What is going to happen - and can we change it?

[jtuck004]

After WWII we were left with about the only intact manufacturing base, and it was about 30% of our GDP, from what I have read. As we have built others up and pushed our free trade and "if it's good for Wall Street it's good for America" philosophies that percentage has decreased, to about 12% today.

http://www.allbusiness.com/manufacturing/computer-electronic-product-manufacturing/1182847-1.html

Robert Reich wrote an article a bit ago about jobs coming back slowly over many years (Mish makes a pretty good case that it will probably be 10 to 20 years before we see unemployment numbers like we had in the past 10 or so) and Reich also noted that as they come back the pay will be lower. That's a lot of people not living in homes or eating if that's the case.

He said that is now showing up in the "income data". (For example, Oklahoma reported an increase in their employment with about 4000 jobs a week or so ago, but how can I find out what the quality of that number is - that is, are they mostly hotel and service workers, or rocket scientists, or (well, probably not rocket scientists or they wouldn't be trying to form a state militia)...? Know how I can figure that out?)

But my real question is can we survive as a service economy? Not making anything, and just buying imports from China? To create real wealth do we have to rebuild our capacity in manufacturing from small garages, or perhaps train a couple million people in nanotechnology or...? Hospitals will have a huge number of jobs, but many of those don't pay a decent wage, some don't even have health insurance. The sheer momentum of colleges is turning out students who are going to be screwed by their inability to pay back the constant increase in tuition. Finance has obviously taken a huge amount for themselves, and sent us into this tailspin, yet I still keep running into people wanting to invest or become MBA's, because that is what they are familiar with. Yet finance doesn't produce any wealth, as far as I can tell, though they are adept at skimming it off the top of the labor of others. (Maybe we need to move into an era of private capital, but that has it's own risks). There are some efforts at a congressional level to set some limits, though it looks awfully anemic at the moment - that i,s the changes don't look nearly strong enough to save us from this again. And nowhere close to restructuring things so that workers will gain a larger share of the wealth that only a few hold.

Regardless, I think our job situation is quite a bit worse than anyone seems to be acknowledging yet, at least on a national level. 27 million people unemployed or underemployed, and nearly everyone I talk to says it is going to be slow for a couple of years. I think they are living in a fantasy world. State governments are going broke, have spent their reserve funds, and the worst part is that the tax collections they used to depend on are nowhere near where they were, nor are they likely to return to those levels for at least 10 years. We may well see a 3 fold increase in foreclosures starting around September.

We need to create about 125,000 jobs _just to stay even_, yet our last employment report shows only 164,000 or so, and 50,000 of that was temporary census work. We are still falling behind. Even at 300,000 jobs a month it would take us 5 years to put 15,000,000 people back to work, and there is _nothing_ on the horizon which indicates that such numbers are even close to possible.

People are spending money, but one site indicates that millions of them might be living in houses which the banks simply have not foreclosed on yet (so they don't have to show how weak their assets really are), and that isn't going to last. And if you look back about 4 years or so at all the store closures and consolidations, the actual dollar amounts of spending are terribly small.

I don't think people see the urgency. Should I just settle down?

[OHdem10]

1. We are going through an adjustment due to Globalization Crisis.

Back in 2006 a meeting of the Banking Committee (Shumer) it
was revealed Free Trade had not worked out as planned
and technological developments were creating a crisis.
40,000, 000 jobs would be lost. Our economy is having
to harmonize downward so we better compare to other countries.

If you watched C-Span that day you realize what is going on.
It was never reported on MSM.

IMO, because both parties have such avid Free-Traders and
Wall Street will hear nothing else, I have assumed out
brave leaders prefer to avoid the conversation. I do believe
this is why they have been so willing to extend and extend
Uemployment Funds to those out of work.

This is serious. Most reports indicate it will be years