Sally Blount: The Service Sector Will Save the Economy
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http://bigthink.com The U.S. cannot manufacture goods as economically as other nations because of our taxes and social benefits. As a result, we need to look to the service sector and finance for growth. Question: What will fuel growth in the economy? Sally Blount: Clearly the service sector is where we excel in the U.S. economy versus the manufacturing and so clearly that's going to be, and the knowledge-based sectors. Because that's where we have -- still have a leg up in the world in higher education and people who come out with critical thinking skills, so clearly those pieces are going to lead. Finance is already playing a bigger role than any of us thought it would. But I personally, in terms of sort of hopes and dreams, I think that social enterprise is having more, on a small scale, but there's more vigor in that than I would have guessed five or 10 years ago. And that excites me. Question: Has the service sector permanently eclipsed manufacturing? Sally Blount: For the foreseeable future, the service sector has eclipsed manufacturing and a lot of it is a simple cost argument. We cannot manufacture as economically in the United States as you can in developing countries because all kinds of tax reasons, benefit reasons, and things that we require and are good for society. Question: Is that bad for the U.S.? Sally Blount: The interesting thing about economics and the markets and the developing the developed world is we've never played out this game before in a global scale. We don't know if there is long-term harm to losing a manufacturing base. Intuitively, it feels very uncomfortable. It's unclear where certain sectors of our society are going to continue to find employment. When you drive through Detroit, it's absolutely scary. In some situations... or cities like Buffalo that used to have these manufacturing bases. So I would argue we don't know the answer to that. But I'm not sure we can fix it right now. Until people are willing to not look for the lowest cost on certain manufactured goods. The developed world will win out, or the developing world, as the jobs base for manufacturing will win out over the developed world. And in order for that to change, we'd have to change how we buy, and how we consume. And it's hard to foresee in the near future how that's going to change. So in many ways I don't know if we have a choice, we have to play it out and see what happens. The beautiful thing is, the Internet, for example: We didn't even know about it 20 years ago and even 15 nobody ever thought it was going to circle the globe as fast as it did. There's so, and you know, that's where you get your hope an sense of surprise... is there may well be things that are going to happen that we can't even imagine that make this service-dominated developed economy just fine. And what we have to do when I get back to education is keep educating the thinkers and the innovators and the critiquers who will help those breakthroughs come to bear because that's the only hope for human society because at some point the developing world have played out this chain as well. And we will have robots manufacturing everything basic. And the question is what is human life then? What is the marketplace then? How do we find meaning and value and get our needs met and feed our families? Recorded October 27, 2010Interviewed by Victoria Brown
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a service economy does not produce wealth, does not enrichen this country. WE MUST get our manufacturing BACK. what will make this country wealthy again is to re-open, modernize, and build new steel plants. steel, great example. take iron ore and combine them with other elements that occur in nature. the finished product is worth far more then what you had originally. you just created wealth. service jobs cannot and will not do that.
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People who live in the city doing service jobs literally have nothing. Their existence and livelihood depend on the continued existence and smooth functioning of a complex and fragile economic system. Compared to farmers who can always feed themselves, city people really are the peasants. It's a lot easier for a farmer's kids to move to the city than it is for city people to take up the country life. Because moving to the city is not a step up. It's a step down.
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The service sector will lead to a new kind of slavery with more low paying jobs and increased working hours to make ends meet regardless of education level. It will sober up society. However there will still be access to quality goods as manufacturing will get automated even in developing countries. People will soon have to focus on the quality of life they are living rather than on riches.
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There will be living wage sure. Be enslaved for the rest of your life.
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SO YOU DON'T KNOW. fuck. Why elect The Thatcher. Shit what a brain died politicians and economist. Are they all daft!
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So, Jesus take the wheel? Is that your answer?! What the fuck!
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You can only build an economy on wealth. The service sector is the only sector left yes, but only because the gov't is interfering with the market and by interfere, I mean using it as it's own little monopoly.
Manufacturing of goods is the only way the US is going to get out of this mess, or rather the only way the gov't will get out of this mess because frankly the average US citizen DOESN'T OWE ANYTHING.
It's GOVERNMENT DEBT. It's not ours to pay. -
There are so many people handed positions like this that are complete wastes of oxygen. Pretty obvious why she was given this position.
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Finance is worthless. We should never aspire to grow the financial sector. It's a whole industry that doesn't actually DO ANYTHING, but bets on others ability to do something. They're a necessary evil and a drain on productive society, something to be hopefully minimized.
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How about an agricultural sector- that uses technology to grow organic foods,also foods say that may be tropical, like coconuts, maybe we could grow coconuts in Buffalo, using greenhouses etc...then use the coconuts for their oil, milk, maybe other uses- we could grow things for use as biofeul-hemp and other types of organic to use in clothes, paper, bio-feul types of foods that normally
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What she's saying is not necessarily the case. As manufacturing is becoming more digitised, whereby it becomes cheaper to use computers to design and produce goods, companies are finding that the most productive labour in the world for this is in the 'developed' world. This is because only in this countries are the skills necessary to design and operate these machines existent. We may (nothing is certain) see an increase in western manufacturing in the near future.
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This video should be renamed to: How to defeat China.
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Manufacturing will come back big time with the introduction of strong AI and all types of automation. Even the poorest Chinese wage slave can't work as cheaply as a robot.
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we don't have to change how we buy, we just have to manufacture high level goods like Germany
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This video is essentially a woman shrugging her shoulders going 'I have no idea what is happeneing'. I completely agree with that response.
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I dislike this because the title is misleading. OK no-one can predict the future, but I expected at least something more than "we don't know that losing the manufacturing base is actually a bad thing" and "we HOPE that the service/knowledge sector will help". Expansion needed.
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