Paul Krugman rediscovers Marxism--what's next? Fire? The wheel?

[Spike89]

65. Actually, they do cover the bills

We actually buy the crap they make in China with "wealth" we built by designing the crap they build in China. It is the countries, like China, that are already beginning to get hit hard by the reality of 21st Century manufacturing. Manufacturing still generates some wealth, but it has been steadily decreasing and has already been surpassed in many areas by the value of ideas.

Once, it was pretty hard to turn fiber into cloth and then into clothing. There was lots of wealth to be created from the process. It is easy now, there are machines that can churn out yardage by the ton. The "wealth" is almost entirely generated by the design (ironically, even designing the machines and software that weave cotton into cloth generates more wealth than the actual manufacture).

The point is that manufacturing is becoming a minor part of the wealth equation. You can buy lawnmowers by trading blueprints for better lawnmowers, you can even trade software (a classic service) that will run an automated lawnmower for the actual lawnmower.

This is now. In a few decades it will be laughable to think that the physical making of something was once the center of the economy.