****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I saw an interview of Andrew Liveris on the Nightly Business Report. During an interview about the economy he seemed like a bright CEO so I decided to pick up his book. I'm glad I did!In "Make it in America", Mr. Liveris seeks to shed some light on the reasons behind decline of the American manufacturing industry. Many of them relate to our outdated view of the importance of manufacturing in a modern economy, such as the false belief that America is transforming into a service-based economy which doesn't need to rely on manufacturing.A few key points of Mr. Liveris' book that stuck with me is that manufacturing today is not the low-tech, mundane industry that people think of when the hear the word "manufacturing". Eg. the WWII days of sorting different sized washers on an assembly line by hand, or the laborious job of soldering the same resistor on a circuit board all day. Rather, he explains how manufacturing includes new high-tech businesses such as the building of solar panels, LCD televisions, microprocessors, and the next generation of batteries and green devices. I have to admit I had the "Old-school" perception of manufacturing ingrained in me prior to reading this book. But, the more you think about it--the actual device I'm typing is quite high-tech, and of course not made in America.Mr. Liveris does a good job of explaining manufacturing has been in steep decline over the past 30 years by explaining some of the many headwinds that his sector, and how his sector's challenges are faced by many other industries in America today. Challenges like a lack of skilled engineers and scientists and how our country doesn't have a high perception of these individuals (we all know the coolest jobs are those that flirt with Hollywood and fashion right?), over-burdening tax policies, crumbling national infrastructure, sub-par public education, fluctuating R&D research grants, the slow patent process, delays in obtaining permits, conflicting state and federal regulations, a non-existant country-wide energy policy, and a lack of clear policy and leadership in Washington, creating a sea of uncertainty. All of this makes it difficult for large businesses to determine their fixed costs over the long haul of 10, 20, or even 30 years. In turn this makes the commitment to put down huge sums of money to build hundred-million dollar plants--plants that ultimately create thousands of high-tech, high-paying jobs.When you take a look what other governments are doing to attract high-tech manufacturing, such as free land to build plants, huge capital investments or interest free loans, rapid permit approval, its obvious to see why companies like Dow are establishing facilities overseas and giving millions of jobs to other countries. Sure labor elsewhere is cheaper, but our government here in the States is relatively hostile to business in comparison.For example, as a small business owner of a software company in California I experience this first hand. Although I don't manufacture goods, I design software that results in a saleable product, which adds value and builds a supply chain just like manufacturing does (hiring graphic designers and web designers along the way).As it stands, I'm skittish of hiring any employees full time because of the EDD and the FTB. I have another friend who is a Civil Engineer at Waste Management who explained to me that its a full time to job to abide by all of the state and EPA environmental regulations for a single city dump. That means the have to hire an engineer just to comply with regulations, which means the operation overhead is more expensive, which means your trash bill goes up. I have another friend who is a CPA and he has to spend hundreds of hours to create and file 50 separate tax returns--all with different tax policies--for a nation-wide construction company. This of course means your construction costs for a new home go up.If I was a big Fortune 50 company like the Dow and I had to face all of the headwinds mentioned sofar, I would see a lot of gains from moving my operations overseas.This book gives you an enlightening perspective about how jobs and industry are symbiotic. Both are required for a prosperous future. What's relevant about this subject today (2011) is that there is so much debate in the news and in Washington about how to get the economy back on track and build jobs, and this book makes the answer so obvious: build a more welcoming and efficient environment for businesses in America, and change our perspective on the importance of manufacturing and science/technology in our economy.
