tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post963012768889975059..comments2024-03-06T06:34:42.881-05:00Comments on EconoSpeak: Fiscal Deficits and the Bond Market VigilantesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-78152159579393228552011-06-15T09:36:35.797-04:002011-06-15T09:36:35.797-04:00Re: "...we need expenditure-switching—more ex...Re: "<i>...we need expenditure-switching—more exports, fewer imports... A softening of the dollar... we ...need consent from our main trading partners to accept a drastic reduction in their trade surpluses...it will take years to undo the structuring of the US economy around imported resources and consumer goods. (Adaptation to credit-driven consumption has gone on for so long it may have become a cultural issue... </i>"<br /><br />And [repeating a point I made recently ] there's the decade-long inculcation of household consumer consumption over household production. This has also become a 'cultural issue' and also a major environmental and social one.<br /><br />Here's an interesting quote from 1942:<br /><br />"<i> Most of our people have been taken with the idea of easy living. Because machines can produce so much, they argue, man must be on the threshold of a cinch....[But] A man who sets out to find the economic solution of today's problems is merely burning joss sticks to goods. ...Does anybody believe trade treaties and economic agreements will point the way to the reorientation of man [away from the dishonesty, lack of consideration and integrity of thought that a consumer society suffers from] and the discipline of his instinct by his head and heart?...will they [trade treaties etc] not...point to some vast new competition of nations? <br /><br /> Inevitably they will..."</i><br /><br />Philip Wylie 'A Generation of Vipers', 1942. Page 91.<br /><br />America doesn't need to export more. Like all nations America needs a rethink of what economic development really is. Words like 'productivity', 'efficiency' and 'standard of living' need to reflect qualities of true sustainability as well as incorporate the notion of human fulfilment.<br /><br />I think we're now seeing the end of a particularly noxious form of a global 'economic system' rather than a simple rebalancing of national exports and imports.Myrtle Blackwoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07427043367624101075noreply@blogger.com