Patent office

This past week I visited with an economics teacher who told me that Trumps promise of a 4% GDP was not going to happen. He said the United States is a mature economy and that 2% growth is the price you pay for this maturity. This caused me to think about the 20 million abled bodied people between the ages of 16 and 65 who are not currently working. If these people went to work for $10 an hour this would add 2.2% to the GDP which has been running at 2% for the past ten years bringing us up over 4%. Many of these people have dropped out of the work force because they have other income either from some government source or other financial help. There are signs up all over the place offering employment but these jobs are not being filled. If this trend continues wages will rise and perhaps these people will find it to their advantage to work. In the past innovation has both created and eliminated jobs but created far more. This could easily happen again. One prime example is controlled fusion. The science on this is already established and the engineering as usual will follow. This means an almost unlimited supply of power. This power will be used to produce steam which will produce electricity. It will be used to break down water into hydrogen which will power the transportation industry with the only by-product being water. It will transform the deserts into cropland and thus feed the world. I don’t believe that the United States is as my friend says a mature economy but rather that there will be great strides in future growth some in areas that have not yet been developed. I am reminded of the patent officer who said in 1900 that the patent office should be closed down since everything that could be invented was already invented. Charles H. Duell was the Commissioner of US patent office in 1899. Mr. Deull's most famous attributed utterance is that "everything that can be invented has been invented."