Frightening and true. If our national credit falls out, we are screwed. We don't even have the capability of growing our own crops without the equipment, and we don't have the ability to make the equipment in our own country. I am starting to get more than concerned. This whole concept of building bridges and crap is fine and dandy, but back when FDR did it, we manufactured the stuff to do it in. That is what cranked the economy (even as it lagged down) up, the jobs created to make the equipment to build the roads... In this case, we don't have that anymore.
Add to this the fact that the people with the skills to make stuff are old, or if yunger, few and far between. We have discouraged our kids from becoming engineers and trained them for soft jobs behind a desk.
Good point. Most modern construction equipment is made overseas. In fact, building roads here will result in booming times in South Korea, Japan and Germany. There may be a few thousand road construction crews employed, but the economic impact will not be significant.
Your fears are unfounded.
Deere and CO, one of the most successful agricultural equipment manufacturere in the history of the world is located right here in these god 'ole United States.
They have manufactured a full line of ag equipement for decades and decades. Their equipment is always the very best quality, and countless other manufacturers around the world have gone broke trying to compete with them.
Nothing runs like a Deere!
See my tagline. It is so true today, December 24, 2008. Farmers I know are very worried about the surplus 2008 crop which has driven prices through the floor, and the 2009 crop being waaaaay too big.
You and the rest of my fellow citizens are slow on the uptake. I've been very worried over this for twenty years. Ya'll just told me I was old fashioned and not keeping current with the times.
All of those geniuses at the Wall Street Journal never carried their computations out to include the terms that expressed the need for paying customers, and their need for jobs. Of course, when the equations are meant to increase short term gains, the rest of the math is superfluous. I have been one of the very few concerned about the future.
Now, go rearrange the deck chairs.
That’s what happened wholesale when 95% of formation capital went into an e-commerce bubble that popped and then was double whammied by “community organized” housing markets.
Innovation in all fundamental areas took a hike.
It will be very difficult to bring it back. And Dr. Chu claiming that he’ll create an alternative “green” economy is a dream for the politburo in Peking.