Paul B. Farrell: Silicon Valley can’t save America’s dying economy

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Silicon Valley can’t save America’s dying economy
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch


SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Warning: Silicon Valley is fighting a no-win battle against six fatal headwinds — cultural, political and ideological trends that have become hard wired within America’s collective brain, psyche, soul.

These headwinds are making it virtually impossible for our best ’n’ brightest innovation and technology geniuses to save America from becoming a second-rate superpower trapped in a no-growth economy.

OK, so you don’t believe it? You’re a Silicon Valley superoptimist? Got lots of tech stocks? Believe technology is already building a new world? Saving the future? You’re convinced our best ’n’ brightest innovators, entrepreneurs and capitalists will save us, the whole world, civilization, the planet?

Wrong. High-tech solutions cannot and will not prevent America’s economic growth’s collapsing from an average of greater than 2% GDP growth beginning in 1750, with the Industrial Revolution, but ending a generation ago. America’s GDP is already collapsing. Now, growth is a weak 1.8% on average. Worse, America’s GDP is predicted to sink much further — down near the no-growth 0.2% GDP common on the planet for the years and centuries prior to 1750.

New Silicon Valley innovations can’t stop a collapsing economy

The clear message in economist Robert Gordon’s must-read National Bureau of Economic Research paper, “Is U.S. Economic Growth over?” is that Silicon Valley can’t maintain the economy on its own. His paper is guaranteed to make investors lapse into denial if not cardiac arrest, especially hard-core high-tech fans convinced that technology is indeed the miracle worker that can solve all problems and will save the world. ...........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/silicon-valley-cant-save-americas-dying-economy-2013-08-24?link=home_carousel

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1. This ignores an obvious fact -the point isn't revenue or job growth, it's all ROI by any means

necessary -- THIS QUARTER, to hell with the future -- even cannibalizing, offshoring and downsizing what's left of the "real economy" in order to meet the targets set by Wall Street.