Amerika

From the bloviation files:

It’s no accident that China and Japan, for example, have been both producer-driven economies and nations of savers. We have to slowly shift back to being a producer-driven economy. It will be difficult and painful, but we have to spend less and produce more goods and services that other economies around the world want to buy.

Business Week

He’s not saying end the consumer economy.

He’s saying export so that consumers elsewhere become our buyers.

While this is short-term sense, the long-term problem is that the consumer economy worldwide is destructive.

What we need instead is a cooperative economy that’s self-sustaining and not growth-based, as his suggestion above is.

Unfortunately, that means we cannot support useless people; cooperation requires that most people be productive (a small allowance for the elderly, the injured, a few retarded kids here and there).

And that’s politically unacceptable. Maybe in addition to consumerism, we need to throw out politics — the idea that what most people want is the best goal.