Interesting - in a few days we have articles from the New York Times pointing to Pacific competition in manufacturing, and the LA Times pointing to European competition in manufacturing.
What's interesting is the article on Germany provides a more positive message. "Just a little less consumerism, a little bigger social net, and more vocational training, and everything will be all right." The article on China was, "It ain't coming back."
My bias is the New York Times article more accurately captures the truth for high tech. It's a game of systems and clusters, and it's hard to see us winning. There's little competitive advantage any more, except at our top engineering schools. Perhaps we're better off becoming the world's best farmers?
If you're right, then it could be because of the difference between building cars and building circuits.
It's unlikely Asia will get the same monopoly on building Western cars it has on high tech, simply because cars are difficult to transport.
Consider how many cars you can fit on a container ship compared to how many motherboards.
Another, more assailable, advantage is the reputation Germany has for building cars (the phrase "German Engineering" comes to mind). When someone is about to splash £80k on a Mercedes, they want to know it was built to perfection, and not in a sweatshop which, true or not, is an image commonly ascribed to Asian factories.
Do you know why "Made in <country>" was originally introduced? It was a 19th century ploy by the British to make their consumer able to discriminate against those cheap poorly produced German goods which often tried to pass themselves of as British.
Yeah - "it ain't coming back", but is it not coming back because we don't prostrate ourselves enough, or because we don't care for our workers enough? They seem to want to have it both ways.
What's interesting is the article on Germany provides a more positive message. "Just a little less consumerism, a little bigger social net, and more vocational training, and everything will be all right." The article on China was, "It ain't coming back."
My bias is the New York Times article more accurately captures the truth for high tech. It's a game of systems and clusters, and it's hard to see us winning. There's little competitive advantage any more, except at our top engineering schools. Perhaps we're better off becoming the world's best farmers?