[nathanbedford]

In the year of my birth, 1942 we still lived in a economy of scarcity. Today we have such an abundance of consumer goods that we actually live in a disposable economy.

The closer we come to returning to the pre-World War II model, just so much will our standard of living be reduced.

It's not just that our economy has changed but our technologies have so changed that the comparison is inapt. I have come to an age in which I enjoy boring children and grandchildren with stories about Rotary phones and the novelty of cars with electric windows. I spare them tales of incurable diseases and painful dentistry.

The principle of mercantilism still works, but we have to understand that we are playing on a new ball field with new rules.

We have to understand that we cannot recall the assembly lines which built the model T nor should we want to. We should be looking at robots and worrying about how we retain our democracy and our capitalist system when we don't have the same kind of worker/production relationship, when our entire government structure involving retirement, unemployment, taxation, injuries, are all tied to employment but the employees are robots.

[central_va]

You were born in WWII so i guess there was scarcity. You believe in mercantilism? Turn in your patriot card.

The "conservatives" are taking away the rice bowl of millions of lower capability/capacity (trying to be nice) Americans by offshoring production. They, along with the bought off corrupt congress(fascism), are creating social and economic chaos that is invisible to the gated community crowd. So any cost benefit, which is suspect anyway, is wiped out because the taxpayer is on the hook for all that added costs of an idled work force. Not to mention we need an industrial base to support out military.