Robert Reich is Pessimistic

Here is a bit from Robert Reich's latest post on his blog:

The President now says the answer is to help American business. “We can’t succeed unless American businesses succeed,” he said recently. “And I’m going to do everything I can to promote their ability to grow and prosper.”

But the prosperity of America’s big businesses has become disconnected from the prosperity of most Americans.

Republicans say the answer is to reduce the size and scope of government. But without a government that’s focused on more and better jobs, we’re left with global corporations that don’t give a damn.

China is eating our lunch. Why? It has a national economic strategy designed to create more and better jobs. We have global corporations designed to make money for shareholders.

Seems to me, if you want to compete with China's cheap labour you would be emphasizing robotics in the US. I don't care how hard a Chinese labourer works and for how small a wage, a robot runs for less. The cost in the robot is the research, but that's a one time cost that can be amortized over tens of millions of robots. If America really wants to compete with "cheap labour" from China, it should do a "Manhatten-style" crash development program to leap frog robotic technology a couple of generations.

That's my simple-minded solution. I'm sure it is a lot harder because you would have fanatical Republicans decrying "big government" even while their big corporate donors would be holding out their hands to get a cut of the pie. The "military-industrial complex" would probably complain because they would have to compete for projects while under the current system they get assured contract with nicely padded profits. The universities would love to get the research dollars, but the vast American public would complain about "pointed-headed intellectuals getting taxpayer money to string tin cans together in a scheme to make the American worker unemployed". So... the US won't go for the obvious solution. Instead it will brow-beat China about is underpriced currency and the cozy relationship between the Communist Party and big business in China. (I love that complaint given the cozy relationship between the Republican Party and big business in the US.)