–Perhaps, as the British vacuum magnate James Dyson has suggested, the key is better engineering in the things we make. This is the one competitive advantage Western nations might retain over lower-cost producers elsewhere.

–Dyson gave a lecture that should be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to know what made British and American capitalism so successful in the last 200 years. You can read the whole thing here if you’d like.

–His point is that manufacturing is not a dirty word. It’s a wealthy word. It creates jobs, incomes, profits, and most importantly, better products for people’s lives. We live in an age where we think we can become rich trading services with each other. The evidence seems to contradict that-especially if we’re using borrowed money to buy our Chinese clothes and our fast food. There’s also this question: how does an economy based on consumption and services lead to an increase in a nation’s capital stock–the very key to long-term prosperity? Our guess? It doesn’t.

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