Making It: Why Manufacturing Still Matters

Louis Uchitelle

jun 2009 · The New Press

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A veteran New York Times economics correspondent reports from factories nationwide to illustrate the continuing importance of industry for our country.
 
In the 1950s, manufacturing generated nearly 30 percent of US income. But over the decades, that share has gradually declined to less than 12 percent, at the same time that real estate, finance, and Wall Street trading have grown. While manufacturing’s share of the US economy shrinks, it expands in countries such as China and Germany that have a strong industrial policy. Meanwhile Americans are only vaguely aware of the many consequences—including a decline in their self-image as inventive, practical, and effective people—of the loss of that industrial base.
 
Reporting from places where things were and sometimes still are “Made in the USA”—New York, New York; Boston; Detroit; Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, Indiana; Los Angeles; Midland, Michigan; Milwaukee; Philadelphia; St. Louis; and Washington, DC—Louis Uchitelle argues that the government has a crucial role to play in making domestic manufacturing possible. If the Department of Defense subsidizes the manufacture of weapons and war materiel, why shouldn’t the government support the industrial base that powers our economy?
 
Combining brilliant reportage with an incisive economic and political argument, Making It tells the overlooked story of manufacturing’s still-vital role in the United States and how it might expand.
 
“Compelling . . . demonstrates the intimate connection between good work and national well-being . . . economics with a heart.” —Mike Rose, author of The Mind at Work

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Louis Uchitelle covered economics and labor issues for the New York Times for twenty-five years. Before that, as a foreign correspondent for Associated Press, he covered the American occupation of the Dominican Republic in the 1960s and the rise of a guerrilla movement in Argentina. He is the author of The Disposable American and lives in Scarsdale, New York.