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Draft 1.1 -- Not for Distribution or Circulation • Finance – There is one category in finance which is the single most centralized category within NAICS – and that is running a central monetary system. No community can mimic the Federal Reserve. So the 134 jobs envisioned here under the 25% shift are unlikely. These considerations remove 171 jobs from what's possible even with a 25% shift. Some economists and economic developers will make arguments about why businesses in other sectors may or may not be competitive. But as I document in The Small -Mart Revolution, in all but seven of the 1100 NAICS sectors, there are more examples of competitive small businesses than large businesses. And these models offer a compelling universe of business opportunities for Cabarrus County, if an entrepreneur – or an entrepreneurial - support agency – is prepared to find, study, and develop them. Moreover, there are reasons to suspect that the economies of scale for local businesses are improving. In 1970, services made up 45 percent of consumer spending in the United States. By 2008, they grew to 60 percent. This trend is mirrored in other industrialized countries. As people make more money, they get saturated with "stuff." Once you have your third car, your fourth computer, your fifth television set, you begin to see the virtue in spending your next available dollar on more education or health care. This trend is great news for localization, because most services are inherently local and depend on face -to -face relationships with people we know and trust. As noted about, about two thirds of the anticipated jobs in Cabarrus County fall in the category of services – professional, financial, personal, health, and education. There is no competitive reason why these jobs cannot be created locally. To understand the plausibility of localizing more businesses involved in goods, it's useful to remind ourselves how much our economy has been built on affordable oil. Cheap, plentiful, concentrated, and portable oil has heated our homes and offices, propelled our cars and jetliners, powered our machinery, and brought the entire world into an industrial age. Periodic shortages, such as during the OPEC embargoes of the 1970s, and periodic price spikes, such as during the summer of 2008 when gasoline topped $5 per gallon, have reminded us of our dependence on crude. Over the next few decades, and possibly sooner, oil supplies will dwindle sharply. Many experts contend that world oil supplies have already "peaked" and that we're about to experience sharp rises in oil prices. Even the critics of the peak oil concept —those who wax bullish about new reserves of oil under the ocean floor or in the remote reaches of Canada—concede that exploration of these places is extremely expensive and that prices are heading upward. The only real debate is over how quickly energy costs will rise and whether energy alternatives can ramp up fast enough to prevent critical energy shortages. The features of the post - petroleum era will almost certainly increase the competitiveness of local business. Rising oil prices will encourage the spread of community -based energy service companies, solar equipment installers, and household geothermal services. As more people balk at skyrocketing costs of commuting to work, they will increasingly turn 33 1 -4 Attachment number 1 Page 335