A couple of days ago I uploaded a post about the idea that the "productivity revolution" was the starting point for today's economic fright. Among several interesting comments, I got these questions from a reader, Steve Crawley:

I would like to hear the rest of the story from you about the post-collapse era. Here are a few prompting questions to hopefully get you started. Assuming technology and advanced communications continue be with us, will they contribute to improving our national economic or is something else needed? Do you agree social instability has not yet arrived, but is just around the corner? Or is there another path that is necessary for some sort of economic and possibly social stability to return?

To begin to answer Steve's questions, I would have to start with Yogi Berra's famous caveat, that it is difficult to make predictions... especially about the future. Yuck, yuck.

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"The Holy Family with Saint Anne"

Peter Paul Rubens - Museo del Prado, Madrid

At Christmas, those who follow the teachings of that figure are urged to wish for 'peace on earth, good will to men' and to practice forgiveness and to love their enemies. Who are those enemies that Christians are supposed to forgive and to love?

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I was talking to a very shrewd and well informed friend of mine, a now sedate notary who was once a sort of Spanish Gordon Gekko in the 1980s. He gave me a very intelligent analysis of the crisis.

At the bottom of it, he said, was the enormous increase in productivity brought on by information technologies. We simply produce much more than we can possibly consume: we need lots of consumers and much fewer workers.

How are underemployed people supposed to buy anything? On credit. Something has to give, has given. I think he's right.

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My wife and I took Photoshop and Bruegel The Elder in hand just to wish you a
If you'd like to see the image full size (strongly recommended), CLICK HERE

The decision by Barack Obama to appoint John Holdren as his chief scientific adviser deserves widespread welcome. The Harvard academic and former energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley, commands international respect among physicists, climate experts and other researchers.(...) Thus Obama, who takes up office on 20 January, has made it clear through Holdren's appointment that global warming is going to be dealt with robustly by his administration. Editorial - Observer

Now that President-elect Barack Obama's energy and environment team is complete, the message he's sending is loud and clear: The vacuum of U.S. leadership on climate change will be filled. His nominees share his goal of reducing carbon emissions and developing the next generation of energy production that will reduce this nation's dependence on fossil fuels. More important, they generally reflect the pragmatic approach to governing that Mr. Obama appears to be crafting with his Cabinet picks overall. Editorial - Washington Post

When I first read the comments above, I suddenly shared the same sort of elation-rush that so many Obama supporters experience.

Wow, I thought, that is really naming the best and the brightest, he must really care about energy and global warming, those heretofore starveling stepchildren of American politics. Change I can believe in.

Gee, I said to myself, it's as if he had named Nobel Prize winning economists, Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman secretary of the treasury or even John Mearsheimer as secretary of state instead of Timothy Geithner and Hillary Clinton.
 

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