While Yellen is telling the Chinese to cut back on production, America's increase in production is 0%.
Insanity.
Growth in more Government.
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The USA should be tripping over itself to promote a business/regulatory climate conducive for the market to develop mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and heavy industry jobs.
If all we are going to have is an economy of home healthcare nurses, Motel Six managers, travel agents, social workers, and the odd doctor or lawyer in some particular small town, with most young people working as "assistant managers" at a Dollar General, then there won't be much of an economy.
Ultimately all wealth originates from either the Sun or the Earth, if you want to take it back to that level. All energy basically comes from the Sun and all mineral wealth/raw materials come from the ground or below the ground. Industry and agriculture have to be the foundational bedrock upon which the rest of the economy is built and rests. We cannot all do service work and service work cannot be the heart and soul of the economy.
A town of 5,000 people could function with 1,000 people working in manufacturing, 1,000 working in mining, 10 doctors, 5 dentists, 4 lawyers, 3 accountants, and so forth. If the town had 0 manufacturing jobs, 0 mining jobs, and everybody worked in law, medicine, and accounting, or if a third of the town were hedge fund managers, it would be horrifically imbalanced.
The one thing that the economy absolutely cannot do without is insurance and then re-insurance or "insurance for the insurers." Nothing gets done without insurance. Goods don't move, doctors don't do medicine, lawyers don't do law, accountants don't do accountancy, engineers don't engineer, builders don't build, shippers don't ship. On some level every single one of us is beholden to those cubicle occupying bean counting policy underwriters and claims adjusters. I told a colleague, "as a lawyer having to deal with insurance companies on a continual and ongoing basis, insurance companies are my second biggest source of headaches coming just behind lawyers, although sometimes they come in at the head of the pack."
Retail is going to be slashed and burned by AI due to the states like California pushing minimum wage into the stratosphere which will serve to spur corporations to automate as much front-end retail work as possible. It is also likely that advances in AI will begin to put many insurance workers out of business as advanced algorithms begin to do underwriting and claims adjusting.
I would suspect that AI will become a growing threat to law and medicine, but I also tend to believe lawyers and doctors have enough lobbying clout to use the force of law to make sure AI cannot directly threaten their respective bottom-lines. "That AI construct is practicing law/medicine without a license, and it isn't possible to license an AI construct" combined with the hesitancy of a malpractice carrier to issue a policy to a construct, will probably serve to at least delay, if not derail, mass AI encroachment into law and medicine.
In economic terms, AI, combined with increasing government regulations making it difficult for small and medium businesses to remain viable, is perhaps the single biggest threat to the economy for the average American. We're entering an era where the large established corporate giants can easily afford the colossal upfront costs of transitioning to AI, while the smaller players are just going to get wiped out because of rising labor costs due to increases in minimum wage and the soaring costs of raw materials and energy. I see this as largely deliberate and I believe the agitation for increases in minimum wage is coming from those established giants who have already decided to transition to AI and who want to make labor unaffordable for their smaller competitors.
