In Michigan, in the mid-'80s, the unemployment rate goes way up because a lot of factories shut down. And then, the mid-2000s, to pick a date, the unemployment rate in Michigan isn't that much higher than in the rest of the country. But the main way that happened is people moved.
A well-functioning judicial or education system is just as much part of the wealth of a nation as its roads, ports and factories.
Iraq has the most extensive petrochemical industry in the Middle East and a wealth of vaccine factories, single-cell protein research labs, medical and veterinary manufacturing centers and water treatment plants.
I have lived in other cities but been inside of only one. I once wore all the windows of Chicago and all its doorways on a key ring. Salons, mansions, alleys, courtrooms, depots, factories, hotels, police cells, the lake front, the rooftops and the sidewalks were my haberdashery.
By the time I was leaving school, there were no factories. There was no industry.
My engineer dad is where my technical acumen comes from. I remember him taking me to the factories to see how what works. Often he used to open up his motorbike to fix things and I saw how the wheels worked. His car used to be open for dissection very regularly. All this taught me and inspired me to look beyond what I could see on the skin.
A very big passion of mine and that of the people that run our production is finding factories that have fair labor practices and treating them more like partners in our family than people just who are going to produce for us.
There was great leadership in this country at the time of World War II. There was also unrelenting resolve at home, in America's factories and on the farms, in the cities and the country.
During the 2005 Bush tax holiday, corporations didn't bring back the billions they stashed overseas to build new factories, increase wages, or create more jobs. The lion's share of that windfall went to CEO raises and stock buybacks for investors on Wall Street.
People who work in factories or in the woods or maybe a dairy farm - for years, I've been fascinated with people like that. No pretensions. They just live their lives. I found them beautiful. They were all I seemed to be interested in writing about.
