In Praise of Hard Industries

In Praise of Hard Industries is a book about the economic impact of fewer manufacturing jobs in the United States written by Irish journalist and author Eamonn Fingleton. It was published in 1999. The book was reissued in a 2003 paperback edition under the title Unsustainable: How Economic Dogma Is Destroying American Prosperity.

The book argues that the shift in the American work-force from industry to knowledge workers was setting the country up for an economic collapse. It criticizes financial innovation as a ruse to sell complex financial instruments and urged for more advanced manufacturing in the United States. The book argues that industrial activities create jobs and exports, and that job salaries would be protected in environments using high-end equipment.

In its first chapter, the book enunciates the “Three Strikes Against the New Economy”: a bad job mix, slow income growth. and a dearth of exports.

Reception

The book elicited strong and mixed responses. Liberal economist James K. Galbraith said in The New York Times that Fingleton was “the sort of journalist economists despise,” arguing that the book was “anecdotal, spurning statistics or other corroboration” and that it overstated the decline of American manufacturing.[1] Conservative economist George C. Leef commented that his snap judgment based on the cover was that it was “a lousy book” and that upon reading it, it “turned out to be far worse than I had guessed.”[2]

Economist Paul Craig Roberts[3] and activist Loren Goldner[4] both supported the book's message. Roberts viewed the book as substantially vindicated by the Wall Street crash of 2007-2008 as well as by the earlier dot.com bust of the late 1990s.[3]

References
  1. Galbraith, James (September 12, 1999). "Made in the U.S.A. A journalist looks at America's economic future and finds it is in manufacturing". The New York Times.
  2. Leef, George (August 2000), "Book Reviews", The Freeman/Ideas on Liberty, pp. 55–56
  3. Paul Craig Roberts, "How the Economy was Lost" Counterpunch Feb. 24, 2009
  4. Goldner, Loren, Presentation / Critique of Eamonn Fingleton, In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity (1999), retrieved November 27, 2012

Notes
  • Fingleton, Eamonn. Unsustainable: How Economic Dogma Is Destroying American Prosperity. Buttonwood Press, 2003. ISBN 1-56025-514-5
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