Originally Posted By: Drew99GT
I agree 100%. Jobs, jobs, and JOBS. The last decade was built on nothing but real estate equity. That is gone now. I know most people think education and college is the key for EVERY young person to pursue, but the simple fact is, it's not. Decades ago, most young people who did not want higher education could get jobs in manufacturing or other more asset based businesses that provided a real living wage and a chance at the American Dream. Today, many college graduates can't even find a decent job that provides a living wage because they're overseas. The modern day equivalent of a "middle class" domestic manufacturing job 40 years ago is working at Walmart or the Verizon store. IT jobs that paid well a decade ago are becoming mediocre. Landscaping. construction, or agriculture? FORGET ABOUT IT. Illegals working for peanuts do those jobs and they're used to a much lower standard of living. Service based retail jobs are what's available to the average Joe for the most part. Credit is maxed out and people no longer have the ability to buy the latest Chinese trinket or triple latte 3 times a day from Starbucks. When upwards of 15% of people can't get good jobs and can no longer easily use credit to purchase things, the economy is going to shrink.
This is a structural design of the global economy that IMO has been designed this way. It's called globalism, and it sure was pounded into my head in college a decade ago that it's going to be GREAT for everyone.
Agree, we as a nation already have enough education on the higher end and there is not enough demand for too much of that (yes I do have enough education for what I need to do and what the industry is paying people to do).
We've enjoyed a great ride since WWII and now the rest of the destroyed world in WWII is finally recovered, and they are going to enjoy life just like we do, with the resource that we used to get around the world for peanuts, and they'll be satisfied with just a fraction of what we enjoyed since then. The only way to stabilize the difference is to either keep steady increase in resources (energy, minerals, agricultural products, forestry, etc) while letting the developing nations catch up and the developed nations tough it out. Scenario like you'll end up living with within your mean but the mean cost what you used to pay for a comfortable lifestyle.
Technology will improve efficiency and productivity but they will be eaten up just to keep the developed world surviving, things like what we have that's called jobless recovery and a lot of the future productivity improvement will be in taking care of aging population, or freeing up productivity elsewhere to compensate for an aging population. 55mpg car is very achievable, because by the time they arrive you'll still be paying the same amount of money per mile for fuel because fuel cost increase will eat that up. No government involvement is necessary, the consumer will do it for themselves (see how the 10 year old econo boxes went up in valve).