I think that you have all seen the news about our GNP decline of 2.9%. Well, I am here to tell you that it was a lot worse. How could that be, you ask? If you understand "real economics" then this will not sound strange to you. Remember that we have two elements that drive our economy and those are "extraction" and "value added". Extraction is the extracting of wealth from the geographical resources of the USA and value added is the value we produce as individuals with our skill and hard work. Most of the world only has value added to drive their economies and we compete with the rest of the world on this element.
Look at the recent past. We have had a monumental advances in developing resources like oil and natural gas using "frac'ing". While this was going on, we also have had very significant advances in agriculture. Farmers are some of the most productive citizens that we have. They are producing far more wealth today from our good farm land than in the past. The point of all this is to point out that when we have had a decline in the wealth produced by our citizens by value added that is far greater than the reported 2.9%. I do not see another big increase in things like "frac'ing" or the finding of new wealth from extracting at the rate of the past. That means that to over come the decline in our GNP 2.9%, the element of added value will have to grow at rates well beyond the estimates of anyone.
I blogged before that the name of the game is quality of life for individual citizens and that mean that we need to grow our GNP per person. If our GNP decline of 2.9% were adjusted for on a per person basis, we would be looking at a per person GNP decline of well over 3.0%. That is the number that we should all the talking about.
We all know that our kids are our future and what do we know about them? To improve the quality of life for our kids, they are going to have to figure out how they can produce value added at levels of at least 5% greater than their parents. Those are the numbers. The oil, natural gas, coal, good farm land and forests are all free wealth discovered by Columbus in 1492 and that wealth is being diluted by our population growth.
Given these facts, what do you think our future looks like in light of the decline in our GNP of 2.9%?
PS----When the Army rejects 71% of our kids, how do you think our kids and our country are going to do in the future? It looks like the "Darwin Limitation" has already arrived for the military.
