Comments on: Reinventing America — from the bottom up

By: The1eyedman

The1eyedman — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:13:58 +0000

You seem to be painting a rosy picture and divorcing yourself from reality.
US Corporations and the political establishment have and are perusing the dollar or euro in the sky with complete disregard to cost.
The policy of doing it cheap regardless cost is only just starting to be felt. We contracted our production out overseas and now we no longer have the labor or production facilities to have a rapid recovery.
We no longer produce goods that are as good as or better than the rest of the worlds producers, we no longer have a production based work force, housing which is a secondary based industry is now considered a primary base industry.
We do not have mass transit systems in all major cities, high rise accommodation and high density urban areas are few and far between.
Minor earth quakes on the east coast are reported as disasters followed by a storm which would be considered minor in SE Asia causes damage out of proportion. i.e., our infrastructure cannot handle it.
Hence, all is not well in the US in the short or longterm.

By: laguardia23

laguardia23 — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:55:37 +0000

What I see is that we have to orchestrate a completely new set of priorities in this country. If we are going to be productive members of a worldly society we are going to have to stop starting wars on other peoples property and overhaul our nation’s infrastucture and get people decent affordable health care. The whole world is giving us the Judge Judy treatment. Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

By: Pete_Murphy

Pete_Murphy — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:17:05 +0000

The problem with our economy is not anything that the American people are doing wrong. The problem is that our economic policies are guided by economists. Economists don’t have a clue as to what’s happening to our economy because they steadfastly refuse to consider the effects of the parameter that most dominates our economy today – population growth. They don’t understand the inverse relationship between population density and per capita consumption and the role played by population density disparities in driving global trade imbalances. They continue to lean on population growth as a crutch to prop up macroeconomic growth, which only makes matters worse.

They make proclamations about the cause of our massive trade deficit without ever bothering to verify their claims. They blame it on currency valuations without ever explaining why, in spite of a 300% rise in the value of the yen over the past three decades, our trade deficit with Japan exploded instead of shrinking, or why, in spite of a big rise in the value of the yuan in past few years, our trade deficit with China has done the same thing. Or they blame our trade deficit on low wages without explaining why our biggest trade deficits, in per capita terms, are with wealthy nations like Japan, Germany and a host of others.

And they never explain why America, the most productive nation on earth, seems unable to “compete” with low productivity nations like China. They can’t explain it because they don’t understand what happens when a low population density/high per capita consumption nation like America attempts to combine its economy (through “free” trade) with a high population density/low per capita consumption nation like China (or Japan, or Germany or …). The work of manufacturing is spread evenly across the combined labor force while the disparity in consumption remains. The result is an automatic trade deficit and loss of jobs for America. It’s impossible to “compete” our way out of such a situation.

We don’t need to reinvent ourselves. We need to recognize that we were bamboozled by well-intentioned but badly mistaken “economists” way back in 1947 when they convinced us to sign the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Prior to that date, the smart use of tariffs built us into the world’s pre-eminent industrial power. But, soon after, our trade surplus began to erode. Since 1975, the last year of a trade surplus, our cumulative trade deficit is approaching $11 trillion.

Our economy will never, ever improve until we take back the right to manage trade in our own best interest, the right that we ceded to the World Trade Organization back in 1947. (By the way, the stated mission of the WTO is not to promote free trade, as many believe, but to enforce protectionist policies in favor of undeveloped and developing countries, nearly two thirds of its member states, to the detriment of America. Don’t believe me? Check their web site.)

Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”

By: Ideapete

Ideapete — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 23:15:42 +0000

America made a choice that it will have to reverse.

It should have listened to the late Quality Assurance eminence grise W Edwards Deming

If you start any project with a cost focus ( that includes a country who off shores its manufacturing and basic core ) over time costs go up and Quality goes down ( unemployment , debt etc )

If you do the reverse and target Quality, over time Quality ( of life ) goes up and costs go down

We are simply reaping what we sowed and need to plant a new (metaphorical ) crop for our next generation as we have done continually in our countries history

By: Nullcorp

Nullcorp — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 18:10:49 +0000

I appreciate the recent string of Reuters articles about optimistic big-picture views of America. I can only hope that some of them end up becoming part of a new reality.

I think the key takeaway of this article is that American government is top-down. It’s not really a democracy. That’s partially due to the machinations of Washington, including long-term power consolidation and lobbying, and partially due to the fact that most people simply focus on making money and assume that things will turn out OK.

Imagine if Americans actually voted directly on energy policy, abortion, immigration, regional transit, the debt ceiling, corporate taxation, etc. Imagine if Americans – not the Commander in Chief or the prevalent political party – decided whether we should go to war, or even intervene in smaller conflicts. That would be real democracy at work.

I don’t think I’ll see such a scenario in my lifetime – nor am I completely sure that it would be a good idea. What’s better: tyranny of a wealthy minority (our “elected” officials), where vested interests continuously manipulate things to serve their own ends, or the tyranny of an ignorant populace (to give you one example, recent data indicates that only 1/3 of Republicans in Iowa accept the validity of evolution, with roughly 1/5 accepting scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change). Humans are imperfect, and so are the decisions we make, but I do wish and think that there were more opportunities for Americans to directly influence the outcome of the political process. You can “vote with your wallet” or write a letter to your Congressional rep, both of which are very limited.

Anyway, just something to think about when discussing top-down versus bottom-up governance.