Two Views of The U.S. Economy

The U.S. Economy Today – Two Views and a Great Quote

View #1.: This view is from the noted author (“World Made by Hand” & “The Long Emergency”) and commentator James Howard Kunstler in his 7/20/09 piece “Is Obama Gorbachev?” via lifeaftertheoilcrash.net. Here’s a part of that view:

• “The US economy is now dying a slow and painful death because it had become based on activities that had nothing to do with producing real wealth. Instead, it became dependent on rackets, that is, behavior geared to getting something for nothing”
• “These rackets are often summarized under the acronym FIRE (for finance, insurance and real estate), a system set up to strip-mine profits from the wish commonly labeled ‘the American Dream’ — itself a product of televised advertising and propaganda.”
• “The end product of all that was the doomed economy of suburban sprawl, an infrastructure for daily life with no future in a world defined by fossil fuel scarcity.”
• “The unraveling of debt at every level now is directly related to the mis-investments made in that life.”

View #2.: Charles Hugh Smith in his Monday, 7/20/09, post “Denial, Fear, Anger: The Real Depression Part I” at oftominds.com, brings us this view from correspondent Steve R. on “…the psychology of our post-bubble culture:” Here’s a part of that view plus a great quote from one of Mr. Smith’s readers:

• “Now that the promised dream is crumbling, people are justifiably angry for behaving as they were encouraged to but effectively being duped and punished by the system.”
• “Sure it was mostly technically legal – another big problem with the system. The incentives do not reward honorable behavior and personal responsibility (quite the opposite it seems).”
• “A society perceived to be based upon trickery, deceit, obfuscation by legal fine-print and rewarding failure of the biggest/most connected may create a population of angry, skeptical people.”

From reader Angry Saver: “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” - Eric Hoffer (the self-educated, longshoreman philosopher/PH)

It is time, and past time, for each and all of us to embark on a self-education effort to prepare ourselves for what promises to be a different -and probably more difficult – future. Different and difficult, but with the possibility of far greater rewards and satisfaction.

We’re going to take a short vacation to visit family and plan to be back next week with Part 2 of “The Case for Cast-Iron Cookware.” It’s the hard-use and hard-times cookware for right now! Until next week: keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.