Manufacturing

This article is about manufacturing. Sorry for those who don't like manufacturing, suggest editing the green articles. Manufacturing deserves an explanation, not vandalism by those who think they are above it. On another point, corporations are the ones involved in manufacturing, so referring to them as manufacturers is legitimate information.

The changes Thomas Paine has made unencylopaedic; it reads like a pamphlet written by lobbyists for manufacturing companies! I have re-edited to those areas that merit encyclopaedic treatment, and to attain balance. More specifically:

The description of service sector as "wealth consuming" is eccentric and perjorative. For example, no such assumption underlies the way all major countries calculate GDP! David Friedman only just qualifies as an "economist". He trained as a physicist and many of his contributions are in law and politics. Either way, he's certainly a polemical outlier from mainstream academic views.

"Marginal GDP" growth is not a well-defined term (do you mean the proportional second derivative of GDP?!) - its relationship with manufactured exports is unclear or irrelevant.

That taxation of an industry can fund public services is trivial and not worthy of mention. --Nmcmurdo 18:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Wealth consuming and wealth producing are economically accurate descriptions, not perjoratives. The errosion of manufacturing is economically deleterious in the West, just as the expansion of it in China is economically beneficial to China. Nations which exporters more tradable goods have higher marginal GDP growth, that is the essense of Friedman's point and many economists would concur. -TP

These are obscure, cranky arguments that have almost no following amongst serious economists. Taking the 'wealth destroying' point first. The logical implication of this is that most of the economic activity that takes place in the richest countries in the world is useless or counter-productive, and yet these countries somehow continually fluke their way to being richer than all the others! The mainstream view (e.g. as used in the calculation of GDP - fairly 'orthodox' concept!) is that value is best measured by markets, and as such the service sectors in advanced economies generate more value than any other sector.

On whether deindustrialization is economically deleterious, in some cases it might be (e.g. due to real exchange rate disequilibrium). But in general it is a process observed in almost all major economies as they become richer. If you look closely at the statistics, you'll see that China is now deindustrializing, as one would expect as a result of its rapid economic growth. These processes are now fairly well understood - key works are by Baumol, Obsteld & Rogoff, and in the UK, Bob Rowthorn. Steve Nickell (LSE & ex. Monetary Policy Cttee) did an interesting paper on this subject for the OECD in 2004. For a historical view in the UK, I can thoroughly recommend Feinstein et. al. The 'unorthodox' tag for people like David Friedman is essential if they are to be mentioned at all.--Nmcmurdo 01:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)