But I started getting depressed about the future and even about the present. What does our generation have to be proud of? The biggest growing industries seem to be healthcare, where innovation means higher costs (! FYI: in every other industry, innovation => better AND cheaper) and finance, which has consumed the brightest workers.
Since the majority of America spends the majority of our waking hours at a corporation, maybe it makes sense to take a stock of our country by her companies. This doesn't have the catch-all quality of measuring annual GDP growth, but perhaps you will find it more descriptive. (We could also take stock of America by its leadership, but that would be even more depressing.)
In particular, let's see who is innovating. I can be proud of that. Some companies out near San Francisco are creating cool stuff. Facebook is coating the globe, and there's more promise on the horizon. Google is ubiquitous. Apple is also predicting the future by creating it.
But what else? Microsoft got too big. Banks, well, I don't know what to say. Just because there's nothing tangible to point to, like a website or a phone, doesn't mean they haven't been improving our lives, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming that they have done more harm than good.
To round things out, here's the Fortune 10. Four members of big oil, Wal-Mart, GE, GM, Ford, AT&T, and HP. There's things to be hopeful about. Ford is showing some promise of finally producing the future instead of SUVs. Wal-Mart sells people really cheap stuff, perhaps they'll even teach the healthcare industry how to lower costs.
I don't enjoy going out so much anymore, not when every song suggests "party everyday" in the face of all this evidence that we stand at a crossroads. We can be a generation that worked hard like all of our ancestors. I want to be proud of my country when I'm an old man!
3 comments:
Two easy criticisms to make on this post:
1) Why are you judging companies by their number of patents? That's only one measure of the service they provide. This is very true. But can you be proud of Exxon?? What I'm really trying to get at is, what would make me really proud of my country when I look back as an old man.
2) OK great, you made a vague complaint filled with generalizations. What are you going to do about it? I believe that it is necessary to start with the right attitude, and so I am searching for the right attitude and the right ambition, and I hope they infect my country.
that's deep, but i'm not so sure we are ever going to get back that work really hard motto. i think that feeling comes from going from poverty/working class up the class ladder, and i think we have too many people already at the top of the ladder.
An anonymous reader suggests a broad category of ever-living American invention to add to the list: the tireless and continuous process of Taylorization.
To respond to Mermel, today in macro, we visited a growth model which supports your point. According to real business cycle theory, if a government were to tax the population, and just throw the proceeds into the ocean, the ensuing rising marginal utility of households' consumption would lead to more labor input and an expansion in the economy.
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