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.
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.
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.