We are buying only necessities and saving 5 times as much as we did a few years ago.
They feel it in Shanghai, Penang, Tolucca, Tokyo, and everywhere third world workers came to make products at third world pay scales, and sell them at lower prices than anyone could manage for products made with American pay scales built into them. So we make little now, and tenuously (as we can see with GM and Chrysler ..or should I say the US govt and Fiat). Thus we have an endemic higher unemployment not easily reducible. Which translates into less aggregate buying. And less importing. Which this administration apparently wants to make up for by BernankeSHOP V. 3 which automagically adds money to certain accounts via the productivity of a mouse click.
The Obama admin and the Bush admin before it do/did nothing to change the underlying problem of making things here for a profit and selling them, therefore all we see is that while others make them, we dream up ads, sell insurance, auto warranty extensions, and assure ourselves that Wendy's hamburgers are real and Mcd's are not, and then come up with SPAM filters to keep 'former Nigerian Ministers' from stealing the money they fantasize we have.
Maybe there is no answer to one population after another working for less than the previous group. And so Tokyo supplants, Detroit, Seoul supplants Tokyo, Penang supplants Seoul, and so on.
If so, that needs to be said so this society can correct itself, and research dollars which apparently are going to be largely authored only by the feds via BernankeSHOP can be directed, and applied for.
One thing is for sure, the answer for individuals, families and the nation is not to borrow more so we can spend more and keep the cycle going.
We need to INVENT things everyone else needs. Fusion energy. Cancer cures, genetic in embryo fixes for heart disease. Software. Games too. I'm not sure AMD designing a faster chip which has to be manufactured in Kaioshung for us to afford it is the complete answer.
To invent something, people have to be rewarded with incentive.
Property.
Whoops! That's right. Property is evil.
So expect all the fixes to concentrate on the banks and making more money available for banks to lend, to increase debt so we can retire that 27" cathode ray thing for a 65" LED display and prime the world pump with US taxapyer funds, BenankeSHOP fixes, and personal debt.
This admin does NOT have the ingenuity or will to solve this, even by just GETTING OUT OF THE WAY.
Of course, there is always war.
They feel it in Shanghai, Penang, Tolucca, Tokyo, and everywhere third world workers came to make products at third world pay scales, and sell them at lower prices than anyone could manage for products made with American pay scales built into them. So we make little now, and tenuously (as we can see with GM and Chrysler ..or should I say the US govt and Fiat). Thus we have an endemic higher unemployment not easily reducible. Which translates into less aggregate buying. And less importing. Which this administration apparently wants to make up for by BernankeSHOP V. 3 which automagically adds money to certain accounts via the productivity of a mouse click.
The Obama admin and the Bush admin before it do/did nothing to change the underlying problem of making things here for a profit and selling them, therefore all we see is that while others make them, we dream up ads, sell insurance, auto warranty extensions, and assure ourselves that Wendy's hamburgers are real and Mcd's are not, and then come up with SPAM filters to keep 'former Nigerian Ministers' from stealing the money they fantasize we have.
Maybe there is no answer to one population after another working for less than the previous group. And so Tokyo supplants, Detroit, Seoul supplants Tokyo, Penang supplants Seoul, and so on.
If so, that needs to be said so this society can correct itself, and research dollars which apparently are going to be largely authored only by the feds via BernankeSHOP can be directed, and applied for.
One thing is for sure, the answer for individuals, families and the nation is not to borrow more so we can spend more and keep the cycle going.
We need to INVENT things everyone else needs. Fusion energy. Cancer cures, genetic in embryo fixes for heart disease. Software. Games too. I'm not sure AMD designing a faster chip which has to be manufactured in Kaioshung for us to afford it is the complete answer.
To invent something, people have to be rewarded with incentive.
Property.
Whoops! That's right. Property is evil.
So expect all the fixes to concentrate on the banks and making more money available for banks to lend, to increase debt so we can retire that 27" cathode ray thing for a 65" LED display and prime the world pump with US taxapyer funds, BenankeSHOP fixes, and personal debt.
This admin does NOT have the ingenuity or will to solve this, even by just GETTING OUT OF THE WAY.
Of course, there is always war.
Great post. Ominous last sentence.
ReplyDeleteOur education system does need to emphasize excellence over equity for us to produce modern inventors.
Do you think the days of amateur inventors is over? Is a solid science background now necessary? I think so. Perhaps we can take more advantage of brain drains.
On the bottom rung, more factories may create more production in the sense that people that work with production think about production all day long.
Thoughts?
Thus we have an endemic higher unemployment not easily reducible.
ReplyDeleteAs long as that unemployment rate stays as it is, our economy will not improve.
I see that some government jobs are available, many on the federal level. Elsewhere, finding employment is a wasteland.