Reply #5: Creating wealth ain't gonna come from service jobs like health care. [View All]

[jtuck004]

China is on their way to a lead in solar and renewable engergies - Applied Materials is building the largest plant ever for solar panels in Xi'an.
The Chinese are going to be reducing their independence on oil and coal, and selling us solar technologies soon. We are not going to like the results, so that might be one area.

Our economy is pretty energy intensive, but we are running out of oil, and coal is never going to be clean. Maybe Nuclear engineering?

Agriculture is going to rear it's head one of these years. We could redo the way we treat agriculture, bust up the monopolies, and return to more small farms and local spending - would help our local economies tremendously.

Finance has taken over a huge percentage of GDP, but taking money off the top while not providing the investment in this country that they used to. On the other hand China, Brazil, India, and Russia have new consumers coming on line all the time. When you read the reports of increases in corporate profits you may note that that is coming from sales outside of this country, while sales here are still weak. Until we re-employ about 20+ million people it is very likely to remain like that, or worse. So, if we don't change, perhaps "finance" would be a good field, since our employment picture looks very bad for at least a decade, maybe longer. And perhaps they could study ways to refocus finance on building this country, not just short-term profit.

Commercial aircraft and weapons are still strong suits for us. I wonder what we could get back if we really tried.

Oh yeah, and we need to re-educate people so they understand how to spend in their own best interests.