Making it in America - Book Report/Review Example

Out of their manufacturing, they had managed to build a middle-class and a sustained economy that was solid and high-achieving. Liveris then goes ahead to explain how the US is just at the point of loosing this because of policies that are unfriendly and even hostile to manufacturing. Liveris (2011) supports his chief statement by stating that the manufacturing industry can create more wealth, jobs and growth to a level that the service sector cannot match. He points out that the main secret behind this is that manufacturing takes something that is of smaller value and transforms it into something of a bigger value.

Liveris states that manufacturing is also the leading edge of innovation, the main driver of R&D, and the main reason for having almost all the technologies or innovations that is needed today. Unfortunately, America has lost its manufacturing industries to other countries like China and India and these countries are now growing towards becoming prominent economies. This means America is losing to the rest of the world. They are now seeing what America used to know. Through its CEO, Dow Chemical Foundation voices its concern that reduced manufacturing in the US is the source of massive and growing deficits, unsustainable spending by the federal and state and high unemployment rates (Mich, M. (2011). This is, therefore, a thought-provoking book that Liveris wrote with the main intention of using it as a wake-up call to America to revive or re-invent its manufacturing base so as to strengthen its economy once again before it is late.

He challenges conventional wisdom and uses clear examples from all round the world to make it clear that the manufacturing sector matters now more than ever before. To make the book more provoking, Liveris states that where manufacturing goes, development and research tend to follow (Hagerty, 2011). He explains that it is easier for scientists to try out their ideas if manufacturing experts are located around than when they are located far away. At the same time, global companies are distributing their R&D labs round the globe in order to gain integration with national governments and hence market access.

So how can America miss out on this? He disagrees with the imaginations harbored in the minds of some Americans that the nation can thrive just by dreaming of gadgets like Kindles and iPhones while allowing the Chinese to do the hard work of manufacturing the products. He calls for a national strategy to restore manufacturing and insists that America needs manufacturing if it has to start paying its debts to other nations and to keep its increasing population busy. He also wants a nonpartisan economic growth directed by engineers, economists, industrialists and scientists in order to give incentives to businesses that have the ability to create sustained growth and jobs.

An education system that concentrates more on engineering, math and science is also key. Liveris also points out other problems related to letting go of manufacturing. One of them is that when US-based firms export all their capacity in high-tech processes overseas, the country finally loses some of the skills required for while group of products. He gives an example of the Kindle that was invented in the US but the company could not find all the required capacity and screen-making expertise in