America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it
I work in one of the last remaining large industrial manufacturing labs in the US. Some of my colleagues worked at Bell before that was shuttered.My sense from talking to the previous generation is that financialization of the US has started (finally) failing the American people.The previous generation cashed in on major profits by off shoring (Kodak), but we overdid it.In a round about way our company is run by pension funds, and I work on projects that would get 8-9 figure investments if we were doing this in APEC, but we would rather have stock buybacks, so we end up getting 6 figures and puttering along.Meanwhile the higher ups wonder ‘what happened to R&D?!’