Appointing a Manufacturing Czar

When you think of the type of work people in poor developing countries are predominantly engaged in, what comes to mind? If you said farming you're smarter than most. You would also think it ludicrous to preserve all the jobs lost on the farm due to innovation and technology over the past one hundred years. Just over forty out of each hundred workers in the U.S. was employed in agriculture at the turn of the twentieth century; today that number is less than two. (Actually, it's just over one.) Technology and innovation in agriculture freed up more people to do other things like build bigger homes, invent iPods, create more lifesaving drugs, etc. Appointing a "farm czar" in an attempt to preserve farming jobs sets us back as a nation and as an economy.

The same is true of manufacturing. Fifty years from now it will be the poorer, developing countries that will have labor predominantly engaged in manufacturing. In the meantime, in the U.S. we're moving in the same direction with manufacturing labor as we did with farm labor over the past one hundred years. It's a sign of progress, not regress. Some apparently think it's a problem.

In 2000, the U.S. had 17.2 million manufacturing jobs. As of August, that number had fallen to 11.8 million, or 8.97 percent of all U.S. jobs, a new low in terms of percentages. In 1979, manufacturing jobs accounted for 30 percent of U.S. employment.

The country has shed nearly 2 million manufacturing jobs since the recession began in December 2007, with manufacturing and construction accounting for 40 percent of the losses.

Since 1979 industrial production as more than doubled in real terms, decreasing slightly to just under two times its 1979 level due to the recession. All the while, manufacturing employment has steadily fallen. We are producing more stuff with fewer people. This again is progress, not something we as a society should bemoan. But when it's political . . .

 President Barack Obama will announce Monday that he's tapping his chief auto adviser to try to revitalize the struggling U.S. manufacturing sector.

Ron Bloom will assume the title of senior counselor for manufacturing policy in addition to his role as senior adviser on the president's task force on the automotive industry.

Ah, what this means is that the Obama Administration will work to create and preserve more jobs in the manufacturing sector. We're going to prop up industries that produce stuff that we don't have a comparative advantage in producing.

And the following let's you know that this is politically motivated and that consumers will be made worse off as a result of Mr. Bloom's mandate. This is a ruse to placate unions.

The president will announce Bloom's additional duties in remarks in Cincinnati at an AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic. Bloom will appear with the president, the White House said, but Bloom won't make a speech.Bloom will work with the National Economic Council on developing policies to help manufacturers. He will work with departments and agencies across the administration, including the departments of Commerce, Treasury, Energy and Labor, to streamline programs and create new initiatives.

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