Getting serious about manufacturing

"Manufacturing everything online just isn’t possible."

As we make our way into the brave new world of the “new normal,” one area of particular concern involves our manufacturing sector, where it’s simply impossible to do everything online from home. This concern is especially acute for our country, where manufacturing has long stagnated under the weight of restrictions on foreign investment, labor-market rigidities, and shortcomings in our infrastructure and logistics systems.

It’s a problem that will now be studied closely in a week-long webinar series to be sponsored next week by the Center for Strategy, Enterprise and Intelligence (CenSEI). This is a decade-old knowledge shop founded by Ric Saludo (former Cabinet Secretary and Civil Service Commission chair), Tony Kalaw (former DAP president), and this columnist (former AIM finance professor).

Every morning from November 16-20, the CenSEI webinars will tackle various issues confronted by manufacturing in the “new normal”: floor operations, workplace safety and productivity, logistics and supply chain, upgrading data infrastructure, and financial and compliance issues.

The speaker lineup is impeccable. From the government, speakers will be led by DoLE Secretary Silvestre Bello III, DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III, and DoTr Secretary Arthur Tugade. The private-sector contingent will include Ramon Agustines (GM, URC Flexible Packaging), Emmanuel Bonoan (COO, KPMG), Cezar Consing (CEO, BPI), Xavier Gonzales (Chair, The Medical City), Peter Maquera (SVP, Globe), and Arthur Tan (CEO, IMI Electronics).

Group discounts and even top-line corporate sponsorships are being offered to folks who think this entire subject is serious enough to merit a week-long discussion. If the reader is interested to attend, just get in touch with Arlene Escalante at tel. 0927-077-3342.

* * *

The US elections last week eked out a sliver-thin electoral college victory for the Democratic presidential ticket, who additionally led by something like 4 million votes in the popular polls. Despite a court challenge planned by the Republicans, these margins seem robust enough to warrant the presumption of regularity that will let the wheels of government keep turning until the courts make up their mind one way or the other.

With the sober majority of Trump supporters, it was always about his economic record and conservative social agenda, not his often outrageous behavior in office that—with a lot of assistance from the ill-managed pandemic—led to his dismissal from office.

For single-issue folks like me, it boiled down to the repeatedly-divorced Trump being the only US president ever to speak before an annual “March for Life” in Washington, while a lapsed Catholic like Biden sought to lead Catholics astray in disregarding his support for abortion, the only public policy that the Church officially condemns as “intrinsically evil.”

* * *

In the end, the landslide blowout that the Dems were fantasizing about never happened. With or without Trump—as the redoubtable UA&P law professor Jemy Gatdula reminds us—we can still look forward to a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, the GOP picking up maybe four new seats in the House, and the Senate staying Republican, together with the majority of US governors and state legislatures.

But even with Trump out of the way, the Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman—writing in the Baltimore Sun–fears that “the Republic remains in great danger.” Because of the above gains by the conservative agenda, Krugman claims that the US is “on the edge of becoming a failed state” because “its government is no longer able to exert effective control.”

It’s a sad day indeed when a Nobel prize winner like Krugman starts talking like Black Lives Matter and Antifa. Will Kamala Harris, a product of the far-left political culture of San Francisco, be exerting the same kind of influence on a lifelong centrist like Biden? We shall see.

* * *

As US conservatives gird their loins for a difficult next four years, we can take heart from today’s first reading (Ti 2: 1-8, 11-15). Here, Paul writes Titus exhorting the early Christians in Crete to “…say what is consistent with sound doctrine…Say these things. Exhort and correct with all authority. Let no one look down on you.”

This is nothing but what is expected from those who claim to be Christians. In today’s Gospel (Lk 17: 7-10), Jesus reminds His disciples: “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do’.” Walang personalan, trabaho po lamang.

Earlier in this Gospel, though (Lk 17: 1-2), Jesus issues a warning against scandalous behavior that the new president Biden should take to heart if he still takes his confirmation vows seriously: “…Woe to the person through whom (sin) occurs. It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea, than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.”

Readers can write me at [email protected].