We’re where we are now, because we are a service-based and credit card-spending economy.
We make nothing. We import everything. We can’t buy anything from a poisonous toy to electronic equipment that’s made here.
We invented televisions, computers and cars, but we don’t make either of the two former and only a few of the latter.
We can’t exist on service and spend and not make anything. Without people to manufacture “stuff” there aren’t jobs for us so we have money to spend on “stuff.”
According to Nickelsburg the only industries in California that are relatively safe are education, health care/human services, information, government, leisure and hospitality.
This ivory tower-type should step out on a balcony and take a good look at what’s happening on the ground.
Educational institutions from public to private are in the tank and raising taxes and fees to stay afloat.
Over the last few years nearly half the hospitals in California have closed, gone bankrupt -- mostly due to being overburdened by a huge influx of illegal aliens, who are getting the services for free as mandated by the Feds. And with the high cost of education and loans frozen, how are people to get an education in the health business even if there were hospitals and labs for them to work in?
Governments around the country are going bust and freezing hiring. Even Las Vegas is feeling the pinch and one major hotel has halted construction on a new project. I’d venture a guess that the only place you can’t find a hotel room is in D.C., but that will change after the inauguration.
Information? I don’t even know what that is, do they?
I’m going into the information business right now and here’s a piece of information for Nickelsburg and crew. Free. Gratis. On the house.
Bring back manufacturing to this country or we’ll never see financial recovery!
If you don’t believe me, ask Air America’s Thom Hartmann or former labor secretary in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich. Frankly, they are the only two whose opinions on the economy I trust.
Hartmann was on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown last night (Dec. 12).
When asked by David Schuster who was subbing for Olbermann, what President-elect Barack Obama should do to bring back manufacturing, Hartmann didn’t miss a beat in saying the first thing Obama should do is read Alexander Hamilton’s Report to Congress of 1791.*
He said Hamilton’s report was the basis for this country’s economic principles, which made us the wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth, and it took only 36 years for Ronald Reagan and Reaganomics to drag us down to a debtor nation that produces nothing, rivaling the status of third world countries.
