My watch marks the minutes
I think it’s time I read another book. Specifically, China Inc., by Ted Fishburn. The times have changed, and my kids won’t be getting a job in a local factory where they will labour until they die. No more factories, locally. We’ve got McJobs, millions and millions of them, and the heavy hauling has crossed the ocean.
Just a short news clip, pointing out the cities with one industry that have sprung up outside of cities so large that a Canadian can’t get the scale. One city for umbrellas, another for zippers, another for socks. In fact, take a look around your home; try to find something you’ve purchased in the last few years that wasn’t manufactured along the Pacific Rim. Unless it involves maple syrup or Malpeque molluscs, the odds are stacked against you.
This doesn’t bother me; I was born just after the Made In Japan sticker took on economic importance. What I do find interesting is that history teaches nothing, in economics. In my grandparent’s time, people went down to the Boston states, hoping for a job in textiles. And they found them. Horrible working conditions, if PBS can be trusted.
Now, those plants are gone (renovated into expensive condo developments). We have a lot (think capital letters for the word) of ships loaded with modular containers of just about everything, docking on our west coast and being offloaded into a transportation system that runs on JIT. In fact, that’s where my kids will find jobs. Not as makers, but as transporters. Logisticians. Import/export (forget the export half of the equation) technicians. Times have changed, and my watch (made in China) simply marks the minutes.
