Only three jobs in the world

By Al Portner

There are only three jobs in the whole wide world. There are people who make things. There are people who sell things. And there are people who supervise and account for the people who make and sell things.

The United States economy has shifted dangerously away from making things. The global economy was imagined as the erasure of borders while nations sat around the campfire singing folksongs of uplifting content.

Some workers from emerging economies are living better because of globalization. Some prices are lower than they would have been. Other workers are living not as well as they once did. Many are not working at all. Global companies have pinned down costs and held profits up. Some of the supervisors and accountants have gotten very wealthy.

The world picks winners and losers. In this new, global world, the winners are companies rather than common citizens or nation-states. Governments serve as the guarantors of bad decisions made by globalized private concerns. This state of affairs serves only the few.

The impact of the global economy has been to shift winner and loser categories from nations to corporate entities. Nation-states share ultimate duty for the well-being of their own citizens.

The system broke because it was not properly overseen. Strategic and tactical interests of individual countries were ignored. Our nation has a strategic interest in energy autonomy, as health outcomes as good as afforded in other developed countries at a similar share of GDP, and a manufacturing sector that adequately services domestic needs. We fooled ourselves into believing leveraged managerial know-how could replace the making of things.

Healthy globalization happens when all three legs of the economic stool support their share of the weight. Production surpluses relieve shortages in neighbor nations or are traded for raw materials or finished goods we don’t produce.

Our strength has been discovering better ways to create, produce, sell, and manage. The solution to our problem lies in creating and producing. Sales depends on perceived need. Management cannot stand on its own. We must re-learn to make stuff.

Al Portner is a former daily newspaper editor and publisher of newspapers in seven states. He is the proprietor of The Assignment Desk, LLC, an editorial services consortium.

Portner is also the author of the forthcoming non-fiction book “Mark Twain and the Tale of Grant’s Memoir.” He can be reached at alanportner@theassignmentdesk.net. The Assignment Desk URL address is www.theassignmentdesk.net.