Posted on 03/07/2009 9:48:58 PM PST by Lorianne
Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”
We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...
We can’t do this anymore.
“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Firedman is a maroon...
Communist drivel / propaganda.
If I were a moderator, I would remove this trash.
Classic Liberal “argument” tactics: “Let’s pretend that everything I want to exist actually exists, and then let’s think about everything from that point of view, without me having to defend any of it, because it’s indefensible, so instead we’ll just all assume it’s real.”
This is the DIRECT result of dumbing down of academia. Friedman knows he’s writing crap - he probably writes this junk while half drunk just to get himself to put it down in words. But he also know liberals are simply too stupid to understand that it’s a fairy story and not a legitimate argument. I don’t know who’s more disgusting - him or his target audience.
Well that’s what it SHOULD say.
Nevertheless, he has a valid point about the sustainability of economic growth (sans the environment stuff).
As a nation, we spend way above our means. Too bad he fogot to mention that that’s the plan going forward as well.
Big Government = NOT SUSTAINABLE
The liberal attitude seems to be that capitalism gave us all we have, but since it’s now hit a massive roadbump, we were wrong to follow it all along, so we have to dump the whole philosophy which gave us what we have now lost.
Great comments BUMP! Why waste another moment (out of a great life) reading ANYTHING Thomas Friedman writes?
Friedman is especially bad about this. If you ask him, he's solved the whole world's problems several times over--then he wakes up and sees that nothing in his paltry lifetime has changed. In the middle of the night it must suck to be nothing but the Slimes's homemade writer/android.
Well the good thing is YOU DON’T HAVE TO!
So we can and should continue to send ever more of our factories, jobs, money and technical capabilities to Communist China forever?
The trend is leading into the wall, the author refers to.
Fast.
“Friedman is a maroon...”
And don’t forget his fellow comrade Krugman...
He’s close but no cigar.
There is such a thing as over-reach. There is such a thing as living beyond your means ... spending more than you make, using more than you have.
But, unfortunately, he doesn’t translate this realty to government spending as well.
I read a feature on Tommy somewhere--maybe Atlantic or NewYorker, I don't recall now. But he is very earnest and oh so intense about the enormous importance of his 'work.' No, he might be bipolar because he just can't seem to rest, the world is waiting after all for his brilliance.
He is a true believer--in his own barf.
Like when President Osama referred to a P/E ratio as "profit/earnings ratio?"
lol!
I think you’re assuming some people actually read the article. :)
>>Communist drivel / propaganda.
If I were a moderator, I would remove this trash.<<
I know Jim has listed some sources that simply aren’t worth posting.. but the New York Times is so reflective of popular media bias, I think its worth at least noting and sometimes discussion their positions.
The capitalist system has all the tools needed to cure what ails it. Freidman and others think we shouldn't bother with that, just toss the whole thing aside and say it was defective, and must be replaced, instead of repairing it, which is a pain.
What if 2008 was the year leftists finally succeeded in breaking the greatest engine of prosperity ever created?
No, no, you don’t understand. Censoring thought means it never occured.
That’s why the liberals want Rush off the air.
We have our own Ostrich Brigade here at FR.
You do realize, don’t you, that the population of Communist China is FOUR TIMES the population of America??
China can and seems likely to absorb every skill and job in the American economy, leaving us broke and incapable of making anything.
Capitalism won’t magically fix that. We can and seem determined to collapse our own country.
What insight...
I agree, but aren’t we being hypocritical when we tout Bush, McCain, and other Republicans who called for more regulation way back when ... that (presumably) would have stopped this meltdown?
>>No, no, you don’t understand. Censoring thought means it never occured.
That’s why the liberals want Rush off the air.
We have our own Ostrich Brigade here at FR.<<
I guess we can’t really expect Freep to be immune to such a strong human tendency. But I get your point.
I hadn't heard that...really. The guy is even a bigger intellectual lightweight than I thought.
Another interesting thing is lots of appointees to treasury deputy sec'ty and under sec'ty positions have dropped out or withdrawn. Seems nobody wants to be associated with the sinking economic ship....Geithner is literally "by himself" at Treasury....winging it alone!!
Obama is currently serving in the second month of the first 2 year Presidential term in US history!! The Democrats will be calling for his impeachment within a year!
>scientists are warning us that we’re living beyond our ecological means and overdrawing our natural assets,<
whatta joke!
Yes, that’s the solution but they’ll never admit that or do that.
So, unfortnately, we have no choice but to crash and burn and hopefully pick up the pieces and start over. I say get it over sooner rather than later.
>>Obama Tells America To Buy Stock - Why he needs to do his homework and How Wrong He Is
Posted on March 4, 2009 by mcauleysworld
Yesterday, Obama suggested that the time was right for the average American to buy stock.
To my surprise the President made reference to the “Profit to Earnings Ratio” of stocks. The “Profit to Earnings Ratio”? What the heck is that?
Obama was making up his own measurements of the stock market. There is no “Profit to Earnings Ratio”. While Profits and Earnings are not exactly the same, Profits are a function of Earnings minus Expenses.<<
sigh....
C-c-c-c-oool. I didn't...AND I thoroughly enjoyed reading the posts lambasting this idiot.
Thank you very much.
Trees are not a renewable resource? What is that about?
Talk about clueless... And now he's the leader of the free world...
Obama apparently thinks he's an “idea man” where everyone else does the actual work. The thing is, all his “ideas” are simply reruns of 60’s failed radicalism of Ayers, et al... He's never actually really done anything himself. And unless the Democratic powers that be start filling the voids behind the scenes quickly all of that is going to be painfully obvious even to his blind worshipers.
How is calling for more regulation in some cases being hypocritical?
What does China have to do with anything I've posted?
It's the price system that determines whether something is "renewable", not nature. For the price system to work, it has to reflect real valuations of buyers and sellers, and real knowledge of local conditions (something that a central government can never have). That can only happen if buyers and sellers have a real, personal stake in their economic transactions...which, in turn, can only happen if they own the property they are trading. Private ownership of the means of production, a sound money, and the price system are the mechanisms for creating "renewability" and "sustainability."
Environmentalism is simply the new, hip rationale for instituting socialism. Whether it's the baloney of global warming, or the idiocy of recycling, that's all it is.
Since no one buys the Marxist nonsense about "exploitation of the working class" as an excuse to institute socialism, the left has substituted "exploitation of nature" as the excuse.
If the right wants to win the debate on this, it should adopt the vocabulary of the left (since the left's propagandizers, the press, control most of the flow of information). They should use the terms "sustainability", "renewability", "flow", etc., and demonstrate that these wonderful goals can come about only through individuals making local economic decisions based on local information available only to them. Use the word "local" a lot because that's also a favorite buzzword of the enviro-left. Back this up with examples of the environmental waste and hazards caused by non-local, centralized decisions in countries that have or had socialism. Thomas Sowell has many real-world examples in his books "Basic Economics," "Applied Economics," and "Economic Facts and Fallacies."
Government intervention?
What about it?
Omigosh! Finally we know the true bottom-line reason why our economy has been melting down --- all the rivers have been drying up and the fish are dead!
Dang, I just knew there was some really simple, obvious, intuitive explanation behind all this. Why didn't anyone explain this to us sooner?
I guess it's just like Plato or Aristotle or someone said: "Our economy needs a fish like a bicycle needs a ...... I forget the rest of the quote, but it's something close to that.
How much of our oil consumption do we ‘own’?
How much of the goods we buy do we own the materials and means of production?
There is no end to the high-falutin’ theories people like Friedman will invent in order to avoid discussing:
The Gold Standard;
the removal of gold and silver coins from circulation;
the Federal Reserve.
Well, for example, we hear there was not enough governmnet regulation in the markets and we hear that there was too much government regulation in the markets ... which is it that was the problem?
GLOBAL WARMING CAUSED THE STOCK MARKET TO PLUMMET!
You had to know it was only a matter of time before someone made the connection; but my hats off to Friedman, he certainly took Rahm’s words to heart and isn’t letting any crisis go to waste.
And that overreach extends to goverment as well.
You were taking issue with the article, no?
The author was specifically referring to China.
He threw in some other nonsense about global warming or something, but his point in the top post was we cannot continue to send our jobs and our money to China without repercussion.
We increasingly are tearing down our own ability to do things. Make things. Innovate. Produce. And save.
We’re going broke. Fast. Our banks are imploding, because we’re spending all the money in the banks. Our people don’t have jobs, because we’re outsourcing all the jobs.
We’re sending it all primarly to ... CHINA.
Well said. The left is so confused. They claim local control and more individual input in the public process is better, but they vote for larger central control and LESS individual input in the public process.
They want it both ways.
But then, so do many on the Right. "Hey, we called for more regulation way back when" ... and "government regulation is what got us into this mess so we should have less goverment regulation".
Communist crap, have no clue why anyone would post that horse sh*t
You’re assuming some people actually READ the article before posting.
Just saying.
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