A Revolution in the Works

Forbes.com ^ | November 17, 2010 | Michael S. Malone

[giant sable]

What if they held an Industrial Revolution . . .and we weren't invited?

[rarestia]

bfl (thesis)

[SonOfDarkSkies]

Luckily for the U.S., we have a pro-business, pro-entrepreneur President!

Right?

[Georgia Girl 2]

Yeh and guess what they don’t have in any of those countries? You guessed it. Unions. The US could easily re-industrialize if we could get rid of the unions.

[tutstar]

bump

[ClearCase_guy]

Interesting essay. One of the points being made is that the Supply-and-Demand paradigm has broken done because there is too much supply and not enough demand. I think there is something to this -- a few years ago I saw a number of newspaper articles about people who owned large houses, yet still had to rent out storage units, because they just had too much "stuff". Now, when things are tight, I think a lot of people are thinking that rampant consumerism isn't what they want.

I may have to go re-read this classic:

[FromLori]

Seems the planners have not taken into account people who are making a couple of dollars a day are not able to afford all those products.

[muawiyah]

Robotics don't need no kinda' unions ~ people in China already share jobs. They're having a productivity problem that's rather un-nerving for them ~ the need to further subdivide technically oriented jobs to sop up educated folks.

The whole world will eventually go through this and there'll be no employment for anyone.

[ClearCase_guy]

There's a lot to that. I worry that Socialism will make a resurgence. We can laugh (sort of) at the problems in Europe caused by the early retirement age and generous pensions given to workers -- that hasn't worked out well. But I can see automation and increased productivity allowing a very small number of workers to produce enough "stuff" for an entire population. By that model, you might work 10 years (age 18-28?) then retire, go to college, start a family. It could be a socialistic system in which -- having already done your "share" of the work -- the rest of society will support you until you die.

Personally, I like Free Markets better, but I can see much of the world moving to a paradigm where supply is over-abundant; we don't need additional supply: what we want is more consumption.

[KarlInOhio]

How about throwing us a little dog biscuit on what this is about, why we should follow the link or what you think about it. If it wasn't a Forbes link I would have thought it was a Pimp My Blog post.

[muawiyah]

If we were to double American industrial productivity ~ which is high by world standards ~ we would probably disable half the countries in the world. It’s quite doable over the next 10 years too. Check the history on this: http://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Have you seen this???? This is what they want our dictator to do.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/11/pdf/executive_orders.pdf

[ClearCase_guy]

I’ve seen it. I think that the birth certificate issue is going to get hot. I don’t think Obama will finish his term — both the Republicans and Democrats are going to want him gone. He’s dangerous.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

I hope so. Either that, Broadway Bank scandal, or the DOJ/ Black Panthers scandal. SOMETHING has GOT to stick to this man!

[spintreebob]

Did your mommy ever read TarBaby to you?

The Dems hopes and schemes that the Tea Party will go off message and go mean spirited. It has nothing to do with what is actualy true about Obama’s birth certificate.

When our agenda is Contract-With-America and Taxe-Enough-Already and a City-on-a-hill we win.

When we go off on Monica and illegal aliens and other mean spirited/personal attacks we lose. Again, it has nothing to do with whether the off-message messages are true or not. The Dems don’t care about truth. They care about what the public wants to buy. The public does not want to buy mean-spirited.

[fr_freak]

The Dems don’t care about truth. They care about what the public wants to buy. The public does not want to buy mean-spirited.

The heck they don't. Mean-spirited has been the Dems bread and butter. They do nothing but accuse Republicans of everything from Naziism to orchestrating 9/11 to wanting to kill homeless and poor people. The reason the Dems have been successful with their tactics is because they have had the media on their side, pumping up the Dems accusations and burying the Republicans'. That is now changing. If conservatives attack from all angles and all sides at once, the Dems will crash. All of this "be kind and sensitive and we'll win!" is nothing but pure nonsense.

[spintreebob]

You don’t understand mean-spirited.
Accusing Republicans of being mean spirited is not itself mean-spirited ... in the eyes of the public. It is just politics.

But Republicans trying to starve children or divide immigrant families, etc, etc is mean-spirited ... in the eyes of the public.

Lies and Double standard? what else is new?