The Best Way to Fix Our Economy: Not EasyâJust Right and Best ; Build on Our Strengths or Lose Them Forever. Richard G. Lazar PhD
time. Eric Hoffer wrote of the dignity of the longshoreman’s working life. Studs Terkel loved working people and he wrote about working. Jimmy Breslin was another man who was a down to earth writer. I am like them. And above all let’s not forget the people, who appreciated having work and loved to do good work.
In these glorious times companies made profits for shareholders. Everyone’s owners, managers, workers and communities shared in this good life. People made livable wages and so they were able to buy cars, buy homes and to make a good life for their children and grandchildren. Foreclosures were rare because banks were careful in lending.
Well it seems like paradise has fallen to ruin and all but disappeared. No one’s working today in 2009. Careers are gone, except in the military. This one truth tells it all, or almost all. “No one’s working,” said Richard, a bright workingman, when I asked him how he sees things. It is so true. As for the rest of the story, not even rich inheritors of money or second and third generations of business families are working either. They are busy making more money for themselves. Their fathers and grandfathers worked at building things, designing products, starting and running companies that produced products. Each year, for more than twenty years, I have examined the list of Wealthiest Americans, as published in Forbes Magazine, fewer and fewer of these most privileged became wealthy as product developers or job creators.
Over this twenty-year period, only 8-10% of the wealthiest were product producers. More and more sold their predecessors companies, or made enormous amounts of money in the financial services sector without producing products in America. This is why I have written this tale. With no products to compete in the worldwide marketplace, with outsourcing and buying Chinese products we have come under the spell of evil magicians who tell us that we can thrive without innovative products that produce good jobs for working families. They use Dream Dust to mesmerize and cloud minds.
Is the fairy tale really over for good? Cannot the evil spell be broken? Cannot the magical kingdom once again flower and be bountiful?
Persevere dear Reader. The Build Products That Create Jobs Institute proposes the only path back to happiness, productivity and the dignity of man. It is the lost formula that really makes a strong economy and how the legendary USA can reform and rebuild itself so that more of us can live happily ever after.
We must “Return To Our Future.”—Richard G. Lazar PhD
Wait a Minute: ALERT
Boeing is threatened by a new competitor, China’s C919. The 737 single aisle, short-run aircraft accounted for 60% of Boeing revenue in 2010. China, used information provided when Boeing outsourced parts for their 737.
The C919 will enter service in 2016. They already have orders from three Chinese airlines and just imagine, GE Capital Aviation.
Boeing has counted on the 737 for 20 years of future revenue including for the funding for the development of their new 787. They have outsourced parts to China for the 787 as well. This is where Boeing and the U.S. will be killed for the next 20 years.
Boeing has approximately 164,000 people worldwide and forecasts most revenue from outside the United States (per March, 2011).
So, it can be expected that China will capture half of the Boeing market and maybe 80,000 people will lose their jobs.
Consider that Boeing’s struggles, including the closing of America’s space effort, the errors of outsourcing, the rapid rise of China’s aircraft design and production and the Supreme Court’s recent decision to treat corporations as individuals who can contribute to and influence elections, and the budget cuts by certain states that layoff more and more people.
Consider the perfect storm. Even as the American economy gets a leg up, with these consequences of outsourcing and not producing products, it gets catastrophically ominous with no end in sight.
This is what’s ahead.
“Stop fiddling. Rome is burning.”
—Richard G. Lazar. PhD
What is Ahead? Hope and an Alert!
Hopefully what follows will be enlightening. We intend that it will provoke right thought and right actions. You will find our previously produced monograph and many of our published articles and recent blog entries because they are urgently relevant today and tomorrow.
You will see the way the economy functions when it works well. Clearly, it does not now. You will also be exposed to a simple and clear Roadmap to restore true Capitalism. It describes the only way to produce sustainable jobs and income to buy things and to pay taxes to perform needed functions for all Americans.
You will see how some basic concepts about our nation and others will help us to compete and win. We demonstrate what needs to be stopped and what needs to be reinvigorated with great urgency.
Bless us all.
DRIVING ON THE ONLY ROAD TO ECONOMIC RESURGENCE: 17 Innovative Products for Jobs
By Richard G. Lazar, PhD
With contributions by Carôn Caswell Lazar
A Lazar Group, Incorporated publication.
Other Publications by The Lazar Group, Incorporated
Beyond 1984:
How the West Will Win
Legacy Leadership™
Team Excellence™ Series
The New Leadership Mandate
The Leadership Institute of the Americas proposal
The New American Leadership System™ Assessment Questionnaires
The New American Leadership System™
The Basic Leadership Skills
Advanced Leadership
Theory L Management
Copyrights 1985-1991 by Richard G. Lazar, PhD
Revisions 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000-2008
MUSEOGRAPHS™: THE Art and History Publication of World Culture
Issues 1. Japanese Satsuma Pottery
2. Contemporary African American Folk Art
3. Shaker Design
4. Mexican Painting: 19th & 20th Centuries
5. American Indians I: The Sioux; Lakota, Nakota and Dakota
6. Appalachian Handicrafts
7. American Indians II: The Cherokee, the Principal People
8. Cultural Crossroads: The Old City of Jerusalem
9. The Art of Islam
10. Illuminated Manuscripts
11. Mexican Folk Art
12. American Indians III: Kanien’kehaka, the Mohawk Iroquois
13. Art, Myth, Legend and Story
14. The Celts: Art, War and Lore
Copyrights 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 by Carôn Caswell Lazar
All rights reserved. No reproductions of this book in whole or in part or in any form, including electronic, or for any purpose may be made without written authorization of the copyright owners.
Executive Summary
This is a roadmap to Economic Victory for the USA. It is now simple. However it has taken more than 20 years to be proven. We call this roadmap the Central Productive Process™. It is the only way to build a strong