Chapter 51 American industry caught in a trap

In the late 1950s, the last stretch of Eisenhower's presidency, no farmer in Iowa or a skilled worker in Cincinnati knew what was coming.But by then, New York's internationally oriented banks were already preparing to abandon their investments in the United States and invest in new markets abroad. Henry Ford once stated that he would be happy to pay the highest wages in the industry, sell the cheapest cars in the world, and become the richest man in the world in the process, but only through state-of-the-art technology .Unfortunately, by the early 1960s, Ford's teachings had been forgotten by most policy-influencing organizations in the United States.They are too obsessed with the rules of the game of "buy cheap and sell dear" by businessmen, hoping to make quick money.By the end of the 1950s, American corporations had stopped investing in rebuilding American cities, creating a more skilled workforce, building more modern manufacturing plants, and improving the national economy.Instead, dollars flowed out of the US to the emerging economies of Western Europe, South America, and Asia, competing for cheap industrial companies in those regions that were already producing.At Ford Motor Company, Robert McNamara, an accountant by training, took over the company by the late 1950s.

After the 1957 crisis, more and more large American industries and banks began to follow the "British model" of industrial policy.Systematic deception in terms of product quality became a popular trend at the time.Milton Friedman and other economists preferred to call this phenomenon "monetarism," but it was essentially the British post-1846 "buy cheap, sell dear" approach to American production. Reprint.Pride in craftsmanship and pursuit of industrial progress began to give way to the company's financial "bottom line"—a metric that was calculated every three months for the company's shareholders.

Americans need only look at their own family cars to see the problem. After 1957, instead of making necessary improvements, using modern factory equipment, and improving technological productivity, Detroit began to opportunistically.By 1958, General Motors Chevrolets used half the amount of steel that they had in 1956.Needless to say, the result must have been a dramatic increase in road death rates.The state of the domestic steel industry also reflects this dramatic decline.American steel mills produced 19 million tons of steel for automobiles in 1955, but by 1958 this had dropped to 10 million tons.By the early 1960s, "what was good for General Motors" gradually became bad for the United States and the world.

In 1958, American workers had to pay more for Chevrolets.A gaudy ad on Madison Boulevard, decked out in giant chrome to hide the truth.American industry has committed systematic suicide by defrauding consumers to make up for falling profits.But, like a drunk who falls from the 20th floor, at first he thought he was enjoying free flight.Most Americans don't realize what the "post-industrial" trend of the 1960s really meant for the next decade or even twenty.