Rating: 
Summary: Convincing argument for industry
Review: Eamonn Fingleton has written a magnificent and important book. He shows that countries committed to manufacturing, like Japan, Sweden, Austria and Switzerland, grow far faster (and have more jobs, at higher wages, and produce more exports) than countries committed to 'post-industrialism', like the USA and Britain. Fingleton observes that post-industrialists have 'a childlike faith in the efficacy of free markets', noting, "The basic error in the laissez-faire model is that it greatly overemphasizes the interests of capital over those of labor." He argues that we cannot rely on financial services to rebuild our economies. He points out that basing the US economy on 'information industries', as post-industrialists have recommended, would cost 25 million jobs. Post-industrial services' start-up costs are low - but so are real gains. (IBM, then Microsoft, made exceptional gains only because they monopolised setting the standards for computer operating systems.) US financial trading grew thirty times over between 1970 and 1995, while American workers' real living standards actually fell in that period. Fingleton calls finance 'a cuckoo in the economy's nest': even George Soros called on governments to regulate capital markets to 'stop the market destroying the economy'. In Britain, we need a manufacturing renaissance. We need a national strategy for becoming self-reliant in our most important manufacturing needs. First, we have to channel savings into industrial investment and into educating more people in the most advanced skills. Second, we must retain those skills and production bases that we still have, because modern manufacturing industries need large amounts of production experience and capital. We should protect our home market, to give new industries time to grow. Third, we need to be able to produce the means of production: machine tools, production machines that make hi-tech components and electronic materials, equipment for the engineering, telecommunications, textile, chemical and power-generating industries. And fourth, we need to produce the goods that people need, particularly textiles (especially polyesters and carbon fibres), pollution control equipment, shipping (the world's fleet has more than doubled since 1970), and high quality steel.
Rating:
Summary: Fingleton was right all the time--and still is in 2004
Review: Fingleton's book has been out for a while now (it is March 2002 as I write this) and the new economy has indeed proven to be a mirage. Interestingly, the key review of this book was from the Industry Standard, a new economy magazine which was forced to close early this year. Its reviewer says: "Economic success continues to flow to nations with advanced manufacturing bases. And what looks like a sustained boom for information-based economies will in the end turn out to have been a mirage." He should have told his publisher. So--Fingleton is a prophet, right on the money, yet this insightful book has been largely overlooked. Too bad, because it could have saved investors billions if taken seriously, and it still should be on the reading lists of policy makers in NYC, DC, and Silicon Valley. I can't praise this book strongly enough, or its author.
Addendum:
It is now mid-2004 and Fingleton is still on target with this book. Over the past four years, additional forcing factors have weakened the US economy: Outsourcing of manufacturing and -- increasingly -- service-sector jobs (weren't those supposed to be 'the future'?); tax cuts which have led to socio-economic polarization, huge amounts of federal borrowing (mostly from abroad), and a national debt that now appears difficult or impossible to retire. Meanwhile, our trade deficits have grown as our own ability to manufacture and satisfy our domestic needs has declined, just as Fingleton forecast. See Fingleton's most recent book, Unsustainable, for major insights into this. We would do well to remember that no nation is proof against failure; none of the great ancient or modern empires survive today, and most died because of failures of insight or leadership. Unless US leaders begin to take these economic issues seriously, and do it now, this country could follow, becoming the world's largest Argentina. Fingleton's books should be mandatory reading for any voter in the 2004 presidential election, and every candidate.
Rating:
Summary: Fingleton was right all the time--and still is in 2004
Review: Fingleton's book has been out for a while now (it is March 2002 as I write) and the new economy has indeed proven to be a mirage, as he forecast. Interestingly, the key review of this book was from the Industry Standard, a new economy magazine which was forced to close. Its reviewer says: "Economic success continues to flow to nations with advanced manufacturing bases. And what looks like a sustained boom for information-based economies will in the end turn out to have been a mirage." He should have told his publisher. So--Fingleton is a prophet, right on the money, yet this insightful book has been largely overlooked. Too bad, because it could have saved investors billions if taken seriously, and it still should be on the reading lists of policy makers in NYC, DC, and Silicon Valley. I can't praise this book strongly enough, or its author.
Addendum:
It is now mid-2004 and Fingleton's book is still on target. Over the past four years, additional forcing factors have weakened the US economy: Outsourcing of manufacturing and -- increasingly -- service-sector jobs (weren't those supposed to be 'our future'?); tax cuts which have led to socio-economic polarization, huge amounts of federal borrowing (mostly from abroad), and a national debt that now appears difficult or impossible to retire. Meanwhile, our trade deficits have grown as our own ability to manufacture and satisfy our domestic needs has declined, just as Fingleton said they would. See Fingleton's most recent book, Unsustainable, for major insights into this. We would do well to remember that no nation is proof against failure; none of the great ancient or modern empires survive today, and most died because of failures of insight or leadership. Unless US leaders begin to take these economic issues seriously, and do it now, this country could follow, becoming the world's largest Argentina. Fingleton's books should be mandatory reading for any voter in the 2004 presidential election, and every candidate.
Rating: 
Summary: lament of the 'virtual' economy
Review: Fingleton's illuminating and detailed study takes a practical and anecdotal look at some of the New Economy's accepted wisdoms. Are we really in a boom economy. Many residents of the First World take that as a fact with little evidence from their personal lives. In many cases middle income families are working longer and harder to maintain their living standards. They work much harder than their parents but without the same job security and benefits. Big winners seem to be of windfall gains in a bloated and increasingly fragile stock market. Nothing is more central to the vast expectations of the post industrial economy than those associated with software, telecommunications or financial services, which form its bulwark. Fingleton's analysis clearly shows that software is inherently transitory and unstable. Telecommunications is touted as a vehicle for a vast expansion of consumer markets, yet as became painfully clear in the dot.com collapse, there is little proof of that potential. Gambling and porn remain the internet's most profitable commodities. Financial services has devolved into deregulated boutiques speculating in exotic currency and equity instruments, in markets trading at unheard of multiples and expansion. All these 'industries' employ a specific type of intellect and skill set, which might apply to a highly educated 20% of the labour force. Nothing is reviled more than the old 'rust' belt industries in the free market ethos. Steel, ship building, textiles, that can offer capital intensive high technology enterprise integrated into well payed, labour intensive associated manufacturing are disappearing from the First World's economic arsenal. The New Economy's extreme marginalization of certain employment sectors, its inequity in distribution of wealth, and its unpredictability, have only now started to bite into previously secure areas of the social demographic. No surprise then that social turbulence is starting in disparate protest movements. The divisions being created in our society ensures the haves will need to use draconian measures to control the have nots, with an inevitable and equal reaction. Fingleton falls himself into the chimera of new age economics when his remedies call more for the much over rated effect of 'savings' as opposed to tariffs, progressive tax systems and direct involvement of national governments in economic and currency management. However, this book is an accessible study of the effects of the globalization and de-industrialization in Western economies. Post industrialism runs on the mumbo jumbo of futurists, buzz words, intentionally complex rationalizations. These obfuscate its real intent and encourage public ignorance and apathy. The book is a welcome, if limited, contribution to cutting through the fog of claims to show how thread bare the cloth of the New World Order really is.
Rating:
Summary: A shrewd analysis of the so-called 'New Economy'.
Review: I have been waiting a long time for a book like 'In Praise of Hard Industries' to appear. Tokyo based author Eamonn Fingleton has written a shrewd analysis of the so-called 'New Economy' which ought to stimulate a good deal of much needed controversy. Using a series of well researched case studies, Fingleton effectively debunks many of the cherished beliefs held by 'Post-industrialists' who promote the advantages of services over manufacturing. In particular, he casts a sceptical eye over the much vaunted 'renaissance' of American industry during the past decade. Unlike so many others, Fingleton goes under the surface to show just how unstable the current American economic boom really is. This book should be on the reading list of anyone concerned about the direction not only of the North American but some European economies as well.
Rating:
Summary: Fingleton is right on target
Review: I've lived in Japan for over 5 years and worked in both the manufacturing and sales/marketing side for a technology company. I also speak and read Japanese. I know this culture - particularly the aspect that Japanese are both proud of and recognize as vital to prosperity - manufacturing, or, to include the craft trades, "thing making".
Reading "In Praise of Hard Industries" had me cheering, out loud sometimes. This guy hits it right on the head on every single aspect and effortlessly argues away the myths that Americans like to cling to as the economy falls into ruin - the viability of America's "service economy", superior American creativity, American wealth - all illusions that persist because Americans aren't educated enough or in the right way to be able to see the flimsiness of the financial channel commentators' arguments.
Were's so far out of the game in manufacturing technology - both in terms of skill and mindset - that I don't know if we can ever get back in. Throw on top of that the skills in market resesarch and product marketing and sales and the prospects look even worse. Japanese companies have honed all these razor sharp and are super competetive. And our measures would certainly be complicated by the fact that the strong penetration of Japanese companies into our country as *employers* brings them strong political influence within our own borders. It's the Trojan Horse! But whatever the measures, we have to start with an honest discussion of the facts - a look in the mirror, a wakeup call. This book, along with Fingleton's others and his website, are just that.
Rating:
Summary: Finally some common sense about the "New Economy"
Review: If you are tired of hearing about inflated stock prices enjoyed by companies that have been around for only a few short months, or maybe years, and who have yet to turn a profit--while most people in the United States are getting poorer and more insecure--this book is must reading. "In Praise of Hard Industries" presents some fairly simple, but seemingly forgotten, reasons why America--despite the information-techno-babble hype--is still in economic decline. First, just as you can't expect to buy more than you sell and get rich, you can't import more than you export and expect a wealthy country. Second, for everyone to prosper you really do have to consider the prosperity of everyone rather than confining your attention to a narrow elite of computer programers and Wall Street financiers. Third, American industry will not return to records of strong growth if we continue to leave our fate in the hands of large shareholders who care only about short term profits and the value of their stocks instead of long term investments that increase productivity and allow us to take a "high road" of growth and shared prosperity.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent! Mr. Fingleton is a sharp man.
Review: In 1998-early 2000, I was noticing that good old manufacturing stocks were priced at insanely low prices. The stocks were trading at valuations that suggested many solid small & midsized manufacturers essentially worthless. I was semi-baffled. It must have been terrible for the managers and employees of these wonderful companies to come to work each day. They probably thought they were dinosaurs in the dot com world. Mr. Fingleton was praising these salt-of-the-earth firms when others had written them off. After the dot com bubble started bursting, these great firms had tremendous returns. Mr. Fingleton was way ahead of the curve when he wrote this book and was a bright light in a dot com mania wilderness.
Rating: 
Summary: A Major Disappointment
Review: In his previous book "Blindside", Eamonn Fingleton offered an often controversial and thought-provoking examination of the Japanese economy's many strengths. This reviewer considers it one of the more important books available on the Japanese economy. While "In Praise of Hard Industries" attempts to be controversial, most of its arguments are so flawed and the information presented so often misrepresented and slanted that the knowledgeable reader will in the end dismiss this book entirely. Fingleton gives the impression here that Japan's economy is dominated by manufacturing. In fact, manufacturing's share of Japanese GDP has significantly declined since the mid-1970's and now stands at about 24% of total output. The number of manufacturing jobs in Japan continues to steadily fall (a fact ignored in this book) and average manufacturing wages in Japan are in fact lower than those of a number of service sector industries (another fact ignored in this book). While Japan's manufacturing is the world's best, a huge swath of Japan's economy remains in a quagmire, deeply in denial of reality and in wait for a miraculous economic recovery and/or a government-led bailout. The collapse of the Sogo department store chain with about $18 billion US in debt in July 2000 and the long list of construction contractors on life support contradict Fingleton's contention here that the debt problem has been contained within the financial sector. Nonsense. Japan will eventually recover and indeed it is a mistake to underestimate Japan, but the resurgence of Japan in the 00's will not be led by manufacturing but instead will be led by the information economy. And yes, the US will in 2001 and 2002 experience a recession from the late 90's Internet/technology excesses but it will remain the world's most powerful economy in 2010 as it is in 2000. This book provides no guidance to how the coming decade will unfold for either the Japanese nor the US economies. Eamonn Fingleton is capable of penetrating analysis but little of that is here. "In Praise" is, unfortunately, a disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent! Mr. Fingleton is a sharp man.
Review: Shades of Nostradamus. Despite Mr. Fingleton having published this book in 1998, it is not out of date nor is it too late to read it in 2002. The author is a prophet, and I only wish I had read the book earlier, certainly before the stock market bubble popped. Furthermore, I wish this book had been the a critical document forming American political debate for the past four years. In summary of the thesis, the pathology of the nation's declining economy is manifest in the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector. We will be generations correcting the problem, or we will be another Argentina. Like a skilled coroner dissecting the victim of a brutal murder, Mr. Fingleton takes apart the myth of "postindustrialism," certainly as it pertains to the consensus of economic thinking in the US. Oh Gods of Hubris, what violence have we wrought upon our once mighty American economy by following the chimera of well-packaged economic fads. So you think steel and shipbuilding are rust-belt industries, better suited to the "third world" and without which the US is a better place? Not after you read this book. So you think we should be teaching children that their goal in life should be to grow up and be computer programmers because that is the pathway to a good job and secure future? Not so fast, pilgrims. So you think that the US does not need these so-called "commoditized" high tech manufactures like the chips and circuitry that go into the guts of even a run of the mill computer? To paraphrase a certain disgraced former President of the United States, "It all depends on what you mean by 'commoditized.'" You will probably never understand what is happening to the US economy unless and until you read this book. I am not in the business of giving advice to the President of the United States, but I will make an exception and recommend that he read "In Praise of Hard Industries." Heck, I will send him my copy if he wishes. And then, I hope that he recommends the book to every Cabinet officer, sub-Cabinet official, Member of Congress, Federal Judge, and any one else whose decisions affect policy in this country. This book is that important.
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