Friday, April 22, 2011
RE PATIENTS ARE NOT CONSUMERS THE OTHER DONALD NYT KRUGMAN EDITORIAL
He asks, "What has gone wrong with us?"
It started back in the early 50s when we decided to encourage Americans to consume more, to aid foreign producers trying to recover from World War II.
This strategy, really also a military and propaganda strategy, was viewed as also a way of refuting and eventually defeating the flourishing and spread of Communism, at that time.
It was an enormous shooting of oneself in the foot, for Western Civilization, because it rapidly promoted the development of several very large civilizational rivals, at a time when the very resources, especially oil, on which such rapid global, and globalizing globbalizing development, was beginning to dwindle. It lead in turn to the hollowing out of the US industrial base, and to many other things.
It is viewed by some pundits as a sui generis phenomenon, but that is not how it had unfolded, after World War II. It was quite intentional and strategic, if ultimately quite foolish and disastrous, in retrospect.
Some pundits talk about 1980, and Reagan, as the start of a bad trend in globalization. Many people, cannot name them all, start there, re globalization.
It began much earlier, grew out of the Marshall Plan, and Bretton Woods, World Bank, GATT, etc.
Embraced whole heartedly by the Executive Branch, early on, as a way of getting ostensible diplomatic or strategic jobs 'done', without having to go through elaborate public funding public scrutiny decisions with Congress. "Trade Not Aid", "Technology Transfer", etc.
The best very short summary of Executive Branch aspects may be Trading American Interests, in Foreign Affairs.
See also Eckes' longer work, Prestowitz' Trading Places, and Chalmers Johnson's works.
See also recent posts re Donald Duck:
good 'producerism' pay taxes and save, Walt Disney Hollywood propaganda, during the war;
bad consumerism fight Communism propaganda after it.
http://www.realecontv.com/videos/government-corruption/war-and-taxes.html
Terms search also, eg, leverage, globalization trap.
It started back in the early 50s when we decided to encourage Americans to consume more, to aid foreign producers trying to recover from World War II.
This strategy, really also a military and propaganda strategy, was viewed as also a way of refuting and eventually defeating the flourishing and spread of Communism, at that time.
It was an enormous shooting of oneself in the foot, for Western Civilization, because it rapidly promoted the development of several very large civilizational rivals, at a time when the very resources, especially oil, on which such rapid global, and globalizing globbalizing development, was beginning to dwindle. It lead in turn to the hollowing out of the US industrial base, and to many other things.
It is viewed by some pundits as a sui generis phenomenon, but that is not how it had unfolded, after World War II. It was quite intentional and strategic, if ultimately quite foolish and disastrous, in retrospect.
Some pundits talk about 1980, and Reagan, as the start of a bad trend in globalization. Many people, cannot name them all, start there, re globalization.
It began much earlier, grew out of the Marshall Plan, and Bretton Woods, World Bank, GATT, etc.
Embraced whole heartedly by the Executive Branch, early on, as a way of getting ostensible diplomatic or strategic jobs 'done', without having to go through elaborate public funding public scrutiny decisions with Congress. "Trade Not Aid", "Technology Transfer", etc.
The best very short summary of Executive Branch aspects may be Trading American Interests, in Foreign Affairs.
See also Eckes' longer work, Prestowitz' Trading Places, and Chalmers Johnson's works.
See also recent posts re Donald Duck:
good 'producerism' pay taxes and save, Walt Disney Hollywood propaganda, during the war;
bad consumerism fight Communism propaganda after it.
http://www.realecontv.com/videos/government-corruption/war-and-taxes.html
Terms search also, eg, leverage, globalization trap.
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