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 can't do this anymore'
A one-time cheerleader for hyper-consumerism lays down his pom-pom 16
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Posted 1:50 PM on 8 Mar 2009
by Tom Philpott -
Posted in
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Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow my Twitter feed; contact me at tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org.
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hapa Posted 6:39 am
08 Mar 2009
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Bart Anderson Posted 7:46 am
08 Mar 2009
In this, Friedman is ahead of most environmentalism and President Obama.
I notice that he quoted local guru Joseph Romm.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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Pompey Road Posted 12:11 pm
08 Mar 2009
How do you produce green manufacturing jobs when we don't build anything anymore?
Those T-Bills are going to have to be serious interest bearing if we keep going back to the well. Especially after out GNP Debt gets more out of sinc. Our bonds will have a junk rating before the year is over if we are not careful.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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PurpleOzone Posted 12:40 pm
08 Mar 2009
In the last few years, we sold them bonds based on phony housing values. They bought them because we are so reliable -- only we weren't.
Too many Americans used their homes as ATM machines. Kept the consumer economy going off the rising equity of their house.
I kept wondering how it could keep going and what would happen when it cracks.
I still don't know exactly. I never dreamed that Europe had worse excessed than us. I heard the Chinese Minister Of Finance, or some such title, on the radio say: "We know the Americans will inflate the money supply, but it's a precarious world,and you are still the safest place to invest our money, so we will continue to fund your deficit." (Almost a direct quote.)
I do know that at the end of this recession, or depression, the economy will not recover back to what it was, unlike the other recessions since WWII. What the outcome, I don't think I'm going to like it.
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Bob Wallace Posted 3:36 pm
08 Mar 2009
We do build solar panels and thin film solar.
We are manufacturing the components for thermal solar.
We may import some of the materials for the new grid, but most of the labor will be performed inside the country.
If dry rock geothermal or slow flow hydro prove out those will be in-country projects.
As we move to more automated manufacturing there is less and less advantage to making things in low labor cost countries.
When the higher prices for oil return with the economic recovery it will become economically advantageous to make things closer to where they are consumed.
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Pangolin Posted 5:21 pm
08 Mar 2009
He's calling this mess the "Great Disruption" which may or may not be better than the "Greater Depression" which has been used on the net for some years. The most important point is that they are questioning the wisdom of debt-financed economics.
An economic system based upon debt will fail. Debt implies that there will be more resources in the future to pay for resource expenditures now. That works out fine if you are purchasing seed corn since 3 grains will yield hundreds of grains but purchases of cars, roads, houses and airplanes require greater resource use in the future not lessor.
Imagine if you were required to purchase 10 years of fuel with a car, 20 years of fuel with an airplane and 40 years of fuel with a house. You wouldn't do it. The price would be too high. Debt economics allows us to deceive ourselves into thinking that we can afford the cars purchase price and that fuel at any cost. The plane and the fuel at whatever cost and the house and a subscription to a natural gas well still not drilled.
The resources aren't there. We don't have the fuel to serve existing cars into the foreseeable future, or planes or houses. We are all betting that somebody else is going to get kicked out of the marketplace while each one of us retains our relative economic standing and access to energy.
It's time to face up to reality. We need a whole new game and a new set of rules. The current monopoly set isn't working.
Put the Carbon Back
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Bob Wallace Posted 5:37 pm
08 Mar 2009
Borrowing to buy is a way to pay as you go. You borrow someone else's accumulated wealth and pay them a fee for the privilege of using their money.
The fuel problem is not a "borrowing"/debt problem but a combined resource scarcity and environmental problem.
We have to move to renewable fuel sources. And we'll have to borrow money to do so.
And pay for those resources and borrowed funds as we use those new energy sources.
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Pompey Road Posted 11:37 pm
08 Mar 2009
I am encouraged the new administration is said they are going to close some tax loop holes, tax incentives for taking production overseas. Mr. Obama campaigned on stopping outsourcing jobs, to what extent he accomplishes this will determine if we get to keep those green manufacturing jobs. Granted we will get some construction jobs out of this. Of the 15 major wind turbine companies GE is definitely in the mix, I do not know if they farm any of the components out or not. The problem will be the lop sided trade agreements we have entered into. I noticed some early complaining about the Economic Recovery Plan trying to specify U.S. materials for the projects paid for with ERP money. I fear we have also given our sovereignty to the WTO and of course as soon as you try to mandate that you actually build something here everybody starts crying protectionism.
Our banking industry is in shreds, I don/t know if China will provide capital to fund manufacturing on components that they want to produce. I don't know why they would want to capitalize the competition. Saudi Arabia has us over an oil barrel, China has us over a money barrel.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:21 am
09 Mar 2009
Growth, jobs, manufacturing, and investment can be aimed at using renewable resources to recycle the wasteful mess we already have made.
We need more and more renewable energy, organic ag, and energy conservation stuff. That's your source of economic growth.
The old sources, underground coal, oil, and minerals combined with the atmosphere and water of planet earth via combustion is a recipe for disaster on a global scale, the final end of growth of our current industrial so-called civilization.
The bacteria on the petri plate have about used up the growth medium with this DNA, time to find a new code that lets us go on growing in a new direction.
The new code: it involves using the free energy we get from the fusion reactor 9 minutes away as light flies, to recycle everything we have consumed and excreted to poison our petri dish.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:34 am
09 Mar 2009
The US had a great run, from the end of WWII to about right now. We basically controlled manufacturing, trade, and finance. Now we seem to be on the path to be one of the top players, not the top player.
We can't always have things our way in the future.
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davedenali Posted 12:58 am
09 Mar 2009
Yes. He also doesn't have to get votes. Go tell the UAW that the economic growth model is fatally flawed. I dont mean that Friedman isn't right about this -- of course he is. But columnists and elected officials live in very different worlds -- with different challenges.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:06 am
09 Mar 2009
When everything dissapears into a black financial hole, those with the biggest, baddest weapons rule. Just be glad we have a peacemaker in charge.
Our factory colonies, China and Korea, were on the rise, threatening to surpass us, but then crime happened, an 800 trillion dollar fraud. Ironically putting us back on top. The place where the fraid was researched and developed, over the reagan revolutionary deregulation decades.
The neoconmen (remember them? no one wants to admit they are one now?) came along with their crusade just in time to trigger the world into chapter 11, rescuing the marvelous supremacey of our western "culture" for a few more years.
In short: Cheney and friends knew we (the people) would bolt the fossil, chemical, nuclear, military-industrial corporate yoke if we had the cash to do that, so he decided he better help oil soar up and away to take the wind out of our sails. It worked! Hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Pompey Road Posted 3:13 am
09 Mar 2009
I have no problem with sharing the manufacturing pie, but green manufacturing is our ticket back to whatever is normal when we come out of this nightmare. I don't think the realities or perception of our pre depression economy will be relevant on the other side of this deep economic down turn. There are some manufacturing China will be more suited for and some that will be right down our alley if we can take R&D to the finished product quicker.
They can have most of the heavy smoke stack industry, if they can do it without polluting. We just really need to watch who we give most favored nation trading status to and then give up all our leverage on co2, pollution, child and prison labor, human rights, you name it. China is in the catbird seat as far as trade negotiations and keeping the dollar afloat.
When you get to quick to outsource and dump your legacy cost at any cost you make bad deals. Britian lost Empire and it will happen to us. A large part of our finiancial problem is the expense it takes to maintain empire. We come out of this number 2 or 3 as far as being an economic power. I can live with that, just so long as we don't become a banana republic with nukes. I know of no country in history that can survive for long without a strong middle class.
If the model is European socialism thats fine with me also, not picky about economic models either. It just strikes me as peculiar that China has become more capitalist than we are and a strong manufacturing base grew their middle class and no one will admit to this being the reason for their success story.
Manufacturing is not a dirty word, balance of trade and a healthy GNP depend on it. Excuse me if I can't seem to get over the nostalgia of our glory days when that model made us the largest economy in the world with an affluent and educated middle class.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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cheflovesbeer Posted 3:20 am
09 Mar 2009
I say future because her stock has tanked it is worth pennies on the dollar. She was last fall a multi billionaire. Now her stock is worth less than a hundred million if the company survives.
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tidal Posted 3:47 am
09 Mar 2009
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Bart Anderson Posted 4:08 am
09 Mar 2009
Davedenali writes: To the poster who wrote "In this, Friedman is ahead of most environmentalism and President Obama."
Yes. He also doesn't have to get votes. Go tell the UAW that the economic growth model is fatally flawed. I dont mean that Friedman isn't right about this -- of course he is. But columnists and elected officials live in very different worlds -- with different challenges. Exactly. What this should tell us that we should not look to President Obama or any politician for the unpleasant truths that will shape our reality.
Same thing is true of mainstream organizations and publications. They depend on sponsors who are invested in the status quo.
This situation is not a problem when things aren't changing fast. However, when conditions are about to change dramatically (e.g. the financial meltdown), it is foolish to rely on mainstream voices. The truths emerge from the edges.
The significance of Friedman's article is that a formerly taboo concept has been taken up by a mainstream commentator.
Like many great leaders, President Obama will not be the one to broach unpopular ideas. (The leaders who do this have arrows in their back.) Instead, he creates an environment where others push the ideas and develop political support. When the political climate is right, he begin to adopt the ideas.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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