You could look at it as an example of the winners writing history. Or you could hold it up as a really great example of the power of PR, especially the notion that the more money spent to create and maintain an image, the longer it lasts. Regardless of the reasons, I’m starting to really question some of the assumptions we have about people who earn a living with their hands. I grew up in a city, and I live in a city now, and it seems to me that we don’t necessarily think of farmers as dumb, but we do categorize them as sort of simple folks who wear overalls and straw hats and tend to speak more slowly than most of us. Mechanics and people who repair furnaces and carburetors are often called gear heads. People who decide to pursue a trade rather than a four-year degree seem to often be portrayed as less than, as requiring an explanation in casual conversation. The term blue collar strikes me as degrading, not because I don’t like blue (it’s my favorite color) but because my guess is that the term was coined by those who consider themselves white collar. Assigning people to a category, I think, implies that you’re different from them, and in every naming incident I’ve ever witnessed, it’s been done as a put down, a way of the people doing the naming saying, I’m different than you, and I’m better, I’m smarter, and I make more money. If done properly, putting people in their place is quite a powerful thing.
I think the long and short of it is that the assumption we’ve all been fed is that people who do things with their hands do so because they aren’t able to support themselves with their brains. That’s a pretty handy viewpoint, given the agenda of the marketing people, whose transformation of the word “union” into an automatic negative is as impressive as it is deplorable. It’s the workers who caused the decline of the car industry, we’re told, in a refrain that’s now firmly ensconced in our national lore. I remember a year or so ago, when the automakers were receiving federal aid that was a mere fraction compared to what the bankers took, listening to the outrage over unionized auto workers earning $75,000 a year. How dare the people who manufacture automobiles make that much? It’s an insult to the scads of mid-level PR people – knowledge workers, they call themselves – who are paid the same or more per year to nurture the myth that sending jobs from the U.S. to other countries is a great thing for all of us – an insult, I suppose, because the PR people are inherently smarter than the unionized auto workers. And an insult to the very smart financial people, who are so intelligent and valuable that their expertise alone is worth at least $75,000 a year … as a bonus.
So I was happy to see that Katie Couric devoted one of her “Where America Stands” pieces to manufacturing. I was even happier to see that the piece focused on Benson High School, in Portland. Even though the theme of it was generally offensive (the notion that these youngsters aren’t dumb was reiterated over and over again with noisy machinery running in the background) I was encouraged to hear people who are not yet 18 say, with conviction, that they do not want to spend the rest of their years sitting at a computer. That gave me a small glimmer of hope: young people, who’ve been inundated with technology since birth, rejecting conventional wisdom rather than heading off to the University of Oregon to major in “communications.”
What was shocking about the story was the numbers. Since 2000, the number of people who manufacture clothing in this country has declined by two thirds. Perhaps my perspective is skewed, but it seems to me that in the past decade, the amount of clothing pimped and purchased in this country has increased by at least two thirds, if not more. There are department stores, big and little stores at the malls, breathtakingly enormous discount stores, and then, as if that weren’t enough, outlet malls large enough to have their own zip code. All of them packed with cheap and mostly ugly clothing.
The other statistic that caught me is this: of the 250 million iPhones sold in this country last year, none of them were manufactured in this country. I was surprised that the number sold wasn’t higher, and equally surprised (although I shouldn’t have been) that not even parts of them were made somewhere in the U.S. But not to worry, the reporter assured me. The engineering, design and marketing of the iPhones – which is where the real money is – is being done here. The making of the devices, the cheap part, happens in countries like China. So my question is this: How long do we expect the Chinese to accept their role in our narrative, which calls for them to perform our menial tasks (as defined by us) and get paid accordingly? When the Chinese decide they’ve outgrown their current role – and they certainly will, sooner, I’d imagine, than any of our product planning geniuses are anticipating – what’s our Plan B?
I think the long and short of it is that the assumption we’ve all been fed is that people who do things with their hands do so because they aren’t able to support themselves with their brains. That’s a pretty handy viewpoint, given the agenda of the marketing people, whose transformation of the word “union” into an automatic negative is as impressive as it is deplorable. It’s the workers who caused the decline of the car industry, we’re told, in a refrain that’s now firmly ensconced in our national lore. I remember a year or so ago, when the automakers were receiving federal aid that was a mere fraction compared to what the bankers took, listening to the outrage over unionized auto workers earning $75,000 a year. How dare the people who manufacture automobiles make that much? It’s an insult to the scads of mid-level PR people – knowledge workers, they call themselves – who are paid the same or more per year to nurture the myth that sending jobs from the U.S. to other countries is a great thing for all of us – an insult, I suppose, because the PR people are inherently smarter than the unionized auto workers. And an insult to the very smart financial people, who are so intelligent and valuable that their expertise alone is worth at least $75,000 a year … as a bonus.
So I was happy to see that Katie Couric devoted one of her “Where America Stands” pieces to manufacturing. I was even happier to see that the piece focused on Benson High School, in Portland. Even though the theme of it was generally offensive (the notion that these youngsters aren’t dumb was reiterated over and over again with noisy machinery running in the background) I was encouraged to hear people who are not yet 18 say, with conviction, that they do not want to spend the rest of their years sitting at a computer. That gave me a small glimmer of hope: young people, who’ve been inundated with technology since birth, rejecting conventional wisdom rather than heading off to the University of Oregon to major in “communications.”
What was shocking about the story was the numbers. Since 2000, the number of people who manufacture clothing in this country has declined by two thirds. Perhaps my perspective is skewed, but it seems to me that in the past decade, the amount of clothing pimped and purchased in this country has increased by at least two thirds, if not more. There are department stores, big and little stores at the malls, breathtakingly enormous discount stores, and then, as if that weren’t enough, outlet malls large enough to have their own zip code. All of them packed with cheap and mostly ugly clothing.
The other statistic that caught me is this: of the 250 million iPhones sold in this country last year, none of them were manufactured in this country. I was surprised that the number sold wasn’t higher, and equally surprised (although I shouldn’t have been) that not even parts of them were made somewhere in the U.S. But not to worry, the reporter assured me. The engineering, design and marketing of the iPhones – which is where the real money is – is being done here. The making of the devices, the cheap part, happens in countries like China. So my question is this: How long do we expect the Chinese to accept their role in our narrative, which calls for them to perform our menial tasks (as defined by us) and get paid accordingly? When the Chinese decide they’ve outgrown their current role – and they certainly will, sooner, I’d imagine, than any of our product planning geniuses are anticipating – what’s our Plan B?
