We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers

[Marcus Bryant]

Too narrowly focused on agriculture/manufacturing v government employment. I'd add tech to the former and legal and finance to the latter.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050204576219073867182108.html?m od=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

[Marcus Bryant]

Measurement of government services by productivity is misleading as most government services are (in theory) provided for the common good (which, of course, assumes that they would otherwise not be provided).

[DarrinS]

Good article. I had no idea it was that lopsided.

[boutons_deux]

WSJ is as credible as any other Murdoch "news" publication.

Fire incompetent "government" teachers who didn't cause the economy to crash, but bail out WSJ's beloved criminal bankers who did.

WSJ blowing continuous smokescreen over the real threats to UCA, the corps and capitalists that WSJ adores.

[DarrinS]

WSJ is as credible as any other Murdoch "news" publication.

Fire incompetent "government" teachers who didn't cause the economy to crash, but bail out WSJ's beloved criminal bankers who did.

WSJ blowing continuous smokescreen over the real threats to UCA, the corps and capitalists that WSJ adores.


link to refute their data

[boutons_deux]

Like to expose WHY UCA manufacturing has cratered as a deliberate corporate/conservative policy for decades?

[DarrinS]

Like to expose WHY UCA manufacturing has cratered as a deliberate corporate/conservative policy for decades?


What is UCA?

[TeyshaBlue]

Unopened Can of Anchovies.

[jack sommerset]

What is UCA?

I think it's "unemployed chicano association" It's pretty big.

[DarrinS]

uneducated caucasian association

[MannyIsGod]

Well make shit when we can do so for 2 dollars a day.

[EVAY]

Look at the data he is using. The base line being used is 1960. Think about that.

World War II ended in 1945 with the U.S. and the Soviet Unions being almost the ONLY large manufacturing powerhouses left standing, and the U.S. was
light-years ahead of the USSR.

So 15 years after that, the U.S. was still providing almost everything that the rest of the world was using to rebuild itself.

There is a cyclicality to the development and efficiency of manufacturing prowess. The U.S. entered the industrial age later than some of the other WWI and WWII combatants and came to its peak in the period during and after WWII. The other nations had to re-create from devastated factories in the post war years. Finally, what are now considered the 'developing countries' were just coming out of their colonial periods into their own economic development around this time (1960).

All of which is to say that the author chose what is arguably the highest level of U.S. 'making' things relative to other countries as the comparison point, and then bemoans how much we have lost. Kind of a set-up, I would argue.

[EVAY]

Additionally, the enormous increases in productivity that have been characteristic of the U.S. over the last 50 years or so obviously means that it takes fewer people to make the same number of widgets than it used to and that is a good thing.

[EVAY]

Moreover, the higher levels of education of America's youth results in fewer people being willing to work at 'making things' and more interested in 'white collar' jobs than was the case in 1960...and that is a good thing.

[EVAY]

Summary of article: the U.S. economy is more service, information and data based now than it was in 1960.

Ya think?