One of the most interesting, and vital, questions for the future of the U.S., and any country really, is whether it is possible to have a viable economy without any manufacturing capacity in your country.
Former Intel CEO Andy Grove weighs in on this question in an interview in the current issue of Technology Review. His answer: rebuild a basic manufacturing capacity, including protecting your manufacturing sector and products. Check it out.
There was a time when I thought that raising the retirement age was a good idea. People were living longer and healthier, and most work was information or service work. So why not? The U.S. age for Social Security is already going up to 67. What would be the harm in raising it to 70?
More recently I have come to the view that this would be bad public policy. Why? For those in the top 50% of earners life span is indeed increasing, but for those in the bottom 50% of earners life span is barely changing. Raising the retirement age would be quite harmful to those earning less, who are often in the most physically demanding jobs.
Digby has written about this with passion and clarity.
Then there is the recent proposal being floated to save some Medicare spending by increasing the eligibility age from 65 to 67 here in the U.S. This would be a disaster for many, many people age 65-67, who could not afford private health insurance (if they could get it) and may no longer be covered by employers. And it may not save much money for the government. It is Insurance 101 to keep younger, healthier people in your program. In fact a recent analysis shows that while there may be a small saving in Medicare itself, the costs to individuals, employers, and states, plus higher costs to remaining Medicare enrollees will be more than twice any anticipated savings. Uh oh. Maybe this idea needs to be re-thought.
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Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, author, consultant, blogger, internet video producer and Founder of Futurist.com. We are booking events for the Fall-Winter and for 2012. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.
I grew up on this stuff. In the 1970′s some at NASA believed it may be realistic to be building colonies in orbit of up to 10,000 people, by…about now. It may have been, had we really wanted to. The original dreams came from the work of Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill, and his book High Frontiers: Human Colonies in Space, written in 1976. Check out this video from NASA circa-mid-1970′s. Still a dream for the future, or just a fantasy from yesterday?
Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, author, consultant, blogger, internet video producer and Founder of Futurist.com. We are booking programs for the Fall-Winter and for 2012. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.
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Duff Hendrickson is an old friend who creates animations and scenes for virtual worlds. This is a new demo reel of work made mostly for scientists. Fun to watch this weekend.
IBM CTO Mark Dean, who was one of the designers of the first IBM PC that debuted in 1981, weighed in recently on whether we are entering a “post-PC” era in which tablets and phones replace PC’s. That meme is exaggerated, but Dean does suggest that computing itself is in transition…
PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device — though there’s plenty of excitement about smartphones and tablets — but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress,” Dean says. “These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact. It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society, and people’s lives.
Interesting. It is all about social spaces.