Good Morning to you all on this Friday before Christmas Eve. Hope you have all of your Christmas shopping done. We do--but then we don't do much. The news readers talked about the hopes retailers have of a good procrastinators' rush this year. For my part I wish we could drive a stake of holly into the heart of the beast we call a consumer economy. Consumption without production has always seemed to me a royal road to poverty.

It is always refreshing to see someone in government express a truth. Evidently the NSA has admitted the futility of trying to make its computer systems totally 'secure.'

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It is now Saturday morning. I didn't see much more that was interesting or worth a comment yesterday but I liked that story on computer security so I decided to keep it.

This story on MSNBC sounds all too familiar this year. Same story--different location. We hope that the snow predicted here for Tuesday holds off until the afternoon because Mom has an early morning doctor's appointment. But otherwise we intend to hibernate. Also we hope the snow for Christmas Eve is light because we are supposed to go to Sister's for dinner.

Newsweek (by way of MSNBC) carried a story which should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the developments in manufacturing and the labor market. Manufacturers have accelerated their use of robots and are producing the same amount or more with far fewer workers. That has been the story of the last 70 or so years. The notion that the new jobs will require more training and skills simply means that workers have to find a way to pay for more expensive training and education (often by going deeper into debt) or they will be priced out of decent paying jobs. The question is--will those jobs really bring in enough money for the worker to make the extra expense economically rational? But another thought also struck me--what happens when this level of automation hits China and India?