[cincibuck]

Bait? Actually, Phillips makes more sense about the economy than McCain, Obama or Hillary, so in that sense, yes.

The central issues become: 1) Can we afford laissez faire mentality in an era of mega banks? 2) Can we continue to survive by no longer manufacturing anything? 3) Can you make a national economy out of "money products?"

With a "bottom line driven" stockmarket, we have managed to force ourselves out of manufacturing and into a risky area where we push money and debt around, creating a short term, "get it now" mentality. Enron and the current housing loan fiasco should be showing us how quickly things can go from wonderful to awful in just such an economy. But. to me. the greater question is what do we do for employment? One thing history should teach us is that you don't want a huge section of your population unemployed and unemployable. Things tend to get very messy when that happens. Bring back domestic service? Put folks back on the farms? Reinstitute the treadmill... our current prison population could generate a hell of a lot of electricity that way... but, seriously, how does this kind of economy create jobs, jobs that can support a middle class life style?

McCain has at least had the courage to tell folks in Big 10 Country that the era of an economy driven by Big Three and steel manufacturing is over. He proposes retraining and my question is retraining for what? Unless the guys on the assembly line now are a far different breed than the guys I worked with in GM plants back in the '60s, there isn't much out there for them to do. They aren't going to become IT folks... and frankly, look at how much of the IT work has been sent off to the third world with engineering following close behind.

Believe Phillips, or not, what is for sure is that we are venturing into a new type of economy.