We’re going to say something so honest and so outrageous that it’s necessary to start this post with a legal disclaimer: The opinions stated here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The 60 Second Marketer’s parent, BKV, Inc. or its sister agency, 60 Second Communications.
Okay, that said, here’s something that most people are either too afraid to say or not honest enough with themselves to admit:
Ford, GM and Chrysler should shut down their U.S. manufacturing plants and start manufacturing their automobiles overseas.
Sure, it’s an outrageous thing to say. And yes, it’s somewhat inflammatory. But it’s the honest-to-gosh truth.
Just take a look at the other manufacturing operations located in the United States. Oops! Where did they all go? Computers? Manufactured with cheap labor in China. Furniture? Ditto. Electronics? You guessed it — China.
That’s not to say the United States doesn’t have a lot to offer. In fact, we’re poised for some wonderful things to happen in the 21st century. But none of those things involve manufacturing. They almost all involve services and information technology.
America is a great country. And one of the things that makes us great is that we’re a huge melting pot of the smartest, hardest-working, most innovative minds the earth has ever seen.
America is about skilled labor, not unskilled labor (apologies to all the hard-working line workers in car factories across the country). The sooner we accept the fact that we’re better at new ideas, new technologies and new services, the sooner we can get back on track.
Oh sure, it’ll be painful. Look at what happened to Cleveland and Pittsburgh in the 1970s when the steel industry went overseas. But look at where those cities are today — vibrant, lively sources of new ideas, new technologies and new services.
So what’s a country to do? As hard as this is going to be, we should put a 10-year transitional plan into place that migrates workers from the unskilled manufacturing jobs to skilled jobs in information, services and technology.
It’ll be a massive undertaking, along the scale of the arms manufacturing of World War II or the Interstate Highway system of the 1950s. But it’s necessary, because the horrible truth about Ford, GM and Chrysler is that they’re business-model is dead. It’s time for them to start manufacturing their automobiles overseas so we can free up our workers to spend their energies developing new innovations that will help us continute to be the world’s largest econoy well into the 21st century.
















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