[quote=briansd1][quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
I think we are about to see the entire societal construct, especially the post-WWII welfare state as epitomized by the Eurozone, get swept away.
[/quote]
And what is to replace it?
Will that prove beneficial to the average American?
As eaves pointed out before, the period after WWII saw millions of Americans entering the middle-class and acquiring an education for the first time ever. America was a young country with great social mobility (at least for Whites).
Generations later, people are more entrenched in their social classes. Institutions have become old and stagnant and mainly concerned with perpetuating their power.
If the social safety net is dismantled, will we see a return to the social stratification of the 1920s?
[quote=Arraya]
After that is done – then the revolution comes:)
[/quote]
And what will the revolution bring us? There are no guarantees that the revolutionaries will be able to lead. In most likelihood, they won’t. I personally don’t want a bunch of proletarians without education or understanding of economics running the world.
What about the transition period? Did you consider that there will be a period of untold suffering and poverty?
Why are you so eager for a collapse of the exiting order when you are unsure of the future?
I feel more comfortable with Mend it, don’t end it.[/quote]
Brian: This is interesting. On the one hand, you accuse conservatives of wanting to “conserve back in time” (meaning a preservation of the way things were and/or the Old Order). On the other hand, you’re arguing for exactly the same position, especially when you adopt the Dems stance on Big Labor, meaning a return to the American Golden Age of Manufacturing, when GM, US Steel and other large manufacturers could engage in self-destructive labor practices and union deals that essentially destroyed American competitiveness.
Which is it? A return to the old days, when union workers were compensated far in excess of value, especially with health and pension benefits that, in some cases, ran for longer than their working careers. Or, a more competitive, leaner workforce operating in right-to-work states.
That question is at the heart of the NLRB versus Boeing situation right now, when the government is according itself the power to tell an American company when and where it can operate and under what guidelines.
You act as though, when the revolution eventually comes, you’re going to be in a position to say, “Uh, no thank you, I’m quite content with the status quo ante”. Not how it works, bub, and the tremors being felt in the Eurozone are the precursor to a societal change of cataclysmic proportions. Similar to the battles being waged over public unions and the unfunded and unaffordable benefits and pensions schemes we’re presently confronting.
Both the Dems and the GOP are fighting the last war. The world has irrevocably changed and Big Money (GOP) and Big Labor (Dems) have been caught flat-footed and unprepared and with no viable tools in the box. Why do you think that everything Obama (and Dubya before him) and Bernanke and Congress are throwing at the problem isn’t working? Wrong tactics for the wrong war.
