Manufacturing matters.

In the U.S., manufacturing generates about $1.6 trillion, or 12 percent of our Gross Domestic Product, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the nation’s industrial research and development (R&D), two-thirds of our nation’s total exports of goods and services, and supports almost 20 million high-paying jobs.

Contrast that with the upsetting picture painted by the National Journal's Michael Hirsh of what happens when manufacturing disappears.  Hirsh recently visited Braddock, Pennsylvania to investigate the chronic unemployment that has resulted from lost steel jobs:

Today, Braddock is a black hole of apathy where the gravitational pull of despair is often too powerful to resist. Unemployment is chronically in the double digits, not so much because of displaced steelworkers—most of those jobs disappeared in the 1980s—but because of their children and grandchildren. These are the second and third generations of a lost tribe.

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