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What will we offer people in other countries, as a medium of exchange, for their petroleum, other raw materials, and manufactured goods, once foreigners realize that the fiat currency we offer as payment, is of little or no value? They don't seem interested in what little that we offer tham to buy now, and we build no new factories, we discover no new minerals, and we innovate less frequently in ways that translate into intangibles that they will want to buy from us.

Sixteen years after Alan Shepard was first blasted into space, and eight years after astronauts from the United States landed on the moon, NASA displayed a new program and a new space vehicle design that promised to make frequent space travel much more attainable. Four years later, in 1981, the new space shuttle was launched. Seeing the shuttle roll on it's back, as predicted, shortly after liftoff, and then flawlessly rise up out of the atmosphere, I felt a sense of pride welling up that I haven't felt too often since.

Twenty four years have passed since that launch. A couple of years ago, our president announced a goal of manned travel to mars. Later that month, he did not even mention that new goal in his annual state of the union address.
The space shuttle program appears to be at an end, and NASA has a replacement space vehicle scheduled to launch.....when?.....and the president's followup of his intention for mars spaceflight is........?

Once we sell Chinese and other foreigners our non-renewables; real estate, brick and mortar businesses, how will we sustain ourselves, let alone extricate ourselves from the "mire"?