Unemployment. Honest debate.

[Anomalocaris]

What do you propose to do then

Actually, I asked you first Chuck. Should be interesting to see how many words it takes you to say "I don't know".

What I know depends on whether you ask what we should do now,

or what we should do then, when having continued to subsidize losing trades and industries and people who will not redeploy themselves from these, we find the Chinese have become better in just about everything that creates value, and every one of our trades and industry have become losers.

What we should do now is to:

1. Outsource to the Chinese and Indians those fields which could be outsourced in which the Chinese and Indians are already as efficient or more efficient then we are, so we no longer commit extra resource to proping them up when we could obtain all the value they can provide while paying the Chinese less.

2. Throrughly evaluate which field we still hold an advantage for the time being over the Chinese and Indians, but which in the long run is a lost cause because it would be very difficult for us to keep our lead very long no matter what we do. Milk these industries for all they are worth while we have them, try to build some sort of fundation so when we do lose our lead, we are in a position to outsource them in such a way as to get a share of the profit, but wind down any long term domestic investment in them.

3. Indentify which industries which, though concerted action and cooperative outlook, we can conceivably leverage our headstart to maintain an superiority over the Chinese and Indians indefinitely. Redirect as much investment as possible as as appropriate to the relaive value of these industry so as maximize the chance that we will actually maintain out lead indefinitely.

4. Restructure coorporate governance to reward management not for trying to blindly keep jobs in the united states, not for blindly outsourcing whenever there is short term gain to be realized, but for maintaining and investing in the long term only in those industries where our headstart can economically be maintained.

We are no longer a country so rich in resources and capital that we can profligately spend competitioninto oblivion and then reap the rewards later. We must now pick our battles carefully.

What we should do then:

Learn to say "yes sir" in Chinese and master the art of fixing the plumbing in second rate Chinese hotels., and count on the fact that this is not the end of the world, that economic superiority come and go, great powers rise and fall, and in a century or two, the Chinese may also dissipate away their superiority to give us, along with many others, another shot.