Nice post! It's from the heart and spot on.
There are several factors at work that you should be aware of.
The major problem with our economy right now is the baby boom. This un-natural population growth has dominated politics, the economy and culture for the last 50 years. There are finite resources in the world and the BB consume and consume. For years they consumed houses, house goods, education, cars, you name it.
Today they consume health care, and are de-consuming as they retire, downsize their houses, and cut their spending which is natural with all who retire. That might be a hint of what will be growth industries, health care, nursing homes, in home health care etc. Consider a transition to healthcare IT, specifically radiology which is where the bulk of healthcare technology and dollars are.
The baby boomers are not the allies of the young. They have always been self centered, inward looking and out to get the most for themselves. As a group the young can't look to them for help. Being past their working lives they are not concerned much with the economy. Being that many don't have adequate retirement they will continue to occupy jobs that in the past would have opened up and given other opportunities. Do count on them to look to the young to subsidize their healthcare and retirement. They as a group lived in a golden era of American economics and our monumental debt it testament to their idea of pushing issues off to another generation.
The second issue I sure you can appreciate is we are moving to a post PC world. People don't upgrade video cards in a tablet or phone. At some point we'll all be using tablets or running servers. If your very technical consider something like healthcare hardware repair. Find a niche that can't be moved to the cloud or run on a tablet.
Seeing as the boomers needed cheap stuff for their suburban wonderlands, all the jobs were shipped to china, mexico, vietnam etc. Those jobs are gone for good. You'll notice there is little discussion of unrolling the failed NAFTA agreements and free trade in fact the opposite continues. Free Trade is an enemy of the post Baby boom.
There are two other revolutions that will affect job growth in the future, robotics and 3D Printing. Drivers, pilots, assembly workers, warehouse workers, and many more are being replaced with location aware robots.
Anything that has anything routine about it will be replaced. Cops on patrol will be replaced, we'll only have cops who come after the patrol robot has alerted to something. Jobs that have more of a future are jobs that perform work that is near impossible to program. Think firefighter, plumbing repair, remodeling, vs. Cabbie, garbageman, etc.
I actually heard an engineer bragging that one day the barista will be replaced with a 3d printer that will be able to put any design you want on your coffee. It was a bit disgusting but proved to me that we are being driven by financial bean counters and dispassionate engineers.
To see this in action, check out on youtube, "boston robotics", "amazon warehouse", "3d printer". Consider the next generation of robots will have google as a brain.
If you understand there is no going back to your grandpas economy, you'll be able to make better choices for you and your family.
Good Luck and keep on posting here.
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