To summarize: global manufacturing is expanding rapidly; that expansion is helping to pull the world out of the Great Recession; and much of it is based on cross-border trade. This is a perfect example of how the global economy, and the manufacturing sector in particular, is no longer some sort of adversarial, “us versus them” system. It’s complementary, wherein success and growth abroad fuels success and growth at home. So everybody wins, right? Well, not everybody. You see, pandering politicians can’t campaign on such kum-bay-yah happiness. They need scary bogeymen, from which they can save their constituents. And, of course, there’s no better bogeyman these days than China.

Gas is going to be costly, so fuel-efficient cars will be popular - and, so, the federal government cannot rely on you having the good sense to buy them but must mandate them instead.

Advertising is not a scam at all. It is individuals sacrificing a level of product perfection in exchange for a level of product trust and time efficiency that cannot be fulfilled through word-of-mouth advertising.

If banks were bigger, they would be too big to save. And if they were more international, governments would be less inclined to bail them out because politicians wouldn’t want to spend money helping out other countries. Also if banks were more international, they would be more diversified. So it seems to me that larger, more international banks would also be superior to the status quo.

There are things that big banks do for customers that small banks can’t, because of economy of scale. Compare the web site and online services of Bank of America to that of your local credit union. I love credit unions (I’m a member of two), but they just don’t have the economies of scale to justify spending nearly as much on technological (and other) infrastructure costs like a big bank does. In the wholesale banking space, there are literally hundreds of bank services that big banks offer, but small banks can’t, mostly for the same reason. Wholesale customers want a bank that they can do all their financial business with.

Bismarck was a tradition-bound reactionary, altogether resentful of modern industrial development, although he himself owned a small paper mill. As did many of the ultraconservative contemporaries of his junker class, he trusted agriculture and handicraft but frowned on large-scale industrial enterprise and on trade unionism. To check both, if they had to be tolerated, was one of his goals. Governmentalizing, and thereby controlling through an appropriate bureaucratic apparatus, the providing of medical, accident, and old age care and of death (burial) benefits seemed an obvious way to put the reins on laissez-faire capitalism as well as on labor.

One of the scariest phrases in the English language is “comprehensive reform.” It means large legislation, studded with these sorts of land mines. If you really want to create a jobless recovery, then I recommend enacting legislation that makes it harder to start a business. Of course, anyone who votes against the bill will be branded as an opponent of necessary financial reforms.

The point here is that when the age of eligibility for benefits was not far from average longevity, Social Security acted like a program to insure people against the risk that they would outlive their savings. Today, however, with an age of eligibility well below the age of longevity, Social Security acts more like a government-run retirement savings system.