Let me now try to connect the dots by adding some commentary..

Children, though ignorant, lacking in life experience required for judgement, and intently focused on their current needs, are more perceptive about their local psyco-social environment than adults are theirs or the childrens. Children will always see clearly the scism between the edicts of adults and the behavior of adults and use that scism as a justification for their own careless, self-destructive behaviors. Children, being void of concern for their future 10, 20, 30... years hence and being void of concerns for consequences that are not immediate, will dare to blithly explore adult behaviors that raise their esteem in their peer group. This is more than just 'peer pressure' because a lot of it is defined by how the children perceive the adult world and the value set of that adult world. Children will gravitate to that activity from or in association with which they get positive adult feedback/praise and adulation from their peers. The COACHING- and athletics -above-all set are wonderfully skilled at using this to manipulate. This Conspiracy/Collusion of the Coaches has elevated athletics to dominate academics in the K-12 public systems in the last 50 years. The coaches network through all levels from Pee Wee Leagues to NFL, identifying and recruiting prospective talent, diverting kids from academics into long, gruelling practise sessions to further the coaches career path into the big money positions. Note that there is no comperable networking in academics, indeed there is none at all! In fact at the university level I do not know or any that allocate money or professor time to recruit talent from even local high schools. Has anyone ever heard of a university sponsoring and funding on-campus visits to recruit academically-talented prospective students??

My friends and associates that are still working in defense-related companies (viz. Raytheon, TI, etc) in the hard sciences tell me that they are having difficulty in filling positions that require citizens with the proper academic skills who can be cleared for Top Secret and beyond. The link [url=www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/2005/february/] INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP AT RISK[/url] at analyzes this problem, but carefully avoids any confrontation with the COACHES and their control of the flow of tax monies for education. Note that instead of advising a reallocation of those monies to favor academics Dr. Herbold takes the PC coward's approach of increasing the salaries of teachers via milking the taxpayers for yet more money. Here in Ector Co., TX the high school budget for the year just completed allocated 1/7th of all operating budget $ (~$3,000,000) to playing. Playing: football, baseball, tennis, soccer, track, swimming, diving, volleyball, softball, gymnastics, basketball, golf, power lifting, and marching band. $1,000 was allocated to support the National Honor Society. No $ were allocated to support trips by math or science students to Science Fairs or appropriate events at area Universities. Children perceive where the emphasis lies; so they play; it is easier; it gets them peer status; it gets them adult praise; it gets their name in the newspaper; it gets their photo in ther newspaper; it gets them f**ked when they become adults needing a good paying job; it gets them f**ked when they try to go to college!! Unless they get a "scholarship" to continue playing and then become "playing directors" = COACHES.

Finally, addressing the long term consequences: an economic system which generates a high standard of living/comfort/security for its participants through the use of technology will deplete the natural resources to produce those products necessary to the high standard of living/comfort/security. Those resources that are easily located, extracted, transported and processed will be used to extinction at which time they must be replaced by a replacement resource that costs more economically to locate and extract. For the economic system to continue to supply products cheaply enough to maintain (much less increase) the extant standard of living/comfort/security the technologies involved must improve, sometimes radically. *****Only improved technology can compensate for the depletion of resources.***** For technology to improve at a pace commensurate to maintaining the standard of living/comfort/security of a growing population of participants in an economic system the number of trained technologists must also increase. But because the difficulty of resource replacement at an equivalent economic cost rises geometrically or exponentially as such resources become more difficult to locate, access and extract the number of competent technologists required will also increase geometrically or exponentially. As is documented in INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP AT RISK the U.S. educational system is not increasing the number of competent technologists, it is barely replacing them!! Even so, U.S. graduate schools in math, physics and engineering are populated by foreign students to more than 50%, so our shortfall as implied in the above paragraph in the production of indigenous technologists adequate to sustain the U.S. economic system is so huge as to be insurmountable.

The U.S. is playing (a la Nero in Rome) while the country is crumbling!!

Economics is not a “zero sum” game.

Toward that goal, let me condense and simplify several thousand pages of text and papers in the field of macro-economics as follows:

By way of abstractions similar to the manner that the mathematics of topology deals with hidden relationships that are not measureable nor expressable in conventional equation form, a macro economic system can be related to the form (topology again) of a three legged milk stool.

Seat:
If the system is to be successful, the seat must have certain properties that can be identified, but are difficult to measure with any accuracy. The seat must be adequately level else a product on one side will cost more than it costs on the other side; at some differential level this generates the socially damaging activity known as smuggling, ex. cigarettes from Virginia to NY among others. The seat must be adequately flat without large bumps or holes as these obstacles generate dead, undeveloped zones; the plains territories of the U.S. were dead zones until the steel plow was available in quantity. The seat surface must be adequately smooth (adequately low taxes, low shipping costs, adequate banking/exchange mechanisms, etc.) else the flow of materials and products will stagnate, wither, and eventually die; this should be self-evident. A multitude of other attributes can be applied by analogy to the seat; whole books worth.

First leg.
The first leg (or pillar) upon which the seat rests is the natural resource universe encompassed by the system. This includes every physical thing that can contribute to the creation of an item which can be traded, e.g. a product. Mineral resources: ores, water, farmland, timber,... Energy resources: hydrologic, wind, oil, coal, nuclear,...

Second leg.
The second leg is the extant technology level capable of utilizing the natural resource universe to create a useful, desirable, tradeable product. In the case of ores this requires a technology of adequate location, exposure, extraction, purification,... For hydrologic: the extant technology must be adequate to dam streams and rivers then build waterwheels to capture the gravity energy of falling water; to become a transportation means the technology to explore, map and traverse rivers must be adequate.

Third leg.
The third leg is the collection of educated, motivated people encompassed by the economic system. They must have adaquate knowledge to use the extant technology effectively and efficiently. They must have adequate motivation to actually do so. You might think of this leg as a civilization.

So there you have it. The factor that keeps the zero sum at bay is the human creative activity that constantly improves existing factors in the economy and constantly invents/creates new products and factors in the economy.

You, the astute reader, should at this point become aware of a worriesome fact: the activity of the economic system depletes the natural resource universe. A point is reached where/when: all the useful rivers are dammed; all the high grade ores have been mined; all the oil has been pumped (and burned); all the old growth timber has been cut; all the best farmland has been plowed; all the windy mesas have windmills installed; etc…

Given that an unexploited continent laden with surface deposits of ores and shallow expanses of petroleum stratae is not going to pop up in the Pacific Ocean, only the creation of better technology can compensate for the depletion of the natural resource universe. The creation of better technology demands not only better educated technologists, but more of them.

This should give everyone nightmares about the capability of the U.S. economy to sustain anything close to our current standard of living, even in the relatively near-term future.