It's an odd perspective, looking at the present in what I wrote of the future. The economic realignment following the establishment of a global economy... It's history in every book I write, part of my cultural foundation for my fiction. It's the first step in establishing a planetary government. That won't happen soon. This is just the undeniable proof it is a global economy. We're all in the mess together. Wha' hoppen?

The labor market became global. American consumers were the basis of the world spending whoopee, but it was more profitable to pay cheap labor to do it. The correct ethic for work is the work ethic. The execs' job is steer the profit-making machine to the most profit. Yes, that does mean researching maintenance drugs, not cures. The executives work for the corporation, a thing. The only way to impose a human ethic is with regulation, and those fell off at borders. That will begin to change.

Now, America. What can we do to make our labor so internationally competitive we can pay for our modern lifestyle, and to protect it? It's not going to get more peaceful until violence gets real, real, real unprofitable. I agree with the intelligence forecasters (sigh). 2025 won't be peaceful. Power-generation self-sufficient is an essential buffer against the 'resource wars' that could develop. It could also reduce their scope by reducing the vast power that goes with controlling something people need. We have trolls watching every bridge that's yielding a nice toll. Can you say "pirates?"

Am I saying America needs a WPA-style program? I'm saying we need a lot more lasting program than that. Our kids don't see any reason to work hard in school. Too many of their parents are still struggling to pay student loans, not saving so they don't have them, and college doesn't mean you'll get a job. And you can't get a loan at eighteen, so you either try to live for three years on whatever will feed you to be on your own to get a grant, or you start on your twenty-year student loan debt. Or maybe your parents have been in default for years. It's common.

It going to be a big bundle, a comprehensive plan to upgrade the country and create twenty-first century jobs. Can we get health care in it? I don't know. The insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies have a whole lot of investment power in our economy. They would have to change radically.