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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: patron_anejo_por_favor who wrote (255542)	8/13/2003 6:00:21 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (8) \| Respond to of 436258

Americans don't need jobs. We can riverboat gamble in the "stock market" instead of working for a living, says Mark of "Mark to Market" at Capitalstool.com. But now Mike Norman agrees, and says it with a straight face. Out of Work? Become an Investor By Mike Norman Special to TheStreet.com 08/13/2003 04:27 PM EDT Job growth is falling, and unfortunately, fewer jobs are being created. A lot of new jobs are going to low-cost labor markets, like China and India. The U.S. can't compete with this, nor should it try. * In other words, although 2 million Americans may have lost their jobs in the past two years, the economy as a whole has benefited from this trend of outsourcing cheap labor. Still, many continue to wonder when new jobs will be created at home. I'm almost drawn to the conclusion that large supplies of new jobs might never be created, or if they are, their existence will be fleeting because cheap-labor countries will quickly adapt and take them away. The global economy and markets appear to be saying to industrialized countries, and to the U.S. in particular, that the job of their citizens is to invest, not toil away on a production line. Falling interest rates and lower capital costs have put money and credit into the hands of average individuals, offering them the chance to thrive through investment, rather than physical labor. Yet for all its utopian significance, this paradigm is being viewed negatively. It's seen as a weakness rather than understood for what it is: the next evolution of a truly advanced society. To many, job losses reflect some kind of flaw in our economy, a defect exploited by the laboring countries of the world, putting America at a disadvantage. They see job losses and deficits and conclude that the U.S. squandered its economic prowess, and that somehow countries like China, India and Japan have beaten us at our own game. Consider the U.S. as a person who has worked hard all his life and is now enjoying the fruits of his labor. Rather than thinking of our debt as something negative, or worrying about a small loss in jobs to low-cost labor markets, we should see the huge benefits that we enjoy, like enormous capital markets that provide cheap capital, incredibly high standards of living, and an economy that has the flexibility and resilience (because of the vast amounts of capital that flow through it) to weather unprecedented events like Sept. 11, the corporate scandals and war. * The job of Americans, therefore, will be to invest. Your "work" now is to accumulate and manage assets. (Of course, that doesn't mean everyone will become full-time traders. As I pointed out, even in this job environment, we still have 129 million payroll jobs.) The traditional definition of a job is fading, at least in this country. The sooner you realize this, the better off you will be. Those who don't see this shift and take advantage of it will see their standard of living decline relative to someone who embraces this new reality. *** As for those who constantly harp on job loss, debt and deficits, or the fate of the dollar, they'll be left behind in the next phase of the economic evolution. Their view is incorrect; they are married to an old and obsolete way of looking at the world. They have been preaching their doom for decades while the U.S. economy continues to grow and as standards of living continue to rise. Their loss will be our gain.