I for one am amazed at what we as a nation don’t understand.  When we look at all the factors - inputs and variables that make up an economy, there is one factor that has remained constant throughout the history of humankind - labor.  There is only one element older than labor - land.  Without the element of labor, land will feed some.  With labor, land will feed all.  As a business activity, labor represents the techne of work, value added by the human.  Labor is older than technology, which represents the techno of work, value added by tools and machines.

Long before money ever existed, we traded the value of our labor; valued in terms of experience, skill and knowledge.  Take away labor and the value of land is little.  Labor has always been and will always be the heart of economics, not money.  The value stored in currency, metals and fuels are derived from labor.  Since we cannot eat gold or build a house of oil, without labor they lose their value.

We send workers home and export work to less developed nations to save money.  We send workers home and import workers because we stopped investing in our school system.  Without work, the people we sent home cannot afford to buy anything.  Reversing the patterns of the last 40 years is not easy, but it has been done before.