I see it happening. Any comments on our future here in the US?
http://www.evolver.net/user/soultraveller/blog/america_changes_are_cominga_lot_them_are_hereCHANGES ARE COMING ----
Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we
adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come.
1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the
post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is
probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have
just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post
office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.
2. The Check. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do
away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions
of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online
transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This
plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid
your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office
would absolutely go out of business.
3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the
newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print
edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As
for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in
mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper
and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with
Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a
model for paid subscription services.
4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that
you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same
thing about downloading music fromiTunes. I wanted my hard copy
CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could
get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get
the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can
browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before
you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And
think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on
the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the
story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that
you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make
a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep
it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double
charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will
let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge
against your minutes.
6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The
music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal
downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given
a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed
and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio
conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music
purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional music that
the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is
also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating
and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for
Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary,
"Before the Music Dies."
7. Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not
just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies
streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing
lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent
watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than
the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and
commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good
riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put
out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch
online and through Netflix.
8. The "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we
used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own
them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today
your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures,
music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD,
and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is
changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their
latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer,
the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows,
Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If
you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If
you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay
a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.
In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or
your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good
news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it
all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most
of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes
you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab
a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.
9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on
nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for
a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the
buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you
can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are,
right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If
you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and
your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try
to get you to buy something else. Again and again.
All we will have that can't be changed are Memories.
---------------
19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America That Will Blow Your Mind
The United States is rapidly becoming the very first
"post-industrial" nation on the globe. All great economic empires
eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that
their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is
accomplishing this is absolutely amazing. It was America that was
at the forefront of the industrial revolution. It was America that
showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to
televisions to airplanes. It was the great American manufacturing
base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.
But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America . Tens
of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past
decade alone. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been
lost in the same time period. The United States has become a nation
that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly
little. Do you know what our biggest export is today? Waste paper.
Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of
the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest
of the world wants to sell to us. The United States has become
bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what
it once was. Once upon a time America could literally out produce
the rest of the world combined. Today that is no longer true, but
Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world. If the
deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what
possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?
Any great nation throughout history has been great at making
things. So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing
base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the
U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation? We have
created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in
an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the
current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable.
Every single month America goes into more debt and every single
month America gets poorer.
So what happens when the debt bubble pops?
The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern
for every man, woman and child in the country. But sadly, most
Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.
For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand
it to them. Perhaps what they will read below will shock them
badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.
The following are 19 facts about the deindustrialization of America
that will blow your mind....
#1 The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since
2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people
when they were still in operation.
#2 Dell Inc., one of America 's largest manufacturers of computers,
has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China
with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.
#3 Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large
U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in
November. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.
#4 In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide. So how
many of them were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
#5 According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy
Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase
at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million
jobs this year alone.
#6 As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had
risen 18 percent compared to the same time period a year ago.
#7 The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million
manufacturing jobs since October 2000.
#8 According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the
foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding
30 percent to 10.1 million. During that exact same time period,
U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8
percent to 21.1 million.
#9 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. Economic
output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.
#10 Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory
that produces the Ford Ranger in St. Paul, Minnesota. Approximately
750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because
making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford's new
"global" manufacturing strategy.
#11 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked
in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans
were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.
#12 In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent
of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.
#13 The United States has lost a whopping 32 percent of its
manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#14 In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per
capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.
#15 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is
actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#16 Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of
different products. Asia now produces 84 percent of them worldwide.
#17 The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods
for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States .
#18 One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy
will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.
#19 The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now
living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number
of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.
-----
So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose
before we do something about it?
How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed
before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on
our hands?
How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country
before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is
killing our economy?
How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting
war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing
national economic suicide?
The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis. It needs
to be treated like one.
And to underscore the above:
11/9/10: The largest private employer in Saginaw, Mich., will soon
be the city government of Beijing, as a 104-year-old unit of General
Motors will be sold to new owners from China. The $450M purchase
received little attention this summer, but it is a landmark deal
- the first time Chinese investors have bought a U.S. industrial
operation of such scaleand history.
