[elbucko]

We're rapidly turning into a society of teachers, lawyers, salesmen, and security guards -- fields you can't offshore. Notice something about those professions: none of them have anything directly do with the production of any sort of exportable goods.

You're absolutely right. It needed repeating. We are turning into a UK of about the 1970's.

[Nice50BMG]

We're rapidly turning into a society of teachers, lawyers, salesmen, and security guards -- fields you can't offshore. Notice something about those professions: none of them have anything directly do with the production of any sort of exportable goods. And you've hit the nail on the head. It's already begun. And the teachers in the NEA will do everything they can to keep cranking out more teachers to fill their union rolls. Because when you're done with a typical liberal arts college in the US, there's nothing that you can use for anything else other than being a teacher, a lawyer, or some non-descript bureaucrat. There are not enough information-age educators teaching the skills necessary. And to the question about who manufactures goods? Who cares? America has always been an invention culture, much more than a manufacturing culture. Our special economic weapon is creativity. That's why we created the "information age" and so many other radical changes in the economic superstructure of global commerce.