Unlike you spd, I can separate my own desire to buy cheap from the needs of the economy.
The US economy needs more growth and the EU desperately needs growth.
The EU opted for austerity and reform but they killed growth. As you know, growth compounds over the years. EU standard of living are falling behind and they will have a hard time catching.
Unlike you, I don’t give a flying tinker’s damn about an sham economy whose only goal seems to be to keep people on a treadmill.
Most “growth” is fucking bullshit anyway. Unless it’s an electric car, are we really better off driving cars that are new vs 5-6 years old? Are we really better off having the latest and greatest iToy vs keeping our phones 3-4 years? Are we really better off with 2000 square foot houses vs 1000 square foot apartments and wasting energy with power dryers vs hanging laundry on a balcony?
Why is innovation for the sake of innovation needed? Does it really make people happier? Life expectancy in most EU countries is very similar to ours. Yet people work less and have more free time. If anything, their standard of living (as far as having more time to themselves vs owing it to the company store) is higher than in the US, since free time is the one commodity you can’t easily make more of. Level of paranoia is also less since non-Anglo countries aren’t as poisoned by the American media. Imagine kids in San Diego walking to school without parents starting at age seven or eight.
Let prices deflate to the point where people can survive on a 30-35 hr per week average work week, with civilized amount of vacation REQUIRED for ALL workers, not just those who “earn” it. Nationalize health insurance to reduce fixed costs of hiring. And have a happy society vs one that’s obsessed with things built in 3rd-world shitholes at 50 cents per hour.
Isn’t the idea that everyone of working age should participate in the economy at forty or fifty hours per week really arbitrary? And a means of social control! If you’re slogging nine or ten hours a day, answering email after hours, commuting two hours a day, come home dog-tired to take care of your family, where’s the time to protest or even read much? And if you go to a protest, you might end up with a criminal record that effectively bans you from working … and there are the student loans and mortgage to pay.
Basically, the average American doesn’t know how much he/she is being held by the short hairs, and the bankster swine at the Fed are just perpetuating that. It’s the same thing as artificial shortages in the former USSR, except that instead of waiting in bread lines, we’re waiting at the office or in traffic on the freeway. MURKAH! YEAH! RAH-RAH!
