THE DANGER SIGNS - AT 8:32 A.M. ET:  If you're concerned about the real economy - not the paper economy, but the economy of jobs, people and products - and if you're concerned about the requirements of national defense - this should disturb you:

California is shedding manufacturing jobs faster than any other state thanks to heavy regulation and high taxes, according to a new study.

A report out of the Milken Institute found that California has shed nearly 80,000 manufacturing jobs over the past five years, as neighboring states gained 62,000 jobs in the same sector.

The new numbers suggest that the federal government might want to think twice before following in California's footsteps and instituting sweeping regulations on the energy industry and elsewhere.

Otherwise the Golden State might not be the only one that's losing its luster.

And...

...American manufacturing has been on a steady decline for decades and some economists say they fear that if the trend is not addressed soon the U.S. industrial base will disappear for good.

After World War II, manufacturing accounted for one in every three American jobs. Now it's one in 10 and falling.

The Milken report blamed California's exportation of manufacturing jobs on heavy regulation, a hostile legislature and the highest tax rate in the United States.

COMMENT:  The tragedy here is that there's a major segment of the American population, college graduates who've been indoctrinated in enviro-religionism, that rejoices in the decline of American manufacturing.  Can you smell that pure, impoverished air?

Great nations make things.  Industrial dreamers make industrial products.  MADE IN USA used to be a label we saw every hour of every day.  Now there are whole product lines where it never appears.

The threat to our economy is clear.  The threat to our national defense is dire.  Who will make the planes, the ships, the tanks, the vehicles, if our manufacturing base disappears under the weight of the ideologists?  The ideologists, of course, don't care.  But the rest of us should.

There was a time, not many decades ago, when it was said that what happened in California would soon spread across the country.  We used to welcome that.  Now we should dread it.

August 4, 2009