Mongo, you are pretty scary. Your thinking is close to mine. I sure hope you don't end up being a wack job.
BTW, nobody has every really bail out the US. It is not in our blood because most of us do not see ourselves as victims and expect entitlements.
Me, a Whack Job, thats a matter of perspective, in political theory probably NOT, but personal behaviour is a different story.
My point was, if we become the next Greece, who would bail us out. The European Union was able to do it for the little country of Greece, but a faultering US, who has the money to bail us out, if they wanted to. The rest of the world, although disliking us, might realize our economies are linked and a bailout would help us, but would they have the resources to do it. Although we should think positively, we would be arrogant to think it could never happen to us, we do need to reverse the trend and do it soon, Health Care takes root and Social Security Falters, we may be at the point of NO return. Or at least the point enough people in the country will be too cowed to sum up the fortitude to reverse it, they rather strike and riot like Greece and demand someone else fix it for them, no pain, all gain for them.
I think you missed the point of the article. The artice was talking about how the economies problems are structural in nature (and therefore beyond Obama's policies of the last three years). Specifically the article says that we are structural weak in that we produce too many people in finance, lawyers, social workers, and humanity fields and not enough engineers, business people, and scientist to ensure economic growth in the future.
For example, a brilliant person with a very high IQ becomes a writer for a TV show. Maybe he eventually becomes a producer. Thats a field within the humanities. That person brings value to millions of poeple through entertaining programing, but they fail to contribute to long term economic growth the same way a brilliant business person (who improves means of production), scientist (through scientific discoveries that lead to new technologies), or engineer (who improves practical know how) do.
The miracle of capitalism and free markets, that invisible guiding hand, as Smith put it. The market, if allowed to be unincumbered will determine what jobs are needed and people will respond to meet those jobs. It will be done without prejiduce, without an agenda, without bias, where there is a need, the market will highlight and produce a reward for those that will step up and meet the need.
Of course, the market will respond to and be guided by the will of the people, if we become self-centered, frivolous society, the market will serve that, as long as we can sustain ourselves with those attitudes.
Let capitalism work, the invisible guiding hand, without an agenda or bias, will restructure the economy and have it respond the most efficient way possible.
OR we can continue the arrogance and folly of thinking we can figure out the complex interaction and logistics of 300M people, and manipulate it according with centralized planning, as we waste resources slapping band-aids on massive problems, while we ignore even worse problems that don't fit our agenda. All the while constraining the markets, because we know if we let it go, it will correct all the folly up to know and it will be painful for the foolish, so we keep it at bay and only let the problem grow so the pain will be even worse when it can NOT be constrained anymore.