The state of the State, 2011

Our country is pretty messed up right now. Economically, we are headed down into a black hole.

As far as I can tell, it all started when the government removed some banking regulations put into effect during the Great Depression. The result was that the banks made mortgage loans that could not be paid back. A LOT of them. So we ended up with tens of millions of loans for about $200,000 each that were worthless. Trillions of dollars of debt. Banks were sucked under. The government bailed them out. They took the bailout and put it in their petty cash drawer.

Anyway, the debt is much worse than that. There are reports that the Federal Reserve handed out another $16 trillion secretly, without government authorization, to our banks and European banks.

So Congress, in their infinite wisdom, is voting to cut social programs.  This is basically just a huge new tax on the elderly, the poor, and the middle class (because the wealthy don’t need social programs).

They also decided to have a huge battle over raising the debt ceiling (which has been done over 100 times in the past).  This obvious stupidity caused the lowering of the US credit rating. All of this also caused people to start yanking their money out of stocks and bonds, and another trillion dollars disappeared in the stock market.

In my lifetime, we started heading down this path several times, but we were saved by technology which created more jobs and pulled us out. There was the personal computer, the internet, and cell phones. Well, maybe not cell phones, since none of them are being built in the US.

Recently I saw an article that talked about an announcement by one of the largest factory owners in China. He has 1.2 million employees. He is planning on replacing most of those employees with robots. At least 3 million robots.

This is astounding. He has the lowest paid workforce in the world. He has decided that robots are cheaper. No one will stop him, in fact the government will probably loan him the money. It will happen, it is happening, and he will probably be done within 3 years.

This opens a solution for the US. We can also build and install robots in factories. Why not build our products in US robot factories instead of Chinese robot factories?

I see this as the Robot Race, similar to the Arms Race of the Cold War era. Every country will start installing as many robots as possible. How many robots? Maybe a few BILLION?

I am working on robots in my garage, trying to learn as much as I can. Someone has to install, program, and repair all of these robots, and the networks that link them together. I am looking for investors, business partners, engineers, and programmers. This is the big boom of this century. Catch it now. I am looking for at least $500,000 to get this ball rolling, and all I want out of it is a very small percentage of the profits.

The flip side of the robot coin is that soon there will be no jobs at all. Our society is not ready for this. I would also like to have an organization working on this problem. We need a way to transition to a society that does not work for a living. It will affect everything. I am going to start brainstorming sessions on this in September, anybody that is interested is welcome to join me.