Take Me to Your Leader

The industrial age started with the invention of the steam engine in the late 1700's. And how did many citizens of that time react to this new technology? With one word, fear. Farmers worried that their cows wouldn't give milk because the trains roared through the countryside at the devilish speed of 15 miles per hour. Tailors, inspired mobs to break into manufacturing plants and destroy the looms and sewing machines.

And we, the people of today often feel the exact same way as our forebearers felt. In fact, it seems as if it is only a matter of time before one of our inventions stands up and says like a robot from a sci-fi movie of the 1950's, " Take me to your leader."

Yet our lives would be vastly worse off without technology. In fact, technology leads to productivity, and productivity leads to higher standards of living. For instance, the sewing machine led to inexpensive clothing. The steam engine's use, which drove such things as sewing machines and looms, meant that London in the 1850's could commission the building of, for the time, a modern sewage system using steam power to pump out waste when the tide would take the waste out to sea. This cured the city of epidemics of immense proportionss. In fact, so useful was the steam engine that the Panama Canal was built with steam driven bulldozers and steam shovels.

Today, because of technology, The United States is still the greatest manufacturing power on earth. Yet workers in manufacturing often fear this technology because of lost jobs to machines, even as new jobs are created. So nationally, is this alarm justified?

It depends. If the work force, in the long run doesn't adapt, yes. Companies and corporations for all the profits from machines, don't pay social security taxes because Social Security is set up in its make up to be a type of old age and disability insurance. Frankly, companies and machines don't retire or become disabled, so they don't pay taxes under the Social Security Act. Too many lost jobs not replaced with good paying jobs could mean the system's total insolvency.

However, if we as individuals do adapt and keep up with the times, then there is great opportunity with new technology. Every machine needs a programmer, with each new technological innovation that offshoots the original also needing a programmer. Machines also need to be serviced and repaired. This servicing and repairing of these technologies means good jobs for people who are doing the servicing and repair machines at the company using the technology, even if the innovation being used is manufactured elsewhere.

For businesses new technology means lower costs, and lower costs means more capital for investments. Capital is the life blood of the body of our economy.

Now, don't get me wrong. This use of technology which has led to the outsourcing of American jobs is not something I favor uncontrolled. With 28% of the world's economy, you have to ask why our trade diplomats negotiate with other nations as if we were a nation the size of a kernel of wheat. But this said, reality is what the world is made of and if we accept reality and keep pace, there are wonderful careers in manufacturing that are high paying. The roar of that train through the countryside is also a trumpet's call.

By

Jeffrey Ruzicka

Jeffrey Ruzicka is a retired executive of a small company that specializes in industrial water treatment. He is a contributing writer to ManufacturingWorkers, ManufacturingWorkersBlog and Nexxt