When you go to the large discount stores or the mega-lumber stores, it seems like nearly everything on the shelves is made in China.  It’s hard to find anything manufactured in the United States.  US manufacturing employment peaked in 1950 and has been in decline ever since.  The United States runs large and continual trade deficits with other nations due to the fact that they buy fewer goods from us than we buy from them.  Falling manufacturing employment, coupled with trade deficits, has prompted outcry from protectionists, urging the US government to subsidize American businesses at taxpayer expense or to impose tariffs on foreign goods, all in the name of protecting American jobs. While subsidies and tariff protection seem like cures for our ills, they are foolish and damaging to the United States of America.

First of all, if we were losing our manufacturing jobs to the Chinese, we would expect employment in manufacturing to be falling in the United States and rising in China.  Since 2000 we have lost 3.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States.  However, the Chinese lost over 4.5 million manufacturing jobs during the same period!  In fact, over the past fifteen years manufacturing employment has declined in nearly every developed country.  Why?  Because of improved technology and efficiency in manufacturing worldwide.  On the manufacturing line robots and computers increasingly do what men used to do.  In nearly every manufacturing process machines have replaced men, regardless of whether the manufacturing takes place in China or the United States.

Let’s look at how technology has affected employment in agriculture.  Whereas 100 years ago 40% of the American labor force was employed in farming, today only 2% of our workers produce all the food we can eat!  Over the past 100 years, rather than wringing our hands over the loss of farming jobs, we have embraced the wonderful technological efficiencies in our farming sector and have freed up people who used to farm so that they can engage in other activities that benefit our economy.  If someone were to propose that the US government take tax dollars and hire 50 million Americans to work on farms, he would be rightly branded as an idiot.  After all, why would the American taxpayer want to employ people to work on farms where they are not needed?  Isn’t our economy much better off to have these people doing other types of work?

While it may be hard to see at first, it is obvious to most economists that manufacturing employment is following the same historical path as employment in agriculture.  Each year we manufacture more and more goods with fewer and fewer workers.  Where do those workers go?  They move into the technology and service sectors of our economy, where they can be more productive.  Some argue that jobs in product development and marketing are somehow inferior to those in manufacturing.  This simply isn’t true.  Let’s take the iPod Nano, which retails for about $200.  There are about $94 dollars worth of parts in the Nano.  These parts are sent to China, where a Chinese manufacturing firm is paid $8 to assemble and package each Nano.  The Nano’s are then shipped to the United States and other countries, where Apple sells them for $200 each.  Let me ask you a question?  Would you rather be employed by Apple, a company that innovates and markets the Nano with a markup of $100 per unit, or would you rather be employed on an assembly line in China working for an employer that gets $8 per unit?

Clearly the real money is found not just in manufacturing, but also in design, innovation, and marketing.  There will always be huge profits and possibilities for firms that create and market things like iPods, Google, Razor phones (Motorola), Dreamliners (Boeing) and computer software (Microsoft).  Employees in such firms benefit due to the fact that these companies are constantly innovating and picking up the superior sales and profits inherent in innovation.  Furthermore, the above-mentioned companies sell their products worldwide.  The United States is the world’s most innovative economy by far.  Whereas the manufacturer in China lives in constant fear that Apple will find another firm in Malaysia to assemble its iPod Nano for $6 per unit, American employees of Apple and Ebay can look forward to a bright future as their companies bring new innovations to the world economy.

Tariffs will not help US manufacturers.  They will only invite retaliation in the form of increased tariffs on American goods sold in China and other Asian countries, denying American firms access to the world’s largest and most rapidly growing consumer markets.  American companies are among the most competitive in the world.  Faced with possible extinction, even traditional manufacturers like Ford and General Motors are making great strides to reduce costs so that they can better compete in the global economy.  I’m betting both firms will succeed, but if they don’t their workers will not just “go away”.   They will find employment with existing and soon to exist American firms that continue to innovate and market themselves successfully in an increasingly prosperous and competitive world.

Shock and disbelief were the initial emotions that ran through Craig Johnson as he walked back to his car from the golf course. He had caught his wife cheating with golf pro Bill Haley. (Episode 19, “The Gossip” ) There was no doubt about what was going on in the storage shed. Craig sat silently in the car, leaning over the steering wheel, staring at the early morning dew that had formed on the windshield. Part of him wanted to go back to the shed and thrash the man who had seduced his wife. Another part of him wanted to walk back and confront the woman who had cheated on him. He made the right decision by driving back to the house, showering and shaving, and heading for the office.

It wasn’t a good day to be a patient in the dental office of Craig Johnson, DDS. His mind wasn’t on his dentistry, yet he managed to struggle through the day. After work he would go home to his daughter Megan, to his son, Ethan, and to his wife, Susan, with whom his relationship would never be the same. He vowed not to discuss the situation with Susan in the presence of the children. They would have to be out of the house when he confronted his wife. When he entered the house, Susan came to the front door, greeted him, and gave him a kiss. His skin crawled at the hypocrisy of it all. After dinner he spent some time helping his kids with their homework and told Susan he had some business to attend to at the office. He returned late, crawling into bed without disturbing Susan’s sleep. He was boiling inside, but this was not the time for an argument.

Friday was a bit better at the office. Most of the day Craig kept his mind on his dentistry rather than on the adultery. Megan and Ethan were going to spend the night with their aunt Betty, Susan’s sister. Susan had nothing planned for the evening and Craig wished he hadn’t. During dinner Craig told Susan what had happened at the golf course. She cried. He didn’t need an admission of guilt because it was implied by her reaction. He asked her how long this had been going on and she told him that it had been over a year. Craig felt like a dummy. How could he have not known about this for a year? She asked him if he was going to move out of the house. He replied, “No, Susan, I’m not moving out of the house and neither are the children. You are moving out of the house.” She pleaded with him not to kick her out. She told him that the children needed her. “You wanted to fool around,” said Craig, “Go away from here with your new man and find an apartment.”

Susan was in a panic. She drove away in her car. When she got to the end of the block she stopped the car and called Bill Haley on her cell phone, tearfully telling him what had happened. Bill was displeased. He didn’t want any problems. The disclosure of this affair might jeopardize his position at the Country Club. He didn’t want a wife. He didn’t want children. He didn’t want complications. He told Susan that she shouldn’t come to his apartment that evening. It would only make matters worse. She cried again.

Susan went back to the house. She packed a small suitcase and left. All of a sudden the pleasures of the handsome golf pro didn’t seem worth the price. She would be shunned by her friends, disgraced in the eyes of her parents and children, and face the loss of the substantial income that she shared with her husband. This would be a long night for Susan. There would be no king sized bed with flat screen TV, no luxurious living room with 60-inch plasma HDTV and stereo home theatre, no fancy kitchen with granite countertops in which to grab a midnight snack. This would be a sleepless night spent alone in the confines of a small non-smoking room at the Hubbard Super 8 motel.

As fall lingers in Hubbard and the leaves are nearing their peak colors, it’s time to do the annual “winterizing” chores before it freezes for good. Such tasks include; putting the paint in the basement, removing the boat battery and putting it inside, shutting off the supply valves leading to the outdoor faucets, putting fuel stabilizer in the lawnmower engine, testing the snow blower to make sure it works, and last but not least, lighting the boiler.

Last Tuesday Bill Harnack made the annual trip to the basement to light the ancient Kewanee boiler. The temperature in the house had fallen to about sixty degrees and Betty reminded Bill, for at least the tenth time this month, to light the boiler. This isn’t something that Bill looks forward to, for it signals in the “reign of the gas company” over his pocketbook for the next six months. The decision to light the boiler is however, inevitable, so Tuesday was the day.

Normally the pilot light burns all year, so Bill simply flips an electrical switch to fire up the boiler. This year, however, there was no resounding “phumph” sound of the gas igniting within. Peering in the combustion chamber, Bill could see that the pilot light wasn’t burning. No pilot light, no combustion. Bill had a problem. As he looked at the combustion unit, complete with gas valve and burner, his mind wandered back twenty-nine years. He and Betty were just “kids” then, in their mid twenties. The boiler was oil-fired back then and Betty’s dad, Laverne, who worked for the gas company, told Bill that it was time to “convert to gas.” This wasn’t a task that Bill was prepared for. It didn’t matter. A couple of weeks later Laverne showed up at the house with a used, gas-fired burner complete with valve and pilot control.

Laverne had found the gas burner in a pile of discarded parts at the gas company. The burner was at least 30 years old. Bill asked his father-in-law if this “junk-pile” burner was any good. “Heck”, said Laverne, “This baby will work for years.” “We’ll just stick it into the belly of this old Kewanee boiler and you won’t have to worry about a thing.” In that dingy basement twenty-nine years ago, Bill watched Laverne tear out the old oil-fired burner and install the “new” gas-fired burner. Laverne explained to Bill how the burner worked, carefully going over the built-in safety devices that are essential in all gas burners. While Bill lacked the experience necessary to completely understand what Laverne was teaching him, he listened dutifully. More than anything, Bill was grateful. He and Betty didn’t have two nickels to rub together and Laverne had gotten the burner free. The installation was also free, another “father in law” favor.

Last Tuesday as Bill stared at the old gas burner his father in law had installed nearly thirty years ago, the pilot light didn’t work. Laverne had told Bill that when the pilot light doesn’t work it is almost always because of a bad thermocouple. Remembering the steps that Laverne had taken years ago, Bill extracted the burner from the boiler and went down to the plumbing shop and bought a replacement thermocouple. Within a few minutes, “ole Kewanee” was up and running again!

In the poorly lighted basement, as he put away his tools, Bill remembered a thought he had as he watched Laverne install the burner twenty-nine years ago. “What am I going to do when this guy passes away,” thought Bill. “Who am I going to rely on to fix this stuff?” This coming February, Laverne will have been gone twenty years. The lessons he taught Bill about gas burners and about life, were learned well. After all, this is the third thermocouple that Bill has installed on the old gas burner.

Monday morning, October 2, 2006 a psychologically disturbed man killed himself after murdering five Amish girls at West Nickel Mines School in Bart Township, Pennsylvania.  The next morning I was listening to National Public Radio and they were interviewing some psychologist about the murders.  He expressed the opinion that the surviving students in the Nickel Mines Amish school would have a difficult time dealing with the deaths of their classmates because the Amish schools don’t have licensed, qualified “grief counselors”.

Sorry, pal.  I’m not buying that crock of intellectualized cow crap for a minute.  The Amish are well suited to dealing with death and loss by using a tool that licensed “shrinks” like you have obviously ignored and probably know nothing about, namely, faith in God and Jesus Christ.  Hundreds of years before the first “licensed grief counselor” arrived on the scene the Amish were taking care of each other, praying for each other and forgiving each other.   There’s a lot those Amish could teach a grief counselor; there isn’t much that the grief counselor knows that the Amish haven’t known for centuries.

The Minnesota Twins and their fans, overjoyed after winning the central division American League Championship on the last day of the regular season, are now in shock after being swept and eliminated by the Oakland Athletics, including two losses in the Metrodome.  There are two lessons to be learnt.  First, the playoffs by their very nature are “fluky”.  Any team is capable of anything during a short series.  After establishing themselves during a 162 game season any team, including the mighty Yankees, can be eliminated during the post season “crapshoot”, otherwise called the playoffs.  Second, you can’t make as many serious mistakes as the Twins made during those three games and expect to win.

Nevertheless, it was a magnificent professional baseball season in Minnesota.  A lot of good happened for the Twins and their fans.  There aren’t any teams in professional baseball with a Cy Young winner (Santana), a batting champion (Mauer), and Justin Morneau, a deserving candidate for MVP.  This was a young team with harmony in the clubhouse and plenty of hustle.  The twins are a team that fans in most cities would be proud to claim as their own.  They are a team that Cubs fans would kill for.  Minnesotans are fortunate to have such a good baseball club, characterized by an excellent farm system, an outstanding manager, good coaches, and a general manager who can squeeze more productivity out of a small payroll than almost anyone else in baseball.

The Democrats are having a heyday with the Mark Foley scandal.  Foley, who quit his job as a congressman from Florida after it was disclosed that he sent sexually inappropriate instant messenger communications to house pages, is a creep.  Unlike Bill Clinton, Foley never actually had sex with anyone, but whiny Nancy Pelosy and her sniveling crew in Washington have demanded that Dennis Hastert, the house majority leader resign.  Hastert had a press conference and explained that while it was unfortunate that Foley’s behavior was not caught earlier, he had no personal knowledge of the explicit nature of Foley’s communication and that he had no intention of resigning.  That will put an effective end to the matter.

The Democrats have tried to use the Foley incident to improve their chances in the upcoming midterm elections, where they need to gain of fifteen seats to take control of the House of Representatives.  However, I predict that the Republican message that the Democrats want to “cut and run” in Iraq and that they are weak on national security will prevail in November.  This will leave the Democrats short of their ambition to control the house.  When push comes to shove, the American voters don’t trust the Democrats on national security.

I should state here that Republicans are no less guilty of brazen political acts, like their attempt to have Bill Clinton impeached for staining Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress.  That was a terrible waste of taxpayer money.  Instead of spending an inordinate amount of time and money investigating the sex lives of Foley and Bubba, our elected representatives should allocate a bit of time toward perhaps other more important issues such as nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, the defeat of Muslim extremists, getting a line on excessive federal expenditures, over dependence on oil as an energy source, global warming, and on and on.

This weekend Dave is traveling back to a small Iowa farm town to attend his 35th college reunion. While he corresponds with a handful of classmates mainly around Christmas time, he’s only been back to the college once since he graduated in 1971. Dave is looking forward to the weekend, but his memories of those four years on the rolling hills of Iowa have humored him for many years. Like many church-sponsored colleges that were established in the 1890’s, Dave’s college was purposefully located in a small Iowa town, far from the temptations of the big city. There was no smoking, no drinking, and the women were locked in the dorms after 11 p.m. to protect their dignity.

This rule-based environment discouraged most of the students, but amidst the written rules and stifling bureaucracy, Dave flourished. He did well academically, winning the respect of his professors and peers. But Dave was a perfect chameleon, capable of saying a prayer during church while at the same time plotting a clever trick on his roommate. What really delighted Dave was to examine the “spirit” of a rule and then figure out how to bash the spirit of the rule without actually violating the rule!

For example, freshmen could drive their cars to campus, but then had to place them in “the pound”, an isolated, cabled-off parking lot where they could not be driven except during Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. This policy was in place to encourage freshmen to study more and drive less. The “pound” fees were cheap, about $5 a semester, so Dave purchased a big old station wagon from a junk yard for $20 and had a friend tow it to the pound. The car didn’t even have an engine, but Dave didn’t care. He legally registered his car in the pound and paid $5 a semester for four years. While all of his buddies were snuggling in cold, dark corners with their girlfriends, Dave took his girl to the station wagon to make out! He even had a small propane heater in the vehicle. After Dave graduated, college administrators wondered why he hadn’t taken his car with him. That’s when they noticed that it had a propane heater and no engine! They had to pay a wrecker to haul Dave’s car back to the junkyard. The owner of the junkyard had a good laugh over that one!

Once Dave was on a “double date” with his girlfriend and another couple. Dave had a skeleton key that got them into “Old Main”, the college administration building. Old Main had lots of turrets and balconies, so Dave keyed them into fourth floor office of the Dean of Students, where they walked through another door to an outside balcony. The only way out of the balcony was four stories straight down, or back through the Deans’ office. William, the sixty year-old night watchman and lay minister at the college-sponsored church, heard the four of them talking on the balcony. This became apparent when William turned the lights on in the Dean’s office and Dave realized that they were Bill had trapped them with no possibility for escape. As the night watchman threw open the door to the balcony, Dave glanced up at the kindly old watchman and with an innocent look said, “Bill, would you be willing to offer the closing prayer?” Bill didn’t know what to do at first, but he thought for a moment and offered the closing prayer! He then told Dave and his friends that he wouldn’t say anything about the incident, as long as they promised never again to hold prayer sessions on the balcony.

To avoid any possibility of “hanky panky” among members of the opposite sex, men’s dorms were off limits to females, the only exception being the fourth Sunday afternoon of each month from 2-4 p.m. One of the rules was that room doors were to be “open”, but this rule was vague. Most guys left their doors wide open, but some fellows left their doors open only one inch, causing a controversy about what constituted the legal definition of “open”. This was such a big problem that the student government held a special session to legislate an exact definition of “open”. Legislation was passed. “Open” meant that the door had to be ajar wide enough to accommodate a shoe. Dave read the law carefully. Hmmmm. Wide enough for a shoe! The next time an open house was held, Dave’s door was completely shut with a thin bedroom slipper slammed into the door jam! It stayed that way for the next two open houses until the student government went back to the drawing board and determined that a standard “hard” shoe had to be used! Ah, the “letter of the law”, said Dave. He contemplated becoming a lawyer!

On another occasion, during the wee hours of the morning, Dave noticed a rival Resident Assistant cutting through a padlock on the entry door to the school’s water tower. The Resident Assistant was trying to be a “big man on campus” by showing his freshmen how to climb the water tower. It took the RA and the freshmen about twenty minutes to climb the ladder to the top, where they threw open the hatch for a nice view of the campus. While they were climbing the ladder, Dave jammed a stick in the hasp from the outside so that they wouldn’t be able to get out of the tower when they returned. After looking out of the hatch for a few minutes the fellows climbed down the ladder and realized that for some reason the door wouldn’t open. They were trapped! The Resident Assistant then climbed another twenty minutes back up the ladder and popped open the hatch to try to find some soul to rescue them. He saw Dave walking down the road and yelled and yelled. Dave pretended not to hear him for quite some time. Finally, when the RA’s voice grew raspy from yelling, Dave suddenly looked up. “Gee Dave, get us out of here”, the RA yelled. “Sure”, said Dave. Dave walked over to the door, removed his stick and said; “Golly guys, it was just stuck, why didn’t you push a little harder?” The RA was so impressed that Dave helped them that he did Dave’s laundry for the rest of the semester. If Dave sees the RA this weekend, he might tell him what really happened. After all, 35 years is long enough to keep a secret.