sounds deplorable... what will they do with the rest of their time? play video games?

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I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
~~Socrates

My UPDATED Pep Talk For Lefties and Lurkers

hmmm... sounds downright utopian... let the machines do ALL the work and everyone draws a stipend from the state...

and you think the rest of the world is going to pay us to sit on our butts all day everyday and consume their products??

__________________
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
~~Socrates

My UPDATED Pep Talk For Lefties and Lurkers

Yes, I know we didn't use to be that way and, yes, I do remember when "Made in Japan" meant the same thing as "Made in China" today - cheap junk!

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Exactly. Many people see this fundamental shift as an inevitability.

So, let's say, then, within 50 years the US no longer produces anything. Outsourced and importing everything we consume. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Should we strive for some sort of material self-sufficiency?

Under this theory, all the wealth creation is done at the secondary (manufacturing) stage, NOT the service-based one. Therefore, we would have shifted all wealth creation to, say, China.

I think we may be setting ourselves up for very bad things, in terms of trade power and debts, if what this theory implies is true.

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"All those in favor of referring a study of leadership feasibility to the political viability subcommittee to consider forming a task group, signify by saying aye!" -- Congress

Becoming entirely dependent on other countries (which is what will happen when we become a solely service- and consumer-based society) is bad for us because not only do we lose any real freedom we may still have left, we become a drag on the world economy.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

That's what I'm worried about. In order to have a reasonable trade balance, we'd have to have exportable goods, I would think. If we allow ourselves to outsource everything, and de-emphasize making anything, I don't see how that would be favorable. I'd certainly much rather deal from a position of strength, especially if we can pay this debt down.

Unless there's something I am missing in the big picture about how we'll stay afloat based purely on a service economy......

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"All those in favor of referring a study of leadership feasibility to the political viability subcommittee to consider forming a task group, signify by saying aye!" -- Congress

It wouldn't be favorable to the US; but I'm sure folks on the other side of the pond would love it!

The debt is just one small part of the problem. The real problem is that our economy is a credit-based economy instead of a pay-as-you-go economy. Part of the result of this is that the dollar hasn't really been worth the paper it's printed on since the Federal Reserve took us off the gold standard. When there is nothing backing a currency, the currency is essentially worthless.

I don't think it's possible.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Indeed. I wonder if this marks the end of our dominance.

I have never understood exactly how an economy worked, not tied to actual gold, or whatever. A gold standard makes sense to me, as the dollar is respresenting a real value in a transcation, essentially a system of IOUs. Maybe I'm just stupid and simplistic.

I guess we can call this a "faith-based" economy?

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"All those in favor of referring a study of leadership feasibility to the political viability subcommittee to consider forming a task group, signify by saying aye!" -- Congress

Yes.

I believe it was intentionally engineered that way in order to make the citizenry dependent on the government.

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."