I need to pick your brains... (poll)

[Javaman]

Poll question: I need to pick your brains... (poll)

For one reason or another our economy has been driven by one big industry of some kind through various stages of this nation.

Now that the auto industry has basically gone the way of the train and steel industry, what runs it now?

The weapons industry? The faux financial industry?

Oil and coal are the life blood of this country, but they don't run the economy per say, they power it. They give the energy to whatever industry that dominates the landscape.

Yes, we are transitioning, but to what?

What do you think it is now? What do you think the future will be?

[ixion]

1. I chose other, although I'm not sure what it will be specifically

because we're going to have to start producing things here again (other than CDOs and weaponry).

I think if it were allowed to happen, that the Green industry could provide the momentum. Thanks to Big Energy, though, that will never be allowed to happen.

So until we decided to take control of our destiny and learn how to make stuff again, we're pretty much screwed.

[Gman]

2. Technology, to a large degree

[CoffeeCat]

3. Will we ever know?

Our economy is definitely transitioning. However, I think we're doing more than transitioning to a different
product or sector supporting the economy. I think we're transitioning into a paradigm shift.

The major industries that you mentioned (auto, steel, etc) have been outsourced or are disappearing. The financial
sector propped up the latest bubble, and the high-tech industry supported its own bubble in the last '80's and early 90's.

As we transition out of our current financial bubble--the government is artificially adding air to the financial bubble.
Can you imagine, if this was 1995 and many major dotcoms were failing--and our government was giving trillions to Silicon
Graphics, Inc. Cray, etc.? Sometimes failure is ok.

I think the economy is being impeded from transitioning. We're blowing hot air into a failed bubble.

70 percent of the U.S. economy is consumer spending. In my opinion, that entire model is antithetical to self actualization
or personal growth. It's sad when our entire existence, security and peace is contingent upon being good little consumers.
The economy went gangbusters during the last decade, because people were using credit cards and home equity to be materialistic
junkies. The result is that we're all pulled inward, sitting in our newly added sun rooms with all of our "stuff".

Because we're so self focused and pulled inward, we could impede our own evolution. Our species is dependent on exploration
and discovery--reaching out into space and using our imaginations to discover new ways of traveling, living and using energy.
Evolution requires at least some of us to be self actualized and focused on something other than granite countertops and Pottery
Barn.

What about a barter economy? What about actually knowing one another and depending on one another--instead of hunkering
down in our suburban cells?

I don't know what the best transition would be, or what our economy should be like. I do know that our government is
breathing life into a failed system that doesn't bring out the best in us. In fact, greed, dishonesty and selfishness
are rewarded. I wish we had the courage to allow it to fail--and believe in our ability to craft something new and
different.

[Javaman]

6. Excellent reply! thanks. nt

[customerserviceguy]

4. Went for "other"

Frankly, fifty years from now, at least half of the people working in the US will be working for a government entity, or one that is essentially one. I work for a regulated utility company, since we're a monopoly, I have to put myself in that category.

[RDANGELO]

5. I agree with CoffeeCat that we are in transition.

I think that eventually we will see an economy growing on the green and health care industries, and hopefully some manufacturing. At some point, we are going to have to stop running large trade deficits.