Koen Dekeyser

Where does manufacturing mania come from? ✍️extract: my May2024 Factful Friday 👉I’m not sure why G7 politicians believe manuf is so pivotal for economic success ❗️YES, you need a manuf to conduct military operations, react to pandemics, & drive the green transition. ❗️YES, productivity growth is faster in manufacturing (in G7). 👉But with only 8% of US workers in factories, why isn’t manuf more of a “that’s nice to have” sort of thing rather than something Biden threw $2 trillion at? 👉The obsession doesn’t make sense unless it is coming from politics … oh, wait, yes that’s it. Now I get it. 👉Manufacturing jobs wins elections. It’s like farm policy in France; no one wins without the farm vote. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~👇 In socialist circles, Anti-service attitudes have a long & glorious intellectual history. 👉 Communist economic theory is all about production, and from Marx onwards that meant things that you could drop on your foot 👉 Marx, a German sitting in London, hatched his masterpiece, Das Kapital, in 1867 when industry was what Germany wanted and England had—It was clearly what made Britain a superpower 👉 Marxism had a plan for economic betterment. That plan relied on industrializing, so given the times, manufacturing mesmerisation made sense 👉 Did you know that Engels called services ‘faux frais’ (false costs)? 👉 Did you know that in the 1990s, the CCP called some service sectors the "imaginary economy" or "fictitious economy" (xūnǐ jīngjì)? 👉 The intellectual linchpin is this: real socialists don’t believe that market prices represent value. 🤔 since it is hard to value services without claiming that they just are worth what people pay for them, it is easy to understand how a hard-charging communist boss would build factories rather than improve productivity in the service sector >>Summary 👉mental blinders drive manuf mania in 🇨🇳; politics drives it in G7

Globally, labour’s share of the pie has fallen for 20 years 🔗 on.ft.com/3TfxqME ILO report: ilo.org/node/668326