Manufacturing an Economic Myth

By Steve Chapman
Chicago Tribune

Barack Obama and Rick Santorum probably couldn't agree that August falls in summer, but on one important issue they are closer than the Winklevoss twins. Both regard manufacturing as precious beyond words, and both think the federal government should be making special efforts to promote it.

Obama favors an array of tax breaks to induce manufacturers to keep jobs in the United States, and Santorum wants to completely scrap the corporate income tax on companies in this particular sector.

"Everybody benefits when manufacturing is going strong," said the president. Santorum recently lamented, "We have the manufacturing sector of the economy when I was growing up that was 21 percent of the workforce. It's now nine."

These are not exactly new sentiments. Walter Mondale, the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee, demanded, "What do we want our kids to do? Sweep up around the Japanese computers?"

In 1992, independent presidential candidate Ross Perot, railing against the North American Free Trade Agreement, forecast "a giant sucking sound" caused by jobs going to Mexico. Pundits galore have long warned that we are "losing our manufacturing base."

(More here.)