Ralph Peters advises us to enjoy our New Year’s champagne. Next year we’ll eat the glass. Peters predicts not one, but a string of possible sovereign bankruptcies. Dubai, Greece, Spain, Eastern Europe. The world’s fourth biggest country is already bankrupt, and its’ name is California. But wait: if the world really gets unlucky we may get to discover the truth about China. Is it a robust economy, or is yet another Ponzi scheme?
Then there are the great unknowns, a Russian economy that may be far more fragile than anyone wants to admit, as well as China, opaque and insatiable.
One of the reasons China’s desperate to keep expanding its trade is that its banking sector is flimsier than chopsticks — plagued by uncollectible sweetheart loans made to favored firms and institutions. Perhaps Beijing will dominate the 21st century. But it’s also possible that China’s economy will turn out to be the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.
The best scenario we could see in the global economy in 2010? Rescue-package fire brigades rushing to deal with these crises individually. What’s the worst? A chain reaction that leads to a rash of national defaults, followed by a world banking and liquidity crisis, Part II.
But even if that happens and we temporarily have to do without the amenities now regarded as commonplace; if we go back to a time when Christmas meant sharing a pudding you had been looking forward to all year, or a new suit clothes to replace something threadbare, then for a brief moment in our material progress we might look around and notice the people we love and be glad to be with them one more time, for one more season.
Well, let’s hear it from a Canadian anyway.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Sorry to make the first comment OT, but I wanted to take this last opportunity to wish everyone at the Belmont Club a Merry Christmas and a healthy happy New Year.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (women). Let nothing, you, dismay….
Do you know something we don’t Sara? Or are you just signing off for the year? Merry Christmas and Happy New Year whatever the case may be. I guess I better stock up on Ramen Noodles and chef boy ardee.
There is always an eschatological pessimist around, on either the religious Right or socialist Left, to forecast doom and gloom, death and destruction, and the end of the world as we know it. Ralph Peters joins Al Gore in the ‘Chicken Little’ brigade.
Heraclitus long ago noted that no man steps into the same river twice, which simply means, change happens. Change is normal. There is no guarantee by anyone that change will be for the better, nor is there any guarantee that change will be for the worse.
For those with an eschatological world-view, however, change is an enemy. The worst is going to happen. Nothing good can come from it. The adverse unintended consequences will overwhelm the planned intent. Peters and Gore, Right and Left, preaching and predicting the worst case as the only case.
Gentile pointed out the propensity of modern politics to become secular religions, in order to accomplish their ideological goals. How is it that Peters and Gore still get away with their dark pessimistic proselytizing without being recognized for who they actually are:
Apocalyptic priests propagandizing to an unthinking congregation.
First Dubai, then Greece and Spain
The old Iron Curtain too
They fall like petals in the rain
As debts and rents come due
The World Bank trembles as the rot
Spreads slowly through the stream
While Exchequers, the whole damn lot
Insist it’s just a dream
A dream that once the handle’s found
Will turn to gold again
Smart men will turn this thing around
The only question’s when
The Chinese seeing this unfold
Demand from USA
That T-bills be redeemed in gold
And we say cannot pay
The Europeans hunker down
The Deutschmark reappears
Young Brits leave old ones in the town
The Norsemen sharpen spears
Then up spake ‘Bama at the bridge
“I’ll hold them off!” he cried
Then took a sandwich from the fridge
And shrugged and said, “I tried.”
And so it ended then and there
The world now marched in ranks
For every town now had a pair
Of lovely Chinese banks
I have it on good authority that all the financial structures in the world could collapse and the sun would still rise in the east. Might even be better off without Goldman Sachs and company. As Captain Renault said so diplomatically in Casablanca, I will take what comes.
There are so many things worth working for, worth even fighting for, a pretty girl who can sing and make the world different, the pretty girl that Bob Hope brings out to reassure the troops that crazy as it is where they are the world still makes sense and they are really OK, the people you live with by choice or blood and the minds you connect with on the web, and the dog, don’t forget the dog.
Saturday the movie was Mrs Miniver. Here is a tribute to Greer Garsen and a time when we knew what was important. Tune by Fain and Kahal, voice by Old Blue Eyes, http://tinyurl.com/yachjon.
A Merry Christmas to all.
Nah, Ashton, I know nuttin’
Actually, my son has to work double shifts tomorrow through Monday, so our Christmas is sort of upside down and I’ll be off line until late Christmas day or the next. Tonight is my last chance to play for a couple days.
Here is Obama’s latest secret present under our tree. Not to be opened of course by us.
Wither Sovereignty Executive Order Amended to Immunize INTERPOL In America – Is The ICC Next?
I’m starting to think that something is going to go very wrong very soon.
Well, in the meantime. Have as Merry a Christmas as possible. Pray for your Families and our Republic.
Papa Ray
We are already at the “sharing the pudding” stage. And darn glad to have pudding to share.
My gift to all my beloveds this year is a jar of mocha mix from a recipe I concocted some years ago when I found some powdered vanilla. Glass jars now since I read that plastics often have BPA which is supposed to be bad for us. But then the cocoa and instant coffee probably are, too.
Life’s gift to us was our son’s survival from a serious bout of swine flu. He came home around Thanksgiving and was ill for a month. First the flu and then pneumonia in both lungs. Having him breathing steadily and back to his own life has made this Christmas season a bit anti-climactic…as though we were seeing it thru wavy glass.
Meanwhile the 15 inches of snow we got led to the demise of our nearest neighbor. She was elderly and slipped outside as the snow started. It was night time and she quickly got hypothermia…her nephew found her, but too late. Now I will never get the chance to ask her about being sent to the big city at age 13 to scrub cribs at a white people’s hospital. I know it would have been a good story to gather in for the Historical Society.
I wonder if we’ll have to start sending the 13 year olds out to work any time in the future? Is that akin to “eating the glass”? It certainly made my elderly neighbor permanently frightened.
Church tomorrow evening because Midnight mass in the country is at 6:30 pm. Carols first and cookies afterwards.
Merry Christmas, Wretchard and crew. May it be champagne out of the bottle at the very least.
“…..and to all a Good Fight – I’m sorry, Night! [although I may have been right the first time].
a Duoist @ 3
Interesting to compare Ralph Peters and Al Gore.
To me, the main difference between the two is:
The things Mr. Peters warns about are actually happening, whereas the things Al Gore warns us of are essentially fantasies.
Again, the bankruptcies of Dubai, Greece and Califonia (my home state) are facts whereas greenhouse-warming of the planet is, at best a semi-plausable guess, at worst, a bitter, over-hyped, anti-Western fiction.
If you’re going to get eschatological, you might as well base your eschatology on something concrete.
Peters is good for a Christmas Eve laugh, even if a broken clock may be right twice a day. Here’s Spengler on Peters and what he doesn’t get:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH19Ag05.html
August 19, 2008
I would also remind BCers that the Baltic state economies Peters would have once described as high tech alternatives to Russia’s hydrocarbon fueled backwardness are now termed “tubercular. Central Europe’s headed for the post-modern equivalent of debtors’ prison.” All economies once gloriously contrasted as having come out of post-Communist topor better than benighted Russia.
In any case, what Peters is describing already happened to Russia, and Russia survived and began to prosper within a few years following the twin hyperinflation/collapses of 1992 and 1998. But of course, the last decade was a more favorable environment for recovery with robust demand for Russia’s raw material exports.
Still, my fellow BCers, that is why I have a soft spot for the Russkies — they are survivors. And so I think are most people who contribute their thoughts here.
Merry Christmas to all!
Heh, and while we’re getting all sappy with pretty girls from the ’40′s singing songs in black & white, and while we still have soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, here’s a little Dinah Shore singing to the troops in WWII. Damn that woman was cute back in the day.
Er, Sorry, here’s the link. Merry Christmas to all!
To W, all commenters on BC, a most enjoyable Christmas.
Thanks for all your great work; for me, most instructive.
Let us make our new year happy.
ADE
It’s not so much the loss of flush times I fear, it’s more the kind of things Papa Ray @ #8 linked to. It’s not just a matter of “change is an enemy,” it’s the kind of change that the globalist elites have in mind for us that brings on the dread. All the qualities that made America great are now presented as the very things that stand in the way of nothing less than world peace. Normal patriotic freedom-loving folks are the new subversives and traditional Bible-believing Christians are practically becoming enemies of the state.
Well, with God’s grace, perhaps I can learn to be content in all circumstances.
Dear BC’ers, I wish you all a very merry Christmas with Christmas card greetings, champagne and Dan Fogelberg’s lovely ode to the very first Christmas – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNjSaO2zH9A
Girl singers? In the 40′s?
Here’s Miss Peggy Lee from 1943 with a message for all those legislators clowning it up in DC for Christmas this year. It just doesn’t get much better than this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N30aWEgeNk
May you and yours enjoy the blessings of the Christmas season in happiness and health. Kudos to Wretchard for his yeoman-like work at BC.
We need a guide in these interesting times, Richard. You’re the guy.
#9 Dymphna
Went on a hunting trip this fall and spent nearly the entire trip in bed with the swine flu. Worst I’ve been sick since I was a little kid. Just stopped coughing from the lingering bronchitis/pneumonia a week ago. Best of luck with your child, they should be alright in a couple more weeks. That oughta take the wave out of your glass.
#6 LOTM
Mrs. Miniver really is a great flick, I’d nearly forgotten about it. It’s a moment in time, a snapshot of a kind of struggle and optimism that the West seems to have largely forgotten how to do properly. It should come as no surprise that in post-modern Britain the movie’s name has become a term of ridicule by their cultural elite for all that came before the Sixties.
Here’s to pretty girls who can “sing and make the world different” (God, I love that phrase!).
#16 Karen Yvonne
“Normal … traditional Bible-believing Christians are practically becoming enemies of the state.”
I’ve been hammering on this since way before the last election. The single thing that is most common amongst white Obama voters is contempt/bigotry towards all but the most emasculated and exsanguinated forms of Christianity. Period. No other attitude – economic, political, social – is as universally present amongst those folks who pulled the lever for Obama. Thing is, the less strident Christians who did vote for Obama haven’t figured out that once the “Bible thumpers” have been taken out, they’ll be next. Let’s hope they do figure it out before it’s too late.
If they can, I believe that this will ultimately be Obama’s undoing.
Merry Christmas, all.
If “globalsim” was shut down tomorrow, and there were no Chinese goods in this country, and we rejected for this assualt on productivity and capitalism from the left, factories across America would open up in every medium sized town, and in a year or so there would be general properity, and we would have all the goods and services any require. It would be just like it was for most of our history. It is the last 20 to 25 years that are the departure from our history and not the other way around.
In all of this talk about tranzis, international markets, international socialism/corporatism and some NWO, what is lacking is an honest discussion of this “globalism” that has been pushed on us. It is a bill of goods we have been sold. The reality of it is rather different than its PR. It has not been with us that long and it will not destroy us should we abandon it. Better to have the discussion now and get control of the matter, for events could likely force our hands anyway.
China craters? Fine. In the last couple of decades America has been set up like a Latin American country where there are elite gatekeepers to internal markets who seek rents for access and the country be damned. This has crept upon us so slowly that many do not realize how we have been degraded and debased. There is no good or necessary reason for America to be this way.
A country as large as America should only import 10% to 20% of the goods and services it consumes. It should not be an export lead economy, at least not in this point of global development. Have a look at how the Chinese got to where they are. The Clinton administration, with the collusion establishment GOP, of course, essentially created a Chinese NAFTA at the same time they attacked productive employers and the Middle classes here.
They have made sure that the wise course followed with the USSR was not followed with the PRC. In fact they chose the opposite course: Build it up.
It is unnatural that a communist society that was impoverished two decades ago hold all such debt of the major capitalist country.
Something stinks here. How has this come to be? Seems willful to me.
We heard the same arguments about the need to support what we once called “the Second World” before, and heard them at the height of the Cold War. They we called “Appeasement”, or “Co-existence”, but they were just rear-guard actions by American fellow-travelers.
China’s rise and prominence is in great measure artificial. Let it stand on its own or crash.
Dismantle Globalism, at least in its current form, and let the America get back to work.
The The EU can the make their own decisions and either stand or fall.
What we are witnessing across the world is the bill coming do for the designs of a world wide parasitic political class.
These designs cannot but fail in the end. Let them crumble before much more damage is done to America. Then we will be fine.
Merry Christmas one and all. Thanks for all of the great posts Wretchard. 2010 is going to be interesting. Still think Obamacare will be the ‘progressives’ Stalingrad or, as someone at Pajamasmedia said so well, instead of grasping their long sought Holy Grail, Obamacare is going to be the Left’s Moby Dick.
God bless.
Me, I read “A Christmas Carol” every year at this time, because it’s the very best story about a misanthrope who embraced God’s love of humanity.
“God Bless us every one.”
Merry Christmas, BC’ers.
The brilliant Russian economist, Egor Gaidar, who died several days ago, recently published a comprehensive analysis of the world economic situation. The main point: it is unpredictable and unstable. Global recession can be U-shaped, W-shaped or even L-shaped. Raw material based economics are more vulnerable then finished products based, but global financial system is seriously endangered by accumulated debts and unfinanced social security costs and entitlements.
Competition makes us all stronger. I give you all a slightly belated Happy Hanukkah.
Judas Maccabeas would be proud of the lovers of liberty in the Belmont Club.
Merry Christmas and Many Thanks to W and the community he hosts here. You all help me make sense of the world around me, and your thoughts encourage me.
And a toast to the hammer bearers of the world – Thor, Judas Macabeus, Charles Martel. More please.
Mongoose,
One need only look at Detroit to see the results of the degradation of our manufacturing base. BUT, that may not be the best example… The automobile used to be the shining example of American superiority in Engineering and manufacturing prowess. It took an Austrian-born, American business leader to dash that superiority. (Excuse the link to Wikipedia, but it’s informative in that it minimizes his transformative work in the burgeoning manufacturing base in Japan). To ridicule a management genius is not my intent, but it is the point that transformed our manufacturing downfall.
From a capitalistic point-of-view, what better solution to a union-ridden, bureaucratic boat anchor than an up-and-coming intelligent society that is willing to (and subservient enough) move a whole society to “feed” the hungry giant – the United States? We had already shown that we would buy inferior products at the low price Japan supplied to us. Not until the manufacturers in the United States saw the trend did they start out on their Japan-bashing… Too late… The Japanese had already started their transformation to quality through Drucker’s genius.
China need only follow Japan’s example. China hasn’t fully reached the quality stage – but why? Quantity has a quality all of it’s own. They, at first, supplied the base materials this country requires. It was only a “second order” economy supplying material for our “third order” economy. They are now at the transformational stage that Japan moved into with their “deification” of Drucker.
The question is, is there sufficient global stability to trust another government to America’s well-being? To reach that stability, there must be a consensus among governments. Have we reached it? Or, have we been led down a blind path, only to have our throats slit? There is time yet to rebuild our manufacturing base, but precious little of it..
The solution is generational now, not reachable in my lifetime, in my opinion. There are vast amounts of practical knowledge going down the drain with every sunset that we ignore the issue.
Mongoose #19
An excellent post.
Globalisation of labor markets is a done deal. Rue it, rage against it, do whatever you want. We may not like it, but it’s here to stay barring true catastrophic change and lots of time for the implications of that change to sink into the skulls of the American people.
I only wish that our politicians and general population had handled it better, and not been so dishonest about its implications and effects. A better political class would have found a better way than encouraging illegal immigration as a solution to globalisation of the labor market. A better pool of workers would not have lied to themselves for decades about the standard of living and income stream security they enjoyed in 1954 as being historically the norm (when it was, in fact, an historical anomaly never duplicated before or since). Or engaged in union thuggery – as well as falling into every government handout possible in order to maintain the standard of living and income stream security that they feel entitled to and are convinced they “deserve” simply because they are above ground and breathing – to avoid dealing with the truth about their overpaid and oversecure condition.
Like yourself, I would love to see the factory in every midsize city. I’d love to think that Americans will forgo the revolution of always-rising expectations that everyone from janitors and day laborers to doctors and lawyers and CEO’s seems to have bought into as a matter of faith. Thing is, in order for these things to happen, unskilled and semiskilled workers would have to be happy with never owning a house, or a new car, or go on a vacation somewhere, or being able to send their kids to college without a scholarship, or own expensive boats or video gaming equipment, and once again derive joy from community, church and civic associations. Middle to upper middle income earners would have to resign themsleves to a new car every ten years, one (and only one) much more modest domicile, and state college for the kids unless they get a scholarship. CEO’s would have to see their pay reduced drastically. It wouldn’t bother me to see those changes (I’ve already resign myself to the fact that if we become less global my standard of living will drop, and I’m OK with that), but I’m not holding my breath.
But I’d be hallucinationg to think that most of my countrymen would give up their delusions of grandeur so easily. If they EVER do this, it will take nearly as many decades to sink into their gray matter as it took for the rot to occur in the first place.
I hope what you predict comes true, but…..
Pessimists can be annoying, but it is the optimists that gets you killed.
If you are a political junkie it is hard sometimes not to be a pessimists when you see the folly of those in power. The fun part though has been that the technology that brings you the bad news from your viewpoint also lets you see the bits and pieces falling off the oppositions starship as it burns across the sky.
On the net you also realize you are not alone in your beliefs and convictions.
Merry Christmas.
And, BTW, I was one of those IDIOTS that believed the globalization of the labor market was a good thing… May my children forgive me…
The thought was that a rising tide floats all boats. That should be amended as “A rising tide floats all boats, as long as the politicians are only rent-seekers and not idealogues…” . What a rube I was…
in line with what no more uro posted: Mongoose, I understand the emotion, but I also recall two gentlemen named Smoot and Hawley who had much the same theory once upon a time. Like them, you greatly overestimate the benefit to be received and grossly underestimate the damage that would be caused.
As far as optimism and pessimism, I am very optimistic that the scenario you proposed will never come to pass, because that would indeed be the most pessimistic scenario I can imagine.
Because it isn’t visible to you, you grossly underestimate the percentage of our economy that depends on foreign earnings. Like Smoot and Hawley, you fail to foresee the wider impacts of a trade war. Our entire high-tech industry (Intel, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, Apple, and thousands of smaller related companies) depends upon the international agreements which keep other nations from simply copying their work and taking it for themselves,always easy to do in a digital world. This is the most lucrative, highest value added part of our economy, and if a trade war starts this sector is wiped out overnight because the international arrangements they depend on vanish – and all the incomes they create will be wiped out with it. You think 100,000 US engineers won’t be headed oversees with their knowledge the day that happens? Think again. (Maybe you don’t realize what a high percentage of today’s most critical engineers are asian by birth.) Also, do I really need to bring up energy and the fact that the US can be choked to death in a very short time if we don’t have access to foreign oil? Yes, you’ll say we should be energy independent, but even a crash program would take 10 – 15 years to achieve that. We won’t survive even 2 years of food and energy riots, much less 15.
Or should we just seize what we need? There’s the shining path to world war, it always begins to sparkle at these times.
Given the extent that we have become globalized, I believe that a general trade war would not end at 25% unemployment as it did the last time, but this time would reach 35% – 40% long before the factories you mention would kick in. Also, you forget that new factories today are going to be primarily automated – the days of long lines of blue collar workers pounding on iron or screwing bolts are gone forever. There’s no employment boom waiting in bringing back textile mills with a million Norma Rae’s working in them. The dire necessities of the situation would probably result in either breakup or the imposition of a command-style military government. Either way, I very honestly doubt that our Constitution or this country would survive the experience.
But my optimistic belief is that none of this will come to pass, and we will just have to find ways to deal with the aggravations of globalization as we go along. There are indeed many ways to do that which we have not tried because we don’t admit the need yet. We can adapt.
So Merry Christmas, and Peace on Earth in our Brave, New, Globalized World!
good one walt!
Someone needs to calm me down- the healthcare bill and the raising of the debt ceiling have me seriously thinking about revolution.
Mongoose,
The Left, the Environmentalist and the Lawyers destroyed our ability to compete and create new products; that is not the fault of globalism.
Here in California, the regulation monster ate our manufacturing base. Thirty years ago, California was teeming with manufacturing start-ups, new innovations and new products. Now all that is left are old grandfathered relics, that produce the same old thing. And that California disease has spread to much of the nation.
The media has portrayed much of our new regulation as free and absolutely painless. Nothing can be further from the truth. These new regulations are always meant to sound so innocuous, but these warm and fuzzy edicts from on high are never coordinated with those already in place; many new regulations actually conflict with those in place, and are impossible to comply with in the real world. That is often intentional. Many NIMBY’s on the left simply want the world to stop, and writing conflicting regulations is good way to achieve that end. Then again, many new laws are passed now with the specific intent that new innovation will be necessary to make them work, forgetting completely whether the new required innovation is even possible.
In places like California, the bureaucratic monster will come at you from many different angles, and you are never sure where you will be blindsided next. You are always looking over your shoulder, always afraid that the simplest heretofore legal act will put you on the wrong side of the newest concoction out of the legislature, and land you in the slammer.
There is tremendous uncertainty now in the American businessworld because of our government. The latest rage is ambiguous legislation that demands lengthy negotiation and concessions on the part of the businessman or manufacturer. Or better warm the hearts of many a nihilist leftie, our helpful bureaucrats and lawyers often now want to re-interpret settled interpretations of the law to hamstring our producers whenever possible.
The ability to produce cutting edge technology requires a regulatory environment where manufacturing decisions can be made quickly, with certainty and with a reasonable expectation that those decisions will work. Those regulatory conditions are simply lacking in far too many places today in America. The competitive life cycle of new products demands speed. Too often the regulatory processes demand more time to make a decision than the product life cycle will allow.
Global trade conditions have surely helped ruin our manufacturing base, but the main culprit is the regulatory morass we have constructed to ensnare business.
wws,
I think you mis-read the majority/intent of Mongoose’s post. The intent is to re-work the manufacturing base to support AMERICA’s interests, not to employ millions of Norma Rae’s. Not that the rebirth of American manufacturing won’t employ people, it will. To compare manufacturing in the 21st century to 1930′s style sweat shops is demagoguery. Was that the intent?
“The things Mr. Peters warns about are actually happening, whereas the things Al Gore warns us of are essentially fantasies.”
In a healthy robust economic cycle what we are facing would be called “creative deconstruction”. I suppose we all just need to be a little more creative in the destruction, and insist upon strict instruction to apply some lessons learned to the next construction.
I am a fan of one tragedy only
Adam was but human–this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
–Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Mongoose @ 19: If “globalsim” was shut down tomorrow, and there were no Chinese goods in this country, and we rejected for this assualt on productivity and capitalism from the left, factories across America would open up in every medium sized town, and in a year or so there would be general properity, and we would have all the goods and services any require.
I too believe we MUST make some rather strong protectionist moves, BUT do not believe it will be nearly so easy. We have to consider the present, the past, and the future.
Present: If we shut out Chinese goods today, the CPI would rise 20% instantly. They have been sending us stuff cheap for twenty years. Thank you, China.
Past: American manufacturing circa 1970 was typified by GM – poor design, no quality, no customer service, very slow innovation governed more by investment returns than competition, complete arrogance. Protectionism might bring these all back bigtime. I shudder to think.
Future: Smoot and Hawley didn’t have to deal with a world of cheap worldwide telecommunications, Internet, jet airliners, oil supertankers, and 500,000,000 roughly westernized Chinese and Indians, Russians and more (gee, has Mexico fallen out of the equation entirely?). These have enabled us to ship waaaay too much work anywhere around the world. But, automation is another. We can build stuff much more cheaply now, even here as well as China – but employing very few people, say it’s a round 50%. The other 50% are stuck in nothing service jobs. It’s not pretty. A ton of this will probably turn into permanent government makework, but hey, maybe we’ll get a bunch of new libraries and smoother streets, or something.
Sooo, with all the protectionism in the world, I’m afraid it will only fix about half the problem. But hey, that’s better than nothing.
Please do not confuse re-building of an American manufacturing base with Protectionism. It is exactly what will drag the process down. Listen to the loudest opponents screaming “PROTECTIONISM!” and follow the money on this one…
I am by nature pessimistic and don’t find Mr. Peters’ musings to be unmerited. Gore on the other hand is a loon, a certifiable mad man. I read the Pollyanna
projections like aDuoists while I watch 90 year old businesses here in Tucson shut the doors in January.
I sit here an underemployed carpenter right now musing on the future and dare, this Christmas season, to pray for a new advent, another Great Awakening. Google Jeremiah Lanphier and the Christian revival of 1857 in America. We need that again in America, God to intervene and change our course. Bah, ideology, Bah the sterile dead idol of statism. O Come O come Emmanuel….
LOTM, Thank you for the “Mrs. Miniver” reference, a wonderful film, the scene of the gritty determined Brits praying in the bombed out church, very inspiring, My wife claimed I had a crush on Greer Garson. I think I really had a crush on the courage and fortitude of Western peoples inspired by the Judeo-Christian God. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Years to all that come here to ponder the imponderable.
Anyone have any predictions on the trend for Mexico? Seems as though the drug problem is becoming militarized – really militarized. Seems like it would be very easy to incubate a coup or “revolution” out of such forces.
Hollywood Loves Pantheism; NY Times Op-Ed on Pantheism Vs. Christianity. A discussion of Avatar
And always remember what the message of Christmas is, that God still believes in us. In the end, well, I guess that’s all that matters. Merry Christmas, everybody.
Sometime during high school I lost the ability to hear a certain pitch of the female voice. It becomes like a pitched twittering sound in my ears. That’s all. For anyone else with the same problem, here is the lyrics to the song sung above.
“The Last Rose Of Summer”
‘Tis the last rose of summer left blooming alone
All her lovely companions are faded and gone
No flower of her kindred, no rosebud is nigh
To reflect back her blushes and give sigh for sigh
I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one, to pine on the stem
Since the lovely are sleeping, go sleep thou with them
Thus kindly I scatter thy leaves o’er the bed
Where thy mates of the garden lie scentless and dead
So soon may I follow when friendships decay
And from love’s shining circle the gems drop away
When true hearts lie withered and fond ones are flown
Oh who would inhabit this bleak world alone?
This bleak world alone
If we shut out Chinese goods today, the CPI would rise 20% instantly.
And so what? We have way too much junk as it is. Look in the typical suburban American kids closet. You’ll find more clothes and shoes than they could wear out in five lifetimes. Do I really need fifty ten dollar t-shirts? Why not ten fifty dollar t-shirts that are well made and will last?
Do I really need to upgrade my television every few years? I recall my family’s first color TV (a Sony – even then we were losing it), which we had for close to twenty years. The flat screen TV I have now, I have no reason to replace unless it stops working. I will happily live with it for the next twenty years if it lasts that long.
Do I need a new cell phone every year? The list goes on and on. We have too much junk.
You can make the argument that many things are TOO cheap now. I will happily pay more for high quality goods that are made in the United States. Sometimes, abundance can be a destructive force (e.g. the fastest way to fix a lot of school systems would be to cut their budgets in half). Goods too cheap, credit too easy: these are not merely economic issues, they are at bottom moral issues, and they have not been good for the collective soul.
Finally, outsourcing all our high-tech manufacturing was not only economically stupid and entirely unnecessary (the only reason it was done was to pad the pockets of the executives), it’s a gigantic exposure in terms of defense. The CEO class in America used to be aligned with the nation’s interests. That ended quite some time ago. Now, they are tranzis without a shred of loyalty to the nation that allowed them to become Masters of the Universe.
#26 Dan M . . .
You said that China will follow Japan’s path from producing junk to producing quality goods. I believe this too. As I said toward the end of a previous thread, Americans generally underestimate the Chinese. We tend to see the bad things, like Mao craziness, but haven’t experienced the incredible patience and quality labor that the Chinese can do routinely.
I could give lots of examples, but anyone who has ever been to contemporary China knows what I’m talking about.
I want to wish all here who participate with me at The Belmont Club a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year — also toss in a Happy Hanukkah for any Jewish readers/commenters.
Bravo Peterike, you nailed it brother. Greed sold the farm in America so the few could get their home on the links while the working class wearily trod the road to serfdom.
“Well, with God’s grace, perhaps I can learn to be content in all circumstances.”
Oh, I sincerely hope not. If people were content in all circumstances, the original Tea Partiers would have accepted British taxation, FDR would have said okey-dokey-no-problemo to Pearl Harbor, and there would be no Jews today because of Adolph’s Final Solution. If it’s wrong, we *have* to stand up to it and not be content. The problem then becomes defining what “wrong” is and what possible options “stand up to” might involve.
Personally, I’m sort of looking forward to another tax revolution next April, since if 6 million citizens do not put checks in the mail to the government, what’s Obama (and the Democrats) gonna do about it?
#9 Dymphna
My best Christmas wishes to the good Lady Dymphna and the redoubtable Baron, and all who stand with them at the Gates of Vienna. Having also been through the possibly fatal illness of a child, if I may I will share your joy.
#19 Mongoose & #27 no mo uro, & #30 wws & #33 Unsk:
Quick woolgathering here, not totally thought out. But if the financial underpinnings of globalization of trade and labor markets collapse; would they not do so too? The current economic collapse has already reduced the amount of international trade drastically. Lease rates for containers for container ships were just above zero last time I looked [a few months ago] due to lack of demand. The Baltic Index that measures international shipments of goods has plummetted and has not recovered.
We have a figurative cold that could turn into pneumonia now. What Peters’ bespeaks is one of the variants of the plague. And it cannot be ruled out, for the reasons that cellac cites at #11.
Today may be the “good old days” we will tell our great grandchildren about. Let us posit that the round of coming layoffs and bankruptcies and government economic sabotage in the first quarter of the new year does push us off of Obama’s beloved ‘precipice’. Or maybe even later in the year. If you are ABC Widget Co. of Walla Walla, Washington it is not going to matter that you have a ridiculously cheap labor force in Backofbeyondwheregodforgot. You have no way of getting the goods here and distributed, nor any way to repatriate your profits, nor any way to pay that cheap labor force. And you will not be alone.
There will be a shortage of jobs in each country, and an absolute dearth of imported goods. For some countries, that will be fatal. Others will only wish it was. Yes, Depression.
International trade will quickly reduce to those goods that 1) are high value enough to be worth the shipment, 2) can be ecomomically shipped the distance, 3) to and from somewhere someone has something of negotiable value that can be similarly shipped back.
Globalization will be gone. There may be a small amount of regionalization, but not enough to disrupt an already destroyed local labor market. Indeed, as it progresses, it probably will help local labor markets as trade of any sort picks up.
If you are in a country that has the means to become relatively self-sufficient, or the means to control transportation of goods over long distances; you have a better chance of recovery. If you are in a country whose population has grown beyond the carrying capacity of the land [without the aid of imported machinery or chemicals]; Malthus is going to kick in. If you have to import food or energy, it is going to hurt.
Eventually [and this may be generational], local entrepeneurs at various places will start in effect specializing in what they can produce, and extend the range of their trade. Incidentally, whatever does come about will probably be far more labor intensive than today. Both power and spare parts are frequently imported.
Networks will arise, and the slow climb from poverty may be possible. I say MAY, because an economy cannot be separated, other than theoretically, from its political system. There is no guarantee that whatever arises from the collapse will be favorable to such trade, or to increasing prosperity of the masses. It may seem a much better gig to those in power to loot and pillage the people as best they can. Or they may not be able or willing to protect any surviving producers from the wolves amongst us.
IF, and I do mean IF, we recover economically; and if the political system of the time permits such recovery, for a goodly while there is going to be a prejudice against moving production outside of local control. The collapse of international finance => collapse of international trade => the collapse of a globalized labor market. There is a further implication of a period of grinding poverty and suffering worldwide [and no, we are not exempt] before things recover. IF they recover. That last “if” is highly dependent on the government not committing the normal or greater amount of self-serving incompetence or tyranny we have come to expect.
Uh …. Happy Christmas?
It might be a project for the new year for us to ponder how to best expedite a recovery from such a financial collapse; because up until now we have concentrated on short term individual survival.
#32 A Conservative Teacher
Don’t calm down too much. It is a subject that indeed does deserve serious consideration once a polity reaches that point.
———————————–
Sorry I if I have put everyone into a depressed mood. More to the spirit of the times, allow me to wish our gracious Host, Wretchard, his family, and all of us, and our families, who share in the intellectual feast he lays for us; that the true spirit of Christmas be with you and your loved ones. May you be able to gather in peace, joy, and in health. And may we be able to repeat the experience for years to come.
Subotai Bahadur
>>If we shut out Chinese goods today, the CPI would rise 20% instantly.
>
>And so what? We have way too much junk as it is.
Overall, I agree, I’m just pointing it out.
Still, the lower half of the economic spectrum may not be quite so blase about their standard of living falling 20% overnight.
ps – current non-led flatscreens will lose 50% of brightness in about five years, or thereabouts. but did you check the prices this year? down at least 50% in two years, especially the larger ones. only the newer led models sell near the old prices. pretty kewl stuff, if only a nicer opiate for my masses.
Completely agree with Unsk. I work as one of those ‘regulators’ and can attest to the ever growing (and often pointless) regulatory burden that every business in America faces (large or small). If you don’t personally work in the EHS field, you haven’t a clue just how complicated, circular, and open to bureaucratic abuse our environmental and workplace regulations really are.
IMO, the outflow of manufacturing base and investment capital in the last 40 years is due to two factors.
The first factor was unavoidable. There is a huge disparity between the typical Western standard of living and that of the Third World. That disparity is largely an artifact of singular world events related to the two World Wars, and is artificial. The large rise in American lifestyle during the 40′s and 50′s relative to the rest of the world was never sustainable. That disparity has slowly been resolving itself since the 80′s, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
The second factor, however, is entirely self induced and could be stopped tomorrow if we had the will to do so. Here I am speaking of the general anti-business, anti-capitalist attitude that currently pervades the USA. The combination of local anti-business politics, ridiculous legal liabilities, byzantine regulatory structures, NIMBY, and a general unwillingness to accept/adapt to factor #1 have created an environment in which business struggles to survive and feels decidely unwelcome. The resulting decline in American industry and lack of new growth is to be expected.
In other news….
Merry Christmas everyone. Have a safe and happy New Year and hope for better things to come. Always have hope.
cellec:
I awakened this morning to find a bunch of comments from the Belmont Club in my email notifier folder and then there was yours. You have no idea how much it touched me. You see, Dinah Shore singing “I’ll Walk Alone” was playing on the hospital speakers at the time they put me in my Mother’s arms for the first time and she always said she thought it was prophetic.
The day she died in 2004 at the age of 94, she took my hand and sang from the lyrics:
I’ve been feeling so lonely this Christmas with no one special in my life and Mother gone. I have my adult kids here with me, but it isn’t the same. I went to bed with tears, feeling very low and alittle sorry for myself and then wake up to the very first thing I read and there it was. I don’t want to get all weird on everybody, but somehow, someway, Mother found a way to give me one of her kicks in the pants and tell me to buck up, she is always there. Why she used you, I don’t know. But may you be blessed this Christmas.
4/Walt. Superb. Will read it aloud to the family tonight. Thank you.
Yes, the Chinese have a capacity for excellent quality labor, but quality control between countries is very hard. Outsourcing software development is much easier than hardware. If an item is assembled in China and the run has a batch of bad parts or the connections aren’t done correctly, there has to be someone stateside to deal with all the RMAs and be handy with a screwdriver. The small local (Silicon Valley) assembly houses are still going strong, especially for prototype manufacture.
I went to buy a hot water dispenser at the Chinese market the other day and the young ladies conferred in Mandarin, then one told me, “Buy *this* one. Zojirushi Japan!” I asked about the other model and they all frowned and said, “No, no, that is Zojirushi China. Bad factory. Japan is better.”
I haven’t dealt much with the bureaucracy of China, but I have watched my friends set up, run, sell, and shut down software offices in India and here in the USofA, and the dynamics are startlingly different. Both fruit, but apples and oranges. Or perhaps apples and cherries — both hardwoods, both a bit frost tolerant, but beyond the earning of profit, the priorities and expectations and the underlying structures don’t match. Heck, online banking in India and the payment of taxes are convoluted and archaic. Reboot your laptop between each transaction or the applets will hang.
The number of holidays and the length of vacation in India makes meeting deadlines tricky, if not impossible. If you hire a variety of people then they might not all be out for a particular holiday, but they also might refuse to work together, let alone have a hard time communicating. It becomes easier to have monoculture offices, all speaking Hindi and Tamal, for instance, with enough proficiency in English per department that there’s at least one person who can communicate with the US teams. With the right mix of individuals, the work ethic can be amazing. Brilliance, teamwork, and dedication are standard. Definitely need at least one savvy polylinguist in each branch office for bribing local officials. It’s a different world.
As for poverty, BTDT. I’m hoping we can avoid that path, but I don’t particularly fear it. We made it through swine flu here. A tough year but less time in the ER for DD than the year before, which is a blessing. Budget’s tight — we are living simply — and DH still has a job. Christmas presents are, as always, homemade. Gossamer lace shawls, warm machine washable wool socks that fit perfectly, fine gauge fingerless mitts, jars of lemon curd… My grandparents are fading. Big Sylvia will be 100 soon and she’s been ready for Heaven for a while. She and Grandfather still live at home but the stairs are a challenge. They priced assisted living and decided to stay home and have a lady come help a bit. The clock ticks and they anticipate joy. There are times when Christian belief really does sustain a person.
W, thank you for Belmont Club. I’m learning a lot. Merry Christmas! [Off to read about Egor Gaidar...]
Beans and bullets, just keep stocking up. (Hint hint, Santa…’stocking’ stuffers??)
I think the music will stop in the next year or so, and we’ll see who can find a chair.
Merry Christmas, indeed.
I’m not feeling much of the hope that was supposed to come along with all this change, but then again, I didn’t buy the obammy brand to begin with.
Best of luck to all Belmonters, and thank you to Wretchard.
God Bless.
I suspect trangbang’s solution is the workable one.
We see the disasters looming and the twisting of the governing ideals of the country, but I find plenty of people who still believe in the Teleprompter and the power of Leviathan to make all things right. (I work in Madison, if that explains things)
So I don’t talk about revolution. They usually don’t work, and when I look at the factions in the country today I’m certain it would turn out badly.
Think about Chicago. If the citizens arose in wrath and suspended the entire city council from gibbets outside City Hall, nobody but the most die-hard death-penalty foes would object. But after the first glow of satisfaction of seeing justice done, what would they think? The problems aren’t solved. The corruption runs through every city agency. So now they must replace all department heads and aides and half the employees, half the judges and police, and so on. What comes next? I fear that the next step is that the bar owner approaches the new inspector with a proposition, and the homeowner approaches the new alderman’s brother to ask a favor, and so on. The corruption isn’t limited to officials. New ones will succumb.
I think we need a bottom-up transformation.
“Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things work.”
-Robert Farrar Capon
Merry Christmas all.
Peters is too right about China. Most of it is SOE (State Owned Enterprises) that can only compete on low price, not quality, and requires a greatly devalued RenMenbi, and massive state subsidies. To keep employment in China going instead of a mass “Bonus Army” etc.
Yes Greece WILL default, as will Spain, Portugal, and probably the UK. The budget Brown will submit is good for a laugh, that’s about it.
Collapse in trade will HURT. Spare parts are made in China and Japan and Malaysia and Singapore and Indonesia and South Korea. Keeping your car (even an American one, or especially an American one), watch, TV, computer, etc. going will require the global supply chain or watch the standard of living plummet.
Note there are few low-tech alternatives. No one makes typewriters anymore, or even ball point pens and paper, in the US. The world would look something like out of “Max Headroom.”
I join in bidding y’all the blessings of the blessed One, at this Holy time when we try to lay aside our worries about the world and concentrate on His Love, made manifest in the birth of His Son. May we embody His blessings in our families and our churches and communities.
I’ve been listening to this one a lot this season: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTZUPh17CFc
Unsk wrote: “Global trade conditions have surely helped ruin our manufacturing base, but the main culprit is the regulatory morass we have constructed to ensnare business.”
Excellent observation. Still, in crisis lies opportunity. If there were serious politicians in the US, then someone would realise the opportunity of cutting back on regulation as an alternative to cutting back on taxes. (Not that taxes don’t need to be reduced too).
Let’s look at the other side of crisis – opportunity.
This crash in the value of the USD might yet force China to break its linkage to the dollar. A floating, market-priced yuan should be a thing to be desired.
As I’ve long predicted, the US government has decided to inflate its way out from under its foreign debts. Not the way I would have preferred to deal with the issue but the outcome has some positives.
$3 natural gas puts pressure on Gazprom and hence the Russian government. Low oil prices help too.
AGW has been shown to be a fraud even if the advocates deny the reversal.
The behavior of the Democratic members of Congress is causing voters to think well of the Republicans and 2010 should see one or both houses flip parties.
The MSM is losing viewers/readers/adherants at an increasing rate. Their influence and mind share are declining as alternate communications channels rise.
So, yes, 2010 will be a challenge but count your blessings every now and then. It will energize you to take advantage of the opportunities and mitigate the damage.
peterike,
We have way too much junk as it is
What you are advocating is exactly the same as the position of the elitists of the AGW cult. Who died and made you Pope able to decide what is good for other people to buy with the fruit of their labor? It is reason for me to thank my parents that they taught me not to feel deprived without polyester clothes, paintings on velvet and laminate pine furniture but that does not give me or you the right to deprive other people of those goods if that is what they want to do with their money. If the tastes and choices of the people are deplorable then that is a failure of education that should be addressed. Perhaps if you send $20 to public television they will show the students episodes of Jane Austen on Great Performances.
The Republican party in the 19th century was the high tariff party and in the last 30 years it has become the free trade party. Free trade builds wealth and allows capital to be deployed to achieve an optimum in a position of comparative advantage. That wealth can then be used to improve many facets of society. It would be healthy for the elites to support through charity efforts to improve the taste and judgement of the people. It is natural for communities to guide and improve the judgement and standards of their members through religious and other voluntary associations.
A rational immigration policy is part of a healthy effort to ensure that an unnecessary pool of unskilled labor is not imported. In part that would help shift the public demand for goods away from the disposable and wealth exporting items you deplore into a higher savings culture. That does not mean that I am opposed to immigration, only that I believe that it should be encouraged for the good of the admitting nation and not just for the interests of individuals. I would eliminate most of the changes regarding family reunification that Ted Kennedy sponsored over the last 45 years.
To be blogged under the title “For Free Trade.”
To #35 – “Adam was but human–this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden”.
Not at all. It was (is) the arrogance of man. Satan tempted with “eat of it and you shall be like God knowing good and evil …..” Eve, and Adam, elevated themselves to a plane equal with God. In other words “ I have an intellect, I have understanding, I have discernment and I am able to evaluate God’s command in light of this and reach my own conclusion. Eating of the fruit (of unknown type) was simply the fruit of the sin which had already taken place, that of pride or arrogance or rebellion.
To # 41 “And always remember what the message of Christmas is, that God still believes in us. In the end, well, I guess that’s all that matters”.
God does not “believe” in us. On the contrary Christmas teaches just the opposite. Remember the angel said to the shepherds “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord”. That a savior was needed indicates man could not save himself. Putting our faith and trust (Jn 3:16, Eph 2:8-9) in Him for who He is and what He has done is all that matters.
Perhaps you meant to say that God remembers us ?
Merry Christmas to All.
Dan
#50–ws1835
I’m not sure that I really agree with you in regards to your “first factor,” but I am in total accord with you as to the second. The sheep dogs of the Regulatory State have contracted rabies and are systematically killing the flocks they are supposed to be protecting. I can’t see any way out other than burning the entire CFR and banning any “law” (calling it a regulation doesn’t stop it from being a law) that doesn’t originate in its entirety from the legislature.
–And with that said, I wish Wretchard and every one of you a Merry Christmas. Despite the Darkness that seems to be coming, we all have many gifts that cannot be taken away from us …
hearing the laughter of a child, seeing the light in the eyes of your spouse, or the beauty of the stars or a sunset.
God Bless you All.
I very seldom post here, although I gaze a whole lot, because my writing gets somewhat tangled. I’m not in the least sentimental, but Sylvia’s (#52) description of her life and that of her grandparents, is the most evocative description of what life really is or could be, that I have read in a long time, with all due respect to all the other wonderful contributors to the BC.
Sylvia, I wish you and your grandparents the very best.
We lost our edge in manufacturing and other areas for two simple reasons: 1.) American companies (and the investors) focused on the short term return rather than the long term growth. 2.) We got lazy and complacent.
And now we wake up to find that the Japanese build better cars, electronics, etc, etc. than we do, that Chinese mass produce goods cheaper than we do, that the Germans (not that they ever really stopped) engineer things better than we do and the world is willing to pay for it, that the Latinos are willing to do the hard work for less while we turn our noses up at the work. And we wonder why we keep getting our lunch handed to us. Perhaps it will take a another REAL depression to snap Americans out the locust dreams they have indulged themselves in the past thirty some odd years to focus back on the Core (as my company’s CEO loves to say)and remember that America’s greatness wasn’t handed to it. It was hacked out the wilderness and forged by hard work, sacrifice, determination, and, yes, damn good luck.
Beyond that, I wish everyone the best of holidays and may you all find that special comfort and joy that is found with family.
Merry Christmas to all of our friends at Belmont Club, I wish you and your families peace and happiness.
Sara @ 51, thanks for sharing. God bless.
As for industry, while I firmly believe that if things like electric cars and solar energy were technologically competitive and engineeringly possible, American capitalists would build them … I still think it is worth driving R&D in that direction to try to overcome the challenges. I don’t underestimate the challenge, I just believe we need new industries, we are the world’s leading inventors, and thanks to Al Gore there’s a huge latent market for new energy solutions.
To warm up, we should re-open the F-22 lines, just in case not all future wars are against medieval savages.
Oh, still, Merry Christmas! Peace on Earth, through superior firepower, and Good Will to Everyone!
#44 – Promethea ,
I would think that on a Capitalist benchmark, the Chinese have set the baseline. Their LONG history of capitalism and business acumen has been smothered in the horror of Mao’s rule, and later, influence. But, when they raised their heads to look at what was going on in their “down-time”, they have shaken themselves off and gone to work. Much is to be admired of their recent “look” into capitalism.
The question remains to be seen whether a democracy will be allowed… A middle class would help that along…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmaUBXoR1hs
#65 DanM . . .
It is so sad to see our democratic system going down the tubes, just as the rising middle class in China could use a good system to emulate. But we no longer have that system. What a tragedy.
The Chinese are used to being “governed” and pushed around by their leaders. I guess we’re getting more like them. But we’re more poorly educated in math, language arts, etc.
Programmer’s Christmas Carol.
I am pace maker dependent. It quits, so do I. Three weeks ago, a wire between my pacemaker and my heart broke. God kicked into overdrive. My daughter just happened to be working on a project with me in my office. She dragged me to urgent care. God kept the wire making contact often enough to keep me in and out of consciousness. An excellent diagnostician figured what was probably wrong immediately. Because I’m on blood thinners, I couldn’t be operated on until my blood was thicker. Excellent nursing staff figured out how to keep me ticking until able to be operated on. An excellent cardiologist and surgeon replaced the pacemaker and wiring. Today, I’m sitting in front of my computer, drinking tea, eating Christmas cookies and enjoying Christmas carols. God is good. Life is good.
And, in no particular order, the wonderful people who worked on me were from Alabama, Oklahoma, Kenya, India and probably other assorted places. I would like to wrap this anecdote up with a wonderfully meaningful parable, pertinent to our time, but I can’t really. All I can think to say is, Merry Christmas to all of you at Belmont Club, who I have come to think of as friends. May God bless you in the coming year (even those of you who are atheist, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. An extra blessing never hurts). And especially to Wretchard whose constantly questing mind educates us and stretches our horizons… And you know, these cookies are really good!
Sergey,
Dobro pazhalevet Belmont Club! Be prepared if you have anything good to say about modern Russia to be accused of posting from the bowels of Lubyanka
Sylvia,
Gaidar is remembered in Russia with mixed feelings. Some feel he has been scapegoated for the collapse of the Soviet system and the harsh reality that no soft landing was possible for it, though the worst shocks might have been avoidable.
The USSR could not transition to capitalism the way China could, for a host of reasons. Too many mono-industry towns like Togliatti, Norilsk, etc. These reasons were alluded to in an episode of the excellent PBS series The Commanding Heights.
At least when it comes to Gaidar — he may have been wrong or naive about a lot of things. But he did not become an oligarch or minigarch on the back of the “reforms” he championed, while many around him were getting stinking rich feasting on the choicest parts of the Soviet carcass while pretending that they were creating democratic capitalism in the Nineties (and those folks still have many apologists, like the WSJ/Washington Post/Economist, who ought to know better).
I guess one could say the same thing of Gaidar that Putin (in a quote you won’t hear from those who think Putin still wants to avenge the collapse of the USSR) said about Boris Yeltsin when he died:
“I don’t know if I would have had the guts to do what he did [abolish the USSR]….he gave us our freedom”
LOTM,
See the above quote regarding Putin’s alleged nostalgia for the USSR…and on the subject of junk, Peter is right. You were talking in another thread about cartels/monopolization in the U.S. economy. Have you ever asked why despite the fact that Honduras/Guatemala can compete with China in terms of labor costs and they’re closer for transport (especially when oil went above $100 a barrel) you still only see Chinese stuff at most stores?
I think it has something to do with the Chinese buying loads of U.S. government debt that they get a somewhat privileged position vis a vis other low wage industries. But seriously, if you’re an American who has lived in Europe and the U.S., you start to notice after a while that quality European clothing is something found only in boutiques in America, whereas it’s abundant even in post-Communist Eastern Europe. You can buy anything you want in America…as long as it’s Made in China…but that, along with the FDA keeping out a host of quality European pharmaceuticals, is a rant for another time.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all good night!
I see some big-thinking theories about the US having lost its competitive edge, esp in manufacturing, due to laziness, short time horizons, and the like.
No doubt there is truth to all of that, but I will add 2 more words:
Wagner Act.
Merry Xmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy New Year, etc.
I heard California lost 47 Thousand Businesses last year!
—
COST OF STATE REGULATIONS ON CALIFORNIA SMALL BUSINESSES
The study finds that the total cost of regulation to the State of California is $492.994 billion which is almost five times the State’s general fund budget, and almost a third of the State’s gross product.
The total cost of regulation results in an employment loss of 3.8 million jobs which is a tenth of the State’s population. Since small business constitute 99.2% of allemployer businesses in California, and all of non-employer business, the regulatory cost is borne almost completely by small business.
—
Los Angeles is bankrupt, yet the City Council just voted Water and Power employees a 5 year contract with raises EVERY YEAR of from 2 to 4 percent!
Marty,
The ’20′s and 30′s were the time of labor. Who’s to say we won’t need the Wagner Act again, if repealed?
Although, no fan of Unions and their collectivist approach, it did build the middle class… Now, how to shed their influence?…
>We have way too much junk as it is
What you are advocating is exactly the same as the position of the elitists of the AGW cult. Who died and made you Pope able to decide what is good for other people to buy with the fruit of their labor?
LOTM I hear you, but have you seen the playrooms of little kids, anytime in the last ten years? I mean, seriously.
Actually, it gives them a nice anti-materialist vibe as they grow up, they assume material possessions are nearly meaningless. But that’s dangerous too, if it leads to everyone thinking their manufacture can be shipped overseas without consequence.
#61 tcobb
“The sheep dogs of the Regulatory State have contracted rabies and are systematically killing the flocks they are supposed to be protecting.
I have to disagree. For over forty years the ones you call sheep dogs have become corrupt politicians and in only accidental ways have managed to somewhat protect American Citizens. These creatures have not been sheepdogs and even disguises won’t help.
The reasons that they are not Sheepdogs? The causes and such I have already spoke of and won’t go into now, but be assured that it had a great deal to do with the liberal brainwashing of the last several generations of American youth.
Which is worth a book or two.
That would be hard to get published and even harder to get the average American to read.
There are many things I have read on this thread that are worthy of being put on every TV screen and every Radio station in the world and played non-stop for weeks.
But even then, I’m afraid that the present population would just ignore it or worse not understand.
But hopefully those who count will read some of these comments and maybe..just maybe awaken to the real world and what is happening to this Republic.
If you noticed my previous post about Obama’s Excecutive Order you will know that we are being set up for something. What I don’t know and frankly am thinking if I do try and discuss it I will be dismissed out of hand as a conspriricy nut. But know that it is beyond worrisome not only to me but to everyone I have discussed it with.
Well, I have dozens of things to do today and tonight, if I can gather the strength to do so. I was up until two AM and got up at seven AM. Taking care of my two Sweet Grand Daughters is a blessing, but also is a hellava lot of work, especially around holidays.
Remember the reason…For this Holiday.
Pray for your families and for our Republic, but also prepare your household by stocking up on everything and having the essentials for life.
And…buy more Ammo.
Papa Ray
I just got back from last minute shopping and before I start in on making our traditional Christmas Eve chile, I want to say that I blame the unions.
I grew up in a town that was almost exclusively dependent on the steel industry and I watched the steelworkers go out on strike and stay out for 2 years or more and the town died little by little until finally there was no steel industry at all. Now it is the UAW and SEIU. Our town went to over 35% unemployment and the cry was that there would be no one left under 60 as all the young people were leaving to find opportunity elsewhere.
So what happened to that town. Senile Madjack Murtha happened and now, worse than the unemployment, worse than the town dying, they are now nothing but serfs to the dem machine. Murtha wrote the book on Cash for Corruptocrats and unless or until the libertarians in this country stand tall and join the GOP and cast out the elitists of the party and get ‘er done, we are all doomed and might as well try to figure out how to survive under the new system.
Yet again and again, I see quoted the very people who back in 2006 were saying that the GOP needed to “learn a lesson.” You know who those people were because they are still at it today. You think they are friends, but they aren’t. They may pretend to care about you, afterall some of them have the biggest blogs with the biggest megaphones, but they are only looking for their own niche of power.
The only way to extract ourselves from this ongoing nightmare is to vote the bums out, all of them, and elect those who aren’t in it for how it will position them for power. Look at the staff, they are the real culprits. Check out who they are taking advice from and stay away from any who quote from the GOP elite.
Join a tea party protest. You will be amazed at how many of your neighbors are there, I know I was back in April. Make yourself a pest with your present representatives and Senators. Stand for liberty and support those who are already standing up for liberty.
Now off to make chile and choco no bake cookies and then off to the Senior Center to deliver presents as part of their “Adopt a Grandma or Grandpa” program for those who are alone for the holiday.
Although, no fan of Unions and their collectivist approach, it did build the middle class…
Uh, I don’t think so. It was the military and the GI Bill after WWII that built the middle class, not the damn unions. They destroy, not build.
programmer, glad your hardware is fixed and you could be with us today. a modern xmas parable fer sure, we’re strongest together, amen.
Sara,
Agree (“Almost” completely).
I have lamented before working for several companies who would, in my opinion, expend ~25% of their resources on making a quarterly report. Never too high or too low; idling production, holding raw materials back, holding goods sold back, etc., ensure on target execution of plans. Very few seemed to have a strategic outlook that seriously went out a year, let alone five. And as I saw electronics production in the nineties being sent offshore I envisioned a massive sweatshop environment of underpaid worker bees but was dumfounded to learn that in many if not all cases of circuit card assembly that much of the work was being done by fully automated factories. The degree of automation offshore has skyrocketed since then and I had to ponder how capital and energy could be so much cheaper in say, Singapore? It is truly astounding how a wistful prediction of a future of service economy and global trade could seduce the nation’s capital holders to give up on our nation as a source of wealth and to scurry with it to distant lands. Yes I can see the need to diversify and to expand but to all but abandon? And this sinking tide has indeed brought our fleet of state onto their keels a-list.
I had an insane conversation with a manager here that Sarbanes–Oxley precluded me from knowing how much the products I designed would cost. You see, if I knew how much the design of an assembly costs then I could figure out what the wage of my co-worker was too, a potential violation. I was designing to unit cost without the benefit of knowing what the outcome of my effort was. All the costs were being rolled up into one big unaccountable mess where one could not remove the chaff from the wheat.
And I worked for a short stint for a division of GM that designed its power controls for electric and hybrid vehicles and they had more business providing this for Toyota and Nissan than they did their own parent company. And while documentarians filmed “Who killed the electric car?” condemning management, while we stood at the precipice of a new technology our very plant was shut down due to the rolling blackouts that hit California that summer and it became clear to me that we’d never progress without a national policy on energy that quashed the NGOs, the EPA, the Sierra Club, and the entire NIMBY contingent and build cheap and reliable power and to keep building and building. It does not surprise me that China is building on the average two new coal power plants a week.
We as a nation have the means and the resources but not the will.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and may God bless one and all!
AM
Keeping your car (even an American one, or especially an American one), watch, TV, computer, etc. going will require the global supply chain…
I think my Amish neighbours bear imitating. I’m seriously considering getting a horse and doing without the increasingly onerous monetary and regulatory burdens of keeping a car (especially in NY) and already have lived my entire adult life without recourse to a watch (though I do need to purchase a new C battery every five years or so to keep my reproduction Shaker wallclock working.) As it is, I only get a few TV stations and read enough to probably be able to wean myself entirely without too much difficulty; and in a pinch could do without the computer as well, since I remember a time when I did just that, quite nicely.
Not to say I wouldn’t miss these amenities, but one does what one either wants to or has to. And who’s to say there wouldn’t be an element of challenge and fun in it, to boot?
The biggest challenge, though, might well be keeping warm in winter and well fed all the year round. I am entirely too dependent on the Pennsylvania coal industry for my fuel (though I could cut plenty of wood in a pinch) and would still find it easier to (and so would rather) continue to buy more of my food than I grow. But I live on nine and a half wholly-owned acres (not accounting for property taxes) and grow it I would if I had to.
An added benefit of such simplification and relative self-reliance would be a reduction in the money given over to subsidization of increasing–and increasingly malevolent–centralized government control. Less spending could/should reduce taxable earning. And as already suggested, limiting or eliminating the government’s tax revenues may be the only entirely satisfactory way left to effectively protest our predicament.
Of course, programmer’s recent predicament still represents a sort of cautionary tale.
Nahn-Cee #47: Oh, I sincerely hope not. If people were content in all circumstances, the original Tea Partiers would have accepted British taxation, FDR would have said okey-dokey-no-problemo to Pearl Harbor, and there would be no Jews today because of Adolphs’s final solution.
I didn’t mean let’s all just give up and submit to whatever they dish out. I am in 100% agreement with you when you say, if it’s *wrong* we have to fight. Being content in reduced circumstances doesn’t have to include losing one’s integrity by caving in to traitors.
Charles #40: that was a great link.
Programmer: Glad you’re still with us!
Me worry? Can handle ut, pardner -
Yours -
Jeremiah Johnson
The cost of production of a manufactured article in the US is going to reflect ALL of the costs of the manufacturer-company tax, payroll tax, property/city taxes, employees income tax, etc, and all of regulatory morass, legal liabilities/insurance, and general hassle of being a US domiciled manufacturer. Whilst the legal costs are more a tithe to the parasitic lawyer class, the taxes raised support communities, states, armed forces, etc. Why do consumers of imported products get a pass and not have to pay their share of taxes. I know that there are import duties, but they are very low, and leave manufacturers of import competitive products out to dry. People employed by govt, or in service industries may call for lower prices for imports-its’ not THEIR job on the line. I do not believe that consumers should be able to make an “End run” around the taxation system, with imported products-we all have to pay our share
It isn’t fair that US domiciled manufacturing workers should have to compete for their livelihood with their own govt sabotaging them in so many ways. Tariffs/free trade agreements have been negotiated by bureaucrats/politicians, but real people and whole towns are affected, and often very much for the worse.
Happy Xmas!
Unions have done wonders for Public Education!
The SEIU is very helpful with elections, ACORN affairs, democrat fundraising, and contract thuggery.
Merry Christmas everyone! (And a belated Happy Hanukkah!)
Thank God I am living in this wonderful country, even though my state (California) and federal government have — temporarily I hope — lost their collective minds.
I feel tremendous gratitude to our host, Richard, and am thankful for the privilege of posting among this illustrious band of brothers and sisters.
Jamie Irons
Well the congress critters are heading home. I wonder if they are going to have as much fun as they did during the August break? I wonder how the DNC et. al. is going to do on the fund raising from now on out? They may look back and regard the Tea Party people as angels compared to who steps up next. What’s fun is going to be what they are going to do finance campaigns in those districts where the Dems are retiring, crossing the aisle, or where they facing unexpected and significant opposition. I also have a feeling that the social life in their home states is going to be unpleasant. There is a good possibility that they’ll find that good friends aren’t anymore. Even if they are your buddy they tend to get touchy when you take money out of their wallets.
62/Philip. Thank you.
69/X. I was pondering the fact that I’ve known many Russians but they all fled Russia (and are all Jewish engineers), so it makes me wonder what are the thoughts and opinions of a Russian who could leave but chooses to stay in Russia. Any suggestions for a reading list? Modern fiction or non-? In English?
80/Sir. Living a simple life is beautiful in many ways. Through an odd twist of fate I ended up making a go of it on an 1897 homestead in NNNW Montana from ’89 – ’96. A bit at a time we made improvements, digging irrigation ditches (by hand), setting fence, fixing up the old shacks that came with the land, planting gardens and fields. The years in Girl Scouts served me well. A life of subsistence can bring fulfillment and serenity.
It was the interface with the government and the medical-industrial complex that was tricky. Truck insurance, electricity, ammunition, the occasional propane refill, property taxes, vaccinations for the kid so she could attend school — these all required cash. I could take in mending in exchange for a bushel of apples, I could swap eggs for nearly everything else we needed, but some cash was required. So, I worked the farm during the daylight hours and did beadwork and wrote magazine articles at night. It was a good life until my first cancer.
68/Programmer. Glad your daughter was in the right place at the right time. Life *is* good.
I don’t think that 2010 will be so bad for the USA. The yield curve is benign, the dollar has bounced off its lows and gold has bounced off its highs. Inflation is not so bad. imho economic growth and government revenues will increase next year in the USA. the tarp money put up by the pubbies last fall was mostly paid back. the dems 800 billion slush fund created early in the year is only a quarter spent…so spread out over a couple of years its inflationary impact is relatively benign.
US oil imports are falling rapidly.
There’s reason to hope that the really stupid carbon tax may have been dodged.
The outcome of the healthcare debate may not be so great.
Anyhow Merry Christmas all.
It was a good life until my first cancer.
Sylvia, so sorry. But glad you’re still with us.
As for myself, medical contingencies represent an always fearful uncertainty. At least until ObamaCare passes and relieves me of all concern.
wws: Hogwash all round, and let me tell you i find you patronizing tone absurd and insulting.
Listen to me: I am a technologist, and a quite senior and accomplished one–in the industry for 40 years and have been both a CTO and CEO. In fact, at this very moment your physical and electronic security in part rests on technology i have designed and built. I have at worked at some of the major High Tech firms and research centers of the world, and I have also worked all over the world. Just this year, I been to China three times, The EU four times and Russia twice on technology related business. I do not know why you think you can instruct me here.
I frankly find this rather offensive:
Because it isn’t visible to you, you grossly underestimate the percentage of our economy that depends on foreign earnings. Like Smoot and Hawley, you fail to foresee the wider impacts of a trade war. Our entire high-tech industry (Intel, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, Apple, and thousands of smaller related companies) depends upon the international agreements which keep other nations from simply copying their work and taking it for themselves,always easy to do in a digital world.
Spare me the bizarre condescension and patronization about what I can or cannot see, what I “grossly overestimate” or how the international technology industry works. What supercilious nonsense. You have not the faintest idea of what you talking about. You have no idea how it works. I suggest you get another source for your notions of how Globalism works than Business Week, Forbes or Wired.
I would wager that I have worked at a higher level as a researcher, academic, working scientist and technologist and executive–and even a government official–than anyone you even personally laid eyes on. I find your tone preposterous.
Please do not imagine that you know more about the world economy and our role in it as a technology innovator, or the bottom line or structure of firms such as oracle or Intel than I do. I assure you that you do not.
You unwittingly regurgitate the same old Globalist cant that has been spread the last 25 years or so to the American people to mask the hollowing out both American technology and industry, and you do so with the comic notion that you are having some sort of business or geopolitical insight or epiphany. In reality you are being played for a fool.
Let me tell you something. America has slipping from its role of world technology leader for over a couple of decade now, and this has been willfully contrived by American and foreign elites. By far, Globalism, and the patsy role the American left and foreign forces has made America play in it, is the chief cause of the erosion of technology leadership. The rest of the world scratch their collective heads at our foolishness, when they are not laughing at us, and laughing all the way to the bank too, I might add.
Do you think the rest of the world exports tech jobs and expertise like we do? Most certainly they do not. Now the total assault on wealth, liberty, knowledge and reason the Democrats are up to will finally destroy it altogther, and the nation’s new “CTO” and the “tech savvy” Obama administration will lead the final charge.
It is just these “international agreements” you are so enamored of that are doing the damage, and the people that are making them have little love for this nation. Do not tell me on one hand that they domestically strangle America and on the other they have a wise foreign policy designed to enhance American competition abroad. It is a position as irrational as it is bogus
Companies like Oracle, Intel and IBM are now really more international companies that American ones, and is some of these firms foreign managers outnumber American ones. The engineering staffs are increasingly not only not American, but their workplaces are not even on American soil. 100,000 American engineers head oversea? Pal, about 300,000 tech jobs went overseas in the last decade, and they most certainly did not go to Americans who followed them overseas. You are talking total and utter nonsense!
Try emigrating to India as an engineer, they are not half so stupid as we are about things like this. In China, one cannot do business with out an almost criminal requirement for tech transfer, and in some cases, it this is actually a matter of legal compulsion. Now remember, in a great many cases that technology was either directly or indirectly bought and paid for by the American taxpayer. America as a nation gains little and suffer much from all of this–only certain key elites benefit.
Now, let me point out to you that these elites that benefit from all of this exporting of American know-how, technology and tech jobs are the same smug, Democrat, urban coastal elites that back Obama, Reid an Pelosi. The left likes to talk about the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age. Well at least Carnegie employed Americans on American soil. Our new (again, mostly Democrat) Robber Barons pilfer the country, paralyze it with their dastardly politics and then make all their money off of foreign investments and foreign labor. It is ludicrous to hold up someone like Ellison or Gates as model we should follow such that we should uphold the current form of Globalism.
Where is our leadership today? Google? Twitter? American innovation today pales besides the technology industry of even 25 years ago. To compare Google to the Bell Labs of yesteryear is patently absurd. It is essentially an ad server wraped around one basic technology. Oracle and MS? They are no longer leaders, they are milking their prior sales and values chains–their days are quite numbered, a decade at best. Oracle is actually a obstacle to the next stage of database technology. Academic research? Have a look at CERN. I suggest that it is you that is out of touch with High Tech industries world wide, and America’s place in it. It is not what you seem to think it is.
Moreover, you are buying hook, line and sinker the blige that was use to pilfer American technology jobs. Try hiring a first rate, American programmer or hardware engineer now. better yet, try hiring a first rate one for an entry level position. Globalism has pushed these jobs overseas, and it has been aided by (mostly Democrat) politicians on the take (have a look at off-shore tech firms’ political contributions). They must be brought back if we are to regain leadership, and a shut down of globalism, at least in its current form, is required to do that. Today an American kid would have to be a fool to go into engineering. Sit around the lunch tableq at Yorktown Heights and listen to the middle aged researcher after middle aged researcher tell you that they have told there children to never, ever go into engineering, and this is at one of the world;s leading centers (and yes, they are moving more and more work off-shore.
You are quite fooling yourself here.
“As far as optimism and pessimism, I am very optimistic that the scenario you proposed will never come to pass, because that would indeed be the most pessimistic scenario I can imagine.”
Nonsense. Stpping the bleeding would increase employment, productivity and prosperity. You argument is irrational on the face of it. It presuposes that America’s wealth need be based on exports. You “grossly overestimate” the contribution of technology, or export lead production to American wealth across the broad mass of our population and across our history. It is a wholly ahistorical argument: America’s wealth was built on High Tariffs and low taxation. America’s High Tech lead was built on a notion of most assuredly not off-shoring tech jobs or giving away the stire. It was seen as a matter of national security. Now the proponents of Globalism want to leave us as just another player. Had we never engaged in this nonsense, we would still command this lead.
The commanding lead that the American taxpayer payed for during the cold war, and paid for with the idea that the technology will be used to keep a technological industrial edge, has been frittered away.
I would would like say that we have thrown it away,that might be more bearable. but the truth is that the waves of left wing elites have either given it away or sold it, and often to core competitors. All one need do is look at the tech transfer to the EU space program, and this is one of the more innocent incidents. The American taxpayer has been had so far as the selling out of American technology goes.
High tech, as an American industry is it the lowest ebb in 50 years in terms of vigor, health and real and lasting accomplishment. Twitter and iphones? Come on now. If you think this is impressive, you know little of the really vital spurts of American High Tech. Once we invented the transistor and the micro processor, the Laser, the geo-stationary satellite, TCP/IP, the foundations of modern computer science. Once we walked on the Moon. That was when we were leaders. We are a woeful shadow of that now, Oracle? MS? In the history of technology and science in America they are sideshows.
New Years Ride
– Linearthinker
F-111
Mongoose – another little venture on my part to comment on what you say.
I totally agree with you. I’m an Engineer, on the verge of retirement… Well reaching that age; I won’t/can’t retire for a while. Right now I work in technical writing for a major corporation.
From time to time I open up, with great impatience on my part, as you have just done above. I get looked at as if I had crop circles burned into my forehead. People – engineers included – simply can’t be bothered thinking, perhaps even coming up with great new ideas. For one thing, coming up with great new ideas disturbs the status quo… And we know how uncomfortable that can be.
Some time ago I came up with an idea that would use our (Canadian) existing logging and pulp manufacturing infrastructure to generate various types of biofuels. With the exception of a fellow chemical engineer with whom I was working at that time, nobody even blinked. What it would have done, among other things, would be keep people working in many, many small towns all over Canada. But nobody even blinked. So the people with all the expertise in handling wood, pulp and paper went on unemployment insurance (they now call it “Employment Insurance”) and did whatever they could to survive. Because people don’t want to think a little beyond what they can see.
But it’s not only the lack of jobs that’s the problem; once a company stops manufacturing, all the expertise – both direct and peripheral – disappears. American-Standard, for whom I once worked, transferred all its manufacturing to Mexico, and closed down it’s magnificent Toronto manufacturing facilities. All that expertise: clay experts, glaze and colour experts, buyers, mold-makers and designers, furnace design experts… You name it… All gone. And if they were close to retirement, all that knowledge that they would have passed on to younger folks simply disappeared. It leaves me quite breathless. And it happens in EVERY industry that disappears from North American shores.
It CAN be turned around. It isn’t as complicated as it seems. Complications are what are thrown at us by “experts” who have a vested interest in obfuscation… In other words, Bullshit.
Mongoose, last I looked, China was still stealing our technology. To the best of my knowledge (which isn’t a lot tech-speaking), they have not leap-frogged us to become world leader inventors. Nor have the Indians.
I always thought that as long as the other guy was stealing our stuff, I wasn’t gonna get too worried.
///
Saw a woman in the supermarket this afternoon wearing an SEIU t-shirt. She looked Mexican or otherwise Latina. Two possibilities: (1) she’s so poor she got it at Goodwill and that’s all she can afford to wear, or (2) that’s what SEIU membership is made up of any more.
Mongoose @ 91: nice screed. I’ll assume for simplicity sake that your personal claims are substantially accurate, I have no particular reason to doubt them.
Do you think the rest of the world exports tech jobs and expertise like we do? Most certainly they do not.
Favorite point.
Even those parts that have any they *could* export. Well, Japanese auto assembly plants here … but those were forced by Congress, now, weren’t they?
But this isn’t all that new, IBM has been bigger outside the US in both business and personnel since forever. What has changed, and recently, is that they have moved 100% of “non-customer facing” jobs outside the US. That’s pretty much 100% of R&D and production. Nothing subtle about it. 100% folks. There ought to be a law.
So where are our political parties, either one? Putting a tax on tanning salons. Bah, humbug.
Still, hope springs eternal. It’s Christmas! Better days.
Mongoose-Keelie
I’m just here for a few, cooking supper for a bunch of sweet girls for a sleep over.
I did my heart and mind so much good to see and read the words that both of you have just wrote and wrote well.
I spent almost forty years as a “hardware engineer” for Big Blue and I can tell you that when I mentored here at two local community colleges, after I retired, I had few students and their level of education was dismal. But I succeeded and they excelled. IBM taught me how to overcome problems and I’m naturally (I’ve been told) a good instructor, though I would say that my only prior experience was bringing up and tutoring new hires and guys that needed help and an extra push.
I could go on for pages but just wanted to say that if more people knew what you two guys do and even myself they could force those in power to start rectifying these problems. But it would take real guts and I just can’t seem to think of more than a couple that would even entertain our ideas.
Once again, pray for our Republic.
Wishes for a good Christmas to all.
Papa Ray
91/Mongoose an 93/Philip. Yes.
Oracle USA has an interesting glass ceiling. Might write about that someday. Mongoose, any idea how SAP is doing? Like Oracle, Google hires a certain type, also good and brilliant, but at the coffee shop or ramen place you can pick them out, like non-Mormons in Providence, Utah. Large monocultures are easier to manage, but they aren’t generally where innovation is thriving.
There are still excellent start-ups in Silicon Valley, small, usually trying to build a narrow scope product to sell to a larger firm down the line — IPO’s are a rarity, not the norm — and composed of small highly interactive teams including at least one “visionary”/high-level genius. The firms that are surviving the current economic mess are the ones that trimmed early, both people and scope, and are operating on a snug budget. No more foosball tables or kitchens full of free food, the youngsters who were going to raves a few years ago are now married and dealing with genius offspring and buckling down to work hard and stay afloat. They’re learning to pace themselves and I think the work product is improving — tighter code, better documentation, actually paying attention to the functional requirements and business needs instead of following whims.
One of the big shifts I’ve seen in the industry is the increase in pace. It used to take years to go from concept to product. In the last couple of years, I’ve seen rollouts in under six months. Software doesn’t require packaging or even disks — just an ftp. In some ways this is wonderful — stock doesn’t go out of date because it doesn’t exist, just post an upgrade to the website. It does, however, remove the time buffer. You don’t get an extra week to fix those bugs while you’re waiting for the printer to finish the documentation. Customers now expect an instantaneous fix — the pressure is intense.
Take heart, Papa Ray. DD goes to high school with the progeny of the pioneers — the senior people at Google and Apple, etc. — kids who perceive and manipulate information in a very different way from their parents, and we parents thought *we* were cutting edge! It’s going to be interesting to see what the kids are able to accomplish. No hive minds in DD’s crowd: the prevailing assumption is that you must make your own job. They are seeking knowledge. Most are planning to go to junior college first since we personally and the various scholarship funds lost a huge percentage of net worth when Obama took office. That whole free ride mentality? Not these kids. They’ll work the system, but they don’t expect it to take care of them.
OK, slow cooked oven b-b-q chicken with scalloped potatoes (with real cheddar cheese) with side dishes of mexican mac & cheese and sugared green beans and home made brownies are on the table with the kids tearing it all up. (well actually I hid the brownies until they are finished supper)
Milk to be served with brownies, otherwise some will fill up on milk and not eat.
I know this gang of girls better than they know themselves. I have been hosting most of them since kindergarten.
97 Sylvia
“Not these kids. They’ll work the system, but they don’t expect it to take care of them.”
Thanks for those thoughts. I’m Glad you feel that way. If my health were better and I didn’t have full time raising of my sweet, wonderful, head strong grand daughters I would be back at our local colleges right now. I’m glad for your perspective as my view for the last 14 years has been right here in West Texas.
I don’t get to travel the world anymore.
Speaking of traveling the world, my two oldest grandsons chose the Military to start their adult lives, and I have to say it was mostly because of me and me alone. They are both electronic techs and are soaking up every bit of knowledge that they are given and then even more, and advancing in rank at a very respectable rate. They too are going to use the system to their advantage, and are grateful for the chance. My youngest grandson now 13 wants to be a United States Marine (not my choice) and just wants to “kill and destroy any and all enemies of our Republic” (his words).
Well, if not for those like him we would have no Republic nor liberty, so he gets no words of discouragement from me.
On another of your many fine points, many firms here in West Texas are and have been operating on reduced budgets, except for a spurt when crude went up last. But they were more careful with their money and expenditures than they were during the earlier boom, so they are still viable and going fairly strong.
Waiting for the next boom or at least a change back to a sane Federal Government.
They are still drilling new wells and recovering old wells by the dozen around here. Texans ain’t going to let somebody else tell them if or when they can make money. Texas Sweet Crude is like ******, you can never get enough of it.
I feel for the developers, agents and oil companies that are trying to drill in other states and have had their leases revoked or tied up in court by the government and/or the eco-terrorists. Costing them millions in legal fees and lost time and assets.
And I fear it is going to get worse.
Well, gotta go make sure my kitchen is not destroyed and every body got enough to eat. The noise level from there has been kinda muted so I have high hopes that their mouths have been full and no real mischief has been commited.
Papa Ray
Have a wonderful Christmas Sylvia and a happy if not prosperous New Year.
Mongoose wrote: “Once we walked on the Moon.”
Visit NASA in Houston. It would bring a tear to your eye. A living museum, where the good stuff happened 40 years ago.
Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff” proposed that the reason the space program rode a wave of public enthusiasm in the US was that people were worried. The Soviets had won the race into space with Sputnik, and people were concerned that the US was going to go down the drain unless they did something about it.
What is interesting today is that people happily buy their Hewlett Packard printer, once made in the US and now made in Vietnam, without getting worried about the implications.
Maybe the current rising unemployment will eventually bring it home to enough people that we ought to be concerned about trade & the economy. Free trade is a great principle, but when the implementation ends up with an unsustainable situation of unbalanced trade, we need to think about how to do it better. And soon.
A lesson from history is that things can change quickly. It took Germany & Japan only a few decades to rise from utter destruction in WW II to out-producing those who had defeated them. China climbed the industrialization curve even faster. There’s no reason for defeatism. But the place to start has to be excessive counter-productive regulation.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and thank you all for your gifts of knowledge and experience throughout the year.
Jim
Just a drive-by… busy am these days, hope I can plug in a bit in the next few…
Merry Christmas to ya’ll. Wish you and yours days of happiness and peace.
I don’t have Mongoose’s experience of engineering, but in academia it is far easier for an Italian to become a professor at an American university than the reverse. The dice are loaded.
Some places are more dramatic: You can’t even become a citizen in Liberia unless you’re black. You can’t own real estate unless you’re a citizen.
OK, got all the girls a bed and a sleep. Dreaming of sugar plums and really more expensive toys. All the parents will be here early this morning with the presents from Santa and themselves.
Cookies and carrots are on the table, with notes of thanks from all of the girls (eight total) two of which are mine.
I showed them Google Earth and the route and and position of Santa as he delivered his gifts to boys and girls all over the world. They couldn’t believe it until I explained how NORAD had satellites and radar to track him. Then the were satisfied and assured.
This is what Christmas is about for kids, but they also got a small talk from me complete with a computer display of the story of Christ’s birth and it’s importance.
It was amazing as I showed and talked and read from my display on my ol’ computer. Before they were noisy and rumbustious and then as I read and pointed and explained they became entranced and quite.
Quite an experience even for an old dog like me. In fact my grand kids and their friends may be the only thing keeping me alive.
To all a good night and Merry Christmas.
Papa Ray
Back from the Senior Center. I must highly recommend that if you have an Adopt a Grandparent program where you live, it is a very rewarding way to spend a couple of holiday hours. There are some very lonely and alone people out there who appreciate even the smallest gesture of kindness and personal attention.
Cookies are made. Chile is bubbling away. Just checked Norad and see that Santa has left Cabo and heading to Tuscon, so it won’t be long ’til he reaches us here in the Inland Empire of So. Cal.
I got to open one present early. A Pajamagram with some kinda sorta sexy PJs, at least as sexy as an adult son gives his Mom. I am about to put them on and head back downstairs and wait for same son to arrive from work so we can get our Christmas under way.
I don’t know why I don’t hang out here more. What a great group of people here at Belmont Club and thanks Richard. I always read, but I rarely comment. Note to self: engage more in 2010.
Night all, and God Bless!
PS: Since we will be up very late and we have no little children here, I intend to sleep in tomorrow. So, say a prayer for my Chargers, who play at 4:30 PST Christmas day.
#68 Programmer
I just now read your post: “Programmer’s Christmas Carol.”
I’m so happy that you are here to taste those sweet delicious cookies.
Life is a long ride, we hope. I have no idea of your age but can tell you that when you get my age, every morning when your ol’ bones wake you up and you struggle to get up and put your slippers on and cripple down the hall to the coffee maker to make your morning joe…it is not only greatly appreciated, but somewhat of a surprise.
Because each night after you kiss those you love and tell them so…you know that you just might not awake.
So…keep on keeping on, and make sure you make each and every day count and take care of those you love and be sure and tell them you love and cherish them…every chance you get.
And one other suggestion. Write letters to all that you know and of course those that you love. Write them and print them out. Put them in a file like I have.
Marked: Please open upon my passing.
You will be surprised at what you write. Not only surprised but humbled and it might quite your mind and spirit.
So..here is to your continued health and to your enjoyment of everyday things and to your life and those that love you.
Merry Christmas and my hopes for you to have a long and happy life.
Papa Ray
wws,
Well, that’s how they do it in the Hindu Kush, and it sorta works for them–but yeah nobody remotely wants to see the standard of living here that this would imply…
Merry Christmas everyone. And a belated Happy Chanukah for those of us who celebrated it.
I’ve been pondering whether it is better to be a happy moron or a sentient worrier. It brings to mind two stories, one a favorite of my late Uncle Albert, the other from my grandfather of blessed memory.
My Uncle’s story was simple. Life is like a walk to the guillotine in which you are soon to be executed for a crime you may or may not have committed. On the way you notice your shoe laces are untied. Some will say, “Why bother to tie my shoes. I’m going to die soon anyway.” Others will tie their shoes just because that is the dignified thing to do. That is the difference between people.
My grandfather’s story is a variant of one by Rabbi Nachman, a famous Chassidic figure. One night a man has a prophetic dream that next year’s wheat crop will be contaminated in such a say that everyone who eats it will go crazy. He tries to warn the townspeople but they mock him and disregard his advice. Still, he saves up extra wheat from this year’s crop just in case. Sure enough, the following year produces crazy wheat and everyone who eats of it goes insane.
My grandfather had two different endings to the story. When he was more optimistic he would say, “You know what they did? They put HIM in the insane asylum.”
But when he was more pessimistic he would end the story this way. “You know what happened to him? He got so lonely that he ate the crazy wheat.”
Looking at what seems to be the inexorable drift toward the destruction of culture, of Western Civilization, of the Judeo-Christian values of America, the disregard for fairness, the outright intellectual dishonesty of our leaders (both elected and not), and the gathering storms of China, Iran, militant Islam, and the green/red coalition, I struggle not to succumb to the fantasy that the happy moron is better off than the sentient worrier.
But it does get lonely and discouraging when you choose not to eat the crazy wheat.
So thanks to W and all the others here at BC. My gratitude for all of you and for this wonderful virtual community is beyond words.
Let’s pray and act for a better New Year.
Merry Christmas to All
This is a great place and we are some of the luckiest and most fortunate people to ever live. We live in an age of miracles. Miracles that we too often take for granted.
The family is asleep as I write. Here for the holiday. They are really my spouse’s. Mine are far away. But estranged daughter stepped back into my life last night. She is soon to be Mom and now sees that Dad is more important than holding childish grudges. THAT is my Christmas present. A fine one also.
Mongoose – Your rant is right on and if and until it changes, the US will fade to backwater status.
programmer – Pray your thanks for your Christmas miracle. He has allowed you at least one more. Praise Him.
Sylvia – I told you that you should do just that, engage more.
Habu – Watch out for those falling skiers.
Remember that Christmas is The Mass of Christ or the celebration of HIM.
Ragnar
Merry Christmas, all.
Batman @ 107, loved your post but come on now. You couldn’t be a happy moron if you tried. Could you.
To Sylvia,
On excellent histories of post-Soviet Russia written by Russians and translated into English, you may be better off asking Sergey, as I am not a Russian citizen, just a Western observer of things Russian. Books like Edward Lucas’ the New Cold War and Kremlin Rising, or even the Feltshinsky Russian version of 9/11 trutherism, are really not reliable sources. The Commanding Heights actually does a decent job although it does not dwell on the human suffering from the collapse of the Soviet empire that led Putin to say it was a “tragedy”.
It’s no secret that the brain drain from the late USSR had a strong Jewish contingent. That is one of the reasons modern Russia reinstituted visa-free travel with Israel in the last two years (making an even further mockery of the fact that the Jackson-Vanik amendments remain on the books in the U.S.), to at least bring some of those folks back for projects, if not to re-settle permanently. There are a million Russian-speaking Israelis and a high percentage lean towards politically conservative positions/Orthodox to ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Not surprising when you consider they were born in a socialist and officially atheist country that they would react that way.
The Jewish Asia Times columnist “Spengler” David P. Goldman has been writing a lot about this subject of late. He seems to think some major Russia-Israel deals are in the works, especially if Israel wants friends or at least partners in this world besides BHO’s White House. But the real interest is Israeli nanotech. And of course, per Mongoose’s essay, to speak of “protectionism” in such sensitive areas, as opposed to making cheap stereos, is patently absurd. Such technology is always developed under the aegis of the state/taxpayers in every other country. Only we Americans are foolish enough to give it away or sell it.
Like many who write here I probably used to be a fairly conventional Republican, but the last few years have taught me to question them both in foreign policy (trying to nation build in the Hindu Kush as opposed to just killing a lot of Taliban, cutting deals with pro-Western/Chinese warlords, and leaving only a thin presence on the ground) and in domestic policy (the GOP’s fatal marriage to free trade uber alles ideology, which is hollowing out the old Reagan Democrats livelihoods).
Back to the diaspora question — if you ask Russians in Russia about Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, their tends to be a strong feeling of distaste. And in my experience it has almost nothing to do with anti-Semitism against a Jewish neighborhood and everything to do with Brighton reminding them of their neighbors in the late 80s and early 90s — people who wanted nothing more than to get the hell out, and have remained in that mindset ever since. Even some of the occasional anti-Russian vitriol you read from Ukrainian nationalist commenters at Russia forums online is often driven by the need to re-affirm that life-changing decision twenty five years on. Russia must remain a hellhole that someone successfully escaped from, acknowledging any progress in the last decade is anathema for some. In pop culture terms, there were a couple of gangster movies made in Russia in the late 90s early 2000s called Brat and Brat 2 which may have also cast the Russian/Ukrainian diaspora in America in a dark light. That entry is on Wikipedia.
To Papa Ray and Mongoose,
Reading your comments reminded me that I’m not alone in sensing that things have fundamentally changed in America even since I was a teenager in the 90s, as I now a Gen Yer/child of the Reagan years approaching my thirties. Quaint concepts like “training” and pairing up experienced 50 or 60somethings to apprentice entry level people seem like a joke that no one believes in anymore. I appreciate the opportunity to vent here. I understand that unemployment/underemployment of experienced people with something to share by no means clears places in the workforce for the young.
I won’t say which field I’m in exactly but it involves publishing and when I look at the “job” listings I see a host of unpaid internships in New York, that thanks to the hard times have not been filled. So what is actually happening is that companies are outsourcing what used to be meager entry level salaries to “unpaid internships” aka funding from Mommy and Daddy. Twenty to thirtysomethings are called slackers for not wanting to move out when it makes no practical sense from the USA to Italy to Germany to Japan, resulting in (hat tip to Whiskey) young women feeling their biological clocks ticking wondering where all the ‘real men’ have gone, delayed marriages, less financial stability or none at all, and finally fewer children or only one child from divorced parents, and so on in a downward social spiral. And all of this is also compounded by insanely inflated prices for housing driven by loans that have been subsidized by Uncle Sam via Fannie and Freddie, creeping inflation for food (thanks ethanol greens/King Corn state Senators, for creating hunger not just in the Third World but in America!) that makes feeding one or two people as opposed to four at a time from Costco uneconomical. I do think neighbors may be forced to band together with neighbors and cook from one big pot like during the Depression — if people can trust each other like they had to back then.
Like I said earlier in coming to Peter’s defense of more expensive but quality European or American clothing — you can buy whatever you want in America…as long as it’s Made in China, and will fall apart or Chinese-made Levi’s that will bleed all over your laundry after one wash. You can buy any food item you want…as long as it contains corn or corn syrup. Corn starch and sugars are one of the reasons diabetes has exploded in minority populations — they did not balloon like that eating corn from the farms in Mexico! I do not blame poor people only watching TV or eating at Burger King for their obesity. Try to buy buckwheat which is cheap in Eastern Europe and you get blank stares or referred to the organic Whole Foods supermarket where it’s $5 a pound, as opposed to $.40 in Russia/Ukraine (after converting from kilos).
Having spent some time abroad I am shocked at how potatoes/tomatoes/carrots and other basic fresh foods can cost eight to ten times in the U.S. what they run in Eastern Europe, when the per capita Purchasing Power is only two to three times less than in the U.S. in major cities like Moscow/St. Petersburg/Warsaw. The New York Times, not Pravda, reported that 25% of American kids are on food stamps and one out of eight adults. PPP figures assume that an American is employed with the median wage, so the editors at the Economist can replace the Big Mac index in 2010 with the Food Stamp index comparing subsidies in the U.S. to UK/EU.
A lot of conservatives are hyperventilating about socialized medicine right now. In my mind, they are just closing the barn door after the horse has left, ObamaCare will merely accelerate the trend of outsourcing rationing to a cartel of HMOs, to maintain the fiction that it is private and not government-driven rationing underway. Mainstream ‘conservative’ media like The Weekly Standard and National Review hardly ever talk about the creeping socialism via government-aligned corporations that has already happened. And of course, when NR’s editors says leave ‘helicopter’ Ben Bernanke alone, he’s doing a fine job shoveling money to the banks to fight the crisis and they condemn Ron Paul as a nutjob aligned with socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, I think William F. Buckley must be rolling over in his grave. If he were alive he’d give Rich Lowry a swift kick in the rear. Instead of standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’ he’s weakly mumbling about slowing down and how much money the banks have supposedly ‘paid back’ to TARP. How about the trillions global banks have received in guarantees from the Fed which remain unaudited?
Even the embargo against Cuba, which a handful of conservatives probably still defend, is in my view has been partially driven by the need to keep down a competitor for medical tourism/affordable long term care for seniors only 90 miles from our shores.
In Europe when you deal with the State you know who you are dealing with but in America we have Big Government corporatism where there are lots of quasi-governmental entities, like the Big Three credit bureaus. Does anyone know why a country of 300 million should only have Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax to determine the credit-worthiness of millions?
Listening to Christmas music and praying for a better 2010, or at least a year when America wakes up and begins throwing off the fetters and follies that have slowly been cast on us for these last two decades…
“Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.” Isaiah 40:4
‘Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother / and in His Name, all opression shall cease’ – O Holy Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS3vpAWW2Zc&feature=related
1 ‘Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan—
2 ‘The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a a light has dawned.
3You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder.
4For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.
5Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.
6For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor,b Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.’
Sylvia and Papa Ray,
Interesting viewpoints to say the least…
I spent a few years at IBM, and found – within the limitations imposed by the internal politics – that some creativity was encouraged. This is possibly because the founder Tom Watson had very clearly told the (IBM) world early on, that every company had to have its quota of “Wild Ducks,” for these were the greatest source of innovation. Of course it’s really difficult to ***manage*** “Wild Ducks,” so the ardent politicians in IBM couldn’t get around to supporting them (as I found out to my cost), because they preferred to control them…
Apparently Lockheed concocted something called Skunkworks, many years ago. The company, like IBM in those days, recognized that if you let certain types of individuals (Wild Ducks?) roam around freely (mentally), with a little directional prodding, you could innovate by the ton, so to speak. This too was very successful, but gradually disappeared in favour of definable cost savings and hence a higher “bottom line”.
Wild Ducks and Skunkworks… What do we have now? Well, I call it the “Curse of Credentialism”. We use credentials alone as our primary measuring rod, with little regard for the less definable (and in my experience, far more interesting) qualities of job candidates. These, if anything, inspire fear in the hearts of bureaucratically-minded managers (of which there are many).
Now I’m rambling…
So because I will not sign on to protectionism for high-tech salaries, I’m evil incarnate, and something less than a true American and/or a submoron?
Once again, I will stipulate the following:
1. I’d like to see America strong and with the best military
2. I’d like to see my neighbors employed and happily raising families of kids who will become good Americans.
3. I’d like to see Americans be innovators in tech and manufacturing and business.
The route I propose to get there doesn’t involve using the police and tax power of government to artificially maintain income streams. I deem that there needs to be a sea change in 300 million people who foolishly believe that the standard of living and security they had in 1954 is the most normal and natural way live and the historic norm. From where I sit, that is the ultimate cause of this problem. All the rest is mechanics. Remove the sense of entitlement, and everything else will fix itself.
The fact that my route to those ends differs from yours seems to infuriate a lot of BCers. Why?
My patriotism and love of country is arrogantly, ridiculously, emotionally, even immaturely attacked by such narrow-minded pomposity as I see in many posts above. The fact that I will not sign on to protectionism as the solution to the problems we face in a global labor market (be it for low-level laborers or high-tech industry types) does not make me:
1. A communist, leftist, or any such thing;
2. In the pay of foreigners who wish America ill
3. Uninformed, unintelligent, or incapable of reasoning abstract or otherwise
To those above who adjudge folks like me who disagree with them on some points of this issue to be any of these things, I would only point out that no matter how high an opinion you have of yourselves, and even if you were a thousand times smarter than you think you already are, you have neither the intelligence nor the moral authority to make said judgement, AND YOU NEVER WILL.
I’ll put my love of America and Western Civilization up against yours and come out favorably every single time.
If I were to play your game, I would accuse all of you of draping yourselves in the flag to line your own pockets, of using words like “defense” and “security” to bludgeon people into supporting government action to maintain your income stream and lifestyle. Have I done that? NO. Let’s make a deal; I won’t impugn your motives like that, and you won’t assume that I’m a commie tranzi America hater, or that I’m a submoron, simply because I disagree with some of your solutions, m’kay?
In a rare example of life imitating art, I would refer those who write these words to a scene at the end of the movie “Other People’s Money”, where a similarly bloviating character played by Gregory Peck issues a speech similarly lofty in its platitudes and accusatory and condescending in its tone, only to be (rightfully) cut off at the knees by an equally smart but less arrogant and more down-to earth speech by the character played by Danny DeVito. It’s worth watching, if for no other reason than to let the winds of pomposity and self-important self righteousness out of your sails and show you how you might look to other intelligent people.
I suppose that I should at least be thankful that your response was not one of threats of physical violence against my family, because when I got into this subject on the Rantburg site, that is exactly what I received.
I just don’t understand this hysteria.
I agree that there is a problem, I want it fixed, but I just don’t agree with your methods. Can you not just respect that? Let’s not eat our own.
The posters who ticked me off are people whose words I read every day, enjoy, and respect, immensely. I’ll continue to do so, despite our disagreements on this subject. You could at least return the favor to someone who is an American as true as yourselves.
Merry Christmas.
I mean it!
On the day we celebrate the birth of our Savior, I remembered that He knew this verse before it was written:
“For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” (Eccl. 1:18)
He also said, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8: 31-32)
That made me think again of Ecclesiastes. It has caused me a great deal more sorrow than I would have liked to know the things I’ve learned. I suspect many here would much have preferred not to know some of the hard lessons they’ve learned, not least our most gracious host. I also recognize the kindred spirits who carry every day the same deep and gnawing fear for the country that, with all its faults, remains the last, best hope for freedom and individual rights on this earth.
Our enemies, internal and external, seem to have almost reached their goals of overthrowing our economic system and making us subject to leftists aiming to force us down the road to serfdom. Between their power and the stupidity/apathy/ignorance of the masses, the balance certainly looks strongly in their favor. However, just because things look daunting is no reason to give up hope. Of all the Bible, my favorite scripture is this:
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, not the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
91. Mongoose:
What he said.
Mr. X, Sylvia, no mo oro, Batman, etc.
It may be a little difficult to comment on all the interesting points you’ve made, but “since brevity is the soul of wit, brief let me be…”
I am not an American, but I am thoroughly incensed at what America has become because of very cynical politics, to put it politely. I have visited America many times, for both business and personal reasons, and have found the people I met to be wonderfully friendly and open. I have been known to say that in America, the glass is always half-full, not half-empty. I could go on…
My grandparents – all Jews – “got out” of Russia/Ukraine, around the beginning of the twentieth century (would you believe, dirt poor). Where did they go? Glasgow, Scotland. Why? I’ll never know. From what I hear, the boat stopped at Leith, on the east coast, and the captain told them that they were “there”… possibly America. It wasn’t… My dad – a cabinetmaker like my grandad – grew up with the same Scottish accent that I carry around with me, and in the still class-ridden environment of the UK, remained close to dirt poor… After I graduated, I came over to Canada (one of the colonies you know).
So here I am – a great supporter of the American ***people*** and the American ideals as defined by your Constitution. I call myself a “North American” as distinct from a “Canadian”.
I can totally relate to the “Mentor System” – “pairing up” – that Mr. X talks about, but we’re all dealing with a “Credentialism” mindset that pays people lots of money for what they studied “somewhere-else-where-it-doesn’t-affect-the-bottom-line” as opposed to what they produce. Or how well they produce it. We could get into the whole idea of mentorship or apprenticeship within companies, and the attendant encouragement of “company loyalty,” etc., but it would not be a short discussion…
No mo uro, and some other have also alluded to the fact that it is extremely uncomfortable not playing the game. The “crazy wheat” story told by Batman says it all… And it applies to all segments of life, from commerce to religion. This not a theory; this has been my experience. But I’m still not playing the game.
Perhaps the difference, in peoples’ heads, between “making a living” and “making a killing” is the underlying problem in our economic systems…
And I said I’d be brief…
How we got here
So… I come across this at Ace of Spades… It looks to me like it could dispel what many of us are arguing. The problem is, this presentation of data is akin to the presentation of a lot of Global Warming data, it shows only one data point. Although, there is a graph of manufacturing output – with 1992 as the reference. Maybe a better set would include 50 years of manufacturing output as a percentage of GDP…
And, I have been remiss…
Merry Christmas to all.
Comment #1:
“I guess it all depends on what you consider a manufactured item.”
—
That’s what I wonder, Dan.
One thing I know, China produced more steel than Korea, Japan, and the USA.
Is this another one of those Mickey D Manufactures Hamburgers Scams?
Remember
This December,
That love weighs more than gold!
~Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon
Thank you Heavenly Father.
Final Victory will be ours!
OK — how about steel manufacturing?
This is not my area of expertise, so I could be misinterpreting these statistics. Here’s what it says on http://www.worldsteel.org for crude steel production in the month of July 2009:
World – 104 Million tons
China – 51 Million tons
EU – 11 Million tons
US – 5 Million tons
The de-industrialization of the US may have gone a lot further than even the pessimists among us had realized. No wonder we have a real un/under-employment rate of about 20% in Obama’s America.
Merry Christmas!
no mo uro @ 115: I deem that there needs to be a sea change in 300 million people who foolishly believe that the standard of living and security they had in 1954 is the most normal and natural way live and the historic norm.
I seem to have missed the middle of this discussion, but I gather you feel 1954 American standards of living are higher than can be maintained in the US today in a globalized world. I must disagree. The 2009 standard of living in the US is probably double the carbon footprint, energy footprint, etc of 1954. And yet, 2009 is also much higher on relatively low energy advances in communications, electronics, etc. I assume you would grant that a new American standard of living should at least include electricity and running water to each home, and phone service by cell or wire. If you divide the world today into those who have at least that much, and those who don’t, hey, I’d guess 50% of the world’s population *does* have these things. And in fact of that 50%, I’d guess most have something approaching a 1954 standard of living, all around the world! That includes maybe 500,000,000 in China, and maye 300,000,000 in India.
And my point, if I have one, and will only finally get around to it, is that nobody is proposing lowering all those down into the have-not category. Seems likely to me that the goal is to raise EVERYBODY in the world to something like the 1954 level over the next twenty to fifty years. Maybe a little less carbon, certainly much less NOx and SOx and O3 and particulate emissions per capita than 1954, but overall more energy usage, more food, more manufactured and electronic items. Automation and other advances make these far, far cheaper than in 1954 – even at high labor rates! That’s called productivity, and it’s what makes the labor rates high!
I take your point, but there is a more optimistic viewpoint that all can be raised, with new technologies replacing old ones more efficiently and with less pollution. I see no reason to look for cuts in ANYONE’s standard of living, returns to primitivism are not at all a necessary path for any reason I can see.
Merry Christmas all. I gave my twenty four year old unmarried (pursued by a couple good guys) daughter a handmade hope chest for Christmas. Hope is a wonderful commodity. No hope in dope, no hope in the dopes in government, but hope in the resilience and ingenuity of folks in the heartland. We can survive these empty suits and blowhards in DC and yet triumph. We’re Americans!
My country,’ tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims’ pride,
from every mountainside let freedom ring!
2. My native country, thee,
land of the noble free, thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
thy woods and templed hills;
my heart with rapture thrills, like that above.
3. Let music swell the breeze,
and ring from all the trees sweet freedom’s song;
let mortal tongues awake;
let all that breathe partake;
let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.
4. Our fathers’ God, to thee,
author of liberty, to thee we sing;
long may our land be bright
with freedom’s holy light;
protect us by thy might, great God, our King.
Merry Christmas, folks, let’s fight the good fight for our young ‘uns and their
progeny. I’ve resolved to read Churchill’s World War II books after the New Year
Fight them in the hedgerows, Jones Beach, where ever.The battle must be joined.
Good morning to all. I hope Santa was kind to everyone, he certainly was to me. My kids outdid themselves for me this year. I feel guilty because they refused to let me spend any money on them. Anyway my plan to sleep all day was quashed by three early morning phone calls.
Josh:
I was nine in 1954. We had moved into a beautiful new 4000 sq. ft. home that my father designed and built. The majority of the money for the house and lot came from money that my parents had saved from high school age up through their first eleven years of marriage. It was mortgage free when we moved into it in 1952.
Both my parents were employed. My Father as a civil engineer, my Mother as the Executive Director of a major non-profit. My Dad drove a 1946 Pontiac, his pride and joy. My Mother drove a 1951 Ford. We had a 13 in. black and white table top TV, a phone, nice appliances, but old. They were all wedding gifts dating from 1938. Our new home was furnished primarily with antiques that had come from my Grandfather’s home. He had died in 1949.
I was allowed 2 pairs of shoes, one for school, one for church. My Dad saw no reason for more as long as my feet were still growing. I got a new winter coat every other year, and a new spring coat on the alternating years. We lived in what at that time was considered the “best” area of town. It had top quality schools. My bike was a refurbished and repainted bike that my Father had gotten for my Mother during the war years when gas was rationed. My sled was one my Father used as a young boy. My Father saw no reason to buy an automatic washer when there was nothing wrong with the wringer washer they’d had since their marriage in ’38 and no dryer. We had lines in the basement to hang clothes in the Winter and in the backyard for Summer. We didn’t get our first dishwasher until 1958 after my Dad had dinner one night at a home with a dishwasher and he was so impressed at how the hostess was able to load the dishes and join the party right after dinner. He thought it was magic. My Dad had a wonderful workshop with all the tools a man could want, but most everything had been inherited from his Father or Grandfather. We took things for repair rather than just pitching them for the latest greatest new item.
My parents, as all parents of that generation, were products of the Great Depression, which meant they were extremely frugal and didn’t spend one unnecessary dime. We had a huge garden, we canned or smoked everything and my parents always took advantage of seasonal items. They bought nothing on time, not even cars. They would save until they could afford.
The major “luxury” expense was entertainment. Both my parents loved to give dinner parties and would network with lavish parties for business colleagues and friends.
I spent my leisure hours outdoors. We invented elaborate games. We jumped rope, played jacks, shot hoops, played tennis at the open school playgrounds. We played tag and dodge ball and had to be home when the street lights came on. If you got hurt, there were no law suits, in fact, more likely you got punished for being so careless. When kids got into disagreements, no one ran home to Mommy and Daddy. We settled amongst ourselves, sometimes with a bloody nose or blackeye, before we all became best buddies again.
Boys were allowed, no encouraged, to be boys. Girls were encouraged to take care of the boys and let them win because they always needed the ego boost and because, as my Aunt told me, they really are such helpless creatures. (Don’t jump on me, she said it, not I.) My Summers were spent at Scout camp and our family cottage that was built in the ’20s by my Dad, my Grandfather and my Grandfather’s brother. It was lakefront and quite nice, but it was shared by four families. This cottage is still in the family today and is shared by all the first and second cousins of those earlier generations.
Saving money was the key and it was drilled into me from the very first dime I earned catching and selling nightcrawlers for the fishermen when I was five. My Dad insisted that I save 10% of every thing I earned and I had to put a penny into my bank. When there was a lot of new home construction around our house, I got the idea to sell lemonade to the construction workers and I did very well, earning close to $25 when I was eight. My Dad sat down with me and showed me the cost of the lemons and sugar and paper cups and deducted that cost from my money and then insisted I save 10% of the net after that. I think I ended up with about $7 out of my hard-earned $25.
Today I have more stuff and so do my kids and grandkids, but is our quality of life better than 1954, I don’t think so. We were creative because we had to be, we were frugal so when we got something, we really appreciated it and treated the item with the respect it deserved. We were healthier for being outdoors so much. Very little obesity in children back in those days. And most of all, we were better educated, despite not having computers and electronic learning devices. We all had library cards and the library was a favorite hangout spot. There was ironclad discipline in school and we were expected to perform to a standard that stopped existing by the time my own kids were going through school. We started public school every morning with 10 verses read from the Old Testament, usually the Psalms, then we recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. Christmas programs consisted of the Christmas play with Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus. We sang the same beautiful Christmas carols and hymns that we sang in the church choir. I was raised a Presbyterian, but all my friends were Jewish and we would attend church or synagogue with each other every week. My best friend was Jewish, she took piano lessons from the organist at our church and was recruited to sing (she had a beautiful voice) for our church choir and no one thought that odd. I went to Hebrew School with her every Thursday afternoon and when she was preparing for her Bas Mitzvah, I knew the material as well as she did from helping her practice.
We were encouraged at home, church, and school to volunteer. We took homemade gifts to hospitals, we helped our parents with volunteer work at the City Mission, we collected money for the March of Dimes, we went Christmas caroling with our school and with our church, and we brought our dimes to school every Friday to buy a stamp which we pasted into a book. When the book was filled we turned it in for a $25 savings bond. The savings bonds I earned with my dimes helped pay for my Freshman year of college.
Frankly, if I could take my computer back with me, I think I’d rather live in 1954 than 2010. Oh, and our doctor made housecalls and made you feel he really cared about you, not just the fee you would put in his bank account. Today you are lucky to see the same doctor twice and even luckier if he remembers your name without looking at the chart.
Snow for Christmas, Doug?
I need to go find data that is measured in “% of capacity” before I comment on steel… I seem to remember some import data that shows we are net importers, though.
What I also seem to remember is shipping data that still shows available cargo tonnage is at a record high – not a sign that shows that ANY manufacturing is going on in the world… Inventories? Where’s Buddy when you need him..
Josh 125
It isn’t the the standards themselves, but the expectation – no, the DEMAND – of them that I take exception to.
Sara 127
A lovely post. Your mention of the civic joys, the things that weren’t involved with a material expectation or the demand for perfect income stream security guaranteed by the government or a union is particularly of note.
I’m glad your family produced a lot of its own food (more Americans should), and I’m glad your 1954 was so wonderful, but to think that a civil engineer and a charity worker can or should have that level of living in perpetuity, or that it represents some norm throughout history, is simply wrong. It has no basis in history other than a tiny blip for the last 2-3 generations. We have to be honest about this. It is the idea that people like that can have that kind of living, that that represents some historical norm, and that expecting that living and the income stream security that went along with it are a right, that are at the heart of our problems in this country.
The only reason a couple of people like your folks were able to have what they did for the jobs they did was the fact that the rest of the world’s industrial base was destroyed after WWII and the only place “stuff” could be built was the U.S. Therefore, the American work force could name their price. When the rest of the world rebuilt, there was competition. The laws of economics say that the cost per person for work MUST go down. But Americans went on lying to themselves that their ability to command that much material wealth and bulletproof paycheck security for their labor was now an absolute right, in their minds. The proverbial revolution of rising expectations, which has proven to have terrible casualties. This isn’t a hit on your folks, who seem like they were nice people and hard-working, it is simply an observation of the truth.
We now suffer the consequences of thinking that could go on forever. Let us hope the realization of the new reality does not destroy us from within. I for one think we have it in us to triumph over this and other issues. Maybe a corollary of the removal of unrealistic income and material expectations by workers, be they laborers or IT professionals alike, is that they will re-learn the joy of those civic things you mentioned in your post, and detox from the need for income and “stuff” in order to perceive themselves as successful. This isn’t some “green” litany, or leftist Puritanism – I am a firm believer in free enterprise and loathe both of those things – it’s a realization that we have strayed, in many ways, from what is really imprtant in life.
As I said, I think America is up to the task, but we’d better get cracking.
Sara, you predate me by a decade, but that lovely reminiscence recalls for me a world not all that far gone and one–well, who knows?–we may yet see again.
If there’s an upside to our present predicament and looming troubles, that just may be it.
Merry Christmas to all! I am thankful for our Saviour, since I am so in need of Him. I hope this Holiday finds you all happy and healthy. I’ve been busy lately, just trying to earn a living and take care of my family, so my already limited commenting has dropped considerably. But I have been reading when I can and do enjoy all your comments.
If I may, I’d like to step between no mor uro and Mongoose and say that you both have valid points. What exactly has led to the decline of American manufacturing? I agree with no mo when he says that the entitlement mentality has led in large part to this. How can we compete when our workers think they can earn upper middle class wages for unskilled or low skilled jobs? It is true that if we were willing to work for what we get, and accept what we are worth, then perhaps American manufacturing could compete. It certainly can’t when we have jobs banks where unneeded workers are paid not to work and a huge chunk of labor costs goes to pay retiree pensions and benefits.
Here’s the deal: if you are an unskilled worker and all you can bring to the job is the ability to push a broom, that is going to be reflected in your standard of living. You can expect to be able to rent a few rooms above the laundromat and eat beans for dinner. Want more? Then develop skills and work ethic such that you will be worth more and don’t use social programs and unions to extort it out of others. You work your way up to middle class by developing skills through hard work and education. It takes years and hard work to become a doctor or engineer. That’s why they get paid better, and it isn’t unfair.
So I agree with no mo uro that protectionism won’t help as long as there is an entitlement mentality among so many workers. People who expect a solid middle class life without putting in the work to develop it. I used to be a ‘free trade’ supporter, and still am in principal. However, I am in agreement with Mongoose on several points. First of all, is what we have had the last 30 – 40 years truly ‘free trade?’ I don’t think so, for several reasons.
1. We Americans have developed technology through our own ingenuity, hard work, creativity and with the financial support of Americans through government subsidized research (the internet was developed through DARPA, a government agency) as well as private investment. Yet we have given away that technology to the Asians. They are reaping free and clear those decades of investment.
2. The other nations do not truly practice free trade. My brother owns a robotics company whose main clients are auto manufacturers. He has tried for decades to break into the Japanese market. They simply will not allow an American based manufacturer in. When I asked him if he had tried Korean auto manufacturers he told me the one small Japanese company that he did manage to get a deal with did so by requiring him to sign a no competition contract, keeping him out of the Korean market for years. Years ago, in the early 80′s, when the Chinese market was just opening up, someone asked a personal hygeine manufacturer why they were so excited. His response, “there are a billion people in China, that’s two billion armpits!” Flash forward 30 years later and we are not making deodorant to sell to the Chinese. Quite the opposite, they simply have set up factories in China to make our deodorant to sell to us. Westinghouse is right now building two nuclear power plants for China, teaching them their technology, developed here in the USA, so the Chinese can then build the rest of their nuclear program on their own. And no doubt, in the future, be a competitor to Westinghouse in other markets. The list goes on. This is not ‘free trade.’
3. Even if we reduce the wage expectations of American workers, and relax the suffocating regulations, both environmental and safety, we could never compete equally with the Chinese, or other developing nations. Let’s face it, no American can live on a few dollars a day. Yet that is what the workers in the other countries get, even if you account for currency differences. They live at a much much lower level of living than we would ever accept. Furthermore, they work in often unsafe and deplorable conditions. Again, not something we are going to accept here. And Chinese factories belch out pollution that makes Pittsburgh of 1945 look clear and sunny. They destroy their lakes and rivers and about 40% of particulates in the smog over California comes from China, from clear across the vast Pacific ocean. In short, this is not a level playing field. We cannot possibly compete with that. It is manifestly unfair. It’s like we come to the fight with both hands tied behind our back and hobbled on one leg and told to fight fair, while our oppenent comes with all limbs free, with brass knuckles and is allowed to hit below the belt. We can’t possibly win a fight like that. It’s amazing that we have lasted as long as we have. So sure, we can untie one of our hands, but it still wouldn’t be a fair fight.
The last 40 years the incentive has been for American manufacturers to move their factories overseas. Sure they can try and hold out, keeping American jobs, but the problem is that their competitors won’t and then they will be undersold.
The loss of American manufacturing is a long term problem, with complex causes. It didn’t happen overnight and it won’t be solved without great pain. I am leaning more towards the protectionist camp now, simply because I do not agree that this is a level playing field and thus not true free trade. We do need to rebuild our manufacturing base, we can’t defend ourselves without one. I respect both of your viewpoints, no mo and Mongoose. Keep on writing, both of you. We all benefit when the problems of our times are hashed out by intelligent people who bring many more years of experience to the fray than I do. Who am I but an erstwhile housewife.
Sorry if I went on too long… just making up for all the times I haven’t had a chance to comment!
If you look at the strategy of American business, it is to pursue profits. Obvious you say but Japanese businesses pursue, as a matter of government industrial policy, to chase market share.
So in my industry, civilian nuclear power, when the world was adding new fleets of nuclear reactors, American businesses were the preeminent suppliers globally. They made a lot of money too.
When the leftists and environmentalists starting throwing up road blocks to new nukes globally, the market shrank considerably. In fact, we almost overbuilt but that doesn’t last. American companies responded by cutting back the nuke business.
“Neutron Jack” Walsh at GE was famous for this. He dramatically scaled by the nuclear division to a token new reactor development effort and whatever nuclear services could pay their own way at the profit levels mandated for all GE divisions.
Now, nuclear power is once again a possibly growing market. Those countries that kept their vendors alive and healthy are poised to compete.
Today, there really is no US nuclear power industry, other than operating plants. GE has almost no efforts, having run out of DoE subsidies without technical success. The other one-time US vendors are either owned by the Japanese or the French.
The industry really has become globalized. Parts come from across the planet based on cost, schedule, and technical merit to be used in plants across the planet.
There are startups in nuclear but when I look at the regulatory hurdles and the cold shoulder they get from officaldom, I don’t rate their chances hit.
So the problem is not want we want the world to be but how do we play the situation as it presents itself.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Are Americans still tough?
Merry Christmas, everyone! While the engineers duke it out here, I just want to give a long overdue thank you to the one who figured out indoor plumbing, so that I may take a hot shower every day – twice, if I feel like it! – and to see whatever I am doing even at 10:00 p.m. – THANK YOU!
Knight1
no mo uro @ 129: It isn’t the the standards themselves, but the expectation – no, the DEMAND – of them that I take exception to.
But I’m suggesting the expectation is quite reasonable, not by foot-stamping, fist-pounding “right”, just by estimation. If you want to protest the bad attitudes, I understand.
Isn’t that the problem with the green wienies that their estimations, even if earnestly believed, are so far off?
Sara @ 127 makes an excellent point, that even in 1954 the expectations, as such, were very much tempered by the Depression mind-set, not to mention the war-time scarcities, which included very puritan-style work ethics.
But Sara, in that 1954 environment a drive across the country could take weeks, a flight across the country could take all day, a ten minute phone call across the country could cost a day’s wages, a fax to Europe more than that. That doctor might come to your house, but he had little to give you but aspirin and a prognosis. Polio was still rampant, taking lives outright and crippling others every year. Cars had terrible reliability, terrible mileage, and terrible performance – compared to now. Not to mention the fluoroscopes in the shoe store, lead in the paint, killing smog in Pittsburg, chronic smog in LA.
One could go on, but I’m just making the point, 1954 is a very “modest” baseline, and really, looking *backwards* is no way to even establish a baseline.
One would hope, if we were smashed down to bedrock, we could maintain some memory and rebuild much faster and more intelligently and not repeat all of our mistakes. Anyway, since we have not (yet…) been smashed down to bedrock, we can intelligently engineer forwards and my estimation is we can do a lot better than 1954 in any material measurement. Heck, we can do better than now, that’s my real position.
On the non-material issues, well, that’s totally another discussion.
–
I was a few years younger than you in 1954, Sara … and I guess I still am!
“I was nine in 1954. We had moved into a beautiful new 4000 sq. ft. home that my father designed and built. The majority of the money for the house and lot came from money that my parents had saved from high school age up through their first eleven years of marriage. It was mortgage free when we moved into it in 1952.”
4,000 sq. ft. mortgage free! Who ever heard of such a thing in 2009? The rest of your post makes me miss my own grandfather who was an engineer, who I never knew, and remember what was lost before I was even born.
The question that has bugged me is: What is the benefit to wrecking the economy? I think I have an answer.
Crisis.
With the economy in collapse the flow of goods and services will screech to a halt, including food for the cities. Obviously the cities will explode in food riots in very short order. This presents two opportunities. First, the imposition of martial law during which the population with registered guns can be disarmed. Second, the food production and distribution system can be nationalized.
Starving people don’t rebel against the hand that feeds them, especially if they’ve been disarmed.
This might be off topic.
I woke up this Christmas morning to find that my neighbourhood was an armed camp. Obama has come to Kailua. He has rented out three mansions down the road from me.
I can NOT go to the beach in front of my home. There are four navy gun boats in the canal. No one can paddle or sail in the canal. The sub-division in which he has decided to stay is now closed with concrete blocks.
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/assets/gif/M11490771225.GIF
If you do not happen to live in Kailua you get to see the rock star/lifestyles of the rich and egocentric version of the invasion:
http://news.yahoo.com/video/politics-15749652/inside-the-obamas-winter-white-house-17278811
“On the non-material issues, well, that’s totally another discussion.”
—
Josh, 134:
Isn’t it obvious that the “non-material issues” put real constraints on what is possible in every sphere of endeavor?
Langley:
Maui is No Ka Oi!
Evacuate, we’ll care for you!
“There are four navy gun boats in the canal.”
You never know where or when a Yemeni Boomer might show up.
On the effects of free trade on industrial capacity, and national security and consumer culture, my position is closer to no mo uro‘s than to Mongoose‘s but I do understand both sides. I deplore the low expectations and self destructive behavior of so many that manifests itself in the imports of nondurable goods, poor education, susceptibility to manipulation, empowerment of Left wing media elites and corrupt politicians, destructive tax fiscal and regulatory policies, and the flight of, first manufacturing and then engineering, jobs overseas. The dysfunctional behaviors that start in what can be called proletarian culture have spread through society.
If I spoke any more forcefully on the need to cultivate traditional values and standards in order to both maintain the sinews of our defense establishment and guide the essential proletarian segment of society into a productive pattern of consumption and savings, and politics, then I would get accused again of being a nose in the air naval officer who doesn’t appreciate the honest and well educated troops. My point is just that to attain the goals that I think we all want calling in the government and saying that there ought to be a law that stops people from buying “unnecessary” big screen TVs is the wrong way to go. It is not a Libertarian position, I am not one, to say that giving more power to the government and hiring more GS-5, 7 or 9 clerks is not a good idea. The problems are real and we need to work on them in politics, education and in the media. Calling for trade barriers does not help.
For example we have a problem that trillions of dollars flow to Islamist regimes like KSA and Iran. Banning the import of oil from those countries will not improve our position. What will improve our position is drilling in the US and offshore, refining and purifying coal and developing other sources such as shale and building nukes. If we follow that policy while using our technological skills to improve efficiency and at the same time buy up every drop of arab oil we can then in a few years we will be free of the oil yoke and they will be back to being often ignored pests in the desert.
Some may argue that we should have fought a war for oil and paid back KSA by seizing the wells in the Eastern Province while using our control of Iraq to knock the price of oil down to $5/bbl. That would have bankrupted Putin and Chavez on the spot and broken OPEC while putting China and Japan in a better relationship with the US. That question of might have been alternatives will get debated for centuries and to me it is more a technical than a moral issue. The problem we now face is the same one Vladimir Lenin did, “What Is To Be Done?”
Sara (Pal2Pal),
Wonderful blogging memoir.
Whitehall,
Well said, my point is that if we strengthen at home we will have the advantage to open markets in negotiations. Carts and horses.
Langley,
There goes the neighborhood.
You can tell a gentleman who boozes
by the company he chooses.
Then the pig got up
and slowly walked away.
To be blogged under Lenin’s title.
The only reason a couple of people like your folks were able to have what they did for the jobs they did was the fact that the rest of the world’s industrial base was destroyed after WWII and the only place “stuff” could be built was the U.S.
Although I agree on the 2nd part of this statement, I’m not so ready to agree on the first. I do realize that there were many areas of abject poverty. In fact, my Mother would cart me around to some of the small mining towns that dotted the surrounding area and I saw real poverty up close, but always with the lesson that I should appreciate what I did have through the hard work of my family.
I don’t agree “The only reason a couple of people like your folks were able to have what they did for the jobs they did was the fact that the rest of the world’s industrial base was destroyed after WWII.” They had what they had because they saved the fruits of their labors, spent frugally on items they knew would last and they never lived their lives thinking they had to keep up with the Joneses. They lived within their means, never accumulated debt and never operated with a deficit. My Dad came from generations of farmers going back before the Revolution in Pennsylvania and before that Wales, my Mother came from seafarers, whalers, and merchants who made their living from these endeavors on Long Island and in the trade between England, France and the new country of America from the mid-1600s. Although my Mother was better educated than my Dad, they both struggled to work their way thru college as the Great Depression closed in. My Mom had a Masters in economics from Berkeley and made $11 a week on her first job and $13 a week at her 2nd. My Dad worked the oil fields of Texas to get thru college and then got a job as a civil engineer with the WPA and then later with a private company who built many of the bridges you see throughout the country. My Dad believed luck came to people who were prepared for the opportunities presented along their path and preparation meant education and hard work learning from the bottom and never being afraid to get your hands dirty. Neither would ever take a handout and both are rolling over in their graves at the idea that their daughter and grandchildren should have to subsidize someone else’s lifestyle, healthcare, housing, etc. My Dad died at the young age of 49 and I was 13. My Mom picked up the slack and went on to a highly successful career as an executive, published writer, artist, musician, and consultant. Preparation and a solid nest egg helped her continue to support us and put me thru college. Although many well-meaning but butinsky neighbors/friends were constantly cautioning me about how our lifestyle would need to change after my Dad died and my Mother was sole support, I never noticed the difference. My parents were so frugal all the time, I never had all that much to begin with and nothing really changed, except that the first thing my Mom did just days after she buried my Dad was buy an automatic washer and matching dryer, but she did that because she no longer had the time to do the laundry the old-fashioned way. And just before the moon landing she bought her first color TV so she could watch it in living color. And because she loved music so much, at some point she bought herself a high quality stereo system, but that was long after I’d left home as was the color TV. And I finally talked her into her first computer when she was 87. Little did I know I was creating a monster. Within a year, she was writing programs and doing the most incredible artwork on her computer and then she found out that some of her long lost friends had email and that she could tour the Louvre in a virtual tour from the comfort of her bedroom and she was hooked. When she found out that she could enjoy an after dinner rousing game of email Scrabble with her daughter who was 3000 miles away, she told me that it didn’t get much better than that. The day we left CompUSA together with her new baby, was a day I created a computer geek of the first order. Did I mention she was 87 at the time?
Doug – I was wrong.
I went back to take pictures.
The gun boats are Coast Guard.
Killing smog in Pittsburg (CA)? no, but there was indeed smog in Pittsburgh (PA).
Sara, thank you for your charming story. I too, wouldn’t mind going back to 1954, in spite of no mor uro’s #129 attempt at a takedown.
BTW In OPM, Danny Devito was just another corporate raider, living off of other people’s productive output. Anything he said is meaningless. He was a destroyer, not a producer.
Langley,
Yeah, just another friendly visitor.
When we are confronted by the trappings of modern royalty, I am always reminded of Bess and Harry Truman’s trip around the country after Ike was elected.
No driver for their Plymouth, just Harry.
No special arrangements necessary, they often simply stayed overnite at friends houses.
We’ve come a long way.
FWIW
Sara,
From your description of your parents, I assume your mom did not join in on the derogatory comments about your husband.
Is that correct?
Mr X interesting, not politically corrected though. I appreciate you didn’t bring medals for proving that you’re better aware than the others
Sarah, We could also narre the same souvenirs in Europe too
Merry Christmas to all! We’ve had a nice day here in Texas so far (although a lot colder than I would like!) If anything I wrote insulted you, Mongoose, that was certainly not my intent and especially at this time of year I wish to extend peace and goodwill towards all!
I have quite a bit of experience as an engineer myself; I started off as an oilfield engineer drilling oil and gas wells throughout the 80′s and part of the 90′s, then did some property development, and then decided it would be useful to go back and get my law degree, which is my current career. What all of these pursuits have in common is the thought process required – whether it’s engineering, or commercial development, or business law, an engineer (or a lawyer) has to be very disciplined in his or her thinking to be effective. You must always remember that emotion and wishful thinking get you nowhere.
And I suppose this was my overall impression of your post in #91, Mongoose – I sympathize with your emotions and goals, I really do, but you’re not thinking like an engineer. (or at least you’re not writing like one) What I mean by that is:
I’m sure you remember how you had to do think when you were working – an engineer starts with Point A – you are here. (and you must do an honest assessment.) Next you considered Point B – what is your destination/goal? That’s usually the easiest part of the problem. The hardest part is always Step 1: What concrete step do I take/support tomorrow to move me towards my goal? This is the only really important part. And as soon as this is achieved, what is the next concrete step? And then what is the third? You must build a hard pathway all the way to your goal, and every step has to be reasonable and do-able. And then you have to consider – does Step 1 do anything to make Step 2 easier or lead to it as a natural follow on? And what about all the others – how do they interact? And of course, you have to examine the risk/reward ration for each step – does anything you’re doing have the potential side effect of blowing your entire project up? (when I was doing oilfield work, that was often a very literal possibility!) Or will you walk yourself step by step into a cul-de-sac with no way out? Easy to do, it’s what I think Obama and the dem’s have done right now.
If you don’t have a reasonable step by step plan to bring you to your goal, then you don’t have any plan at all, just emotion. That, unfortunately and meaning no insult, is all I got out of your comment #91. Maybe I’m assuming too much by imagining how you intend us to move towards your goal. If you plan to make changes which step by step might get us there over the next 30 or 40 years, I think you may have something. But I don’t get the sense that you’re thinking about a time frame like that – and remember, the only levers any of us have to pull are laws and public policy. What laws do you change, what public policies would you institute to achieve your goals? When I said that you were underestimating the downside of your ideas, I meant that you have not considered the destructive downside of the changes you would have to make to enact the policies you are advocating. And yes, there are *always* downsides to every course of action, you know that. They must be faced, and there are times when we have to admit that our goal is not achievable because of them. That’s when a total rethink is required. Some goals just are not achievable, no matter how much we wish they were, and you have to be willing to accept that in order to be effective. In oilfield terms once you know that hole is dry, you’ve got to quit drilling, take the loss and move on.
I’m sure you’ve heard the old truism about military plans – amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics. Please, I am not trying to imply I’m one and you’re the other, that’s not what I mean, that’s just the kind of focus I’m trying to bring to this discussion. HOW do you do what you want to do? Why will those plans work in the real world, and how will they by supported? High sounding goals are all well and good, but what’s the actual plan?
wws — with all due respect, your #148 sounds like the sort of bureaucratic rationale for doing nothing that many of us have (unfortunately) heard in other contexts.
“… remember, the only levers any of us have to pull are laws and public policy.”
Not so. How about individual choices, for example? Any of us can choose to put an item marked “Made in China” back on the shelf at the store — I know I have. Any of us can tell the salesman at the Toyota dealer that we will look only at vehicles assembled in the US.
Laws and public policy have failed us, wws. To be more precise, lawyers and politicians have failed us. That is the heart of the problem. We the People will have to find another way.
#148 wws
mother goose is of the favorite type of women that Whiskey is referring to, the modest ones that dream to equal the inflated Rambos
All one need do is look at the tech transfer to the EU space program,
sure, mother goose as a good Sister Theresa, was keen to let us develop Ariane space industry LMAO