dotnmarty":2zhcynau said:
<stuff clipped>For instance, I can not understand why any American would buy a vehicle that came here on a ship. <more clipped>
Ah Marty, here's one on which we two liberals disagree. In the past 15 years, I've bought an Isuzu, two Toyotas and a VW Jetta. The reasons for my choices weren't driven by price - they were driven by quality (and in the case of the diesel Jetta, incredible fuel economy). The American auto industry took a huge hit because they weren't making what many Americans want - high quality, fuel efficient vehicles. IMHO, there are several issues relating to keeping our standard of living up:
1) We've gotten soft. We don't value education as highly as we used to nor as highly as other countries. We also don't work as hard as we used to nor as hard as individuals in some other countries. Rather than focusing on buying American, we should rather focusing on out competing the hell out of other countries. We need to commit to having the best and brightest students AND teachers and we need to pay our teachers appropriately. We also need to lose the idea that we, as Americans, are some how entitled to a better lifestyle than others. If we want it, we have to work for it.
2) We've shifted too far to a "knowledge based" economy. We don't manufacture near as much as we used to and we have this idea that we can supplant the making of stuff with the creation of ideas. Now that the internet makes the rapid and nearly free exchange of ideas possible, we can't count a knowledge based economy to fill in the loss of manufacturing jobs. As others above have pointed out, knowledge based jobs can also be shifted to other countries and moreover, often at very low cost (it's essentially free to move ideas, software, digital designs etc around the world).
3) Other societies do not necessarily value humanity as we do. Hence, workers in other countries don't have the power that workers in this country have and it's easier for companies to take advantage of them. That used to be a much bigger problem in this country prior to the strong labor movements in the early 1900's. IMHO, the best solution to this problem is to continue to encourage/promote democracy to the extent we can.
4) Our way of living probably will and should change. Americans make up <5% of the world's population but use about 25% of the energy. That can't last forever. We can't really expect the rest of the world to live at a wildly lower standard of living than we do forever. That will change. Obviously, the best way for it to change would be for everyone's standard of living to go up but that will require some fundamental shifts - in particular in energy usage. I think we can live quite nicely on significantly lower energy per capita than we presently do but we definitely need to rethink how we transport people and goods if we are to do that.
Just my 2 (or 4) cents worth.
