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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brian Moore who wrote (73138)	1/10/2000 8:01:00 AM
From: Oblomov	Respond to of 132070

How can you say that airplanes and automobiles have not altered American business greatly? A major chunk of our GDP is due to automobile production, as well as supplier production (steel mfrs, etc.), not to mention the production of oil and gasoline. The vast network of roads in the US - do you think that maybe building them created a few jobs here and there? The fact that the automobile allows people to live miles from where they work has allowed the great suburban (and now exurban) sprawl to occur - which has also resulted in affordable housing for the middle class, and thus a healthy construction sector. The airplane has allowed the national and multinational company to exist. Despite the telecom innovations of the last 70 years, the vast majority of important (big $) business is still conducted face-to-face. This is not because business people are out of touch. In fact, they are very much "in touch" with the non-verbal cues and demeanor of the people with whom they do business. I do not intend any disrespect here, but you have a poor understanding of economic history if you think that the automobile and airplane have not greatly and irrevocably altered the face of American business. As for the Internet, I was an early adopter (1989), and although I see the potential for efficiency improvement, the current hyperbole is astounding. Anytime I hear the word "transformative," I reach for my wallet. If anything, the Internet is pushing the American economy even further toward a pure consumer economy (from a producer economy). That will occur, IMO, until the deflationary effect of e-commerce noticeably spills into the economy at large. Deflation rewards the producer, the debt-free, and the cash-rich. This is not the current status of most Americans.