Dream Big

It has been one year since the financial collapse of Lehman Brothers and the onset of the largest financial crisis in the modern era. Over the past couple of months the problems on Wall Street lead to problems on Main Street. People are out of work and trying to figure how to pick up the pieces. As people find themselves out of work I find myself wondering if this financial collapse will lead to a new era in American history. I wonder what areas of the economy will prosperous and which will go the way of Lehman.
The Financial and Insurance sectors have grown from 2.7% of GDP in 1950 to its 8.1% peak in 2006. If you include real estate in with financials the combined percentage of the economy was 20.4% which is far larger than any other part of the American Economy. The only other sector that has grown by a comparable amount has been the Professional and Business services sector which includes lawyers and scientists. The professional and business sectors grew from 3.7% in 1950 to 12.7%. The increases in these sectors have come primarily from the decrease in manufacturing which has decreased from 27% in 1950 down to 11.5% in 2009. There is no way to completely predict the way the United States economy will look in 15 or 20 years but we need to talk as a country about what we want the country to look like. If we don’t have a big vision for the country I worry about our future prosperity.
Any vision is some vision: One vision for the country is that of the environmentalists that favor huge expenditures on developing green technology in order to make the country a prettier place. This vision is one of wind turbines in every field and solar panels on every household. Eventually we would become so good at developing this technology that we will export it all over the world thereby decreasing our trade deficit and increasing prosperity. This vision at least sets up the country to export products around the world like we did with financial products over the past decade. I would argue that this vision doesn’t go far enough to power the future of innovation. These means of alternative energy are hard to transport across the country.
I say the most important thing to our country in the future is developing large labs that engage in primary research. So many of all the great technological developments of the past century have come because of the government or through government sanctioned monopoly i.e. the phone company. If we really wanted to invest in the country we should double or triple our research and do it in an effective way. I think the first thing that we need to do is develop a fusion process that generates net energy. There has to be a way and we can do it. We have a couple of facilities working on it now. If the president set big goals like powering 20% of the country by fusion by 2020, that would be huge. And the power source could pay off in, as of now, unimagined ways. We can do it and people shouldn’t doubt the human ability to invent and innovate. This power could fuel innovation in more primary research that isn’t feasible right now. And this is a technology that we could export around the world.
Some believe that the financial crisis will decrease the influence of finance in the near future thereby dcreasing one of our major exports around the world. I say lets invest in the long term and in projects that wont yeild results for 10 or 20 years. The investments we have made in the past as a country and government have been good ones. I say lets become a fusion powered country and travel the solar system. That’s my idea of dreaming big.