Make No Little Plans

The President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, headed by the venerable Paul Volcker who has seen his share of economic woes, is pushing to double exports as a percentage of GDP.

And we’d all like to be thinner, younger, and richer.

That’s not to say it can’t be done, but given that our policies over the last 30 years have all but outsourced our manufacturing sector and of hundreds of industries, about all that we have left to export are agricultural products and bulldozers.

The US was once the world’s leading manufacturer of near everything but chopsticks. We have traded that to be the world’s biggest shopping mall.

With that said, the goal is ambitious. To rebuild America’s manufacturing infrastructure implementing 21^st century technology to effectively compete with clumsy labor-intensive manufacturing from the third world is exciting. This may be more than the Economic Recovery Advisory Board had in mind, but Americans have never been known for thinking small. As the oft-quoted architect Daniel Burnham once encouraged, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood…Make big plans, aim high in hope and work.”