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| Economy |
| Americans won't be paid for being American any more |
| 2016-04-01 |
| Donald Trump argues that America's problem is that it has sent its wealth overseas. Exactly the opposite is the case: America's problem is that the world's wealth came to America, and bought subprime mortgages. At the peak of the housing bubble America imported capital each year equivalent to 6% of GDP. Everyone from China's central bank to Arab sovereign wealth funds to German provincial-government banks bought American mortgage debt until the housing bubble crashed. Virtually all of the world's available savings came to the United States. ...A vast army of white-collar warriors supported the grand migration of capital. Americans dropped whatever they were doing and became real-estate agents and mortgage brokers. The financial industry recruited math whizzes from university graduating classes to manufacturer ever-more-complex financial instruments. Opportunity abounded as the world's capital knocked on America's door. Americans, to be sure, spent the money piled at their doorstep on cheap imports from China and other aspiring countries. ...Then came the inevitable crash. Home prices collapsed and well-paying white collar jobs disappeared. The brother-in-law who made $150,000 a year as a mortgage broker in 2007 was unemployed in 2009 and driving a FedEx truck in 2010--or doing nothing at all, as the labor force participation rate collapsed. Americans became downwardly mobile, as I showed in a March 1 essay, and along came Donald Trump to tell Americans that their misery was all the fault of illegal immigrants and rapacious foreigners. Not so: during the decade before the 2008 crash, Americans were being paid for being Americans. Their forefathers had built the world's strongest democracy and most open capital markets, and they were living off the rent they charged to foreigners to come in and use it. Meanwhile Americans under 25 somehow sank to the bottom of the international rankings for skills in literacy, math and technology. If you're paid simply for being American, why not spend your high-school years with Grand Theft Auto? Trump recalls Mortimer Duke at the end of Trading Places, shouting, "Turn those machines back on!" Building a wall with Mexico and restricting Chinese imports won't help. What Americans need is tough love. Whether they will take it is another story. But if they don't, America will look a lot like Britain in its post-industrial decline. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #8 What Spengler missed is there are two Americans (based on class, not race) and Trump is talking about one and Spengler about the other. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2016-04-01 15:14 |
| #7 What doesn't get mentioned in this article: The American Mandarin Class are going to 'help' the Proletariat by unemploying more of them. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2016-04-01 14:42 |
| #6 #4 P2k, look at the sentence I've emphasized. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-04-01 13:57 |
| #5 All those Euro investors in the American |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-04-01 12:37 |
| #4 Anybody who was dumb enough to back some of those mortgages deserves to lose their money. Besides, when the bubble burst it was the American taxpayer who got ripped off to keep the crooked bankers and politicians afloat. The author is trying to rewrite history. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2016-04-01 11:51 |
| #3 As a follow-up to #2, "bearing enough children to prevent demographic collapse." Goldman makes some valid points but fails to mention birth control and modern medicine as the antidote for the inconvenience of children. When all else fails, follow greed and money. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2016-04-01 08:43 |
| #2 A bit about the author. Emphasis added at the last sentence: As "Spengler", Goldman wrote about a wide range of topics, varying from music theory to culture and religion (Goldman himself is an Modern Orthodox Jew), but his main focus was geo-economic and geo-political issues. In his 2011 book How Civilizations Die Goldman revealed his worldview at length, inspired by Franz Rosenzweig and his "The Star of Redemption".[citation needed] According to Goldman, following in Rosenzweig's footsteps, beliefs about the past and future decide the fate of nations, since the propagation of one's culture is an imitation of immortality, the desire for which is so strong that it shapes history. So a nation's future is heavily influenced by what provides it with a vision of life after death: religion. Goldman thinks that the true strength of a nation is exposed during the encounter with the modern age, with globalization and an open and changing array of perceptions and ideas. The common tendency, especially in Europe, to nationalize religion by adding to it a pseudo-Hebraic belief that the nation is the divinely 'chosen people' condemns peoples to downfall when their nationalism (and the religion it is entwined with) is ruined by political circumstances.[citation needed] When religion and patriotism are thus destroyed, a people loses hope for the future and therefore ceases to bear enough children to prevent demographic collapse. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2016-04-01 08:35 |
| #1 Exactly the opposite is the case Except for the Military Welfare system that costs America hundreds of billion, generation after generation, and grave yards after grave yards. Somewhere, that is not included in this calculation. Why is America expected to carry first world countries? Western Europe since the early 80s matched American in population and combined GDP, but expects American to protect their source of oil and maintain open sea lanes. Their good for 'show' and 'contributions' but you know who bears both the vast bulk of the financial and operational burden. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-04-01 08:34 |