Excellent article, but I do disagree with some points. Here’s my opinion: I don’t think capitalism is necessarily dying, but I do think (in our country at least) that the demand for low skill labor is decreasing while the demand for highly skilled technology related positions is increasing. This includes the sectors which support those high-tech industries (marketing, sales, support, etc). I think we were totally unprepared for that transition. The current and unfortunate reality is that you either pick a high-demand industry to study in or you‘ll face challenges later on.

Part of the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of conservative lawmakers who have routinely slashed education budgets at a time when we needed them the most. If we really want to strengthen the middle class we need to make sure they’re prepared for a new world economy. We need to make ourselves more competitive.

I think that bringing back manufacturing is just a band-aid on a broken bone.

As third world countries transition in second world countries and the cost of production goes up I think we’ll see more automation which will probably make marginal costs more expensive at first (R&D) but stabilize them later on. If incomes haven’t seen improvement by that momentary bump in MC then we may be in for some trouble.

I think the solution really is education. I don’t think its realistic to resolve the issues in the second point without it.