Factory Work: Summing Up
Most of my posts the past several weeks have been about manufacturing. More specifically what has traditionally been blue collar work done in factories. The Atlantic End of Men? cover story, the Andy Grove Business Week commentary and the New Times article on the skill gap between current factory jobs and those of applicants all […]
Andy Grove III
Business Week chose Duke’s Vivek Wadhwa to respond to Andy Grove’s commentary on the need to retain manufacturing jobs. Wadhwa’s response is quite consistent with the basic Michigan Future view of the economy. That the kind of factory jobs that are going overseas are not the kind of jobs Americans need– far too low wage […]
Andy Grove II
Andy Grove in his Business Week commentary lays out a case that America is on track to have high unemployment long term. With all sorts of dangerous implications for the country, social and political as well as economic. He identifies two prime reasons for the country’s likely inability to create jobs at the needed scale. The […]
Andy Grove on Manufacturing
Bloomberg Business Week published an important commentary from legendary former Intel CEO Andy Grove. They also published a response by Duke’s Vivek Wadhwa. Both are worth reading and debating. The case Grove makes is so important, my next few posts will be on the issues he raises. Grove argues that keeping manufacturing jobs in American is a […]
The Real Minnesota Story
High praise for LivingstonDaily.com for a story destroying the claim by a Republican State Senate candidate that Minnesota is a low tax state. Finally someone in the media is willing to check the facts on all the claims that low tax states have the best economies. As they report, when they asked what state had […]
The Challenges of Adult Training
Kudos to the Lansing State Journal and Detroit News for in depth articles on the performance of Michigan’s adult training system. ( You can find the Journal’s article here and the News’ lead article here.) The News focused on the No Worker Left Behind program and its, at best, mixed results. While the Journal takes […]
The Future of Factory Work
Important article in the New York Times on what is happening to manufacturing employment since the economy started to recover from the Great Recession. It identifies the trends that will likely define factory work going forward. The new reality: (1) Some job growth, but at a fraction of what was lost this decade (six million) […]
Men Declining?
Provocative and important cover story in the current issue of the the Atlantic. It’s entitled The End of Men? Clearly exaggerated, but the main point of the article that men are having a harder time than women making the transition to a far more knowledge-based economy is probably true. The article claims the trend is […]
Michigan Ain’t the Worse
Came back from this year’s Detroit Regional Chamber’s terrific Mackinac Policy Conference with one big take away: next year’s conference should be about what is right with Michigan. Folks are so down on Michigan. The public conversation is that we are the worse in everything. It ain’t true! Two recent articles provide evidence that it […]
Ficano on Transit
Great editorial from Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano for One D on transit. Ficano makes the case that rail transit is a key ingredient metro Detroit needs to retain and attract young professionals. Based in part on a recent charrette of University of Michigan students who were asked “if you could start from scratch, what would […]