regulatory efforts of a top official, Brooksley Born, who was trying to call attention to the dangers of the unregulated derivatives, such as credit swap defaults, which today are considered the key to the current economic crisis.

Deregulation! That’s the ticket. What do you think? Anyone? Anyone?

And the voting machines shouldn’t be pre-set.

I found a link on Think Progress to Why Tuesday? and saw that Norm Ornstein is on the Board.

I love Norm, he’s a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (really Norm?—AEI?), an election analyst for CBS News and writes a weekly column for Roll Call newspaper. I have every book he’s written (how many people can say that?)—my favorite is “The Broken Branch.” He can be hired for speaking engagements; I’m saving up for him to speak at my next birthday. And Andrew Young is on the Board, too. Go on over there and give ‘em some love…

From the Wikipedia article:

Originally one of the youngest economics professors in the history of Harvard University, Sachs became renowned for his work on the challenges of economic development, environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation, debt cancellation, and globalization. He has authored numerous books and articles on these subjects, including The End of Poverty and Common Wealth, both New York Times bestsellers. He has been named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” several times.

I’ll check back when I’ve finished…or buy the book for yourself.

This article in Slate is an entertaining discussion of the book between the author and Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, and author of Why Globalization Works.
]]> http://riotsystems.com/dismal_page/reading-now-common-wealth-by-jeffrey-d-sachs/feed/ http://riotsystems.com/dismal_page/freakonomics/ http://riotsystems.com/dismal_page/freakonomics/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:10:29 +0000 admin http://riotsystems.com/blob2/?p=278

This book is a page-turner. I brought it to the beach and all four adults waited patiently for a turn to read it—not your usual beach book. I liked it because I juxtapose odd topics and don’t always know where…

This book is a page-turner. I brought it to the beach and all four adults waited patiently for a turn to read it—not your usual beach book. I liked it because I juxtapose odd topics and don’t always know where to take them. This book gave me a new perspective. Sample topics:

• Information control as applied to the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents
• The economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers
• The controversial role legalized abortion has played in reducing crime. (Levitt explored this topic in an earlier paper entitled “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime.”)
• The negligible effects of good parenting on education

According to Wikipedia:

In April 2007, co-author Stephen Dubner announced that there will be a sequel to Freakonomics. It will contain further writings about street gang culture from Sudhir Venkatesh, as well as a study of the use of money by capuchin monkeys.[8] Dubner has said the title would be Superfreakonomics,[9] and that one topic will be what makes people good at what they do.

Yeah! Buy the book.

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