The Final Nail in the Coffin? Crisis, Manufacturing Decline, and Why It Matters

Abstract

Recessions inevitably, and understandably, herald anxiety and much discussion about the headline performance of the economy, chiefly employment, income and GDP growth. Various indicators, such as exports, investment or consumer spending are closely monitored for evidence of economic recovery. The performance of individual sectors is important to this discourse, but sectors are largely treated as component parts — a way of disaggregating overall economic performance — rather than examined in terms of the intrinsic role they may play in the overall economic system. It is rare for mainstream economic commentators to dig very deeply into ‘what’ questions: exports of what, investment in what, or spending on what. Critical scholarship is not faultless in this regard. Colin Hay’s (2013) depiction of failure of the Anglo-liberal growth model represents a persuasive account of the British growth crisis and the conditions that triggered the deep recession of 2009. Again, however, we are invited to worry about an economy that pays too little to most of its employees, fails to facilitate long-term investment, and relies too heavily on consumer spending fuelled by debt and the housing market — concerns that manifest at the macro level of analysis, not the meso. The prominent role played by the financial sector in this critical account is the exception that proves the rule, as the ‘cuckoo in the nest’ it is (rightly) condemned as a key progenitor of the macroeconomy’s pathologies.