Standard of Living? -- MORE BELOW --? Some say that we can "fine-tune" a transition from "stimulus" policies to "austerity" policies, and that a precision transition can allow the US can grow its way out of the 2007-2008 meltdown and get back to the growth-and-prosperity scenario that existed before the bubble burst.
Others say that the horse is out of the barn, and politicians are merely working on fixing the hinges on a broken barn door. Or that Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and the shell fragments are still breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.
Have our basic industries - Steel, Furniture, Textiles, Housewares, Electronics [and the majority of what's sold at Walmart and the Big Box Stores] - really been offshored to the extent that a steady decline is irreversible? Or is the effect of this exaggerated?
Are large portions of the country in already in terminal decay (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, ...), requiring so much investment to reverse that it's "a bridge too far"?
Did the TBTF banks really take down a lot of the rest of the world by changing our banking laws to allow investment banks to rate their own toxic instruments "Triple A'", and then to leverage up 40-to-1 based on it?
But, if we just find the exact gymnastic manuever to jump from a speeding "stimulus train" to an opposite-traveling "austerity train", everything might still work out swell?
For the next twenty years, which "world view" is closer to the truth:
a) we hit a bump in the road, and there may be a couple more, but soon we'll be back on the interstate
or
b) the road is crumbling, we don't have enough money to fix it, and as a nation, we'll have to get out and walk/bike/hitchhike for quite some time
Thanks for your answers!
Others say that the horse is out of the barn, and politicians are merely working on fixing the hinges on a broken barn door. Or that Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and the shell fragments are still breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.
Have our basic industries - Steel, Furniture, Textiles, Housewares, Electronics [and the majority of what's sold at Walmart and the Big Box Stores] - really been offshored to the extent that a steady decline is irreversible? Or is the effect of this exaggerated?
Are large portions of the country in already in terminal decay (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, ...), requiring so much investment to reverse that it's "a bridge too far"?
Did the TBTF banks really take down a lot of the rest of the world by changing our banking laws to allow investment banks to rate their own toxic instruments "Triple A'", and then to leverage up 40-to-1 based on it?
But, if we just find the exact gymnastic manuever to jump from a speeding "stimulus train" to an opposite-traveling "austerity train", everything might still work out swell?
For the next twenty years, which "world view" is closer to the truth:
a) we hit a bump in the road, and there may be a couple more, but soon we'll be back on the interstate
or
b) the road is crumbling, we don't have enough money to fix it, and as a nation, we'll have to get out and walk/bike/hitchhike for quite some time
Thanks for your answers!