Finally, some new attention paid to the crucial role that making things and hands-on work have played, and must continue to play, in a sustainable U.S. economy…
On Friday, President Obama spoke from a G.E. plant in Schenectady, NY.
“Our challenge,” he said, “is to do everything we can to make it easier for folks to bring products to market and to start and expand new businesses, and to grow and hire new workers. I want plants like this all across America. … We want an economy that’s fueled by what we invent and what we build.”
In addition to capital-improvement, business-incentive tax cuts, and deals to open foreign markets in China, India, and South Korea, the President also discussed a government clean-energy-production program designed to ensure that we can compete “not just in the industries of the past, but also in the industries of the future.”
It’s exciting to hear recognition at the highest levels of government that our American identity—our economic power—does not exist solely on Wall Street. That it’s also in the tradition of innovation and in the muscle and sweat that built the nation.
This gives me hope that the current economic crisis will continue to provide new opportunities to rekindle respect for making and fixing things in this country.
Sometimes I wonder if I will open up the paper some morning and read tha the very last (fill in the blank) machinist, tool and die maker, blacksmith…died in their sleep and took all of their knowledge with them…