I’m not an economist, but it’s clear to me that if I were a country, I’d want my economy to be grounded on the bedrock of making.
I use “making” pointedly, where making is the conversion of raw materials—dirt, rocks and sticks—into products. As a country, making would be my focus because it creates real value—not the paper kind of value realized through bundling debt and balance sheet malarkey, but real value, the price-minus-cost kind of value. The glamor may be in buying and selling companies, but the most powerful contributor of long-term value is making, because making means jobs.