Ever wonder why the dollar is in a steady decline? Ever wonder why so many foreign corporations and companies own so much American property?

     It's really quite simply because we have ceased to be a producing nation. Not that we are not very productive, very busy, very hard working. It's just that we no longer produce very much physical material for all of our hard labors. This is not to say that our exhaustive intellectual property or managerial and IT service isn't worth anything, it has value, in it's own way.

     But here is the problem: all this intellectual property, managerial whatnot and IT services, you can't eat them, you can't wear them, they will not quench your thirst, they will not power your machines. They are luxuries.

Can you build a country's economy solely on luxuries?

Yeah, I didn't think so either.

     The service sector should be just that, a sector, it shouldn't even be a majority sector if we want a strong and fruitful economy. If we want an economy that concentrates wealth into our country and it's citizens, it has to produce real main stream products, not luxuries. As we saw in the 70's and 80's the manufacturing sector of our economy could not compete very well against foreign manufacturers. This is the normal give and take in the system, but in the US there is a problem with the corporation system and the government. Nothing serious was done to keep the manufacturing sector afloat. We did not raise tremendous tariffs on imported manufactured goods and direct that money into manufacturing R&D. Nope, we just started importing more manufactured goods, first from Japan and then China as they became more industrialized. And of course how did we paid for all these imported goods? Well let's just say it wasn't a fair trade, we definitely did not exchange our manufactured goods for theirs. We paid for it with the accumulated wealth of a nation that was once the undisputed industrial world leader. We paid for it in dollars, which now that it's not based on any metal reserve system is more like stock in the American government than any sort of real currency.

     It's not that we couldn't make major changes to the corporate system that rewards the quick buck over the long term investment. It's not that the government couldn't use tariff money to run large and risky research programs that would make our manufacturing sector competitive again.

     It was just easier to outsource our manufacturing economy. Kind of like how it's easier to import oil than develop alternative fuel sources...

     So all that news that we've been hearing over the years about how “our economy is becoming a sort of service economy” has been a lie, what they we're really saying is “our economy is failing, so we're going to tell you it's becoming something better so you don't panic!”

But,

in truth,

without an economy based in manufacturing,

or an economy based in exportable energy commodities,

or an economy based on any sort of basic human need instead of luxuries,

our economy is a lie.

Just like the cake...