The United States, and most of the western world, no longer makes things. Our everyday necessities, shoes, clothing, hammers, computers, are now made in other countries. The United States is now almost entirely a service economy, insurance, bond trading, tourism, real estate, retail, and so forth, none of which actually produces a product, a “thing”, like a hat or a bicycle. The entire service economy succeeds only so long as the people who make the “things” perceive that what we give them in return, paper promissory notes, are worth something. But what happens when our promises are no longer accepted? What happens when the service economy slows and comes to a halt because the people who make the “things” we need to survive no longer load the container ships and send the “things” to us? At that point we will have to start manufacturing things again, and rebuilding a manufacturing economy will be a whole lot harder than it was tearing it down. And how will those of us in a declining service economy restore our industry? By a Deus Ex Machina? Or is that machinery gone forever as well?
He looked just like you would expect
An empty man to look
A man self-lacking in respect
A case right from the book
He settled wearily on the couch
He sighed and closed his eyes
Said, Doctor I no longer vouch
For what I know are lies
What do you mean? I murmured low
He sighed again and said,
I don’t know why it’s gotten so
The world I trust is dead
You see I once believed in all
The government would say
The TV news now has the gall
To claim that just today
They found that things that we once made
Are made in China now
The Chinese put us in the shade
They’ve stolen our know-how
We do not make the little things
Like hammers, hats and shoes
Or screws and nails and front porch swings
The stuff that folks all use
They claim that we’re in service here
In good old USA
And what is more, this much is clear
We’ve traded jobs that pay
Enough so that a factory hand
Can have a wife and kids
He knows he can support them and
His job won’t hit the skids
I never thought about it much
But doctor, now I see
That service jobs and others such
As those are never free
And have you lost your job I asked
He paused to catch his breath
I did, he said, and now I’m tasked
To bring about the death
Of all the lands that once employed
Its workers making things
I’m tasked to see that they’re destroyed
From commoners to kings
He left me then and shuffled out
I thought him odd but sane
And as I chanced to look about
I glanced out in the rain
And saw the lights go slowly dim
And streetcars to a crawl
I knew at once because of him
For on my desk a scrawl
“When men deny the grace of work
They cannot see the light”
And as I watched by some strange quirk
Came everlasting night