http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-14/meet-restaurant-five-year-waiting-list " Here's a thought: take your passion for your job (if of course there is one) and do what Baehrel did - start a venture, open up a business, provide something new, original, fresh, and you too can attain the American dream. Or alternatively, keep on striking, and demanding more, more, more from the government, and from an uncaring corporatocracy, while lamenting your plight. Because if there is a lesson in Baehrel's experience (and this most certainly is not a promotional post), is that while the US system is doing everything in its power to crush the entrepreneurial drive and to make upward mobility impossible, for those who have a real passion about their lot in life true success is still possible. "
I am not disagreeing with you on your overall message here. But consider the fact that we are not all Mentally Capable (biologically brain wise) to be the men who create something that works super well. Most of us are good for an average Job in a factory or Office. If Outsourcing and other GREED DRIVEN shenanigans don't provide jobs for most of us. There is no way in Hell we will all simply come up with brilliant business plans. One of the major lies fed to us as kids in publicly funded high schools is that we can all be really really ridiculously good at some high pay job, if we only want it enough. There is such a thing as IQ, some are naturally blessed, others not. I can do math, but I have to focus, really focus. A guy I know does it in fraction of a second and with no effort.
How many minor manufacturers in the US making cars, currently or after next year? The US car makers cannot compete again Chinese car makers does not have to scrap all the cars manufacturing locally and their excellent knowledge/ skills! How about Germany (a relatively smaller economy than the USA? List of automobile manufacturers of Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacturers_of_Germany Q Current minor manufacturers Alpina (1965-present) Apal (1999-present) Bitter (1971-present) CityEl (1987-present) Gumpert (2004-present) Hartge (1985 - present) Isdera (1983-present) Jetcar (2000-present) Keinath (1996-present) Lotec (1981-present) Mansory (1989-present) Melkus (1969-1980; 2006-present) Pegasus (1995-present) Ruf Automobile (1982-present) Smart (1997-present) Wiesmann (1985-present) Yes! (1999-present) UQ There can be many alternatives beyond simply either zero or one! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic
You're wrong when you say greed is what led to out sourcing and a lack of jobs for Americans. It was government laws and regulations that led to outsourcing. Another reason was because of the government destroying our currency and making us so much poorer that we came to depend on cheaper Chinese goods. Do you know in China, where they have money, they spend a lot of extra money to buy fruit from the US? This is because they believe it to be a safer and higher quality product, so they pay a very high price for it. They can pay a very high price for it because they have money. In the US we've had a steady destruction of wealth for the last 50 years, because of government intervention, which has left us so poor that we line up at dollar stores to buy cheap plastic Chinese goods. This is not because of greed. Companies aren't forced to find ways to desperately scale back out of greed. It's the government interference in the free market that causes our problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful " The most striking thing about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful. The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty, and chaotic. " http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/10/small-is-beautiful-economic-idea " Small is beautiful â an economic idea that has sadly been forgotten ... For several decades, mass production methods were producing more cheap goods than ever before; the mass media and mass culture opened up new opportunities to a wider audience than ever. It was creating bigger markets and bigger political entities â his book came on the eve of the vote on the European Common Market in 1975 â but he believed such scale led to a dehumanisation of people and the economic systems that ordered their lives. ... What is most striking about the book now is its bold idealism. No one writes like that now; reading Schumacher's bracing prescriptions for our future, it is chilling to realise how so many thinkers, politicians, academics have all signed up to a deadening pragmatic consensus and our thinking has been boxed into a dead end of technocratic managerialism. Small is beautiful is the cry of the romantic idealist, and there seem to be none left. "
http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumDeming93.htm Deming, W. E. 1993. The New Economics For Industry, Government & Education. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Engineering Study.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/18/economics-keynes-schumacher " Economics is lost â it must rediscover life's values Current economists' blind belief in the markets is a worrying departure from the values of Keynes and Schumacher Share Tweet this Email Victoria Chick Victoria Chick theguardian.com, Friday 18 November 2011 20.00 AEST Jump to comments (â¦) Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Economics has 'managed to transform our structures to conform to its ideal of free markets'. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images The Big Ideas podcast: EF Schumacher's 'small is beautiful' Link to this audio Recently I had occasion to compare the respective visions of the economists JM Keynes and EF Schumacher for our economic future. They differed on how they thought the economy should develop: Keynes was prepared to carry on as usual until a good standard of living was reached, while Schumacher's response to what he saw as overcapitalised, dehumanising methods of production was to propose a radical transformation of the structure of our economic system. But they held similar values. Both viewed economics as a secondary feature of our lives. Both were concerned with the good life, how it should be conceived and how it could be lived. For Keynes, solving the "economic problem" was merely a precondition for being able to concentrate on higher values. For Schumacher, work should be part of the good life itself. The cultivation of friendship, the enjoyment of the arts, participation in useful work, caring for others, the pursuit of self-fulfilment and enabling the fulfilment of others were examples of the things that really mattered, not the acquisition of goods beyond basic needs. Nor did they support the macroeconomic aim of continual growth in material production. Their thinking is in sharp contrast to today's mainstream economists. Economics has developed along a single line of thought, in which individuals, isolated from society, have "preferences" for a collection of goods and are motivated by self-interest to pursue the acquisition, at the lowest prices, of the most goods that their economic circumstances allow. Competing businesses, likewise, pursue maximum profit. Economic theory then "proves" that "markets" will establish prices that lead to the most "efficient" allocation of scarce resources. This will maximise growth for the economy as a whole. Mainstream economics claims to be "value-free". Students are cautioned not to mix normative propositions with their "positive" analysis. But self-interest is itself a value. This fact is cleverly disguised by putting forward the theory of consumer choice as a uniquely rational response to economic information such as prices, interest rates, tax rates and the like. Any behaviour not conforming to this theory is deemed irrational; other motivations such as altruism, love, the greater good or aesthetic appreciation are not considered: they are not the province of economics. Such a value system might be just about tolerable if economics were restricted to a narrow sphere of inquiry. But over the past few decades economics has colonised not only much academic inquiry in the social sciences, but also public debate as a whole. Most notably, it has colonised politics. By giving "scientific" support to programmes of deregulation and privatisation over the past 40 years, it has managed to transform our economic structures to conform to its ideal of free markets, in the belief that competition between rational consumers and producers would enforce "correct" prices and lead to an economic optimum. This theory of how the economy would work if there were free competition has thus been put to the test. The result is what I believe will prove to be the worst economic disruption in the history of the developed world. If engineers based their practice on a theory that produced a series of collapsed bridges, that theory would get an instant makeover. No one would employ engineers to build bridges until they were sure the problem had been fixed. But there is not the slightest sign among mainstream economists that there is any need for change, nor is there much hesitation among politicians to continue to seek economists' advice. The politicians might have been wise to heed Einstein: "We cannot solve problems using the same mindset that created them." It is time that the real economists are recognised: those who know what their values are and put them forward for public debate, not those who pretend to a value-free science and wrap their values in the cloak of a strangely limited form of rationality. The Harvard students who walked out of Professor Mankiw's lectures know this, as did the French students who several years ago characterised economics as "autistic": not being connected to the real world of economic problems. But it is the Occupy movement that goes furthest, for, however varied its demands have been, its underlying rebellion is against the untrammelled self-interest that has brought us to this pass. What we have is not only an economic crisis but also, much deeper, a clash of values. A sense of the greater good appears to have survived and is at last making itself heard. "
Listen it' s all good in principle, but that kind of advice in the media sees life as a fairy tale. The reality is that it's not just doing what you like , creating something great. You can have a great product and it will be a flop, just because you can't compete against big business advertsing power and can't buy the media like they do . Or simply the market may not be ready for your product. Plenty of examples of great ideas which failed, or only succeeded later when put to use by better funded businesses . Not to mention that great ideas and entrepreneurship lead to nowhere if you don't have the funding, which you can only have if you have the connections.
that article perverts the message of economics imo... "Mainstream economics claims to be "value-free". Students are cautioned not to mix normative propositions with their "positive" analysis. But self-interest is itself a value. This fact is cleverly disguised by putting forward the theory of consumer choice as a uniquely rational response to economic information such as prices, interest rates, tax rates and the like. Any behaviour not conforming to this theory is deemed irrational; other motivations such as altruism, love, the greater good or aesthetic appreciation are not considered: they are not the province of economics." he is mis representing the core of modern econ... the idea is that price works to allocate resources efficiently when it conveys 100 percent information. Consumers understand that price does not always convey 100 percent info... and they act according... sometimes. so if something is made in a sweat show then competitors may market that their clothes as not made in a sweat shop. examples... Whole foods markets farmers markets Local sourced restaurants. consumers who look at labels I loved my pathfinder in the early 90s... but I have since purchased an explorer and a tahoe because they are very good trucks and why not be american when you sense the other country does not trade fairly. "Mainstream economics claims to be "value-free". Students are cautioned not to mix normative propositions with their "positive" analysis. But self-interest is itself a value. This fact is cleverly disguised by putting forward the theory of consumer choice as a uniquely rational response to economic information such as prices, interest rates, tax rates and the like. Any behaviour not conforming to this theory is deemed irrational; other motivations such as altruism, love, the greater good or aesthetic appreciation are not considered: they are not the province of economics."