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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
"But we'll have to wait until November to see just how many Americans are paying attention."
You suggest that from the 3 mainstream candidates, at least one represents economic sanity, presumably one or both democrats.
I used to believe it worked that way. But with the "off the books" financing of the Iraq debacle-- and the utter unwillingness of Obama and Hillary Clinton to publicly draw the connection between the war,the weakening dollar, and the ever-upward spiraling of dollar-denominated oil prices, I question whether the democrats represent a substantially more sober answer.
The. Dust. Bowl.
The thing is, last time we came out of a Depression, we had huge stocks of national wealth that we've depleted since then. Big timber, salmon runs, ocean fish, oil, coal, groundwater. We had a lot of sink capacity too, like the air and water's ability to absorb pollutants. Those low-entropy stocks and readily available sinks aren't available to us this time around. I worry.
Arthur Miller in his autobiography 'Timebends' said that in his opinion America is utterly invested in forgetting, and nowhere is this more evident than in their forgetting of the Great Depression. He said it was so much worse than it was portrayed to be in the years following and up until he was writing the book in the eighties. Nothing has changed since then. He wrote that Americans don't want to remember how bad it really was, they want to get past it, get over it and recreate it with a Hollywood glow. But the depression left his father a ruined man who never recovered, and he said he saw those people everywhere in his childhood and growing up.
This chimes with my mother's stories of the great depression in Australia. It was so bad she has never gotten over it. Still saving string, still feeling triumphant when she denies herself what she wants in order to save another ten cents, still afraid to stick her neck out in case her head gets bitten off. Her whole life has been limited by the trauma of humiliation, near starvation and privation she went through to get an education and get out.
Get out of debt is the answer, but how America is going to do that when it's fighting a war that's already costing THREE TRILLION DOLLARS worth of borrowed money is anyone's guess ...
Your lengthy response was just a TAD condecending, so I hesitate to ask you to elaborate, but this site can be a circle jerk sometimes im curious as to what your opinion was about the content of the article. Are you saying that mr leonard is yelling fire in a crowded theater, or just the letter writers? His presentation seems only moderately alarmist and conclusions seemed reasonable to me. What would a fiscally conservative republican suggest to improve our current situation? (Isnt it funny that our print-more-money-to-pay-for-the-war-and-bail-out-the-banks-administration would also describe themselves as fiscally conservative?)Hopefully you have time to answer.Ill check tomorrow, im going to bed. (goodnight)
we're fucked.
I disagree with your assumptions. While our stocks of natural resources may possibly (but not definitively) be lower than before the Great Depression, we are unequivocally more wealthy now than we were then.
Ignoring our increases in intellectual and human capital is to ignore vital parts of the equation.
We generate much more GDP now with each barrel of oil or ton of steel than we did even 20 years ago.
This doesn't mean that we have no risk of a new depression, but I note that Leonard has long shown himself to be a far from objective observer of the economic pot he tries to stir.
For example, I would venture to guess that structural full employment is lower now than in 1929 specifically because of social programs. Whereas in 1929 unemployment under SFE was classically in the 4% range as everyone learns in Samuelson, today's baseline is likely to be somewhat higher, even markedly higher because of the higher ratio of transient and part time formal salaried work. So whatever the actual unemployment is, and, that's an extremely hard number to nail down either way, whatever it is, the baseline of what constitutes SFE has got to be much lower than the 96% of 1929. For example in Germany and France today, SFE hovers around 89% which means that the economy tops out at full employment at 89% of the workforce actually working.
Additionally the FDIC insures that most homeowners deposits up to 100,000 are Federally guaranteed even if they have to print inflationary money to do it. So if the Corn Husker Bank folds, most but not all depositors are protected.
I really dislike these "It's the GREAT Depression all over again" ideas. You might as well be predicting the Black Death.
What will happen is what will always happen. The poor will get a little poorer, the middle class will get a LOT poorer. And the Great Marxist happy day of everyone or mostly everyone being the same will return for a while. We can all pick beans, if we're willing to take those jobs from hard working illegal Mexicans.
As far as the dangers of governing the United States "for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the many," who pays most of the taxes in this country? And whittling away at the "safety net"? If part of that net is the bankrupt Social Security program, let's start carving. Sure, spending on the war is grotesque, but there are plenty of grossly mismanaged "safety net" programs that are sucking us dry.
Already the Bush vision is for a single North American country, one big cultural, economic union. They seem to be bent on the policies that will bring it about. They almost seem to want it, which is why traditional Republicans take up the cause of sovereignty, and Democrats take up the cause of protectionism, while the die is already cast. Someone should write a book about the secret Presidency of George Bush, and how economic collapse is the gateway to his vision.
When you're living it then you'll believe it. Welcome to my world.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
