THOMASTON – A former vice chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange predicted Saturday a decline in Americans’ standard of living.

Alfred Berkeley, who stepped down earlier this month after working for Nasdaq for the last seven years, spoke to the Friends of Montpelier group. Berkeley was invited to join the celebration of the 253rd birthday of Maj. Gen. Henry Knox, who served with George Washington during the War of American Independence.

In his remarks, Berkeley said the United States is on the cusp of a major change in its place in the world economy.

“On a relative basis, our standard of living is going to decline,” Berkeley said, as wealth in the developing world increases. He attributed the potential drop to the relatively recent fall of communism and spread of democracy and capitalism throughout the world.

“For the first time, we have people living in the same kind of freedoms we have been living in,” he noted. One billion Chinese and nearly equal that number in India “are just beginning to enjoy the same kind of freedoms that we enjoy.”

While Berkeley believes “this is a great thing,” it presents challenges for the U.S. economy. He explained workers in developing nations are willing to earn wages that most Americans would find unacceptable. And he said people living in developing countries do not expect such a high standard of living as in the United States.

The United States, Berkeley said, would do well to accept the loss of certain industries.

“We will never win back the textile industry,” he said, among others that rely on unskilled labor.

Berkeley also believes the business model in the United States for the past century no longer applies. He noted the country’s economy is no longer based on finite natural resources such as trees and oil, and instead must look to technology and innovation.

Berkeley said the booming economy of the 1990s, not unlike seven or eight other booms in U.S. history, came with the advent of a new technology, including the Internet. He said the notion during the halcyon days of the Internet economy was that businesses could not lose. That idea, he said, has historical parallels.

In the early 1700s, Berkeley said, a business claimed that gold nuggets could be plucked off the ground west of the Mississippi River. The business, which aimed to secure the gold, drew eager investors who believed they could not lose. When word returned to the East that gold was not there for the picking, the business collapsed.

“We’ve gone through a speculative time in our economy when money was fast and loose,” Berkeley said, comparing the gold rush to the Internet economy.

Berkeley is a direct descendant of Washington’s sister – Washington had no children – and is active in museum work in Virginia.