PeopleSoft? Nah. PeopleCrunchy.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:17 AM on December 21, 2004

Betting against manufacturing isn't necessarily smart. Wilbur Ross has made a cool billion in the past few years betting that North American steel was undervalued. While there are certainly complicating global factors behind the rally in steel prices, he did demonstrate at least at one level that U.S. factories can still have a place.

I belive that the next 20 years are going to be very exciting ones for domestic manufacturing. Increasing transport and commodity costs, rising wages in China and India, and improvements in automation and miniaturization are going to create a tremendous opportunity for high tech U.S. manufacturing of low tech goods.

Wal-Mart won't be importing garments from Guangzhou when a $250k piece of equipment run by a $50k/year technician can be dropped in a spare 500 square feet of every distribution center and can transform raw fibers into every woven-apparel requirement of every store in the DC's zone on 24-hour's notice, on whatever pattern the designers in Paris (or, I suppose, Bentonville) dreamed up the night before and uploaded to the corporate network.
posted by MattD at 2:40 PM on December 21, 2004

Not too relevant in this thread but my now deceased father told me when he worked at the Rouge Plant, Henry Ford stopped at his work station and noted how my father had organized his clean-up rags well, complimented him and said he did the same thing and then shook his hand.
posted by JohnR at 6:51 PM on December 21, 2004