The United States is in need of reindustrialization

My sincerest apologies to my opponent, my internet has been down for days. With that said, I hope the voters see the forfeit as a technological inconvenience, as I have every intention of finishing and winning this debate. :) I find it necessary to define industry for my opponent. industry: systematic labor especially for some useful purpose or the creation of something of value b: a department or branch of a craft, art, business, or manufacture ; especially : one that employs a large personnel and capital especially in manufacturing. (1). With that definition in place let's debate! My opponent states: "The central flaw is Pro's argument is that for government to aid revitalization and growth, it must take the money for that aid out of the private sector. Then the government must select the areas for investment and spend it." My response: Yes the government must take money out of the private sector. It is the only sector of our economy large enough to foot the bill. The private sector is "responsible for allocating most of the resources within an economy." (2). My opponent then cites the recent "ethanol debacle" as a reason to not trust the government in their investments. Without governmental assistance, the fate of our various industries would be left to large investors, only a fraction of our population. We would then become a bureaucracy, a government run by the rich. My opponent claims: "Government taking capital out of the private sector and spending it according to political considerations wastes capital and therefore diminishes industry. " My response: Indeed. However, that is not the case. Our government does not have a sector known as "political considerations". Mu opponent makes a brash accusation that the money taken from the private sector (taxes and the like) is solely squandered by whimsical politicians. This is not the case. My opponent is insinuating that every penny taken from the private sector goes directly to the hands of corrupt politicians, who quickly squander the money, by spending it on "political interests." My opponent has no direct proof that the "ethanol debacle was spurred by political influences. The government invested on what it thought would be a viable alternative fuel. My opponent simply showed correlation. But as we all know correlation does not equal causation. My opponent is correct in saying capital creates industry, but I am equally correct. They are both dependent on each other. We need money in order to invest in new industry, but on the same token, that investment also gives us money in return. Mathematically if a=b, then b=a My opponent states: Pro could argue some specific case of taking resources out of X and putting it into Y, but it is far more likely that investors will make those decisions correctly than government. My response: You have no proof to back this unfounded claim. You simply cannot prove that the people are more adept at making investment decisions than the government. Both sectors are equally subject to human error. My opponent states: There are a few genuinely strategic goods that the US could produce that it does not. The principle one is oil. We could choose to convert coal to oil, we could get oil from oil shale, and we could expand drilling. That would substantially increase the independence of the US. The reason why we do not do that has nothing to do with lack of investment capital. It is a policy that foreign dependence on a strategic commodity is better than doing it ourselves. If oil is not deemed a strategic necessity, then clearly textiles, which is orders of magnitude less important, cannot be compelling. My response: My opponent is indeed correct. Oil is a huge commodity that is currently available in The U.S., but has gone virtually untapped. This needs to change. We can tap into our oil, and use it as a trade commodity. The fact that we have this great potential and don't put it to use is appalling. It can be a part of the US' reindustrialization process. My opponent claims: Pro claims that America produces too many college graduates. We produce far too few engineers and scientists, and must fill graduate programs with foreign students. We may well produce too many generic humanities graduates. The cure to that is to redesign the K-12 system to put substantially more emphasis on the sciences. It's not to send humanities majors to factories. My response: When did I ever say or even imply that we need to send humanities majors to factories? I didn't. My opponent says " The cure to that is to redesign the K-12 system to put substantially more emphasis on the sciences" My response: That sounds a lot like reindustrialization. My opponent states: Redirecting destroys value. Rather than producing the things we are most efficient at producing, we would be forced to produce the things we are least efficient at producing. Taking resources out of such successes and trying to compete on labor-intensive goods means that we will cede the markets were we excel. My response: We wouldn't be really be taking away anything. As I have states previously, as a nation we don't produce much. We speculate. We try to be the innovator. But right now we need to produce. We are in a state of financial uproar, with foreigners shouldering our debt beyond our credit. By producing our own goods, we can reduce our dependence on other nations and increase other nations' dependencies on us. My opponent states: "It's not the role of government to fight such changes in the economy." I have never advocated such a position. I realize that the world economy is dynamic and the United States has a need to stay current and fresh and cannot afford to solely revert to industrialization alone. But we do need to produce more of our own necessities and stop relying on other nations to fulfill them for us. Our country needs to reindustrialize so we can continue our innovations. For t