frenchfry said:
Without looking like I am trying to please both sides, you make some good points here.
Capitalism, which proved its worth as a gererator of wealth (which eventually makes everyone "richer", even the poor) is now showing its limits as greed has overtaken good business as the main reason for existence of many enterprises and their managers.
Regulation of the out of control marketplace and a fairer taxation system are certainly necessary, regardless of the country. Special interests dominate the influence on political decision makers. However, taxing the "rich" is only one element of a solution - and here in Europe the main element is controlling spending and living within our means with the current overall amount of tax revenue which is already extremely high.
From what I understand, overall taxation is significantly higher in Europe than in the US as a % of GNP, so it is likely that the US should look to increasing taxes to balance the budget more so than here. After all, someone has to pay for infrastructure.
Of course the tax/spending debate remains shortsighted in scope, the long term solution to securing the perenity of the planet (nothing less!) is reducing our footprint by significantly downsizing our lifestyle. Less consumption, negative growth. This will be the real challenge, and it won't be easy to manage.
Indeed. Why is it that the most intelligent species on the planet has such a stupid relationship with nature?
As far as living within one's means goes, if Europe is bad than it is worse in America, where the art of purchasing on credit has meant that the private class has no savings whatsoever and is thoroughly indebted. Though this is what has driven the consumer economy since the 70's, even if workers, considering inflation and all the rest, have not received a significant increase in their paychecks. In fact the only "intelligent" design the economists and the banks seem to have been able to invent and foist upon the masses, to their great advanatage, has been the credit consumption system to offset a lack of rising wages. Capitalism at it's finest. I can speak for Italy. As bad as things are, and they are dreadful, the average Italian, at least till now, still has good savings, because not indebted by credit.
Add this to a public deficit in the States (due also in not insignificant measure to paying for its wars and bailing out its banks: in short, to finance the empire) that has probably reached the GNP and one has some idea of how much cutting back, or "happy downsizing", needs to be done in terms of spending and consumption: both in regards to the private sphere and that of the state. Yet this is precisely what the economists dread and tell us will lead to recession.
So the capitalist system, under the all powerful sway of finance, has enslaved the population. And all that is talked about is how much freedom was given and what liberty we have. Then one must consider the deplorable state of the public school system, lack of a public healthcare system, student loans, medical insurance, mortgages, car payments, etc.
Not the enlightened system the post-industrial intelligentsia, given all the wealth that was actually generated, had exactly hoped for. Yet this is something which is so little discussed: namely, so much cash and so much egoism and squandering.
So much egoism and squandering underlined. While the citizens were even egged on and abetted by the banks under the aegis of the government in all the credit madness. To say nothing of the encouragement that was given to finance! The entire so-called economic-consumer boom, has been largely fascilitated by indebted wokers. The US is in steep decline, its system of finance capitalism in a condition of collapse and its vast military machine effectively paid for by Chinese funding of the federal deficit.
So yes, Europe needs to trim its dept and employ the all the austerity measures, fine, but let's not loose sight of what is principled and what isn't. While if there is any society that is living beyond its means, then it is the American one. That's why it drives me crazy to hear its conservative class pontificate about how the Europeans need to cut spending, trim costs and downsize the state, all in the name of a consumerism and market competition, so congenial to the creditors, the job bosses but not the working class, that's driving us all straight down the path toward barbarism and ultimately extinction. Apart form their ideology based upon rational egoism having no damn humanity and because being so unreasonable and unbalanced, I can only ask: from which pulpit are they preaching?!
This is why the US model as a sustainable economic system, as one of
values and as one to be exported around the globe, is not very convincing. There needs to be a fundamental shift in the culture and perceptions of the American people, as well as an entire reshuffling of the poltical class (which means a rethinking of the two-party system and the electoral system as well, to break the gridlock and allow a broader range of views into the political process), while the plutocracy needs to be totally eliminated first for there to be any hope of an intelligent and prinicpled reasoning behind governmental policy and the mindest of the citizenry. All of which is never going to happen, but this will be of less consequence when Asia takes over anyway.
Europe, in playing to the Americans and frequently against one and other, has only hopelessly debilitated itself (and with no longer a soviet threat one wonders exactly what for), while the rise of the East will mean that its global position will only become increasingly marginalized if it doesn't get its act together. So I'd recommend that the Europeans stop bickering endlessly over who should steer the ship and whether the Germans feel that it is morally acceptable to save Greece or not (WWII means that any further gestures of humanity and solidarity by the german people would be still welcomed) and decide what the hell they believe in and what deserves fighting for. While its own contributions to the insanity of a certain type of finance, what many have called the Anglo-Saxon disease, will also have to be entirely reworked. Only by such means does Europe stand a chance of having any say on the shape of its own future first and that of the globe second.
Oh, and one last thing: if Britain doesn't want to fully participate in the project, then kick them the hell out. England can then apply to become the 51st US state, which wouldn't be much of a change since it is already a sycophantic American vassal and a quisling to the rest of Europe.
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