Posted on 12/31/2010 5:57:36 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The last 10 years have been the worst for Western civilization since the 1930s. At the onset of the new millennium North America, Europe and Oceania stood at the cutting edge of the future, with new technologies and a lion’s share of the world’s GDP. At its end, most of these economies limped, while economic power – and all the influence it can buy politically – had shifted to China, India and other developing countries.
This past decade China’s economic growth rate, at 10% per annum, grew to five times that U.S.; the gap was even more disparate between China and the slower-growing E.U., Yet periods of slow economic growth occur throughout history — recall the 1970s — and economies recover. The bigger problem facing Western countries, then, is a metaphysical one — a malady that the British writer Austin Williams has dubbed “poverty of ambition.”
This lack of ambition plagues virtually every Western country. The ability to act has become shackled by profound pessimism that according to recent Gallup survey contrasts with the optimism found not only in rising states like China, India and Brazil, but also deeply impoverished places like Bangladesh.
Attitudes have consequences. The rising stars of the non-Western world — from the United Arab Emirates to Singapore and China — are building cities with startling new architecture and bold infrastructure. Their entrepreneurs are expanding their operations across the planet.
Of course, you can chortle at the outrageous overbuilding in places like Dubai, but the Western world might do better to appreciate the scope of their ambition. Indeed, for years New York’s Empire State building, erected during the Depression, was derided as ”the empty state building.” Today it’s visionary developers like Iraqi-born Istabraq Janabi who are planning unlikely new structures even in troubled places like Ramadi, Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.forbes.com ...
Anyone that tries to better themselves thru eduction ends up at the age of 22 with $150,000 bill and a chance to compete with H1-b visa indentured slaves. If you are a white male you get to fight reverse discrimination, too. Yeah, there might be a problem with gloBULLization.
“This lack of ambition plagues virtually every Western country.”
Why bother to be ambitious when the government penalizes those who work? And the “people” know the government is all to anxious to provide food and shelter and medical care to all those who don’t work along with their illegitimate offspring.
Try to start a business, create an invention, take an idea and make it profitable.
Then, try to get through the regulation maze, the licensing, officialdom, and then compete with those who have a monopoly.
America makes it impossible to just DO It.
I don’t know if its so much a lack of ambition. I think its that we’ve shackled ourselves with unsustainable promises (entitlements, health care, pensions) and regulations. He makes a good point about the “Rise of the Restrainers”. I think that perfectly summarizes the people in power today. They want to restrain society and look inward not outward.
China and India, also, don’t have very expensive environmental restrictions placed upon them, compared to most of the developed countries of the world.
There are still plenty of opportunities for the politically ambitious. And that is a big part of the problem.
>>Why bother to be ambitious when the government penalizes those who work?
The government rewards the lazy and punishes success. The corporations use and discard good employees while promoting the products of their “diversity programs”. Entrepreneurs get villified and taxed to death. Environmental protection restrictions are a minefield. Out of control labor laws, OSHA, Personal injury lawyers. School systems that teach kids that hard work hurts self-esteem. The list goes on and on that explains why we have been conditioned to fear our own ambition. Developing countries have none of the things I mentioned. The sky is the limit for the ambitious in those countries.
Bring the free market back to the US and you’ll see ambition again.
Incentives matter. Anyone who has been self-employed understands the difference between preparing your taxes a self-employed person, versus as a w-2 employee. The system is set up to encourage people simply to do as they are told and not to have any ambition. Why bother for a one-in-million shot when the government or inflation eats away at your investment capital?
...”The government rewards the lazy and punishes success. The corporations use and discard good employees while promoting the products of their “diversity programs”. Entrepreneurs get villified and taxed to death. Environmental protection restrictions are a minefield. Out of control labor laws, OSHA, Personal injury lawyers. School systems that teach kids that hard work hurts self-esteem. The list goes on and on that explains why we have been conditioned to fear our own ambition. Developing countries have none of the things I mentioned. The sky is the limit for the ambitious in those countries.
Bring the free market back to the US and you’ll see ambition again”...
BRILLIANT! You put the absolute truth in a nutshell..Thanks!
RE: China and India, also, don’t have very expensive environmental restrictions placed upon them
They actually REFUSE to have these restrictions placed upon them. They refuse to sign on to Kyoto, Copenhagen or Cancun.
The rest of the Western world, signs on, and them promptly and hypocritically ignores their restrictions.
Govt hypertrophy. We’re in a thorny hell of regulations and laws. And no amount of whining is ever going to get us out.
Guess what happens when congress over spends and over taxes.
Stark reality.
RE: All this DADT and START going on, and I haven’t heard a peep out of them.
If we’ve learned anything from the Tea Party it is this -— they are mostly concerned with the country’s FINANCES, DEBT, MONETARY and ECONOMIC POLICIES.
Heck, I’ve even met libertarian Tea Partiers who don’t give a hoot about Gay Marriage, abortion or anything like that.
We need another Tea Party, but for social issues. Good luck finding enough people for that.
People only react when it hurts their bottom line.
Yuri Bezmenov called this the “demoralization” phase, and it seems to have been a spectacular success for the enemies of America.
The author may have a point but it’s not the one he’s trying to make. The principle of comparative advantage dictates that work be done where it can be done most cost-effectively. One example is, we use out great open plains for growing corn and wheat rather than trying to make say, New Jersey able to grow enough food to feed it’s population. But this means New Jersey can use its treasure and talent to engage in economic activity that will allow them to trade for the food they need, but don’t make themselves. Each region does what it does best, and both prosper. It’s the same upward-reaching cycle that has built prosperity in this nation for over 200 years.
The real problem is our ability as a nation to get on with that next step, and this is indeed where government needs to get out of the way. Science and technology will lead the way but not under the burden of over-regulation, oppressive taxation, and a clueless bureaucracy.
A more apt question might be: Why is the US giving away its jobs, technology and markets to China and India?
And, have the these two great nations some think we should be emulating yet created growing economies that benefit even 20% of their large populations?
The problem with comparative advantage nonsense is that nations with a comparative advantage in cheap labor have populations in excess of three billion, , probably closer to four billion, with hundreds of millions of unemployed and underemployed.
It is total nonsense that the US and other industrialized nations can export its manufacturing to cheap labor nations and still create more jobs to employ its displaced workers. And now that cheap workers with more education and skills are in the outsourcing market, the drain of jobs that won’t be replaced moves into more professional jobs.
We’ve been told for thirty or more years that Americans will be retrained for the “high tech, high paying jobs of the future”. Well, the future is here and we see how well that has worked out.
The undeveloped word’s comparative advantage in cheap labor, skilled and unskilled, is immense, and it is fanciful nonsense to pretend that the industrialized nations can export every job possible to cheap labor and still create jobs for their citizens.
We are now realizing how simplistic and nonsensical these theories and policies have been.
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