GE Moves To Kentucky
General Electric announces that it will invest 3.5 billion dollars to move production of its washing machines from China to Kentucky, and in the process create 800 new full-time jobs.
This is good news for Kentucky. But what is more, it may be as significant as the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Bombing the nukes removed an immediate threat, at least for a while. Building the washing machine factory goes a long way toward removing a long-term threat: The threat that our economy with shrink while China’s economy grows.
I recall reading an excerpt from the diary of a young German officer. He had been captured during World War II, landed in New York or New Jersey, and put on a train bound for a prisoner of war camp in the South.
Railroads pass through the industrial parts of towns. As the train passed factory after factory, warehouse after warehouse, the young officer wrote, “How did we ever hope to defeat such a huge economy? We could make better tanks, but they could make twice as many, three times as many.”
We tend to forget that our economy is the engine that propels our military. In 2000, in a controversial decision, the Army decided to order all soldiers to wear black berets. But the generals discovered that no U.S. firm could produce enough, so they bought the berets from overseas, mainly China.
Do you think, just possibly, that this was a clue, a warning? If the Army had to buy uniforms from a potential enemy, should we have done something about it? That’s why the GE decision is such good news.
