Are We Going to Like Our New World Better?

I am 38% through the book The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity. according to my Kindle. And I did say I would share, but I wonder how willing any of us are to accept what may be our new reality. According to this book, we are in a "shift from an economy based on making things to one that revolves around knowledge and creativity." We seem to want to do both, create and make.

We are having so much trouble competing in the manufacture of things but we continue to try and that makes me wonder if we have accepted our prospective new role in the world order. I don't think so, or why would we have risked so much of our nation's wealth to prop up the auto industry, which may never be competitive? Unless we can use our knowledge and creativity to figure out how to make a car that is so unique and compelling that people will be willing to pay extra to own it, we are not facing the reality that we can not be competitive doing the same as everyone else. Isn't it better and certainly more interesting to be the brains of the world rather than the labor force? Let emerging economies raise their standards of living through their own industrial revolution. Let us think up wonderful, cool new things, cure disease and poverty, lead a green revolution, you get the idea.

In the long run, we would have been better off if we had sent all the automotive workers to school to learn new skills rather than spend billions propping up a manufacturing wet dream. These thoughts are my own, fertilized by the ideas of economists much smarter than I am. I have only my own sense of what is the right direction, but it frequently seems at odds with the direction we are taking. It makes me a little uneasy. Does anyone else see that the emperor is not wearing anything?

So much for this Saturday's potluck, I'll look for a happier subject for next week.

Sharon