ideas on how the (USA) economy might recover

The main difference between the generation of business revenue and the generation of tax revenue, is tax revenue is obtained with force. You can't opt out of taxes or the goons will come. Business revenue is obtained using choice, which allows you to opt out. I don't have to buy the car if I don't want too. But if the government ran the auto industry, like taxes, I could be forced to buy or else. Where is the incentive to be efficient if I could shake you down and make you buy?

The business has to earn money from people who have the option not to buy or to buy elsewhere. The government gets to steal money from people who cannot opt out. What is the incentive for a pickpocket to buy his victim a nice gift of appreciation? There is no incentive, instead he will spend his stolen cash on himself and his friends.

What would happen if taxes were voluntary and had to raised like a fund raiser? The good stuff would be funded, while the marginal stuff would be downsized. Less money would be available, so efficiency would have to increase, to make less do more. Without being able to steal from the tax payer, you would draw a different type of leader. The government would begin to look like the free market with departments competing with innovation to get the money.

 

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That's a difficult state to maintain. Preventing large corporations from boxing people in, regulating businesses in which people cannot actually choose (health care, food, housing, etc), and in general preventing the rich and powerful from coercing people in one way or another, is not simple or easy.

 

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Just what do you think wealth is Billy T?

What is transferred wealth? Every time I go to the store and purchase goods and/or services wealth is being transferred. So why do you count some wealth transfers and ignore others...the ones that don’t support your ideology. Wal-Mart is sitting on top of a lot of transferred wealth.

You start by saying everything taxes don’t count because they are a wealth transfer that is an ideological position, not an economic position or one rooted in reality. I suggest you go back and read by previous post, the one you are objecting to.

If a consumer borrows money to buy a car or a home there is no wealth created because they borrowed money, come on Billy T. get real.

 

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Ah, back to the old force argument. You can opt out of taxes. You have a number of options. You can leave the country. You can refuse to earn income above levels that would cause you to pay taxes. You can live in states that have no income taxes like Nevada or Alaska. You can refuse to buy goods that are taxed. You can go old school and live independently, off the land, in some place like Alaska. You do have a choice. It’s just you don’t like the alternatives. If you want to enjoy the benefits of our government, then you need to pay for those benefits. You like our infrastructure? You like our economy? You like the security our government provides you when you sleep at night or when you venture out, then you need to pay for that security.

Government is acting no differently than a homeowner association where homeowners elect people to represent them on a governing board and the board makes the rules and pays the collective bills. That is private industry. You can choose to live in the area or you can leave. Taxes are not thefts just as homeowner association fees are not thefts. Taxes are levies to cover collective expenses. If you don’t like the way the government or the homeowner association is spending your money, you can vote them out or leave . . . your choice.

Taxes are not voluntary for a number of very practical reasons. One some people wouldn’t pay no matter what. They would free load the system. We see that now in our healthcare system. And it is one of the reasons healthcare is so expensive in this country. Everyone benefits, therefore everyone should pay a fair share of the nation’s expenses. It is just that simple. Show me one prosperous nation that uses a system of voluntary taxation. It doesn’t exist, because it just doesn’t work. If you want to live in a prosperous society, if you want the benefits of a prosperous society, you have to pay the bills to maintain and support it.

With respect to government versus private industry, the reality is that a bureaucracy is a bureaucracy regardless of who owns it. As previously pointed out to you Medicare is much more efficient than its private industry counterparts. Just because an agency is owned by the government, it doesn’t mean it is bad or inefficient. Just because a company is privately owned, it doesn’t mean it is efficient or even effective. Having spent an entire career in private industry management, I can personally attest to that. There is nothing magical about private enterprise or government. The same drivers and disincentives in private industry exist also in government agencies. Workers are incented to perform in both private and government agencies with financial rewards. The disincentives are the same as well, lower pay raises, no pay raises, demotion and termination.

I get it, you are angry with government. And you have a right to be so. But you shouldn’t shoot your head off or your foot off or your hand off because you are angry. You should become well informed, and you don’t become well informed by watching or listening to the conservative entertainment complex (i.e. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Marc Levin, et al.). They are the guys and gals that would have you blow off your leg or other body part to express your anger. They are the ones who led people like you to vote for George II and his Republican congresses not once but twice. And then they invented the RINO to deflect your anger . . . pretty slick.

The last Republican Congress and president were extraordinarily fiscally and economically irresponsible. Instead of acting irrationally, we need to understand why they were able to attain power and why they acted so irresponsibly with the nation’s economy and finances. And we need to make changes in the way we elect and manage those individuals.

We need to take the special interest money out of our politics. So our elected officials represent our interests rather than those of the special interests who line the pockets of our elected officials. Our elected officials need to be financially dependent on their jobs for their financial wellbeing rather than a special interest sugar daddy.

http://www.propublica.org/article/medicare-drug-planners-now-lobbyists-with-billions-at-stake-1020

Perhaps congressional compensation and retirement benefits should be based on some objective measures of the health and wellbeing of the American people. And perhaps we need to take out some of the special interest money that dominates our elections and incents the wrong behaviors in our elected representatives. And perhaps we need a better informed electorate and we need mechanisms to ensure that voters are presented with good information, so they can make well informed choices at the ballot box.

 

Wealth is money or any thing that can be sold or used to gain money. For example my Ph. D. in a then the high demand area (physics) was by far the greatest single item of my wealth at that time. There are some things more valuable than wealth. For example good health, but they are not wealth as they cannot be exchanged for money.* Actually money is really wealth only because it represents and can be used as wealth. I.e. money can be used to get wealth, like a car. Money, just facilitates changing wealth from one form to another. Now, very often the form of money is just bits in some computer, no different form other bits that represent the date, etc.

I just gave and example (exchanging dollars for a car) and you give some too about buying things in a store.

Correct, but the act of buying does not create wealth. If you bought a sweater, the person or factory it was made by created wealth, asumming sales price was greater than the production cost.

Your assumption is wrong. I do not "not count" some wealth exchanges as wealth exchanges. Try to give an example of your assumption that I ignore some wealth transfers. Hell, as will be more clear soon, I even consider as a wealth transfer your giving your time to someone else for a salary. Even a 10 year old dog walker knows this. Time is one of your greatest "god given" forms of wealth and is wealth by my definition given at start of this posts as you can exchange it for money.

No I did not say that. Paying taxes, that giving (Or being forced to give is perhaps more accurate) some of your wealth to the IRS is not CREATING WEALTH. It is transfer of existing wealth.

I did. There is no discussion or even the mention of the difference between creating wealth and transfer of wealth.

That is not what I said. I said the government has mainly two forms of financing its self (1) taxes & (2) borrowing. When you buy a house or a car, you are exchanging wealth, not creating it, with the owner of the car or house.

If the house is new, then the builder did create wealth assuming he made a profit. (C, the Cost of materials used plus payments made to workers or for electricity his table saw used, etc. was less than the sales price, P). The amount of wealth the builder created was (P-C). It makes no difference, if the builder borrowed or used cash from his bank account. He created (P-C) wealth. The buyer transferred P of his wealth into the form of a house. As the builder had to use some form(s) of his wealth to pay out C (make a transfer of C to others) he transferred C as well as created (P-C) wealth. The salaries, S, of his labors was "time wealth" they transferred with their learned skills and physical assets (body strength). Just like me, using my educational wealth over time, they transferred over some period of time their personal assets normally without losing these personal assets, only their time.

In some very real sense, time is an asset you can use (combined with other assets, like a Ph.D. or strong body) to create wealth, by exchanging your valuable time for a salary. In many cases these "other assets" actually increase in the process - the carpenter becomes more skilled or I learn more physic by using the knowledge I already have in that area.

Now that I have answered your two questions, I´ll ask two:
(1) What is creation of wealth?
(2) How does it differ from transfer of existing wealth?

Your post seems to be totally ignorant of this difference as you say:

"If a consumer borrows money to buy a car or a home there is no wealth created because they borrowed money, come on Billy T. get real."
Implying that wealth was created. It was not. Wealth was transferred from the lender to the car buyer. The factory where the car was built (assuming it is making profit) is where the new wealth - the car´s (P-C) was created. If C > P, then wealth was destroyed, not created, and the factory (or its owners) net wealth is deceasing.
You have totally missed the point WellWisher was making about wanting the government to CREATE wealth, not just TRANSFER it as you don´t seem to recognize these two are different concepts. (Why I asked my two questions.)

* At least not in the USA, where it is illegal to sell one of your kidneys, etc.

 

Then why is it government spending doesn’t count as wealth, when the same spending in private industry creates wealth? You argued because government spending comes from “wealth transfers”. Wealth (i.e. money) is transferred all the time. As previously pointed out, I pay the electric bill; I transfer some of my wealth to the electric company. The government renders goods and services to me and they charge me for those goods and services with tax bills. It is the same thing. Yet you have drawn a line between the two, an arbitrary line based not on science, not on economics, not on reason, but ideology.

Most of this is not germane to the discussion. The only relevant thing here is your changing position on wealth. Are you now saying that government does create wealth? I suggest you look to Webster's and all of the definitions of wealth. You are being very inconsistent in your definition of wealth.

When government creates or maintains roads are they not creating wealth? When government makes laws to facilitate trade, are they not creating wealth? When government invests in research and development in virtually all of the sciences, is government not creating wealth? When government educates our children, is government not creating wealth? When government provides security, is government not creating wealth? Contrary to your assertion, government spending does create wealth no matter how you want to look at it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/t...e-for-a-government-hand-in-research.html?_r=0

This has nothing to do with the question that was put to you. You want to not count public spending as income and wealth creation (e.g. your previous post) because government borrows some of the money it spends. That being the case then you should also ignore money (i.e. wealth) received by sellers of homes and cars when the money used to make those purchases is borrowed. So using your line of reasoning car makers do not create wealth when they build a car and sell it to a person who borrows money to make the purchase. Homeowners and builders are not creating wealth when they build a home and sell to purchasers who borrow money to purchase them. But if car makers and homebuilders sell their products to people who don’t borrow money, then wealth is created. It doesn’t make sense Billy T.

Unlike people of your political ideology Billy T, I use the Webster’s Dictionary definitions.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wealth

A wealth transfer is just a transfer of wealth ownership.

So you are doubling down on your absurd notion the car maker or home builder creates wealth based on how the purchaser finances the purchase of the seller’s goods. The reality Billy T. is that the seller’s books are going to show that it has created wealth regardless of how the buyer financed the purchase. Those dollars borrowed by the purchaser are going to look exactly like the dollars that were not borrowed to the seller. At the end of the day, the seller is going to have more cash, more wealth, on its financial statements and in its bank account that it did before the sale regardless of how the purchaser secured the funds to make the purchase. So your notion that when government spends borrowed money, it doesn’t count, is ludicrous. It doesn’t hold up in the light of reality and reason.

The point WellWisher was making is that when government spends it doesn’t add value. It doesn’t count. The money spent by government goes down into a deep dark pit and has no value. And that clearly is not the case. It is the same argument you are trying to make. There is no difference between government spending and private industry spending. Spending is spending, economic demand is economic demand. It goes back to that Supply-Demand Model that you have so much trouble understanding.

 

It's a great contradiction that the same folks who complain about the cost of social programs will often whine about the cost and/or legality of the income tax, yet they're living off the fat of the land themselves - the infrastructure paid for by generations of taxpayers - not to mention all the other intangible benefits from the countless ways federal funds, projects and services shore up every kind of individual interest and enterprise.

The implication is that a person who is too poor to pay into the system should not benefit from public assistance, even though the folks who are able to support themselves are only able to do so on account of the vast umbrella of support they get from the government. There's a glaring fallacy in this kind of thinking. I can have the road to drive my nice car on, to get the money I need to eat, but those folks don't deserve a meal ticket or medicine for the baby. The greatest contradiction of all is that this resounds in the churches (at least some in particular) while they supposedly preach compassion and fairness to the downtrodden.

The other great fallacy is that whenever liberals control government, there's a storm of propaganda from the Right about the state of American economic health, often based on false beliefs about the economy from people who've never taken a single course in economics (including conservative politicians). Once the hyperbole has aroused public opinion, they're quick to blame the public assistance programs as the sacrificial goat that needs to go first - as opposed to, say, defense - based on the same kind of logic as above, that the self-sufficient members of society are leeches while the workers are the bread and butter, still never acknowledging the point you made above. Just because a person has a job and owns substantial personal property does not change the fact that she is also a leech, if we are to define all dependence on the government as parasitic.

It's fallacy upon fallacy upon fallacy. Indeed we are going bankrupt, but not in the sense of physical wealth. It's the decline in common sense, basic education - and the character development that accrues from them - that has everyone kicking and screaming about the economy, taxes and the cost of government.

 

It is unusual but government does create some wealth. I even gave a possible example of the NIH part of the government creating wealth (In-house research producing new drug with sales greater than the cost of developing it) Do you have a reading comprehension problem or just can´t remember what your read in my posts?

FALSE. For the third time now ALL SPENDING IS WEATH TRANSFER AND SOME OF IT IS ALSO WEALTH CREATION WHEN (P-C) IS POSTIVE. That is totally independent on how the funds that paid for cost C were obtained. I gave examples of that too. You have a sever reading or memory problem.

Of course it does not. It is 100% your words put into my mouth.

The ONLY thing I said about borrowing was that it was one of the two main ways the government gets the funds it spends. Again for third (4th ?) time, P and C funds can be stolen, earned by stock trading, won at the race track, saved from salary, borrowed from bank or friend, etc. and it makes no differs in the value of (P - C), which if positive means wealth was created and if negative wealth was destroyed. You have either a reading comprehension or memory problem - I have clearly defined all this at least three times now. For 3d or 4th time in summary form:

All spending is wealth transfer. (Note private or public makes no difference.)
Spending for production of goods or service that are sold for price P is wealth creation IFF (P - C) > 0 where C is the total cost of producing whatever was sold.
The source of P & C funds makes no difference to the value of (P - C).

Good. Here is what your Webster´s link gives as definition 4a:
"All property* that has a money value or an exchangeable value."
Exactly in agreement with the definition I gave and illustrated with my Ph.D.in physics. Skills and knowledge I acquired while getting Ph.D. was by far my main wealth at that time. I.e. I exchanged the knowledge and skills I learned while earning that Ph.D. during 30 years for an annually growing salary (more than $100,000 in each of my last few years and more than a million dollars total. I was quite well rewarded for letting APL buy my time as I retired two decades ago.)

The property that unskilled labors exchange for salary is typically their manual dexterity for 8 hours a day. In truth, what we both exchange is the right to command how our limited and valuable time is used for the benefit of someone else, but an hour of the time of a skilled person can be exchanged for more dollars than the hour of an unskilled worker. Have you not heard: “Time is Money.”

Agreed, and very different for wealth creation, such as a framer makes by growing crops that sell for more than his costs. (P – C) > 0. When he paid for seeds and fertilizer that was wealth transfer, not wealth creation. - He did that in the field.

No. You don´t read very well do you. I never said that. I said: it makes no difference whether the builder of a house, borrowed the money or took it from his saving account to pay for the Cost, C, of items and labor used to build the house. The wealth creation the house builder made I said was (P - C) where P is the price the house sold for. Likewise it makes no difference how the buyer got P dollars. The buyer is only transferring P wealth to the builder. Those P dollar could be borrowed, stolen, lottery winning, even saving from his salary, etc. I said exactly the opposite of the words you are putting in my mouth.

More words jammed into my mouth as I never said that. Again I said just the opposite. In post65 I said:
"Your assumption is wrong. I do not "not count" some wealth exchanges as wealth exchanges. Try to give an example of your assumption that I ignore some wealth transfers. It doesn’t hold up in the light of reality and reason."
I.e. this is the second time I have told you your assumption that there are some wealth transfers I say "don´t count" is simply false – I count them all, public or private and you are ignoring my post 65 challenge to you to give even one example of a wealth transfer don´t count /don´t recognize as a wealth transfer.

If anything I error by recognizing many things some would not consider as wealth transfers. Again transfer of my time (which is my real god given wealth) is an example. I exchanged 30 years of my time at the rate of more than 8 hour days, for more than a million dollars of salary. That is a wealth transfer according to both my or Webster definition 4a. - The part I made bold. Your assumption is wrong. There is no wealth exchanges I do "not count" as wealth exchanges. I ask you again to try to give an example of your assumption that I ignore some wealth transfers.

Unfortunately that is the usual case. For example the 3 trillion expected cost of the F-35 fighter program over its life time is IMHO, negative creation of wealth with zero add value as they are not needed. No enemy exists that US can not defeat with F-22 etc. the world´s best planes and pilots. That F-35 program is only a make work project for the Industrial Military Complex, IMC, Ike warned could destroy the US.

It counts as "wealth transfer" from the tax payers to the IMC, with government as an intermediary taking a cut, but certainly not as "wealth creation" except a tiny part such as development of better technology for welding titanium may be wealth creation etc.

Yes both are wealth exchanges and very rarely the government spending does make a little wealth creation. In post 65 I suggested that tiny part of NIH expenditures on in-house research may make some wealth (be wealth creation). I asked you if you could think of a better example of government spending that did create wealth, but you have not yet suggested any.

* I am selling or giving away my physical property - Sold my car with no replacement 4 or 5 years ago. Sold the only land I owned 10+ years ago. Let my cell phone die by not paying fees at least three years ago. I still have a nice watch, stored in a drawer, but I don´t wear one. The older I get the more I believe it is true that you don´t own property - it owns you! My considerably older cousin told me this decades ago as were were talking and polishing her three sets of silverware. (Job took both our efforts for at least three hours. That very rarely used property claimed 6+ hours of our time!) I am trying to keep my mental properties in tack by particiaping here at Sciforums and my strength properties by swiming half an hour twice each week, etc. (Selling car helped that too as I walk a lot, now.)

 

I don’t put words in your mouth Billy T, you do that. You are engaging in a lot of double speak. So now you are admitting that government spending does create wealth – a limited amount in your view but at least you are now recognizing that government spending does create some wealth. Now how about addressing the other instances of government wealth creation I referenced in my last post (e.g. road construction, trade laws, trade agreements, security, social stability, education, etc.). Your definition of wealth now seems to be contingent on some moral judgment about the appropriateness of the investment. If you like the investment, it counts as wealth. If you don’t like it doesn’t count (e.g. F-35). Wither you like or dislike the government expenditure it doesn’t change the fact that government spending creates wealth. It puts money into the pockets of workers and investors. Now certain government expenditures may be frivolous and foolish in your view but that does not change the fact that wealth is still created. Some government spending creates more wealth and some creates less wealth but government spending always creates some wealth. All that money didn’t go down into a dark pit. It went into corporate profits. It went into salaries. That government spending was income to a lot of people. The value government received from that spending is another matter. The government may have spent the money frivolously. But that doesn’t negate the fact that corporations made money on the spending and individuals made money on the government spending.

From an economic point of view there is no difference between government spending and private spending. Both create demand for goods and services. It doesn’t matter who is spending the money as long as it is spent.

And let’s remember how this discourse began you entered the discussion to defend WellWisher’s claim that government spending was didn’t create wealth.

I agree with you and your cousin. I think as one grows older the infatuation with toys wanes and we develop a better appreciation for what is really important. I am glad to hear you are exercising and trying to keep yourself in shape both mentally and physically Billy T. I wish you and your family the best.

 

"Did You Know...

•The United States is the world's largest manufacturing economy, producing 18.2 percent of global manufactured products, according to the World Bank. China is second with 17.6 percent.1

•U.S. manufacturing produces $1.8 trillion of value each year, or 12.2 percent of U.S. GDP. For every $1.00 spent in manufacturing, another $1.48 is added to the economy.2

•Manufacturing supports an estimated 17.2 million jobs in the U.S.—about one in six private sector jobs. Nearly 12 million Americans (or 9 percent of the workforce) are employed directly in manufacturing.3

•In 2011, the average U.S. manufacturing worker earned $77,060 annually, including pay and benefits. The average worker in all industries earned $60,168.4

•U.S. manufacturers are the most productive workers in the world, far surpassing the worker productivity of any other major manufacturing economy, leading to higher wages and living standards.5

•Two-thirds of manufacturers pay income taxes at individual rates. Therefore, any tax increase on individuals is a tax increase on manufacturers.6

•U.S. manufacturers perform two-thirds of all private sector R&D in the nation, driving more innovation than any other sector.7

•Taken alone, U.S. manufacturing would be the tenth largest economy in the world.8



For more details, read the full report Facts About Manufacturing." - National Association of Manufacturers


http://www.nam.org/Statistics-And-Data/Facts-About-Manufacturing/Landing.aspx

 

That is self contradictory - if the maker of the sweater created all the wealth by making the sweater, the sale price would not matter.

Much wealth is created by trade, as Adam Smith was not the first to notice - if someone with surplus sweaters trades for garden tools with someone who has no sweater but surplus garden tools, they are both made more wealthy.

The act of buying does often result in more wealth existing in the world. If you don't want to call that "creating wealth", what do you want to call it?

I don't think that is true any more - not the "far surpassing" productivity or the higher wages or the higher living standards.

Here are a couple sets of soundly derived productivity numbers, from just before the recent crash (the crash played games with the productivity numbers): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked As one can see, the US is nowhere near the world leader in productivity per hour - and quite a ways down the list when the stats are done carefully (second set).

That is meaningless.

I call bullshit. If you remember, that was the general number being bandied about for the supposed luxury compensation of US auto workers, said to be much higher than other Americans and a sign of damaging union influence - and it turned out they were adding in the pensions being paid to retired workers and similar "labor costs" as if they were being paid to employees.

Also, "benefits" in the US include the cost of health insurance, which costs two or three times as much in the US as anywhere else for no better coverage than many first world countries. Figuring health care at that kind of inflated dollar level misleads - the worker never sees the money, the only actual compensation is the care received, which is generally less rather than more than many others receive. A sound comparison would be to figure health care as a wash - ignore the benefit and the money paid for it when comparing compensation in countries with generally equivalent health care for working class people.

The US has been losing ground economically to better managed First World countries for many years now - since the early 1980s. We haven't been "far surpassing" all other countries for decades. Here is the situation in 1991: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/8Comparison.htm

 

No the sales price does matter. For example, if I make sweaters and sell them at price, P, equal to my total cost, C, then the total wealth existing and initially embodied in the cloth and threads etc. I used has been converted into wealth embodied in the sweater, but not increased (nor decreased). If (P - C) > 0, then the total wealth existing in the world has been increased by this difference. If (P - C) < 0, then the total wealth existing has been decreased by this difference.

It is really quite simple as wealth exists in anything that can be exchanged for money. Thus cloth, threads and sweaters embody wealth.

Note that wealth can be embodied in a skill for which there are buyers too. - Wealth need not be embodied in some physical object. I sold my physics knowledge during 30 years for more than a million dollars. It was thus wealth ("anything that can be exchanged for money") as had a very willing buyer.

 

Yeah, and the cow jumped over the Moon. Is there a point or is this more mindless drama? I suspect the latter.

Pretty extraordinary claims, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. So where are your proofs? Your Deloitte reference contradicts your previous claim that manufacturing as percent of GDP in the US was only 6%. The correct number is 12.9% per my previous post and as noted in the Deloitte document you referenced.

Additionally, you don’t appear to understand the material you post much less your claims related to this subject. The Deloitte document you referenced ranked countries by manufacturing as a percent of that country’s GDP. That does not change the fact, per my previous post, that the US is still the largest single manufacturer in the world. The US has a much larger economy and a much more diversified economy than China. Hence our economy is much less dependent on manufacturing than China. That is part of the difference between a developing nation and a developed nation. The US has already been there and done that. We have already been through the process of industrialization. And if China's economy is all that, why are they trying to become a more consumer driven and less manufacturing driven economy like the US? Because they want to become a more diversified economy like the US.

That said, that does not mean the US doesn’t face economic challenges, because it does. And China does too. But the immediate situation in the US is not as dire as you would like to make it out to be. But it could be in rather short order if Republicans get their way in Washington, if they are allowed to continue their fiscal and economic profligacy. The largest and most significant problem the US economy faces is the Republican Party.

 

LOL, The facts are, you were wrong. Your last reference contradicted your previous post and confirmed mine . . . minor details.

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No the point is you were asked to prove your claims, including the bankruptcy claim. You have consistently failed to produce a single shred of proof. Instead you try to obfuscate and evade.

That is gibberish. You claimed US manufacturing was 6% of GDP. It isn’t. Your own reference from Deloitte says it is not 6%. Again, where is your proof that our GDP is calculated differently? It isn’t. You have petrodollars on the brain. GDP is calculated the same in the US as in Russia or anywhere else. GDP has a very specific definition that doesn’t change by country.

Yeah mindless drama . . . when you use emotion laden words like bankruptcy in absurd ways, as you have done, that is mindless drama. I again ask you to prove your claims.

Ignoring the fact that your claims that US manufacturing is going bankrupt is not consistent with your post references; yes US industry has been importing foreign workers for decades now. There is a skill mismatch/shortage in the US. While there is a surplus of workers in the US, there is a shortage of skilled workers. That is one reason why President Obama’s request for educational sending is so very important for the health and wellbeing of the nation. Gone are the days when a kid graduating from high school could follow his dad into a high paying union job and be set for life. The unemployment rate for college graduates is something like 4%, compare that with the national unemployment rate of 7.7%. That says if you don’t have skills, employment is going to be comparatively tough.

Globalization and technology have dramatically changed manufacturing labor markets. And that is not going to change. In the next 20 years I expect the increasing use of robots will dramatically reshape the manufacturing industry. The US and every other nation around the globe will need to figure out how to deal with social displacement caused increased manufacturing efficiency.

 

LOL, that is funny...Rush Limbaugh type answers? Since when has Limbaugh ever constrained himself to fact. Since when has Limbaugh ever told the truth about anything? If you read the references you provided, they say I am correct. The facts are things are not as dire as you need/want them to be. The facts are that both the left and the right have an interest in promulgating misinformation. Unfortunately the right as represented by the right wing entertainment industry is much better and much more prolific and effective in spreading misinformation than folks on the left.

The facts are things are not nearly as dire as the folks on the extreme right or the extreme left want/need them to be. The facts are that our fate is still to be written. The facts are that the US still has a healthy manufacturing base. The facts are that Republican ideology is the greatest treat the health and wellbeing of this nation. The facts are that technology will result in increasing productivity and efficiency creating challenges to our traditional social structure and that is going to happen no matter where you live, China, India, Europe or the USA.