It's an old story that tends to be repeated constantly over the years: with the recently announced bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler, there will be many, many factory closings across the United States.

Sadly, throughout the Hudson Valley, we're no strangers to this occurrence. Residents have suffered through the closings of Schrade, Hydro, and IBM plants, as the companies which owned the factories moved their manufacturing overseas to take advantage of less expensive labor. Now, as the de-industrialization of America continues with the downward spiral of the United States auto industry, countless other communities across the country will feel even more of the hurt that we've gotten quite good at making a part of our daily lives.

To folks in this area, it's almost routine. Our efforts to cope with the loss of the area's major employer, and the unemployment its imposed on the laborers who have been unable to put their skills to work in other jobs, have become such a normal facet of our lives, that it's becoming difficult to recall a time when this wasn't the case.

Worse, the closing of these factories will undoubtedly have a ripple effect throughout the country. All of the companies that supplied the factories with various parts that were incorporated into car construction will be adversely affected, and suddenly you have something of an economic shockwave felt all across the nation.

Manufacturing the goods we need overseas is not sustainable, nor is it desirable. Until today, this has really been a local issue. Communities hit by this trend traditionally have been left to fend for themselves in how to recover, and the common thinking when looking at one of these empty factories is that manufacturing will never come back. But perhaps this sentiment can be rethought. Perhaps with this new wave of closings, we can approach the issue collectively; to not just say this is a "local" problem, but that this is a national one.

We don't have the definitive answer, of course. But there are a number of societal and structural changes that can take place that might make manufacturing in the United States a viable option once again. Socializing healthcare, for example, is one way that a costly burden on companies can be lifted, thereby making it easier for them to employ American workers. Likewise, revising the way our country approaches the education process, and finding new ways for all people to learn the skills they need to compete in a global market — one that has become adept at luring American companies manufacturing dollars — can be a valuable way to make a positive change. And of course, it's possible that our country could reallocate some of the funding it's committing to ventures which have proven to be costly over the years: perhaps we could fight one war instead of two, and bring some of that cash to more initiatives to create jobs at home.

As we said, there's no easy solution, no one answer to this old problem which doesn't seem to want to go away. But if we put our heads together and think about ways in which our country can defeat a problem collectively, perhaps national solutions can provide new hope on for the vacant factories in the Hudson Valley.

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