Polls: Obama Can't Stop the Rot...
But Can Anyone?
by Dan Ehrlich



Confidence in Government Plummets as Reality Bites
New opinion polls reveal most Americans feel the nation is in decline and President Obama's efforts to stem this has been ineffective. The first reactions of the media to this has been to paint the President as losing touch with his electorate.

“The president isn't here to solve the nation's problems on a political calendar. He is here to solve the nation's problems as they exist," is how Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs answered the news media..

But a Wall Street Journal survey revealed the depth of the economic pessimism among the electorate -- with only 26 percent of those surveyed believing that the economy will improve over the next year, down 47 percent from a year ago.

Obama argues that his policies headed off a far deeper disaster and warns Republicans would revive policies that sparked the crisis and would consign America to perpetual economic purgatory. Yet his policies at best will be a short-term fix.

Again, here's where politicians from all parties refuse to level with the American people. And that's because whether liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, their devotion to a free and open market is set in stone.

Every administration since Ronald Reagan's has been tied to supply side monetarism based on a open and free world market where our workers compete with Chinese and Indian workers and industries. Here's where Obama is no different from the rest. He cringes at talk of restrictive trade barriers and extols the one-world market, the very thing that has pinned us to the Chinese economy.

And that’s because America has maxed out its credit card. President Bush, largely through his own personal war, had mortgaged the country to a greater extreme than Ronald Reagan did. And Obama has continued this with his massive bailouts. Today, with much of our debt being taken over by foreign countries to keep us afloat, we as a people no longer control our destiny.

A main reason the US economy hasn’t nose-dived even faster than it has is due to the United Arab Emirates and China buying up the US debt. Why? Do they want to own a superpower? Yes, but more important, they want to keep the Gulf oil flowing to China so it can make more junk that can be sold to is in the consumer West.

Now with his new stimulus bill, one that Obama promised would be a priority during his election campaign, he hopes to create FDR New Deal style public works projects that will employ thousands of workers.

I suggested one such project, an ambitious yet vital trans-continental canal to carry water to the parched southwest. This would create thousands of jobs and revenue. Read http://hard-truths.blogspot.com/2010/08/transcontinental-aqueduct-could-solve.html But even this won't get to the core of the problem that's slowly destroying this nation...our own glutenous consumption that has made low cost goods from Asia mandatory at the expense of our own more expensive industry. Read http://hard-truths.blogspot.com/2010/07/regression-new-reality-by-dan-ehrlich.html

Your first reaction may be to stop buying foreign made goods and even boycotting Wal-Mart, insisting on firms selling American made goods. Then you might protest to the President and Congress that we should enact trade barriers to keep foreign goods out of the country.

But, realistically, foreign goods are a lot like illegal drugs and illegal aliens, they're here because there's an enormous market in America for them. And the main reason for that is we simply can't find many American made good these days. They have been driven out of existence and it's hard to see how they magically can reappear. Even our bailed out car makers get much of their parts from Asia. And, my Japanese Sony laptop says made in China on it.

What will probably happen is this: As we become poorer and China richer, the Chinese will move their factories here to make stuff even cheaper for us to buy. The result will be loads of new jobs for the new low wage American worker.

You see, we can't maintain our present individual consumption rate if our economic fortunes keep declining. Already part-time work and having two jobs has become normal for millions of citizens. Americans are now looking for work that Americans formerly wouldn't do. With all this our living standard will also drop along with the consumption rate. In this way we will eventually see our new reality.

Yet, politicians such as Obama won't give us these hard truths. They, as well as the news media, seldom bring up Reagan's introducing America to supply-side economics as a cure for our massive ever growing consumer demand and how it has impacted the country. That's largely because they don't want to take the radical steps that would be needed to rebuild the economy. Yet, recently, Reagan's finance director David Stockman admitted the massive negative effect Reganomics has had on America.

Now, we find ourselves in a situation where our only realistic alternative is eventual life as a low wage nation with more frugal spending habits.

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