"Point is the economy is in a shit hole"
I kind of agree with MM on this. The employment rate sucks, and it's not getting better. But, it's not Obama's fault. Everything we buy except for our food and energy is produced elsewhere. Bush triggered his Great Recession at a really bad time for globalized America.
There is no question the economy is going thru a structural one. It started well before the 2008 recession. Employment and income growth under the Bush administrations was very lackluster and anemic. Like many cities in this country have done or are doing, the US needs to undertake a structural transformation of its economy.........to reinvent itself as a nation along the lines of what Germany has done. And yet there is neither the will among captains of industry nor those in the federal govt who rule. With industry, they are more concerned about what their bottom line and what their shareholders think. And with gov't we have a very partisan group that stands in the way of innovation and change.........see Solyndra. And as you say, the Great Recession triggered by Bush just made everything so much worse.
So what's happening is there are city states like SF, Portland, Seattle, SLC, Des Moines, Denver, MPLS, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, DC, NYC, Boston, Raleigh-Durham etc doing very well.......and the rest of the country not so much. The have cities have recognized that change was necessary and have taken the steps to make that change possible. Sadly, the have not cities are uninterested in taking the same kind of steps the have cities have taken. And unfortunately, there is no national effort to bring up the have not cities to the level of prosperity of the have cities.
Its the national effort that is the key. There has to be a more concerted effort on the part of the federal gov't to undertake a structural transformation of the economy.........first to recognize the US will never again be the leader in regular manufacturing...............the Germans focus and place their emphasis on hi tech/advanced product design like scientific instruments; they leave heavy manufacturing to countries in the Eastern Bloc or Mexico......the US needs to do the same; secondly the US needs to enhance its role as an important R & D center, playing off the fact that the US has a lot of world class universities that produce the kind of people who can do important R&D; thirdly the US needs to seed new and emerging industries and not go into partisan political attacks or palpitations whenever one fails ala Solyndra; fourthly the US has great need for infrastructure improvement/repair as well as new infrastructure like hi speed rail...............the US needs to make that into an industry of sorts where people who are not well educated can participate and make a decent salary. Finally, the US needs to get industry to reduce their focus on shareholder concerns and do what's best for the country. I am not sure how you instill national pride into the people who run our major corps but its got to be done so that they ask themselves the question.......how is what I am doing helping or hurting the country.
All of the above is antithetical to the current incarnation of the GOP. They stop any attempts at progress whenever any of the above approaches are presented to them. And its not because they are the opposition party. Its much deeper than that. Many of their politicians come from a region of the country that is just not as advanced as the rest of the country. Their lack of education and insights makes them very resistant to change. They don't like the fact the nation has become racially diverse; that the laws don't allow the entitlement they feel they deserve; that its become harder for them to make the kind of money they have made in the past by less than scrupulous methods. They are angry, bitter and stuck in their ways. And unfortunately, they have enough political clout to stop everything in its tracks.
We are watching a nation in decline that shouldn't be in this position. And sadly, the GOP is proud that they have put us there. |
