William Greider: The Good Times as We Knew it Aren't Coming Back, So Now What?

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



The Good Times as We Knew it Aren't Coming Back, So Now What?

By William Greider, The Nation. Posted May 8, 2009.

Our enormous wealth and power are in decline -- yet we have a chance to fill the emptiness in our lives and give them meaning.



This article is excerpted from William Greider's new book, Come Home, America. Copyright © 2009 by William Greider. Permission granted by Rodale Inc.


As Franklin Roosevelt understood, Americans will postpone immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices -- if they must -- so long as they are convinced the future can be better than the past. But we face a far more difficult problem at our moment in history. What do you promise people who have been told they can have anything they want, who are repeatedly congratulated for living in the best of all possible circumstances? How do you tell them "the good times," as we have known them, are not coming back? Americans need a new vision that helps them deal with reality, a promising story of the future that helps them let go of the past.

Here is the grand vision I suggest Americans can pursue: the right of all citizens to larger lives. Not to get richer than the next guy or necessarily to accumulate more and more stuff but the right to live life more fully and engage more expansively the elemental possibilities of human existence. That is the essence of what so many now seem to yearn for in their lives. People -- even successful and affluent people -- are frustrated because the intangible dimensions of life have been held back or displaced in large and small ways, pushed aside by the economic system's relentless demands to maximize yields of profit and wealth. Our common moral verities have been trashed in the name of greater returns. The softer aspects of mortal experience are diminished because life itself is not tabulated in the economic system's accounting.

The political order mistakenly accepts these life-limiting trade-offs as normal, as necessary to achieve "good times." At earlier periods of our history, the sacrifices demanded by the engine of American capitalism were widely tolerated because the nation was young and underdeveloped. The engine promised to generate higher levels of abundance, and it did. But what is the justification now, when the nation is already quite rich and the engine keeps demanding larger chunks of our lives?

What families, even those who are prosperous, typically lose in the exchange are the small grace notes of everyday life, like the ritual of having a daily dinner with everyone present. The more substantial thing we sacrifice is time to experience the joys and mysteries of nurturing the children, the small pleasures of idle curiosity, of learning to craft things by one's own hand, and the satisfactions of friendships and social cooperation. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/139895/the_good_times_as_we_knew_it_aren%27t_coming_back%2C_so_now_what/

[Delphinus]

1. This is most excellent!

Thank you for sharing it - I'm sending it to almost everyone I know.

[paulsby]

10. it's crap

during every recession/depression, the naysayers say the good times are over.

they said that in the great depression.

they were wrong then,. they are wrong now

those who don't learn from history...

fwiw, the general rule is that people are most optimistic nearest to the crash and most pessimistic nearest to the turnaround.

that philosophy has helped me make a fair amount in trading futures and stocks.

iow, be a contrarian.

[Merlot]

11. What good times?

I guess I missed them. Not everybody was out buying mcmansions, drinking $4 lattees, and driving SUV's while having health ainsurance and dabbling in the stock market.

[paulsby]

16. i wasn't either

i saved my money during the real estate bubble, for instance. lived in a relatively modest house, because i wanted to wait until everybody hated real estate (just closed on a big house) to get a much better deal.

like i said, contrarianism.

buy when everybody hates it. sell when everybody loves it.

that works with real estate, gold, etc.

for example, i started buying a gold fund (despite my meager income) in 1998. when everybody HATED gold and love stocks

contrarianism was the investing lesson i learned from my grandfather, who lived through the great depression.

but the good times have existed at numerous points since the great depression.

and we are another recession (arguably depression), so all the naysayers come out and say "it's over".

and they remain historically ignorant and myopic.

[Mojorabbit]

17. I think that may have been true in the past

but we are bumping our heads now at some tangible limits. We have used up a lot of the world's resources, overfished the oceans, warmed perhaps fatally the earth, and the world is running out of oil. There are physical limitations, our resources are not infinite. There will have to be a downsizing one way or another. Will it be now? I don't know but I think it won't be far into the future.

[paulsby]

18. nope

the most famous canard in economics and investing is "it's different this time"

we heard it during the tech stock bubble, the real estate bubble, the gold bubble (in the 80's), during the opec oil crisis, etc. etc.

and we are hearing it now.

people need to LEARN from history. it's an exercise in psychology, more than economics.

it keeps happening. has done so for hundreds of years.

[AdHocSolver]

19. The stock market Ponzi schemes you refer to may recover, but fewer people will benefit from...

the real economy.

The main difference between now and then is that back then a majority of jobs were not offshored as they are today. The wealthy elite will be able to use their horde of monetary assets to restart the Ponzi schemes that we call the stock marrket.

However, with so many jobs lost to foreign countries due to offshoring, there will be far fewer people participating in the "recovery".

Unless jobs are brought back to the U.S. so that a majority of goods purchased here are manufactured here, providing good paying jobs to most Americans, this country will become just another "banana republic" with a small number of super-rich upper class elites and a huge majority of destitute poor.

If that is what appeals to you, you will be part of a very small minority.

Moreover, conditions will be worse for the poor majority this time around than in previous years. Global climate change has already had negative effects on food supplies. Food prices are rising, and food fish are disappearing due to over-fishing and pollution of the oceans.

Sure enough, the orchestrated financial frauds that brought about the tech stock bubble, the real estate bubble, the gold bubble, the oil "crisis", etc. will be restarted -- the next one probably involving the "green" revolution. However, these schemes will do nothing to benefit the average person.

The average person involved in the "real" economy will be far worse off -- unless there is a groundswell demand to get rid of NAFTA, the WTO, rewrite the tax laws to prevent corporations hiding their profits in offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes, and in reregulating the financial industry by reinstating New Deal legislation such as the Glass-Steagall Act.

[northernlights]

21. actually, we *are* the contrarians

Of course, it's hard to tell if you spend a lot of time on this board. But the economic opinions here tend to be the contrarian views.

Just look at the MSM -- it's all about how the recovery is underway. The "kid's news" program that follows This Week (at least in my neck of the woods) led this morning with how "the economy has recovered." Cokie Roberts was suspicious of the recovery (which is almost enough to make me believe in it), but for the most part, the meme seems to be the worst is over, it's all uphill from here. I get it at school, too. The well-employed claim the worst is over, and encourage us students to take on more debt and keep going. Of course, that's in *their* best interest, to keep enrollment up.

It's *very* contrarian to believe that this is a sucker's rally or temporary plateau before a renewed dive or a new bubble that will burst.

But look at the facts on the ground:

70% of our "economy" is "consumer spending."
Official unemployment is ~10% and expected to rise. There is no reason to believe that won't happen.
Real unemployment is probably much higher than the 10% admitted to.
Auto bailout money is funding sending more jobs overseas.
Financial bailout money was not used to fund credit -- more and more small businesses are closing, putting their owners and employees out of work.
Trillions in financial bailout money was essentially poured down a bottomless pit.
Fewer and fewer taxpayers are now on the hook for more and more bailout money.

Obama has admitted that we need to manufacturing in our economy again. He has ruled out manufacturing autos. He hasn't said what he thinks will replace it. Computers? They're a commodity now.

[TacticalPeek]

2. K & R

:kick:

[tomreedtoon]

3. I guess it's nice to dream.

The problem with Greider's ideas is that there is no consensus behind them. There is no one willing to take them to the people that don't read Alternet or other unread web sites. Pit Greider against Limbaugh and see who gets listened to.

[On the Road]

4. I am Disappointed in Greider for This Kind of Article

I have heard him speak and learned a lot from Secrets of the Temple.

He has written on economics long enough to know that the kind of knee-jerk scenario he's prophecizing is inadvisable to say the least. The timing -- just when the freefall is ending and there are signs of stability -- is especially poor.

[DemReadingDU]

6. Freefall may be spinned it is ending

and there may be happy talk about stability, but what is going to happen when the thousands (millions?) who will be unemployed this summer due to GM and Chrysler shutting down? These people will have less money to spend which could cause even more businesses to default.

[balantz]

12. Exactly. When simultaneously the little bubble bursts and the unemployment benefits run out.

[DemReadingDU]

14. after unemployment benefits cease

and still there will be too many people for the number of jobs, most people will have used up their savings, might lose their house/apartment if no other income, probably no health insurance either. Food pantries are already overwhelmed. I can't see how the freefall is ending, it has only just begun.

:(

[omega minimo]

7. why do you consider it "a knee jerk scenario"?

[AdHocSolver]

20. The real economy is nowhere near the bottom of its freefall.

The economy will be in recovery only when job creation exceeds job elimination.

The stability you speak of is a slowing of economic collapse due to throwing billions of dollars at the stock market. The only result of that tactic is to save the profits of the fraudsters in the financial markets who oversold the worthless finacial paper they were promoting.

The depths of the Great Depression didn't occur until 1932 or thereabouts when a large segment of the population was unemployed. The economy partially recovered after Roosevelt implemented the New Deal which included a job stimulus package.

However, nowadays, when most of what we buy is imported from Asia, the stimulus money will be siphoned to China, rather than circulating within the U.S. to promote job growth here. In other words, unless our trade and tax laws are restructured to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., the tax stimulus will mainly help Chinese workers keep their jobs.

What Greider is trying to say is that people should reorder their priorities and stop falling for the fraudulent get-rich-quick schemes promoted by the corporations.

[raccoon]

5. Come on, yall, one more puts this on greatest! It should be rec'd for the

thread title alone.

[omega minimo]

8. Let's see what the meatlovers, SUVites and "woo"haters make of this

:popcorn:


"The softer aspects of mortal experience are diminished because life itself is not tabulated in the economic system's accounting".

"What families, even those who are prosperous, typically lose in the exchange are the small grace notes of everyday life..."

"The more substantial thing we sacrifice is time to experience the joys and mysteries of nurturing the children, the small pleasures of idle curiosity, of learning to craft things by one's own hand, and the satisfactions of friendships and social cooperation. ......... "






Speaking of Toxic Assets:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5615381&mesg_id=5615381

[Uncle Joe]

9. I'm sorry, but regarding the subjects of "Good Times" and "meatlovers".

I couldn't help but think of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9BqNOjPJxw

:rofl:

[balantz]

13. That's just too funny!

:rofl:

[DemReadingDU]

15. too funny!

:rofl: