Here is one thing that I know to be 100% true..... If you think that you can't get ahead, you won't get ahead.
"As a man thinketh, so is he". Absolutely true. However, one must be realistic, at the same time scouting for opportunities.
America's future is bleak. The consequences of the debt problem are far reaching and not well understood. We are close to a dollar collapse. When that happens, American consumer incomes - which, in lieu of borrowed cash, drive this economy - WILL be cut in half. Perhaps more. A 30 year rollback in wages and living standards is conservative. In all honesty, America is sitting at an economic precipice. Unless radical measures are taken to back us off from this great abyss - and that means tanking the economy as we know it today (GDP contraction = 15%+) - we are the next Greece in 5 years. Except with no IMF bailout. All the business savvy and connections in the world won't do much then. Big Money will simply leave America. It's already begun, in earnest. The migration of capital and industry overseas is really just a prelude to our future. Our future, is Asia. The bankers have picked the meat off our carcuss, and have turned their sights to greener pastures where the futures of it's peons have yet to be mortgaged to the absolute hilt. America? We're about to get a margin call of a lifetime. And this joke of an economy runs on borrowed money and debt. So no, I'm not optimistic on American business. And I'm not sure anyone who understands a lick of economics, has reason to be, either. Does opportunity exist now in resources, finance, offshoring and internet marketing? Sure. But in my very limited experience, Hydro is right. Most of the money flying around is kept in tight circles. And those circles are mostly speculative (finance, banking, commodities). The economy will continue to recover in the short-term, inflation will ratchet-up, then go parabolic. So ya, there's opportunity. Far slimmer opportunity than in the past 3 decades. And the window is rapidly closing. Honestly, I think we're phucked. Nearly half of Americans collect some form of Government welfare. The aging boomer demographic are loathe to reform Social Security and Medicaid. The Defense lobby is hugely entrenched in Washington. And Bankers? Admittedly, they "own" Congress. The deck is literally stacked against us. The type of fiscal and monetary reform we'd need to turn the ship around is so antithetical to the monied powers that run this Country, it's pretty much a forgone conclusion what happens next. Take JFK. Here was a guy who went up against the Military-Banking complex and made overtures to end Vietnam and legalize competing currencies (Gold and Silver), and he got his head blown off. That was nearly 50 years ago. The Tea Party was an emergent hope, but that got hijacked by the Neocons as a platform to re-brand their agenda of perpetual war. Ron Paul is basically the only chance we've got left. And that's not much of a chance. The real opportunity is Asia. Jim Rogers is right. Learn Mandarin, pack up, and move. Consumer financing barely exists in China, and their purchasing power is about to sky-rocket alongside a dollar collapse. That's where the real opportunity is.
Slashdot shares their wisdom on the issue http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/04/14/1456225/Americas-Tech-Decline-a-Reading-Guide
What is this. Any idea? Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither.