MADE IN AMERICA

I don't know when it happened or why but somewhere along the line our country made a decision that working with our hands was a bad thing. We decided that we'd become a nation of managers, where everyone would have a college education and this would somehow translate into solid jobs and a happy life.

It's a lie.

The truth is that if we don't build things, if we don't take raw materials and create something of value from them them we aren't creating wealth. And as we've now seen, if we try to make money by just skimming a little off the top of other peoples wealth by charging management fees we will, slowly but surely, starve.

We've created a system that rewards non-productive activity with insane amounts of money and punishes those that use tools by forcing the real wages paid to tradespeople down, year after year. Consequently, America has lost the ability to build. Everyone wants to be an office guy with a desk and a computer. The last thing they want to do is sweat and hurt. Everybody wants to make money trading stocks but nobody wants or knows how to use a hammer and a saw to produce something that has intrinsic value and creates real wealth.

I'm not saying that management skills aren't important. They're essential. But we need fewer managers and more producers working in the fields and on the factory floors. We need our managers to be managing productive activity, not just more and more layers of management managing itself. We've got way too many chiefs and not enough warriors.

Now we've lost our factories and plants along with our skills and rebuilding an economy based on production will take years. But, if we don't, we'll be left with nothing. If we can't stand on our own two feet, if we absolutely rely on the Chinese and Indians to make basic essential products then we have become their slaves and we'll be forced to do as they demand.