Beats me. I used to have this (nightmare) vision that the future US economy would consist of three job classes: trial lawyers, insurance salesmen, and burger flippers. The insurance salemen would sell liability insurance to the burger flippers who would sell burgers to the salesmen and lawyers, and the lawyers would sue them both. But that nightmare has been replaced because even that is a death spiral. Once the trial lawyers put the burger flippers and insurance salemen out of business, who is around to pay the lawyers' fees?
Government workers, I guess. But if there is no business around doing things that can be taxed, who supports the government? I guess they just print money and pay themselves. A government of regulators regulating the regulators.
I have tried in my own way to offer solutions to people in positions to do something, business and government people, etc. Its more of a plea, really. And that is, don't make stupid decisions that needlessly destroy the lives of our best and brightest. Sure, it might cost you a fraction of a percent or so in your company's quarterly profit statement to keep your in-house IT dept., intead of firing them and sending the jobs off to India, or manning the help desk in Bombay with Punjeeb Boobleeboobleedo instead of in Chicago by Bill Smith. But, dagnabbit, its a matter of the future of the country to keep our best and brightest employed here.
Likewise in the government sector. It might be politically attractive to pander to some extremist group and shutdown a worthwhile and productive research program or laboratory and throw a couple of dozen Ph.D.s out on the street with no job prospects, but for the sake of national security and our technological future, forego a few thousand votes bought with the lifeblood of our most technologically-capable citizens in the next election and keep those people around.
Unfortunately, when you've got leaders who look no further than the next election or the next quarterly profit statement, there is a disconnect between the value of long-range vision and short-term benefits.
Indeed. At the risk of seeming a cheerleader to the protectionists (and I'm about to convert to one)..... Steve Jobs may have started Apple - and Hewlett and Packard, too - from their garages, but they were in their teens: flexible.
Ph.D'd engineers with 3 kids and 400K debt are not likely to be able to laissez faire out of this mess. Can their wives and kids pick up the slack?