wrote in message
...

snipped
I think what I'm trying to work through is that I feel both you and Ken are
vastly overgeneralizing. I do not feel that we NEED have a nation with a
glut of folks capable of
"burger flipping" as a skillset. Nor, do I agree with Ken that we are
overwhelmingly a nation of overachieving production machines. There is, as
always a continuum, but we have, IMO, lowered the overall skill levels over
the past few decades. For whatever reason, we have dumbed down basic
education, made higher education(especially in technical and scientific
fields) less regarded by both students and the institutions themselves, and
in so doing have done the national economy no real good.
Therefore, I applaud what Obama seems to be saying: short term stimulus
followed by a bit of belt tightening and a national focus on education and
innovation. Sure, it's political rah-rah, to an extent, but at least it
attempts to start getting the notion over to the people that this is no easy
ride that someone else does for you.
As for the way commerce was conducted in the 1950-75 timeframe, I do see
relevant ideas that seem to have been lost. Why, for instance, were
corporations perfectly profitable, and focused on the long term, when CEO's
and Presidents made around 20-30 times the entry level professional's
salary? When did it seem prudent to pay the leadership an average of 150
times entry? These weren't, for years on end, ever regulated matters, yet
were considered fair practice. I'm not claiming any rights or wrongs here,
so much as wondering where it all got off the track, with a shrinking
industrial production, widening gap between workers and exective's
compensation, lowering of educational standards and unregulated greed.
I do suspect it's going to as messy as making sausage getting back onto
sounder footing.......
Tom