In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity

Blurb

In Praise of Hard Industries is a book about the economic impact of fewer manufacturing jobs in the United States written by Irish journalist and author Eamonn Fingleton. It was published in 1999. The book was reissued in a 2003 paperback edition under the title Unsustainable: How Economic Dogma Is Destroying American Prosperity.
The book argues that the shift in the American work-force from industry to knowledge workers was setting the country up for an economic collapse. It criticizes financial innovation as a ruse to sell complex financial instruments and urged for more advanced manufacturing in the United States. The book argues that industrial activities create jobs and exports, and that job salaries would be protected in environments using high-end equipment.
In its first chapter, the book enunciates the “Three Strikes Against the New Economy”: a bad job mix, slow income growth. and a dearth of exports.