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?
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