"Sleep Now in the Fire" - Rage Against the Machine
There seems to be a glimmer of recognition out there that what is going on in the global economy is much more profound than a run of the mill recession -- even a quite severe one. Pundits finally seem to be grasping that the western economies are in a box from which escape will not be easy. Beyond that though, the prescriptions for recovery seem to be wanting. Thomas Friedman gives us the classic upper middle class striver solution -- study harder, work harder, be more productive. This is something that Friedman's professional class readers will intuitively relate to -- they are people who think of themselves as winners in a world of competition, people who got into the best colleges, law schools, medical schools, business schools -- people who became partners at big law firms and investment firms and the like. It is inconceivable to many of these folks that they, too, could somehow be rendered obsolete, that a world of unbridled competition, one in which their professions cease to be protected by licensing and state and international boundaries, is one where they might just be another superfluous and overpaid bit of personnel.
Nouriel Roubini weighs in with a similarly themed column, one that has more intellectual weight than Friedman's. but seems in the end to have a similar conclusion. And Joe Nocera looks to the forces of commerce to save us -- asking plaintively "what is business waiting for?" I've actually liked Nocera's early work as an opinion columnist, but this seems silly. Business is going to hire people when there is sufficient demand to buy that which workers produce -- individual firms are not going to waste money investing in workers who produce products or services that will not be purchased. Stimulating such demand must in the end fall to government.
(One false premise in Friedman's column and one reflected in much of current opinion is that the American social safety net is unsustainable. It's not. Unlike some of our European counterparts, we have a revenue problem, not a problem with overly generous common provisions to the citizenry. And, as Warren Buffet so ably pointed out, we have an easy solution to our revenue problems.)
The next "big idea" we need on the political/economic spectrum is one that helps get us through this moment of massive deleveraging and dislocation, while moving us toward some sort of equilibrium in terms of economic power. A world in which capital has its way virtually all of the time is simply not a world any of us should want to live in -- and all of the study and hard work and skills building is never going to change that.
Or as Thomas Frank put it far better than I can, praying to the God that sucked is always going to be an act of futile obeisance.
