Web Letters: What Kind of Economy?

Congratulations to The Nation for printing this fresh-thinking approach to economic matters. I take issue with many of its points, but it gets many things right.

Yes, we need to think more about the future and how to profit from the ever-increasing pace of change and less about how to protect what we have.

Yes, how we address climate change is fundamental, and the short/medium term economic effects are underdiscussed.

Yes, both sides have fallen into ruts on global trade matters.

Yes, the current fiscal deficits threaten nothing (notwithstanding the massive tax increases that will be necessary to redeem those lovely Treasury bonds.)

I wish he had talked more about technology's coming impact, whether on alternative energy, lifespan and quality of life changes from biotechnology, the now-rapid emergence of robotics and artificial intelligence on the service sector, no-job fully automated manufacturing, and so on.

Thanks again for thinking (a little) outside the box.

Larry Stevens

Los Altos, CA

Just as a minor point to an otherwise excellent article: Climate change is real, and coastal flooding is going to happen.

But the main mechanism has been shown by NASA's analysis of global warming on Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, to be a solar cycle at work, and any intelligent observer should realize that this item changes many other things.

John D. Froelich
None

Upper Darby, Pennsylvania