We’ll never be happy consumers again
AlterNet
by James Howard Kunstler
02/10/09
The argument about ‘change’ during the election was sufficiently vague that no one was really challenged to articulate a future that wasn’t, materially, more-of-the-same. I suppose the Obama team may have thought they would only administer it differently than the Bush team — but basically life in the USA would continue being about all those trips to the mall, and the cubicle jobs to support that, and the family safaris to visit Grandma in Lansing, and the vacations at Sea World, and Skipper’s $20,000 college loan, and Dad’s yearly junket to Las Vegas, and refinancing the house, and rolling over this loan and that loan … and that has all led to a very dead end in a dark place. If this nation wants to survive without an intense political convulsion, there’s a lot we can do, but none of it is being voiced in any corner of Washington at this time...
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/126104/we%27ll_never_be_happy_consumers_again_--_no_stimulus_package_can_bring_that_back/
Obama and the wrong road
Independent Institute
by Carlos Alberto Montaner
Last Jan. 9, President Obama declared that ‘there is no disagreement that we need action by our government, [for example,] a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy.’ He was wrong. A few days later, polled by the Cato Institute, some 200 economists from the best American universities answered him in a full-page ad published in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal: ‘With all due respect, Mr. President, that is not true.’ And then they briefly expressed their reasons: an increase in government spending in the 1930s did not liquidate the Great Depression or contribute to solving the crisis in Japan in the 1990s. To reprise that strategy was a triumph of hope over experience. What was the correct road to emerge from the crisis? No doubt, they opined, the best fiscal policy to revitalize the growth of the economy consisted of reducing taxes and the burden of government and initiating reforms that would eliminate impediments to work, savings, investment and production...
http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2430
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stimulus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Great+Depression
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=James+Howard+Kunstler
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Carlos+Alberto+Montaner
by James Howard Kunstler
02/10/09
The argument about ‘change’ during the election was sufficiently vague that no one was really challenged to articulate a future that wasn’t, materially, more-of-the-same. I suppose the Obama team may have thought they would only administer it differently than the Bush team — but basically life in the USA would continue being about all those trips to the mall, and the cubicle jobs to support that, and the family safaris to visit Grandma in Lansing, and the vacations at Sea World, and Skipper’s $20,000 college loan, and Dad’s yearly junket to Las Vegas, and refinancing the house, and rolling over this loan and that loan … and that has all led to a very dead end in a dark place. If this nation wants to survive without an intense political convulsion, there’s a lot we can do, but none of it is being voiced in any corner of Washington at this time...
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/126104/we%27ll_never_be_happy_consumers_again_--_no_stimulus_package_can_bring_that_back/
Obama and the wrong road
Independent Institute
by Carlos Alberto Montaner
Last Jan. 9, President Obama declared that ‘there is no disagreement that we need action by our government, [for example,] a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy.’ He was wrong. A few days later, polled by the Cato Institute, some 200 economists from the best American universities answered him in a full-page ad published in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal: ‘With all due respect, Mr. President, that is not true.’ And then they briefly expressed their reasons: an increase in government spending in the 1930s did not liquidate the Great Depression or contribute to solving the crisis in Japan in the 1990s. To reprise that strategy was a triumph of hope over experience. What was the correct road to emerge from the crisis? No doubt, they opined, the best fiscal policy to revitalize the growth of the economy consisted of reducing taxes and the burden of government and initiating reforms that would eliminate impediments to work, savings, investment and production...
http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2430
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stimulus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Great+Depression
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=James+Howard+Kunstler
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Carlos+Alberto+Montaner
rudkla - 11. Feb, 11:23
