You need to read this extraordinary short piece from The Economist. Folks, contrary to popular reports, America is not skateboarding toward Hell after all. Evoking Ronald Reagan’s campaign slogan, “It’s Morning Again in America,” the author contrasts the current doom-and-gloom mode of presidential campaigning with the more realistic vision of Warren Buffett and James Fallows.
Job growth is booming, largely because of innovation and entrepreneurship taking place in large cities and rust-belt regions. Unemployment is falling, and although wages ticked down slightly in February, the average US wage still stands at $25.35 an hour.
The Economist attributes this activity to three reviving forces:
- “Old industrial skills are acquiring new relevance thanks to such things as advances in materials science.” These are leading to new technologies and improvements in synthetic materials, textiles, chemicals, and weapons.
- Cheap property in old industrial cities has morphed into an unexpected asset. Large companies and small businesses are reoccupying and repurposing abandoned mills and warehouses; Silicon Valley-type entrepreneurs are seeking more reasonably priced space in fly-over country, and older industries are re-opening in rural districts.
- Manufacturing has risen from the dead. “Startups are beginning to transform manufacturing just as they transformed service industries. . . . New techniques such as 3D printing, combined with a rapid decline in the cost of computing power, are making it easier for small firms to compete with big ones.” Crowdfunding sources abet this renaissance by making it easier for budding entrepreneurs to raise capital.
You know, we hear so much that is negative — monstrously negative — that if you read the news much you become either depressed or crazed.
One of my colleagues remarked that a source of our daily angst is the constant drumbeat of doom and gloom, violence and hatred that sells web pages. She is so right about that. We live in an atmosphere of fear and dread. The Presidential campaign rhetoric distills that to a poisonous elixir.
Don’t drink it, friends. The Brits have got it right: “It is time for Americans to recognise that, for all its troubles, their country has not lost the ability to remake and revitalise itself.”
No, indeed. It’s what we do best.
Thanks for sharing. Just posted 🙂
I like your message today, and I like the whole outlook that is offered on America.
It really is difficult to read a newspaper and not just want to do yourself in.
oohhboy, ain’t THAT the truth!!!
Awesome post! Politicians just want to sing doom and gloom to get voted in.
Yup. Some of them seem to be going beyond that. Have you watched Rachel Maddow lately? Eeeek!