Can you create wealth from dross?

"Reviving manufacturing has become a prime policy objective for national leaders from Washington to Beijing to New Delhi," wrote M Schuman. But it is becoming difficult as competition increases. "At least one country seems to have figured out how to do just that, however, and a highly unexpected one: Japan." Japanese factories had to shift to countries like China where labor costs were low but are now coming back. Wages for workers rose by just 0.6% in October compared to last year but in manufacturing wages rose by 1%. How did Japan do it? Japanese managers invented "lean manufacturing" in which "companies continue to invest heavily in manufacturing innovation, automation and job training". Unemployment is down to 2.8% but the main threat to Japan's economy is its extremely low birthrate. However, after bottoming out at 1.26 births per woman in 2005 the rate has increased to 1.43, which is higher than that of South Korea, Singapore and Germany. Germany gets round its problem of low birthrate by extensive training and skilling of workers through its apprentice system. "In Germany, everything from selling cars to building pianos and harpsichords has its own practical technical schooling, testing and qualifications." India is the exact opposite with almost 60% of the population between 15 and 54 years of age and fertility rate still bombing along at 2.45 per woman. Although we have one of the highest GDP growth rates in the world the economy is still not creating enough jobs to absorb the growing numbers of job seekers. Which means children have only a 33% opportunity of climbing out of their social class, wrote T Kundu. Increasing mobility may lead to inequality but is more important in increasing prosperity by increasing opportunities. wrote Prof T Cowen. Forget manufacturing and leapfrog to digital services to achieve sustained growth of 7-8% over the next decade, wrote J Sinha and A Bhattacharya. That is what A Maira warned against as he wrote, "India cannot take shortcuts to development." He said that we are in this predicament because of 4 shortcuts taken in the past. Not investing in education and healthcare, ignoring manufacturing in favor of information technology, investing in Artificial Intelligence instead of training people and lack of coherent government policy. And yet Indian scientists are quietly making their mark in the field of science globally. Sadly, they are kept under control by politicians and civil servants. Why? Because India has 75 ministers, while the US has the Vice President and 22 of cabinet rank. The more the dross, the less the progress.