In the January, 2012, issue of The Atlantic Monthly, there is a lengthy article on the future of American manufacturing entitled “Making it in America”.  In profiling an individual company called Standard Motor Products and a few employees performing manufacturing operations, particularly a 22-year-old single parent named Maddie Parlier, reporter Adam Davidson concludes that the company will continue to perform manufacturing operations in the United States, but it will do so only if it can continually compare the cost of employees versus automated technology, and extract the best economic value from the process.

Employees who do not have high levels of education and technical skill will be continually insecure and will be displaced if they are not continually keeping ahead of the marketplace.  The most painful point the reporter makes is that anyone who starts his or her work career with major family or other responsibilities will have difficulty keeping current with the skills needed.  Maddie Parlier is 22 years old, has completed high school, but has not gone beyond it, is a single mother, and has no spare time or money to take courses and upgrade her skills.  She will be vulnerable to a future replacement by technology.

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There are so many subjects about which to write a blog every week, but, this week, the retirement of Steve Jobs has spawned two separate blogs.  The first was a celebration of his many successes. This will be about his many failures.  The Wall Street Journal quoted an article written by Nick Schulz in The National Review on August 25, 2011.

Unlike Walt Mossberg, whom I quoted the other day, or the many other commentators who celebrated Jobs’ successes, Schulz focused on the fact that Jobs had many major failures along the way, including the Apple I computer, the Lisa computer and the NeXt computer.  He was asked to leave Apple in 1985 and did not return until 1997.  Steven Jobs failed repeatedly and publicly, and he paid in the short run.  However, today, the Apple employees and shareholders are more secure and richer than they ever could have imagined.  He invested repeatedly for the longer term.

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Steven Jobs resignation from the CEO position at Apple has given all of us a moment to reflect on how profoundly, as reporter Walt Mossberg observed in the Thursday, August 25, 2011, issue of The Wall Street Journal, in a piece entitled “Job’s Legacy: Changing How We Live.” We Jobs was transformational in his work with Pixar animation and made Apple Computer one of the most valuable companies in the world, I will focus on what he accomplished at Apple Computer as a creator of great products and services.

Today, I have an I-Mac desktop computer, as does my wife, a MacBook Air laptop, as do my sons and my daughter, an I-Phone, as does my wife, and an I-Pod, as do every member of my family.  My wife even has an I-Pad, so she can read her emails more easily.

I prepared this blog, along with most others, on my MacBook Air, which is my work computer, since I take it everywhere.  It holds my PowerPoint presentations as well, and my Kindle software that enables me to read books anywhere I take my computer.

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In the Thursday, July 21, 2011, issue of The Wall Street Journal, reporter David Wessel wrote an article entitled “What Derailed the Economic Recovery?” in which he attempts to describe the different theories for why the economic recovery has been both weak and short-lived.  He immediately dismisses the theory that external events, like the Japanese tsunami and nuclear disaster, have simply delayed the recovery. He gives more credence to two other theories: excessive uncertainty caused by government over-regulation and by a poorly designed stimulus package; and the fact that we are seeing a long-term pullback from a credit-driven economy.

These theories are certainly part of the explanation, but I would offer another explanation: that we are in the midst of a long-term redefinition of the skills and capabilities our economy needs, as well as the way we govern ourselves as a society, and that, as a result, there is a serious mismatch between the skills our economy needs and the skills and capabilities available within our country.

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Every once in a while, something happens at a sporting event that provokes a discussion of much deeper societal values. Such an event happened Saturday, July 9, at Yankee Stadium. Christian Lopez, the fan who caught Derek Jeter’s 3,000^th hit, a home run, made an instant decision to give the ball to Derek Jeter, even though he had an absolute right to keep it, and maximize the economic benefit from securing a ball that is very important in the history of baseball.  To put this into perspective, the value of what the Yankees gave him for the ball was probably worth around $50,000.  The ball could have fetched $400,000 in an auction.

Whether he made a values-based judgment that he had simply received a windfall and did not deserve to profit simply from being in the right place at the right time, or whether he believed that he would receive more long-term economic benefit from giving up the ball does not matter: he did an admirable thing.

Everyone’s behaviors are on a continuum from being totally generous of spirit to others to being totally mercenary and interested only in helping oneself.  To be generous of spirit does not mean that one withdraws from the capitalist system, lives like Mother Teresa or Paul John Paul II, and deny or give away everything material.  A person whom I consider an example of practicing behaviors that are generous of spirit, and whom I have always admired, and got to meet by serving briefly on a board of directors with him, is Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who was the first person to walk on the moon.

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Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle, and a renowned journalist from the early 20^th century, once said that “it is difficult to get someone to understand something when the continuation of his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.” This is a profound, but simple, truth.

Whole industries and marketplaces, and often political and social paradigms, depend on people willfully denying reality.  In health care, the stubborn myth is that more care is always better care.  This myth enables health care providers to make more money, not have to make tough end-of-life decisions, and appear to be giving the patient what he or she wants.

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In the March 5-11 issue of The Economist, there was an article entitled “The Perils of Property.” The author made the point that buying a home is the biggest single financial bet most Americans will ever make.  As all too many Americans learned in the recent financial meltdown, buying a home can be a very risky bet.

Our government not only subsidizes home ownership through the home mortgage interest deduction, but it has created a variety of tools to enable lenders to make home mortgage loans to more people.  Lawmakers have always believed that broad-based home ownership is an inherent societal benefit, because they believe it creates a greater stake in the well being of the community.  Independent of whether owning a home is a good investment, American lawmakers want as many Americans as possible to own, rather than rent, their residences.

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The recent tragic suicide of Dave Duerson, a great professional football player, who made a conscious decision to end his life in a way that enabled his brain to be donated to Boston University’s Center for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, reminds us of a profound truth about our nation’s health care crisis: we have to address the root causes of unhealthy and destructive behaviors before we can change the behaviors.

The assumptions underlying many of our health care policies are that people are most motivated to do what is healthy for them and their families, and if we could only get them good information, and good and affordable care, they would do the right things.  Unfortunately, the reality is much more complex.

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Every once in a while, an article about the economy cuts through conventional thinking and gets right to the heart of a critical issue.  One such article is Andy Kessler’s Op-ed piece in the Thursday, February 17, 2011, Wall Street Journal, entitled “Is Your Job an Endangered Species?”

What makes this article insightful is that it takes apart batches of job tasks and looks at the skills required for each one, and their replaceability by technology or self-service solutions.  Beyond the obvious example of toll takers, which, thankfully for all drivers, are rapidly disappearing, he points out that jobs which exist because of the need to move physical items or information, jobs which exist solely because supply is artificially limited or restricted, or which exist because of artificial or gimmicky price and value differentiations, or because of government-conferred monopolies will disappear over time.

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In the early 1980’s, shortly after George Harvey became the Chairman and CEO of Pitney Bowes, I asked a more senior colleague why he thought George was the best candidate among those who vied for the CEO position.  He talked about George’s wisdom and track record, but he also said: “Unlike many adults who collect a paycheck, he actually makes tough decisions.”  He went on to explain that many highly-paid, well-credentialed people are afraid to put themselves at risk by making difficult decisions, but that no leader of a major organization could afford to be afraid to take the risk of being wrong or pretend to be taking certain actions.

That comment has not only stuck, but seems more astute than ever.  I have been both more admiring of people who stick their neck out, and more frustrated with those who should, but do not, when tough situations occur.  In the last few years, we have moved into the most difficult economic environment since the 1930’s.  It has effectively “smoked out” whether people want to embrace tough decisions and engage others in constructive conflict, or whether they will develop even more elaborate ways to avoid those decisions.  I have seen more of both kinds of people in the last three years than ever before, especially the non-performers who have learned to survive by “pretending” to perform.

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