More on the bright side
I am often accused of being a doomster but I am not. I read the horrid economic news with very mixed feelings: fear, compassion, self-pity and hopeful exhilaration are all combined.
The first three are easy for my readers to figure out. I'm sure many share one or all of them with me. The last one, hopeful exhilaration, may need some more explaining.
Let's have a sample of fully documented mainstream doomsterism. First this from Samuelson:
Since the early 1980s, American economic growth has depended on a steady rise in consumer spending supported by more debt and increasing asset prices (stocks, homes). Just as the mid-1980s signaled the end of Japan's export-led growth, the present U.S. slump signals the end of upbeat, consumption-led growth. But its legacy is an overbuilt and overemployed consumption sector, from car dealers to malls. The question is whether our system is adaptive enough to create new sources of growth to fill the void left by retreating shoppers.And then this from Krugman:
If you want to see what it really takes to boot the economy out of a debt trap, look at the large public works program, otherwise known as World War II, that ended the Great Depression. The war didn't just lead to full employment. It also led to rapidly rising incomes and substantial inflation, all with virtually no borrowing by the private sector. By 1945 the government's debt had soared, but the ratio of private-sector debt to G.D.P. was only half what it had been in 1940. And this low level of private debt helped set the stage for the great postwar boom. Since nothing like that is on the table, or seems likely to get on the table any time soon, it will take years for families and firms to work off the debt they ran up so blithely. The odds are that the legacy of our time of illusion -- our decade at Bernie's -- will be a long, painful slump.Just a sample, and not of wild men like Kunstler or Orlov: these are Samuelson and Krugman talking, but they are talking real pain.
This incipiant pain reminds me of my favorite quote from Spike Milligan's legendary BBC radio, "The Goon Show",
(horrible, blood curdling scream in off) ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGH!I don't know if I'm alone in this, but almost everything important that I have ever learned in my now long-toothed life has been won with certain pain. I associate intense discomfort with the acquisition of valued knowledge. Mind you, I don't find suffering "redeeming" or even pleasurable, only instructive.
Spike: "Listen, someone is screaming in agony... fortunately I speak it fluently."
The elite School of Hard Knocks is finally opening its ivy clad halls to America's core, its heart: the great American middle class.
Both Samuelson and Krugman fear a coming "lost decade", however, instead of a "lost" decade, I see a the possibility of a decade of discovery, of restless interrogation, of world transforming consciousness. For the American middle class and its docile belief in its methods, myths and heroes is both the first victim and the principal instrument, the cutting edge, of the system and its failure. These bland, well meaning people are the vanguard. For the world to ever change they must change first.
I am exhilarated by the prospect of white bread, middle class, "normal" Americans finally beginning to seriously question their system. By this I mean Americans asking the same kind of questions that South Americans, for example, often ask themselves: "I am a hard worker and the land I live in is rich in raw materials of every kind... why am I poor?" And the white bread gringos finally coming to the same conclusion that our Latin cousins came to long ago: "because a infinitesimally tiny minority of the population, an astronomically wealthy few, who couldn't care less whether I or my children live or die, has arranged the world and its commerce and institutions entirely to their own benefit".
If it takes the American middle class ten years of being put through the jumps just to metabolize that, it will be a decade well spent, one whose praises their children and their children's children and the whole world will happily sing. For this is knowledge that has been in the possession of not just South Americans, but most of our planet's inhabitants for centuries untold. However, the day that middle class Americans, with tears and travail acquire it... the world will finally change. That is if they don't turn to fascism first, of course.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/
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I am often accused of being a doomster but I am not.
It think you get that because the general theme of much of your writing comes off as "repent America, for the end is near." If you somehow learned to be less obvious about the preaching intent, and allowed more for the reader to come to their own conclusion, you might get less of it. For those of us who disagree with some of your world views, it would be more insidious if you did that, but more effective. As it is now, it's often too blatant to convince most people who don't already agree.
February 16, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for the sage advice. I shall work on being more insidious in the poisoning of young minds
February 16, 2009 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seriously, I am quite optimistic. I look forward to the era that stretches out before us. The idiotic complacency of the years since Reagan has been most trying. The complacency of the Eisenhower years, which I knew as a child, was, if bland and boring, at least based on solid fundamentals and not on delusional voodoo economics etc.
I can imagine this period as creative and intellectually exciting. I think I'm still young enough to make a contribution. Bottom line, I am not a doomster, my "inner Lenin" is hot to trot.
February 16, 2009 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
And the inner Trot? ;-)
February 16, 2009 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
David. I was just discussing the same mix of feelings with a friend. I am entirely happy at the prospect of reworking our hardware - cars, houses, energy, etc. I'm also entirely happy at the prospect that we MIGHT also change our institutions, from the media through our democratic systems through our corporate structures. (Again, with the proviso that we please not go through something politically worse to get there.)
But the sheer agony of people - not simply watching dollars shrink on a page, or having to lower an absurdly over-rich consumption pattern - but of being unemployed, losing hope, losing homes, breaking up families, lives in despair... that, I cannot happily accept.
We forget, because we almost always speak with the SURVIVORS of tough times, how many go under. And don't get back up. If you freeze to death, or jump off a bridge, you really don't get to come back. (Last I heard.)
That, and knowing that this will occur, factually and actually, and that many will be permanently emotionally or physically or intellectually broken, I cannot find myself accepting. And that, I think, is why at least some of your readers rebel. Going through change, cutting the fat, opening the mind, creating something better for their children - many here are open to that, WANT that. But the cost, when it's up close & personal, may not be acceptable, or even, for some, possible to endure.
February 16, 2009 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Quinn.
February 16, 2009 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah I am with Bwak. Good comment, good sentiments.
Just as an aside, I need that inner trot and I have to have a little prune juice every morning.
February 16, 2009 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you need an "inner trot", forget the prune juice, just read the financial pages with breakfast.
February 17, 2009 1:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Quinn,
That has always been the the conflict for me. My "Inner Lenin" could see this thing coming and was licking his chops and my "Inner Mr. Nice-Guy, Charlie-Compassionate" dreaded it. This tender dialectic has been resolved by events. Now that it has arrived, lets get some use out of the sucker.
February 17, 2009 1:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
More thoughts on:
It is amazing what our species can endure. Here is Marx on the subject.Assuming no financial regulators or bank chairmen are reading this post, none of us brought this crisis on, but as it alway happens through the history of our system we are going to end up paying for the broken crockery. This then, is a "lemonade from lemons" situation. The great danger now is fascism and war. We have to be alert for that and denounce that and fight against that. Useful work I think.February 17, 2009 6:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm curious as to why you believe that "'normal' Americans" will finally begin "to seriously question their system", when they haven't in the wake of the multitude of similar situation in USA history.
The masses didn't question the system when the "astronomically wealthy few" imposed the whiskey tax inordinately on small producers to pay off the $5 million loan they had secured from France to further their revolution, 20% of which, incidentally, was raked off by the wealthy fellow who arranged for the loan.
The masses didn't question the system when an "astronomically wealthy few" looted the federal treasury, and public lands, during the railroad building orgy of the mid-1800s after essentially buying Congressional grants.
Likewise in the wake of the depressions of the 1890s and 1930s, or in the wake of S&L debacle, and etc.
February 16, 2009 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess you are right Chris, but still I will be interested to see how Orange county processes California going broke. It appears that in the 1930s, for example, the USA was a much more solid country than today, there still was a manufacturing base, the dollar was based on gold and Americans didn't cut each others hair and flip burgers so much. Sooner or later the system founders, all systems in history have. This just might be it.
February 17, 2009 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like this post, David. Thank you for it.
February 16, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're welcome LisB.
February 17, 2009 2:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for this post. I have been trying to figure out what bugs people (including me) about the stimulus discussion. I think this gets at it.
Am I the only one who grinds my teeth a bit when I hear "stimulate spending?" What are overextended Americans loaded down with stuff and debt supposed to spend on? I have a healthy respect for the joy of heartless materialism, but even I watched the fundamentalism-fueled shopfest of the last eight years with a kind of horror. (A diamond-and-ruby cross for the wife, and a fish logo on the back of the Escalade, please, 'cause we're Christians.)
As David points out, there is a real opportunity here to truly simplify, to pay off our debts, forgive our debtors, get in tune with the future and be able to go out in the world without getting shot at. But I don't hear that when I hear "we're going to spend a lot of money so others can too" from the hallowed halls of government. Are they afraid to say it?
February 17, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
I sort of agree, but as usual, you are too patronizing and snobby. I would be more likely to give credence to your sage musings if they weren't accompanied by you looking down your nose at them.
"These bland, well meaning people are the vanguard...
"I am exhilarated by the prospect of white bread, middle class, "normal" Americans finally beginning to seriously question their system."
Oye.
February 17, 2009 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
"These bland, well meaning people", the "white bread, middle class, 'normal' Americans" are my tribe. And just as African-Americans are permitted to use the "N" word (and use it quite freely, I might add) I have no qualms about "patronizing" the whitebreads.
February 17, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Globe's Emerging Middle Classes;
Views on Democracy, Religion, Values and Life Satisfaction in Emerging Nations
February 12, 2009
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1119/global-middle-class
February 17, 2009 11:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
The thing is Seaton, you're more than a doomster. Assuming that you are well-intentioned, and not simply nursing some deep and festering chip on your shoulder by writing to Americans who have chosen to live in their country (I generally have an aversion to psychoanalysis from afar), you make the same mistake all kinds of "smart" people have made through the millenia. That is, you think you're so smart you can predict the future. In two years you can look as foolish as you did during the election campaign when you predicted the demise of now-President Obama.
By the way, 74 percent of Spaniards believe that Jews have too much power in the international financial markets. But I hear the water is fine. Ole!
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASInt_13/5465_13.htm
February 23, 2009 8:29 AM | Reply | Permalink