2004 Year in Review

What are you good at?

We discussed various industries and products exported by the US. Agriculture is the first to spring to mind, but who eats field corn and soybeans? These grains are useless unless reprocessed into sweetener or used as animal feed. Soybeans can be processed into edible products, but most Americans don't eat them. Cotton and rice are exported to the detriment of farmers in other foreign lands and our ag. industry is highly subsidized and even more dependent on cheap fuel. Seems we don't play fair.

We agreed that our auto industry certainly was not top notch. Japanese cars are in almost every country in the world and they are well regarded for price, quality and reliability. US cars are not. German cars are still considered the ultimate in sophisticated engineering. US cars are not. The only place I ever saw US cars outside the US in any quantity was in Saudi Arabia where fuel is cheap and the roads are good, long and straight.

I told him we maybe have the best health care system in the world, but of course it is also the most expensive and continues to escalate beyond the means of many. This is one area where we agreed out-sourcing would be particularly valuable. If an American needs a new kidney (for example) he could fly to Bombay, go to a state of the art hospital staffed by American trained physicians, recuperate for a few months and fly home for a fifth or less the amount it would cost here. I'm not sure we have much to be proud of in this department.

I did not feel comfortable saying that I thought maybe we had the best military because even I don't believe that is true. I think our air force and technology in particular are quite impressive, but maybe not to the extent we think. After the first gulf war and CNN's advertisements for Smart Bombs we sold plenty to other nations. In practice they weren't quite as "smart" as we portrayed them on the news. In fact the US military is good, but not better than any in the developed world. Our soldiers are not braver or better trained, but in general are better equipped (because we spend a heck of a lot more money) than most. Since war tactics are changing the jury is still out on whether or not we exceed anyone in this department. China and India can easily and swiftly out-man us.

We do have an exceptionally large military-industrial complex and we do export land mines and missiles and munitions in great quantity to many other countries. Our stuff is good. It isn't cheap. I'm not proud.

Some would lead us to believe that we are of higher moral character and we have a stronger work ethic here in the US compared to many other nations. In my travels I have found this to be utterly false. What we do do well in this instance and in my opinion is have good basic education and familiarity with established technology. Our trades people are not as good as European or Japanese trained technicians, but we do tend to have a broader range of skills and improvise well. This might offend some from the South, but good old Yankee ingenuity is a plus in our behalf. The work force in general is well trained, willing and able, but we have jobs and something to train for. This isn't the case everywhere.

In the end all I could attribute our good fortune to was hard work, an abundance of natural resources, the willingness of entrepreneurs to reinvest profit and a government of the people that successfully holds everyone accountable and no one above the law. Otherwise we are no different and certainly no better than anyone else.

by Marc Adami, Guest Columnist
June 12, 2004