The Biggest Transformation of Our Times

[gla22]

After reading through the New York Times, the WSJ, the LA Times, Drudge, BBC News and the Economist the past week I have seen a lot of narratives. There is the narrative global warming is a hoax attached to stories about freezing cold temperatures, the narrative that the earth is slowly increasing in temperature, narratives detailing how Pat Robertson is a modern Patrick Henry, narratives that Pat Robertson is as bad as Hitler. Narratives about the plight of homeless children in NYC and how the government should do more and narratives on how the parents are drug addicts who squander their assistance buying drugs.

The one thing that all these narratives have in common is that none of them matter. It is also true that when reporting news on free trade deals, immigration, GDP growth, sovereign debt levels there is a surprising lack of narrative although how they connect is clear from a series of widely available economic reports by the U.N., IMF ect. that receive little coverage.

It is apparent that our lives, our economies, our physical environments are being rapidly transformed by technology and globalization yet most news outlets are not reporting on how these forces fit into a narrative that explains how our lives our changing and how the world will look 10 years from now. Instead if they even bother to touch on these topics and expand on the effects they mostly focus on positive anecdotal stories instead of looking at the big picture. Because of this gap in understanding, politicians do not feel any public pressure to respond in ways to these forces to protect the common interest.

For us, members of this forum, we generally compose the upper to upper middle class, of modern industrialized nations. We work for a living, pay a good share of the taxes yet we currently allow our governments to ignore what is in our interest. Free trade, increased immigration and less international capital controls, combined with the already revolutionary aspects that technology has brought including higher birth rates in the developed world, longer life expectancy, more automation is fueling a race to the bottom for the middle class in developed countries. Wages decrease, taxes increase or stay the same, and immigrant populations strain public resources and hurt unity as assimilation stops and different value systems and culture divide people.

To prevent the decline and stagnation in real wages, the increase in debt, the overpopulation of our environments, and the growing economic divide it is necessary that new criteria are used when selecting politicians. Politicians should be anti-globalist and should promote and enforce barriers to trade with countries with dissimilar wages and human rights, politicians should limit immigration (both legal and illegal) which drive down wages and create tension. In countries with high birth rates efforts should be made to curb population growth. Although increased population results in increased growth, all growth is not equal, and overpopulation unnecessarily stresses food, water and energy resources in many regions. Our governments are delaying the inevitable with massive deficit spending and borrowing, propping up aggregate demand while enriching the top .5%. Within our lifetimes the U.S. will have its own sovereign debt crisis, the wealth of our nation will have been squandered and siphoned instead of spent creating a sovereign wealth fund and the U.S. will be in the same position as the PIIGS are now, except in our case there will be no one to bail us out.

[Mr.Bill]

[The Dharma Bum]

I'd say we've already squandered our wealth. If it weren't for the dollars status as world reserve currency we would be feeling the same pain PIIGS are already.

Those states are literally stealing everything in their banks over 100K, that will happen here too, eventually.

[exploited]

Of course our standard of living is going to fall, we have been living like kings for a century. It is impossible to sustain the lifestyle that we have developed here, because such a lifestyle requires global capitalist exploitation, and is built upon the backs of third-world poverty.

Now we are whining about the system because it doesn't benefit the average Westerner as much as it did. That is due to bad wealth distribution, not free markets or immigration.

Throwing up fences around our borders and trade barriers is just as much trying to delay the inevitable as what we do now. It would simply ensure that the actually poor have to continue to suffer so the West can "feel good" about themselves.

Terrible ideas for the most part. I agree re: anti-growth sentiment though.

[gla22]

[exploited]

We are past industrialization, and there is no going back.

What is needed is better wages for service and knowledge workers, not an inevitably failed attempt to get back to manufacturing.

This is done by implementing wage controls, not sparking a global recession with trade barriers.

[eynon81]

[eynon81]

[Winchester]

[eynon81]