The time for sending our best and brightest to business school or law school is coming to an end. by Ivan from Oregon
(libertarian)
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
In case you haven't noticed, the entire financial system of the world and the economies of them are in the beginning of a collapse that, in my opinion cannot be averted. The question is, what will the world be like when, and after, this plays out. To answer this question requires a realistic look at what our present state of affairs truly is.
In the US, most of our "GDP" (gross domestic product) is based on "consumer spending". Somehow we have come to the delusion that spending is some kind of "product" - the more we spend, the richer we are. As a country, we have subsidized (with taxpayer funds) the export of most industries that actually produce something, leaving us with the fruits of "financial engineers" that construct new ways of making money by manipulating financial arrangements. Some of our latest "inventions" have been "credit default swaps", and a plethora of other instruments that make no money except for the "financial geniuses" that invent them.
What we have left are people that know how to manipulate the law and the financial systems, without any contribution to the wealth of the economy. (Tell me how tax preparers and lawyers contribute to the economy.) Also, don't bother to tell me that our "service economies" substitute for other aspects. It's hard to believe that we'll all get wealthy by doing other's laundry.
Whatever world we're facing, it's clear that the most needed people will be ones that know how to do things and make things, if we're to increase our standard of living. Steer your children into careers of engineering, science, or trades such as machine shop, medicine, agriculture, mining, etc., that produce stuff , not as parasites that actually degrade things that would improve everyone's standard of living.
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As an Engineer myself I applaud your enthusiasm towards these kind of careers. It is the builders and creators who build the wealth and the financial manipulators who destroy it.
Unfortunately, Engineering jobs are also been outsourced or completely elimiated by the same financial people that you are talking about in this article, making it worst for the rest of the nation. I was doing an excellent job with Chrysler and General Motors and recently got fired from GM by a stupid boss who created no wealth. A lot of bad management decisions are made and we are all paying for them. Until we don't get the respect from the marketplace and the business and lawyers come down from their inflated positions that contribute nothing to the economy, we are also screwed. Today big companies like GM, are keeping useless management (lower; middle; and upper)while firing the people who actually do the job and design and build the cars. Also, those Engineers who are still employed by GM are also doing so much clerical and beurocratic work that there is little time left for the actual Engineering work. So as you pointed out less contributions to the wealth of the company and the economy.
After 11 years Engineering work and almost a Ph.D. in Engineering, I had to leave my Engineering career. Today I have a non-Engineering related business and currently employ local people.
I do agree that we need more Science, Engineering, Creators, Inventors, builders, Developers, etc.. But until the financial bozos that you describe on your text come down and stop controlling the system, the wealth creation of our Nation is limited or negative. Thus we will have more non-value added jobs like accounting, legal as you described while the value-adding wealth-creation jobs are disapearing.
Posted By: Ivan from Oregon
Date: 2008-08-14 02:57:04
trd,
Your example of General Motors points to more changes that will have to take place. Clearly, the managements of our "big three" have had their butts kicked by the Japanese, whom we taught how to make a quality product. It's not clear that GM and the others can survive the coming economic storm without being essentially nationalized. Imagine how effective government-controlled management will be.
My unstated assumption in the article is that, as we pull ourselves out of the depression to come, we have some form of honest money and a very limited government, not some sort of socialist, dictatorial leviathan. If we re-learn the lesson of "no free lunch", scrap "fly now, pay later", then development of skills will once more be more in line with an America that used to be.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-08-15 15:40:56
I think that "honest money" is the key, Ivan.
Without it, it's pointless to talk about manufacturing here rather than abroad. It's also pointless if the laws are geared toward keeping wages and prices as high as possible, if those same laws are designed to manipulate a so-called "free" market to achieve government-desired ends.
With honest money, however, there's really no need to be worried provided that other forms of government intervention have also been reduced or eliminated proportionately. In that scenario, a productive economy comes back to us quite naturally and easily.
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