The Millennium Economy: An Introduction.

It's no secret that the world economy has behaved differently in say the last six to ten years.  Here's something then that I've been chewing on for about the last six months.  Economists constantly reference every number and statistic back to every recovery and recession we've seen since the end of World War II.  Everything is always referenced as the "Post War Economy".  Well it strikes me that today's economy bears almost no resemblance to the world of 1945 or 1955 or even 1985.  Politically the world order has been broken and remade several times since then.  Consider that in 1945 the three largest world economies by country were the United States, Great Britain and France.  Today they are The United States, China, Japan then Germany.  

Back in the day, manufacturing was the largest sector of the US economy.  Today it's shrinking.  Computers and modern technology are increasing the rate of learning and economic development while rewriting the rules for how modern systems work.

I'm going to be talking more about this in the months ahead.  This year we introduced an occasional column series entitled "Things are Getting Better."  We're going to do the same thing in the coming months under a new series of columns which we'll tentatively title "The Millennium Economy.  As a start off to what we will be discussing, watch this 60 Minutes clip below from earlier this year on Robots & Jobs.

Stay tuned for more at a later date.