The Dollar

Now here's something you'll never see on Fox Business channel, or any business channel for that matter.

GDP and job growth in the 2000's was due exclusively to dollar devaluation.

During the election season all we heard about was jobs, jobs, jobs. Why aren't there any jobs?

The real question rather is why was there any job growth at all from 2001 to 2008? The answer is clearly because the dollar was devalued 41% over the decade.

It's not magic: unless you have some innovation like the internet in the 1990's to increase your GDP you get no economic growth and no growth in jobs. The only way out is to devalue the dollar so the jobs that are created are paid with relatively worthless currency.  The upshot is that not only the new workers, but ALL workers are paid with the devalued dollar.

Only when the world was ending in 2008 was the free fall in dollar value halted. Now we are Japan: with a rising cohort of dependent pensioners and a currency that cannot be devalued any further. Okay, we aren't as bad off as Europe, but relative to the last two decades we have a lot more drag on the economy.

The 1990's saw GDP growth due to the internet boom, so the US dollar was spared.

Modest Proposal:

We need a new growth industry.  One of the few things the US does with any competitive advantage is provide military firepower. I suggest we monetize this by contracting our services to global bidders for a price. Why provide it for free?  There was a time when global security was the loss leader: we made the world safe so that our industries could sell to the world markets, but that advantage is dwindling. Now we are making the world safe so that our competitors can compete with us and out-sell us.

Security is expensive. Why is the US bearing the burden for free? If our UN and NATO partners don't want to pony up then maybe we should accept bids from other potential customers.

Just sayin'.