Simple: because we're not using very much of it, and it's often cheaper to get what we need elsewhere. (Same dynamic, IOW, that's in play with oil imports, many food items, and manufacturing.)
As you can see, however, we're not uranium-free:
Posted on 06/16/2009 4:36:09 PM PDT by Wontsubmit
Then why don’t we produce any?
I wouldn’t mind seeing your response to post 40 as well.
Simple: because we're not using very much of it, and it's often cheaper to get what we need elsewhere. (Same dynamic, IOW, that's in play with oil imports, many food items, and manufacturing.)
As you can see, however, we're not uranium-free:
We managed to "convince" them because we had that lucky combination of motivated and intelligent people (the "mental/cultural" part), coupled with incredibly vast resources. Our money was better, because it was backed up by real wealth in the form of factories, people, and products.
As I said above, our main difficulties have to do with the mental/cultural part, which is actually a result of decadence brought on by previous wealth. The momentum and inertia gained from that earlier success is immense, and we've been coasting on those past successes for a long time, and friction has only gradually made its effects known. This is a very common cultural malady; history is full of similar examples.
The "top-heavy" aspects you mention are very real. IMO, they're a result of the fact that our expectations for pay, benefits, and comfort are very high, and our motivation is rather diminished. At the same time, we're in direct competition with lower-cost, highly motivated labor overseas. So the natural (and profit-driven) tendency is to let the low-cost guys do the labor, and jobs here tend to be based on the use of end-products rather than the creation of them.
The transition back to a "creative" economy in the US really depends on the restoration of two things: lower costs here, and motivation to succeed. An economic crash would be very ugly, but it would restore that part of the dynamic. The rest of the equation is to have resources on which to operate: energy, raw materials, and so on, and we have those in abundance.
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