peelman.us

And I’ll say it again:

The US has run the table on the world’s economy for 60 years and that train has run off the rails. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we had the lowest working industrial population in the world, and we made up for it with huge advances and sheer wastefulness in power generation (both steam, electricity, and oil) and mechanization.

We were able to become the worlds leading industrial and economic power because we were the only ones really left capable after WWII. Most of Europe would feel the fallout from WWII until the mid-eighties when they started to recover. Africa remains dark for the most part. Japan took the worst beating but has come back as an economic super power and now owns a significant portion of our national debt. The rest of Asia was busy dragging itself out of the rice patties and into its own Industrial Age, allowing THEM to take on all the benefits we Americans had, without any of the overhead of actually having to create any of the Industry. It was already done, the trial-and-error was mostly over. They just had to build factories and staff them and we had a cheap source for manufactured goods. Now THOSE countries are starting to evolve beyond their industrial ages whereas we hit the technology age and turned into Jeff Spicoli. We have progressively gotten more ignorant and apathetic about our place in the world’s economy. Our manufacturing base has moved overseas to escape the overhead of labor unions. Why pay healthcare benefits and have employees who pay income tax? Get mexicans or asians to do the work, and charge the same money, that way you can pocket the difference and buy a 3rd private jet or a 4th yacht. *See below

After the depression and WWII, we decided we had to bury the communists, so we spent BILLIONS on national defense, creating the largest debt of any country in the world. All the while we spent paltry amounts of money on stupid things like infrastructure, education, social security, healthcare, non-defense-related-science research, genomics, etc.

Until we re-sort ourselves life is going to suck here for a while. We’re going to be pinched economically, everybody’s at fault and no one is to blame. Well, not quite. One percent of the country owns 38% of the wealth. Ten percent owns 71% (inclusive). Those are Wikipedia’s numbers from 2001, so the numbers are most likely different, but i can’t see them being any better (from my point of view as a resident of the middle class). I blame them.

Addendum:

And oh yes, I’m envious of the rich. I covet things that I cannot afford, fancy cars, computers, houses, etc. But when I look at some of these guys, who own multiple houses, private aircraft (and can afford to pay a pilot a decent wage to fly them around at a whim, and pay rent on a hanger or tarmac space at an airport), multiple exotic cars and boats, $400 pants, $500 shirts, the ears of congressmen, senators, presidents, etc., it really pisses me off.

I’m all for a capitalist society, where good ideas and hard work are rewarded. But when i hear talk about the “fairness” of Unions, or the “fairness” of an economic stimulus package, I can’t help but be appalled at the things that we choose to care about, while we sit by and let rampant greed and corruption corrode this country from the top down. The odds are no longer in the favor of hard work and good ideas being enough for somebody to make something out of themselves. The fact that you can still cheat, lie, and steal your way to the top should say something to everyone about the state of the country.