I agee with TJR...We need to continue to evolve. I learned decades ago that the US was moving from a manufacturing/industrial economy to an Information economy. We need to find our niche market for America and become the dominate power in that field.
Everyone want to blame third world countries like China for taking our manufacturing jobs..They did not take them, we gave them the jobs because we did not want to do them or we wanted too much money to do those jobs and it became economicly impractical.
After WWII Japan made only cheap tin toys. Later they set a goal to be come the dominate Camera manufacturer in the world, and they were very sucessful at it. Then they went after home electronics and dominate that field. Then they went in cars and pretty much dominate the world in that market as well.
Germany has always dominated the world in precision engineering and after WWII they rebuilt that reputation. They also have the one of the highest paid labor forces in the world, but because of their precision engineering, they have not lost their market for designing and building world class cars.
American needs to find their niche market and go after it, and when the competition catches up, they need to be ready to move on to the next market they can dominate,.
The only thing that has changed is the Global Economy is shifting certain work to those countries who can provide the products or services at the best price.
As TJR stated, USA used to be the agricultural bread basket of the world. Then that diminished when the industrial revolution began to bring the boys off the farm and into the industrial cities for more pay and job stability. That has been replaced by the Information age, age we have become a Service based economy. Now the Service economy has become more specialized and contries like India have taken over much of the telephone based call-center service business.
Other nations like Japan, Germany, etc based their economy on consumer products. But for many decades, the biggest market in the US was the military industrial complex. We design and manufacture nearly all of our own High-Tech military equipment and we appear to be very good at it. Over 40 years ago I heard it said that the US always talks about wanting peace, yet so much of our economy has been based on Defense that world peace could actually destroy our economy.
Perhaps Americas best niche in the world economy is the design and manufacturing of High-Tech Military equipment and weapons for the rest of the world?? Kind of a scary thought.
...Rich
