We got lots of lumber around here. A toothpick making machine could come in handy.

Where can we get one?

Flowerchild, this is brilliant! You've got it exactly right. Why aren't the workers ranting? I'm baffled.

And once again, the union workers are gonna lay on their backs and settle for a tummy rub when they should be in the streets with pitchforks. Who's a goo-boy. who's a goo-boy?

I wish this could be plastered up on every union hall across the country.

Good job.

Maybe the revolution should start in Michigan. You with me, 'gander?

Flower and Ramona, two for the workers. Hip, hip, hurrah Yay, yay

Hey Flowerchild. Great piece.Only one way to say this - Fuck Reich. I mean Yadda yadda, the guy's smart. But we knew this strategy was crap when it really got going under Reagan, and now Reich shows up, 25 gd years later, going on and on and on about how the American worker has lost ground, even though there's now 2 adults working and together they got 3 jobs and piles of debt and no health care and their kids education sucks and BTW we're diving into depression, and now this asshole wants to REPEAT the experiment? Like, we're in a MUCH better starting place than we were before Robert.

His ideas are 30 years old, and it's time he was pastured. And I'm so sick of the left and Democrats putting the worst of the worst in charge - Summers et al - so as to appease big money; and then which critics get highlighted by the media? Reich and Krugman? Not wanting to be rude or anything, but Reich's burned out and Krugman's a big big fan of free trade and globalization, so that's a huge difference of opinion, eh?

Further rants over at Ramona's.

Kick ass, take names. Repeat.

Revolt against what?

The global economy is here to stay. There is no way to put the toothpaste back in the tube, even if we wanted to. The standard of living in the United States is going to go down, as the standard of living in the underdeveloped world is going to go up until we've reached some sort of equilibrium.

I do not think there is anyway to avoid it, and in truth, it's only fair. We've consumed far more than our share of the world's resources for far too long, and it's time to pay the piper.

The biggest problem (outside of peak oil)is...how do we, as a country even survive? We are broke. We can't afford the safety nets everyone needs. How do you "make" jobs, even if you want to?

California is going to be the first casualty. All but one of the propositions designed to get us out of our financial mess failed, giving the Governor a mandate to cut services to the bare bones. Many of the programs that will be cut are penny-wise, pound foolish. It's going to be a frickin' mess, and the rest of the country should be paying attention, because although we're leading the way in the downward spiral, y'all are going to be following us. It's going to be a wild ride.

The lack of jobs means less taxes collected, which means fewer services, which means fewer companies relocate here, and others leave, meaning fewer jobs, and even less taxes collected...It's going to be ugly.

So again, I ask...revolt against what?

.

Uh . . .

Here's a bit of "symbolic analytic" work for ol' Reich right here . . .

Stick a plug in that piehole Bob.

He's past useless.

~OGD~

Think about what has happened in our country since last fall.

Capitalism has completely failed in every way as a result of it's own inherent, unrestrained greed and inability to regulate itself. The guys who have been in charge for all our lifetimes have finally exposed themselves as the greedy, irresponsible, selfish, thoroughly incompetent swine that they are.

What has been proposed as a solution?

First, the taxpayers have had to cover almost all the losses created by the greedy, irresponsible, selfish, thoroughly incompetent swine to the tune of about 12 Trillion dollars or something like that when you include all the extra legislative hocus pocus pulled by Bernanke on behalf of the very richiest and most culpable.

Will any measures be taken to force the wealthy to start making real investements from now on and in this country instead of just engaging in nothing more than speculation? No.

The people must demand better or they will get nothing but more of the same coddling of the rich assholes tht got us in this mess to begin with.

" Two months ago I bought a box of toothpicks. They were made in China."

That's where your silver ware is made too.

I'm with you, flower; especially the "Reich is not as smart as he thinks he is" part. Did you see the other day where he said that since Obama can't get Congress to tax the uber wealthy to pay for health care he should tax the middle class (via taxing benefits)? I was infuriated!

But what I don't get is this -- if the workers take to the streets with pitchforks, what are they going to say? "YOU MUST BUY OUR CARS!"

Truth is, "the worker" has no weight to throw in this battle. I am very discouraged. Glad you wrote this though -- history sure has a way of repeating itself, huh?

Excellent post. Its ironic that a flowerchild should decry the deindustrialization of our country. The hippie ideology of the baby boomer generation was one of the key wedges used to destroy the coalition that FDR forged between farmers, labor, the urban and rural poor and working classes. Helped destroy the Democratic Party as the organizing force of that coalition. Paved the way for a fascist corporatist like Nixon to come in and appeal to the worst impulses of the working class - racism, America right or wrong support for an immoral war, etc. Not something you wanna hear, but I was a middle class hippy myself, born into plenty, the son of a man who worked his way up from the factory floor into upper management. His company was non-union, but was more than fair to the workforce, paying wages and benefits commensurate with the local Michigan GM and Ford, etc. factories. Yet, in the late sixties and early seventies I rejected his values for a nebulous, pie-in-the-sky post-industrial world view that has come to its disastrous fruition.

Globalization is just a form of imperialism. It never could work, hasn't worked and is now dead. The monetary system build to support it is dead, bankrupt. Simply put, it is based on usury, on looting the stored up wealth of national economies. This sounds leftist, and the left uses this jargon, but Marxism is no more a solution that predatory free trade "capitalism". Marx never understood the American Revolution or the American System of Political Economy as utilized by Lincoln, or later by FDR to build and protect national industry and infrastructure. He was a creature of the British Hallibury school of Ricardo, et., al. He was a slave to a fishbowl mentality that conceived all of capitalism as being modeled on British free trade imperialism.

To survive and resume the American experiment, we must end monetarism and free trade in all its forms. Shrink the financial services section of the economy, relegate it to its rightful place - servicing the capitalization needs of the productive, physical section of the economy. Outlaw derivatives and associated criminal speculation and usury in all forms. Return to a Hamiltonian credit system to fund the capital needs of real industries in rebuilding our national infrastructure.

For example, many above have mentioned the auto industry; that we have too much capacity and the US auto makers are basically toast. True. But those companies are the respository of a national treasure - machine tool capacity and a skilled labor force that can deploy it. Do we let the status quo continue unabated - let the hedge funds and assorted other sick financial predator vultures continue to pick their carcasses clean? We've seen that leads to the middle classes' the the nation's ruin. No, we must re-deploy that capacity to rebuild our infrastructure - we have an estimated $11 TRILLION deficit in infrastructure investment in the US. Restructure and retool auto to build the power plants, power grids, electric rail, maglev systems, canals, locks, bridges, etc., etc., that are absolutely required if we are to have a chance for advancing living standards for future generations.

Time for baby boomers like Mr. Reich (who's heart, I believe, if not his mind, is in the right place) to grow up and realize he and the country has been bamboozled by a foreign ideology implanted to destroy the greatest experiment in human freedom and empowerment ever conceived - implanted by the same neo-feudalist financial oligarchy that seeks to turn the whole planet into their plantation, unencumbered by pesky sovereign nation-states that concern themselves with quaint notions of "the general welfare".

I wish I'd said that. Sort of.

I almost did not read this because of the title. I thought you were promoting a Reich Rant and he is way too DLC for me.

Like you, I'd given up trying to explain that the economics being promoted was going to kill the goose and that we were the goose.

It was good that you started your argument with the question of where are we going to get the stuff we need to live before leading up to the loss of jobs. Too often in economic discussions of jobs and wages their connection to how we get the stuff we need gets abstracted away.

Still there may be a silver lining to the globalization clouds. Maybe it is a wake up call to think beyond jobs and wages. If trends in robotics continue, we will not be losing jobs to people overseas, we and they will be losing more and more of them to robots. In a sane economy, where gains in productivity benefit more than shareholders, this would be a good thing. However, the majority of us depend on jobs/wages to get the stuff we need.

It would be really great if economists started looking ahead to address that huge bump in the road instead of continuing to argue over Smith, Marx, Keynes, Hayek and Friedman.

"To survive and resume the American experiment"...
The infrastructure that Audacity refers to will "restructure and rebuild" in ways that we do not expect, in ways that we would never have anticipated until now, in this present new arrangement of things.

While the infrastructure still exists, the capitalism that built is has fallen into disrepair.The old gang has walked away from the mess they made; it's up to the new kids on the block to pick up the pieces and go with it. We are at ground-zero of the rebirth and retooling of American capitalism.Are you in?

We're going to put this thing back together piecemeal. We, the American people, will recover the fallen and neglected parts, the overlooked and abandoned components of a once-great industrial economy. The former asset managers, now unable to profitably maintain their worn-out administration and bankrupted ownership of the nuts and bolts and whirlygigs of the American enterprise, will cede that infrastructure to the public domain.The whole mess will be (is) in a state of terrible disrepair and confusion, like ground zero.

Now here's the deal: those alert citizens who are willing to work hard toward a new kind of recovery--those who are willing to jump in, get their hands dirty--those who are willing to take a stake in the retooled America (like a rebuilt carburetor)--those diligent, far-sighted ones who are willing to take a chance, accept a new venture, identify and develop those new opportunities (It may be right around the corner from you right now.) --These are the bold citizen-activists who will resurrect the American economy--and redefine the word "capitalism."

They (we) will work and act as individuals.

And will organize.

Are you one of those who is looking for the opportunities in this shipwrecked economy?Look around you.

Because it's really not about what GM does, or Chrysler. It's not about what Bernanke or Geithener will do next week, next month. It has nothing to do with what Nixon did or didn't do way back when--or Clinton or Carter or Bush. AIG and Citi are irrelevant. The crux of the thing does not revolve around the post-feudal, post-imperialist, post-industrial, post-summeroflove, post-911,post-financial meltdown, post-China syndrome elite that is out or not out to enslave you into arguing with your comrades and divert your attention from the great potential of your own innovations and collective willingess to take responsibility for your own destiny.

It's not about them. It's about you, and me,and
what you will do to improve the lot of yourself and of those whom you hold dear. What can you do to improve your community? What can you do to reinvent America? Let's get to work.

Carey Rowland, author of Glass half-Full

I had a vision of gossamer threads forming a webbed pattern atop buildings in. Metropolis. You could only see the threads if you looked at them from a certain angle, and then you would only see a prismal shiver of sunrays.

These were solar fibers, a step beyond the cumbersome panels.

What I mean to say is that if we truly value and support a nascent technology, we will find a way to accomodate it into our society. So we must reevaluate. But so long as we are inflating a financial structure with fake wealth and securing trade with the blood of our youth, we will sink.

(I posted this comment on Reich's TPM blog, but I'm posting it here because if it happens (see below)I want to take credit for seeing through him first. If I'm wrong. . .well. . . never mind.)

Okay, I've slept on it. I even blogged about this piece.

Now I'm almost totally convinced this is Reich's idea of a wicked joke. I come to this because:

a. He was the Labor Secretary a few years back. He understands the necessity for good paying jobs.

b. He is a professor so I know he comprehends what he reads. He reads, as I do, that every MONTH over a half-million workers lose their jobs.

c. He's better at understanding economics than most. He knows without even giving it much thought that when people are out of work they're not buying things. We live in a consumer economy. Things need to move of the shelves and out of the lots or we're in big trouble.

d. He is known for his impish sense of humor.

So, unless I'm badly mistaken, Part 2 is going to be the punchline to his joke. He's going to come out laughing at US for taking him seriously.

If I were a praying person, I would be praying it is so. If it isn't, I'm ripping him off of my bloglist as fast as he can talk.

Reich's column and arguments were pretty bad. However, I haven't seen a realistic proposal from anyone here. It seems that everyone wants to point fingers at some villain and proclaim the people victims, but that is the easy way out. I know I will get trashed for buying the corporatist line, so be it.

How do you explain the replacement of manual labor functions with mechanization? This accounts by far for the largest portion of the decrease in the labor pool. Take axes to all the damn machines? I don't know. Do you want to be the one in the fields picking the cotton? If you are honest, not bloody likely.

None of it is easily explained and none of the solutions will be easy. Maybe we are moving to a new paradigm. I won't hazard to guess. I can guarantee you that the revolution some are calling for would be EXTREMELY bloody and no one should pretend to know where that might end. Maybe that would be better than the slow strangulation, I don't know.

Well, this post's 24 hours is almost up. Migwetch (thanks) for reading and the commenting was quite informative and helpful. I sure learned a lot, which is a dang good return on a hair-on-fire rant.

Like I said. I'll be waiting for Part II.

The main work that needs to happen is this: people need to get together and figure out how to efficiently gather energy from the sun, earth and sky, harness it, and pump it back into the grid.
When everybody can go to Lowe's or Home Depot, or Nick's hardware around the corner, spend a few hundred bucks, come home with hardware to connect at home, and put electricity back into the system--now that's a revolution in the infrastructure.

Something to think about, for you tinkerers out there.

Carey Rowland, author of Glass half-Full