Review by Choice Review
Uchitelle (who covered economic and labor issues for the New York Times for 25 years) argues that the decline of American manufacturing--from 29 percent of GDP in 1953 to 12 percent today--has harmed the country, because manufacturing jobs anchored vibrant urban communities and are better and more skill-intensive than the jobs that replaced them. His evidence comes largely from years of visiting factories and knowledgeably interviewing workers, management, owners, and public officials--valuable evidence that makes this book worth reading. He proposes increasing manufacturing's share back to at least 19 percent of GDP, which could be achieved if we were to reject the "misbegotten notion that government shouldn't pick winners." Instead, the government should depreciate the dollar, substantially restrict imports and offshoring, and heavily subsidize manufacturing--attaching strings so that manufacturing firms (which he sees as "semi-public institutions") could no longer relocate without government permission. Most economists will question these proposals, along with his contention that governmental subsidies of manufacturing already equal 20 percent of its revenue--a definition that elastically views as subsidies government infrastructure spending and purchases of manufactured goods (such as police cars) at market prices. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty. --Robert M. Whaples, Wake Forest University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Uchitelle (The Disposable American, 2006), who formerly wrote for the New York Times and the Associated Press, covers the changing state of manufacturing in America and argues that the American government can, and should, intervene to revive this sector. Drawing on his fieldwork across the U.S., from New York to Detroit to Indianapolis, Uchitelle writes how manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are no longer available, or not returning to the country, due to the nature of free trade in an era of globalization. He argues for the government to become more involved in crafting a federal industrial policy aligned with existing state and municipal levels. This short book cites statistics, data, and reports from the government, news outlets, and businesses covering the economic politics of free trade, outsourcing, and offshoring. Readers interested in U.S. labor and economics history, globalization, and political economy will find Uchitelle's latest to be deeply engrossing, convincing, and thoughtfully written.--Pun, Raymond Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Manufacturing in the United States "is not dying," Uchitelle (The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences) argues in this slim, fact-packed book about how factories have declined but not disappeared in the U.S. Reports of manufacturing's demise may be somewhat exaggerated, but there's no question that the sector has shrunk dramatically as a share of the U.S. economy, displacing generations of high school graduates who depended on industrial jobs for middle-class lifestyles. Uchitelle convincingly debunks explanations that blame supposedly unskilled workers for their own plight, instead pointing to the rise of multinational corporations, a lack of federal government subsidies , and destructive competition among U.S. cities to attract factories that haphazardly relocate jobs from point A to point B. Uchitelle's book is strong on nostalgia, history, and honesty as he concludes that, despite all his credible arguments about the value of manufacturing jobs, offshoring from the U.S. isn't likely to be reversed. If industries that offshored manufacturing brought some of that production home, Uchitelle writes, "American would be restored as a manufacturing giant." Could that happen? "The answer," he says, "is no. It's too late." Though repetitive at times, Uchitelle's book is an elegant swan song for a lost era of U.S. manufacturing greatness. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A venerable economics reporter delves into the messy business of American manufacturing.Former longtime New York Times economics and labor writer Uchitelle (The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences, 2006, etc.) provides a slim but powerful critique of the American manufacturing sector. This son of a textile salesman augments his fact-filled account by traveling across the country to meet with manufacturing owners and workers, often being forced to confront his own prejudices. "I finally visited enough factories and interviewed enough blue-collar workers to shake off the stereotype that white-collar office workers were more skilled than their blue-collar counterparts by virtue of working in offices rather than in factories," writes the author. "Factories house the same cross-section of restless, intelligent, achievement-oriented people as offices, where many of the tasks are also repetitive, requiring different but not necessarily superior skills." The heart of the issue is that manufacturing by its very nature requires the government to subsidize this vital economic activity, a necessity that both elected officials and governmental agencies actively choose to ignore. In addition to arguing for a comprehensive federal policy to organize subsidies intelligently, Uchitelle argues for a radical reversal of the controversial practice of off-shoring jobs. It's a smart, well-articulated line of reasoning that touches on the reasons that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders resonated with blue-collar workers during the last election cyclecandidacies, the author notes with bitter irony, only made possible by "the relentless downward pressure on factory output and employment: not just lost jobs that paid well, but the mountain of imports that have supplanted U.S. output, and the free trade agreements such as NAFTA that have kept the imports flowing." Yet Uchitelle is also brutally honest, admitting that none of these changes is likely to come to pass: "Too many horses, in sum, are gone from the barn, and unlikely to return." A robust and fatalistic argument for a return to American greatness. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
