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24 June, 2001The message that manufacturing is not the future of a modern economy is just nonsense.
The last few years front pages of the newspapers and TV- and radio news have been dominated by the so called. new economy.
What's that?
It is simply the way stock markets brokers call new companies in the electronics, computers and telecommunication sectors. It is also a definition of companies which values at the stock exchanges around the world have been boasted artificially through speculation.
The worse is that the value of the companies concerned is not a real one but is just bubble that has now busted leaving thousands and thousand of workers both blue and white collars out of job.
News about easy money in "new-economy" companies, Microsoft, Compaq, Nokia, Ericsson, Vodafone etc, have created the wrong perception that the traditional strong manufacturing industries such as steel, automobile, white goods-companies or textile, chemicals etc are out of fashion.
The message is simply that manufacturing is not the future of a modern economy. But, this is just nonsense.
Or as the new secretary of trade and industry in UK expressed at the AEEU conference in Blackpool, UK, on June 13th 2001:
"There are not two economies, one old and a new one, there is just one economy."
Manufacturing remains the most important factor in the economy of a modern country. While it is true that service sector of the economy is growing faster than manufacturing, bear in mind that services are linked directly to manufacturing.
For example, physical goods need maintenance, their production and distribution requires transport, information, communications, insurance and real estate services, etc. In other words much of the growth of the services sector is result of growth in manufacturing.
It is true that number of jobs in the manufacturing is shrinking and will shrink even more.
New technologies and new products will constantly change the way things, necessary and less necessary for our life, are manufactured. But the total value of this in the economic system will not be less. On the contrary it will be higher.
The demand must increase if we want to create a sustainable growth over the whole world. To satisfy that, enormous amount of funds are to be invested in production of goods.
At the same time the investment will create jobs and purchasing power for the workers and their family to enable them to buy what they produce and a little more.
Economist, brokers at stock exchanges, neo-liberal politicians, they tend to forget sometime that manufacturing is needed to make necessary goods to make easier for every body to enjoy the life.
Speculations on the other hand only create problems and wealth just for few.
It is simply the way stock markets brokers call new companies in the electronics, computers and telecommunication sectors. It is also a definition of companies which values at the stock exchanges around the world have been boasted artificially through speculation.
The worse is that the value of the companies concerned is not a real one but is just bubble that has now busted leaving thousands and thousand of workers both blue and white collars out of job.
News about easy money in "new-economy" companies, Microsoft, Compaq, Nokia, Ericsson, Vodafone etc, have created the wrong perception that the traditional strong manufacturing industries such as steel, automobile, white goods-companies or textile, chemicals etc are out of fashion.
The message is simply that manufacturing is not the future of a modern economy. But, this is just nonsense.
Or as the new secretary of trade and industry in UK expressed at the AEEU conference in Blackpool, UK, on June 13th 2001:
"There are not two economies, one old and a new one, there is just one economy."
Manufacturing remains the most important factor in the economy of a modern country. While it is true that service sector of the economy is growing faster than manufacturing, bear in mind that services are linked directly to manufacturing.
For example, physical goods need maintenance, their production and distribution requires transport, information, communications, insurance and real estate services, etc. In other words much of the growth of the services sector is result of growth in manufacturing.
It is true that number of jobs in the manufacturing is shrinking and will shrink even more.
New technologies and new products will constantly change the way things, necessary and less necessary for our life, are manufactured. But the total value of this in the economic system will not be less. On the contrary it will be higher.
The demand must increase if we want to create a sustainable growth over the whole world. To satisfy that, enormous amount of funds are to be invested in production of goods.
At the same time the investment will create jobs and purchasing power for the workers and their family to enable them to buy what they produce and a little more.
Economist, brokers at stock exchanges, neo-liberal politicians, they tend to forget sometime that manufacturing is needed to make necessary goods to make easier for every body to enjoy the life.
Speculations on the other hand only create problems and wealth just for few.