The U.S. is Great, but...What Do We Bring to the Table?

Chinese-born American intellectual elite Min Luo enumerated several challenges he saw facing present-day America: an inability to think of the end-game before implementing drastic solutions, an ethnocentric media, and a wasteful society. (See Interview: part six, part seven, part eight.)
Min continued:
"Number four: I’ll be very candid. If you produce something, you create value. If you don’t create something, you don’t create value. The U.S. has been very happy not creating, but having a very good life.

"For example, in the service sector—my numbers may not be right—70% of the GDP is from the service sector. Service sector does not really create a value. I’m thinking developing countries, like China, more than 70% is not in the service sector."
(According to the World Bank, approx 80% of the U.S. GDP is from the service sector. In China, that percentage is close to 50%.)

diagram courtesy of blog.trade.gov

“In China, when they are doing the service sector," Min said. "They probably make like 1/5th of what the people in the U.S. make, even though they work much harder. So, in a way, you look at the world and say, ‘Why are other people working so hard and they don’t have a good life?’ I’m thinking we’ve been blessed living in the U.S. We’ve been blessed being a superpower.
“Still, a true superpower needs manufacturing. Other than the internet, what is the U.S. contributing to the world?”
(…to be continued. Next segment: The U.S. Needs a Plan)

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