What can Americans create that the rest of the world buys?

you figure this one out and you'll be rich.

 

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/02/06/made_in_the_usa/

Basically expensive things that the layperson cannot afford but makes the global economy function.

 

Actually, I'm not sure if it was posted here or not but I recently read an article that said the US is still the world's largest manufacturer and that its share of the world's manufactured goods has held steady for the last 30 years. China takes advantage of its labor to manufacture clothes, consumer goods, etc. while the US relies more on automation and sophistication to manufacture air planes, heavy equipment, medical equipment, etc.

 

We already missed the boat playing Cold War GI Joes.

It's greentech/cleantech that we should have put all of the time and research into.

 

US growth is not export driven. Our market is mostly internal, and that means we will be able to make more wealth is when we add value to something preexisting (e.g. almost any small business).

 

Here are some things that I think we can make that the rest of the world buys.














Industrial Telecom Equipment

 

I'd love to see some child labor put together a Boeing in a factory in China but that probably won't happen in my life time.

 

snuggies and boner pills.

 

I find it ironic there is an Uzi in the foreground.

 

To answer the OP's question I don't think there is anything that we in the US can manufacture that can't be currently or eventually manufactured somewhere else. We do still have many advantages though in regard to what we produce and sell and I think one area we still have a big advantage is in the arts. Bollywood, Hong Kong and other places have big film industries but they can't compare to Hollywood.

 

We import most of our oil, but don't we refine all of our own plastics and other petrochemical bi-products? Maybe as the developing world manufactures even more consumer/retail goods to service their domestic demand, we could supply the plastics? I dunno. Also, I have no idea what portion of the planet has refrigeration or air conditioning; we should definitely be able to make a dent in some of the equatorial frontier/emerging economies.

We also seem to export a hella food: especially corn, so we could probably export a lot of ethanol if that means anything. It seems like we have a lot of natural gas, but obviously we consume so much I can't imagine we'd export too much LNG or CNG. We're a pretty big land mass, so there will probably always be unexploited resources somewhere if we get desperate or unscrupulous enough. Combine that with a permanent influx of cheap non-union labor, we should be able to produce and sell something competitively.

Regardless, I wonder if we're at a point where credit, advertising and distribution matters more economically than manufacturing capacity, technological innovation or exporting primacy anyways.

 

Well-educated, innovative, creative, highly-skilled, and sociable workers who are fluent in several languages.

There's little we can make that other countries can't in the next few decades (see the Boeing 787 and its out-sourcing), so it comes down to the type of people our education system can create. The type of workers above could be in high demand by other countries as consultants and what not.

Maybe with better educated consumers, earnings will rise and people will actually pay and acknowledge the importance of buying American. Or, an entirely new economic model can be developed that does not depend so much on manufacturing.

 

Corn based ethanol currently takes as much if not more energy to make than what you get out of it. We will never be an ethanol exporter until we perfect using switch grass.

 

not sure why we need to manufacture domestically. Services are a bigger chunk of our GDP

 

Hemp oil can be refined in your garage to run a diesel engine.

 

As the rest of the world becomes educated, they will catch us on services as well.

My submission is education. We have the best in the world, which is the reason so many come here to matriculate.

 

A lot of electronics are designed here like the iphone. The problem is it is made else where. You don't need as many people to design it.