There are plenty of news sites available on the internet.  I don’t like them.  I want them to omit entertainment fluff and get down to information that I can use.  Stop abusing my thinking-brain with horrible empty content.  I hate stories that don’t help any Americans to understand better about what’s happening to us all in the twenty-first century.  There are topics galore that are being neglected.  Here are some examples.

How about telling Americans what happens to workers and non-workers in a shrinking economy that has fewer jobs?  What policies and circumstances caused those fewer jobs?  Please show evidence.  Are we seeing the destruction of the market economy?  What kind of economy can take its place?

How can the U.S. continue its fiscal overspending and monetarism under the situation we see around us where production has been eclipsed by speculation and opportunity has been shut out by the excessive pursuit of risk?  How about explaining the consequences of mal-invested capital (under a system of financialization and bank deregulation)?  Money has been wasted when it could have been better used.  Can we change our malinvestment habit (by ending financialization and re-regulating banks)?  What are examples of some better uses for American capital?  How can we begin to re-build wealth in the USA?

How about explaining what the “post-industrial economy” is?  What do the Saudis mean when they talk about their “post-oil economic future?”  What will it mean for us?  Is there a new energy economy on the horizon?  How can we each benefit from it?

And please stop talking about how robots have taken over the job market and how hopeless the job horizon is for all of us (American jobs have been diminished mostly through malinvestments like hostile takeovers, and outsourcing, not robots) .  Financialization and tax rules that consider asset depreciation have encouraged the purchase of robots in the car industry.  But without low-interest loans and tax breaks, assembly-line robots probably wouldn’t have made sense (so that’s a policy issue involving economic interventionism).  And without these added costs from robotics, would cars be cheaper (so would you have a newer car)?

And a lot of work needs to get done that robots can’t do.  Robots lack human dexterity and computers aren’t intelligent (they haven’t passed the Turing Test).  While it’s true that the telephone, electrical grid and sewage treatment plants of the world have been revolutionized by microprocessors, a microprocessor is a very small and humble kind of switch that isn’t a robot.  To call a microprocessor a robot seems to me an exaggeration.

Microprocessors have taken over telephone switching, and electrical plant operations and water treatment centers so that fewer people are needed to operate those facilities.  But those microprocessors are vulnerable in the case of an electromagnetic pulse.  They aren’t a replacement that is as reliable as a person.  And hardening those systems isn’t considered affordable (without a government program that pays for the upgrade) by the private companies that have adopted microprocessors.  Private companies have cut their costs to increase their profits by using microprocessors, but in doing that, they have made our electrical, communication and water treatment systems vulnerable.

New opportunities that aren’t present in a centralized economy could rejuvenate our cities if small business taxes are reduced.  Bad policies like high taxes that harm innovation don’t have to continue.  How about declassifying new technologies and opening them up for private development?  If you would like to understand how we got to our American political and economic here and now, buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries available at Amazon.com right now.

To learn about EMP threats see: “Report of the Commission to Assess the Treat to the United States from Electromagnetic (EMP) Attack: Critical National Infrastructures,” Dr. John S. Foster, Jr., Mr. Earl Gjelde, Dr. William R. Graham (Chairman), et al, April 2008.