Readers' Voices

On Target

Thank you for your excellent editorial! ("It's the People, Not the Technology," August 2010) It hits the target dead on.

I also wish to congratulate you on your insight into America's slide from the top, and how important manufacturing is to a strong and growing economy. Manufacturing creates new dollars; a service economy just moves around the same dollar.

We have really missed the boat by allowing all of our manufacturing industries to move overseas. With overseas wages being so low in the Third World countries, we can't maintain our standard of living and compete in a global economy. Our wages will have to come down, and I think we are beginning to see the adjustment downward of those wages. 

If they want a stimulus package, why not give a stimulus for every job brought back to the U.S.?

Harold Daum
Senior Plant Engineer, jea
DaumHG@jea.com

Agreement on Bad Business

I couldn't agree more with Jim Montague's column on "Bad Business" in the  August 2010 issue—Let's make greed and stupidity a capital crime. I think there are a couple of parallel problems also:

1. 1) A good part of the population just doesn't care—as long as we have cheap gas for the monster truck and the spills happen "somewhere else," then all is well. As for the grandkids—keep that cheap gas coming for them!
2. A good part of the population is math, science and politically illiterate. All issues are condensed down to black and white, and presented in 30-second sound bites on Fox, CNN or wherever, and it's just too painful to have to actually think about any issue. And, then the politicians feed into this and make it worse.
   It would be funny if it wasn't so serious.

Ray Jorgenson
Process Controls Engineer,
EMD Millipore
Raymond_Jorgenson@millipore.com

Have Your Say

Control and ControlGlobal.com always welcome your comments. Please send letters via email to any of our editors at the following addresses:
Walt Boyes— wboyes@putman.net
Jim Montague— jmontague@putman.net
Nancy Bartels— nbartels@putman.net
Katherine Bonfante — kbonfante@putman.net

Snail mail goes to Control, Putman Media, 555 W. Pierce Road, Suite 301, Itasca, IL, 60143. You also can fax letters to Control Editorial at 630/467-1124.

Please indicate in your letter whether we have permission to publish it. We will not use anonymous letters, although we will withhold names by request. We do reserve the right to edit letters that appear in the magazine for space.

In addition, you can submit comments to any of our online blogs—SoundOff!, Unfettered or The Great Kanduski—simply by registering and hitting the "comment" button.   

In Memoriam: Automation World's Dave Harvey

On Sept. 22, we lost a good competitor and a good friend, Dave Harvey, the vice president and publisher of Automation World. He passed away after a protracted illness. He is survived by his wife and six children. Dave was one of the founders of Automation World and had been with the magazine since it's inception in 2003. He also was the longtime publisher of Control Engineering. He will be missed.