José M. Rivera, CEO, CSIA (Control System Integrators Association) on Plantservices.com January 2018

1. On the workforce front, the “war on talent” will continue to intensify. The demand for STEM career professionals will continue to grow, and it won’t be met by the modest improvements made to make these careers more appealing to the younger generation of American born students. Some companies will be able to leverage their global footprint to create technology centers wherever talent is found, including outside of the United States. For the smaller, domestic companies, they will have to resort to creative ways to still meet their needs. Young STEM professionals will have leverage, and employers will try to meet their work environment expectations, including the ability to work remotely part of the time.
2. The “war on talent” is not limited to university careers. The U.S. has had a serious shortage of good trade workers in spite of the fact that these are good-paying jobs. For generations, we have not valued these jobs and have encouraged the younger generations to target college degrees instead. We have discussed and started to emulate the German apprenticeship model, but the output is small compared to the need. It would be to the benefit of all to have more retraining programs to help workers in some industries transition to others. Unfortunately, I’m not very optimistic that we’ll have 2018 bring us progress on this front.
3. Industrial automation will continue to be inspired by leading consumer technologies. I expect that in 2018, we’ll see more companies in the industrial automation arena continue to experiment with new approaches to business models – for example, subscription-based offers – creating recurring revenue sources from ongoing services. I also think that end users will continue to view system integrators as a viable source of automation resources to meet the needs they can’t deliver on because of their inability to hire talent themselves (many manufacturers have their operations in non-urban environments, making them less attractive to younger talent).

The closing of many malls once exceedingly popular coincides with the rise of Chinese (and other offshore) manufacturing. No matter how cheap the products at Walmart, the real cost is the closing of the malls. The many people whose youth, in the 1980's and 1990's, was lived at the malls cannot find work paying enough to buy goods at malls. Although the internet has taken sales away, the malls served a social purpose the internet cannot.

Trade agreement claiming to open borders are not necessary leads to increased wealth: Only those countries with a trade surplus benefit.

If feudalism produces the greatest physical wealth for the overall society doesn't mean the greatest wealth from other views of the societal cube. It's only one of 6 views into the cube. A good business uses all 6 views to see if the business is healthy. It's funny how government gets disconnected from business concepts. Actually it's not funny as government can be manipulated much easier than a good business to the internal interests of the wealthy and/or the voters.
I plan to use the concept of "saving capitalism" to show the other views of the cube and make them part of the morals of an economic society. It's all part of my plot to retire in a pleasant societal condition. I'm just as selfish as anyone else so I guess I want everyone else to do it my way. (Did I just quote Frank Sinatra?)

Whether God exists or not is not a question: dogs don't care and humans argue about what kind of God exists.

Basically two forms of God form human civilization: a God that works through the supernatural and a God that set in motion the universe and plays out in science/facts/evidence.

Centralizing wealth in the wealthy class dissipates wealth faster and better - and by far the most - than any other economic strata can even aspire.

Adam Smith said, very plainly, never start anything without demand. Of course, the wealthy never listen to Adam Smith and will start anything without regard to long-term wealth which means eventually the wealth must disappear until the middle class is more even and posses purchasing power.

We'll look at how the wealthy accumulate their wealth and why it must, yes must, disappear. Basically, the wealthy are terrible investors and their children are not worth the money they inherit. 

And we'll examine why this accumulation drives economic cycles up and down.