I am finishing up three days of hosting technical meetings for one of our product lines today. We are headquartered in France and have operations there as well as Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia and India. Almost all of our basic research is done in Europe even though we really do most of the scale up and development work here.
The investment side of things is really interesting. We started an expansion project here, in parallel with the Germans early in 2012. Our project cost was about 30% less than theirs for a very similar scope. Interestingly enough, they get a 30% investment incentive from the German government. Wonder if those two things are connected in some way?
The entire European attitude toward jobs is one that goes to great lengths not to ever lay anyone off or eliminate positions. As long as someone is “adding value” they will keep them around.
The idea that everyone should get a college degree is one of the most damaging notions ever put forward. Most people should probably seek some kind of post high school job training, put a large percentage of those people should be doing something other going to a four year college. The media spends countless hours focusing on the minuscule portion of manufacturing that is poorly behaved and largely ignores all of the improvements in our quality of life that have come from manufacturing innovation. That is one of the key factors in driving manufacturing overseas. We don’t have any allies left in the fight and it will take a generation or more to turn that around.
