We’ve been told how horrible our recently passed decade – known as The Aughts – was for the world. The worst ever. I’m sure those lamenting 10-percent unemployment bode far worse than those in the 30s in the soup lines with 25-percent unemployment. As badly as we Americans have been maligned and undutifully burdened with two wars, (to quote a Marine with a handy marker “The Marine Corps is at war, America is at the mall”) certainly someone remembers Europe in the 40s.
The fear of the 2000s is giving way to a new angst of the 10s, but we need not fear. So says Reason’s Nick Gillespie in an article for the Wall Street Journal.
That China problem? Remember the Japan problem?
After a couple more quarters of weak or nonexistent growth, get ready for calls to banish dissent and individualism in business that will last right up to the moment that the Chinese government makes the wrong call. Which, if history is any guide, is already in the pipeline.
Skyrocketing oil?
Look for a new peak-oil panic the moment the world economy unambiguously recovers and demand rises. And after gas prices climb up to $4 a gallon before dropping again to $2.50.
Gillespie covers other ground, including “the war against boys” and what might be a dearth of new technologies (not every decade can have an iPod.). But Gillespie gives a rather Steyn-ian prophesy on the subject of human turnover. In the past we worried about over-sexed kids, in the 10s those kids won’t be having sex enough.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute and other sources that track this sort of thing, high-schoolers are actually scoring less and having fewer pregnancies since the 1990s. Whatever the cause for the slowdown in sex, as the solvency of Social Security and Medicare come closer to reality, not to mention the true costs of health-care reform and record-setting budget deficits, expect a series of prurient exposes on the trouble with promise rings and alarmist reports worrying about who exactly is going to pay for Baby Boomers’ entitlements.
My big prediction – the coarsening of the American heart, as told by Hollywood and the driven media narrative in regard to Obama’s woes and a looming end to “hope and change” at the 2010 elections. It will be the new Iraq film, looking back on those few hopeful months and how the tea-baggers, right wing media and blue dog apostates destroyed it. Our new American utopia, gone, and someone will be made to pay.
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China’s economy and most of the Asian market is fueled by Western consumption and that relationship is magnified by a truly global economy. That China’s manufacturing sector has been contracting precipitously since the start of the downturn seems to demonstrate the point.
How poignant. I spent the afternoon archiving some stories my grandfather had typed up for me 17 years ago about growing up during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl Years in Texas. He’s 98 years old now. I was rereading some of my favorites and realized what little we know of “hard times.”
God bless your grandpa! 98! That’s awesome!
The Chinese have gamed the market, pegging their currency to the dollar and not trading. Meanwhile, the government raids GM and other firms and manufactures its own knock-offs. Once they quit buying our debt, how long before Western companies tell them to screw off?
I don’t see a valid comparison between the Chinese and Japan. China can easily shut themselves off from the outside world and survive; they have natural resources and lots of arable land. Japan cannot live without open trade. Also, as China’s quaility of life ramps up their internal consumption will explode, and already has.
How many Americans could afford a car before the industrial revolution? When the industrial revolution put millions to work in manufacturing, folks had a little walkin’ around money to spend. China is getting big into the automobile market now, and their main target is their own people. So is India. If something really, really severe happened we might give China the finger, but it would have to be huge. It’s a very symbiotic relationship and each would suffer greatly without the other. The big difference is, China holds more cards in an isolationist game because their government is much more willing to let its citizens suffer. The Chinese Leadership: “Cut off trade with America and lose a bunch of grain imports and a few million of our peasnats die, O.K., no problem.” The U.S. Leadership: “Throw some people out onto the streets who signed home loans they can’t afford? No way!”
We’re playing poker and China knows they can always call our bluff, that’s why they always push their advantage. They know we will cave. China is not going anywhere, folks. Even if they have an economic downturn, like Japan, their dictatorial government will herd people into camps, or limit consumption. Look at Tianneman square. They are willing to mow down students and professors to keep the peace. What are a few hundred thousand rural peasants to them?
Naturally, I’ll defer to you on economics. But is it unreasonable to think China can’t continue to game the system? Communist governments have never shown ability, nor interest, to keep a fluid economy, despite any inherent advantage, be it exports, imports, natural resources or otherwise.
China will continue to be a major headache for the U.S. as long as they own so much of our debt. Our major failure of leadership the last 20 years has been the debt, and it will be pay a price in the future.
JohnFN, this is all just my opinion, I have no better insight than you. You could very well be right. I just don’t see the U.S. showing any backbone regarding foreign trade with anyone, and the few we cut-off, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, find ways to skirt the system.
China is guilty of plenty human rights violations. We pitch and moan and threaten, but we keep renewing their most favored nation status. If starving your peasants, mowing down your protesters with tanks and enforcing the genocide of most female fetuses within your borders isn’t reason enough to stop trading with them, what will be? We are not even willing to endure the pain of seeing some people who made bad loan decisions foreclosed on, nor are we willing to see the loan officers who made those loans lose their jobs. What makes you think we’d tell the Chinese to pound sand and cut off a huge percentage of our GDP? It’s not just the loans. How many Americans have jobs because of our open trade with China? Many. And many of those jobs are high paying jobs. Name a Fortune 500 company and see how many people it employs in China. We’re married to them at the hip (insert Siamese twin joke here) and we don’t have the backbone to endure the pain that severing relations would require.
Like the Saudis and Russians, the Chinese play a continual game of abusing us until we pipe up, then they say some nice things, lay low for a few months, and start right back up again. And, as I wrote before, the Chinese know that they are much more willing to sever ties than we are. Our open society makes it very difficult for our government to enact policies that hurt individual Americans, the Chinese do it all day long.
Maybe it will change, but the modern Chinese form of Communism has been very market-centered. Government officials don’t get picky about what something is called, or who owns what, as long as there is money being made. Stalin, Mao, Castro, Kim Jong Il… they are all idealogues willing to run their countries into the ground at the expense of their dreams. Modern China? Not so much. Hong Kong has hardly missed a beat since they took it over.
I tend to think of the Chinese as casino owners. They don’t much care what’s happening on the floor, or in the hotel rooms, as long as they get their cut. And, I don’t think it’s coincidental that gambling is such a huge part of Chinese culture. Americans have a history of taking idealistic stands at the expense of profit for the state. When has modern China done that?
There will be lulls in the Chinese economy, but they will continue to grow more and more self-sufficient; just as the U.S. did in the 20th century. And the Chinese have a long history of closed borders. They’ve done it before. The U.S. never has.
No, I think the Chinese are well aware that they can push hard and call our bluff and we’ll fold everytime.
This too will pass. And I remember my Dad telling me about the BB gun in the window he wanted. It was Daisy and it cost a dollar. He spent a whole YEAR trying to save a dollar and he couldn’t. I have 75 dollars in my purse right now. We don’t know hard times.
On the other hand, the real fun of the 20th Century didn’t begin until August 1914.
Raoul,
“On the other hand, the real fun of the 20th Century didn’t begin until August 1914.”
True. True.
It’s bugged me for months now when people whine about how things are as bad or worse than in the great depression. What? Not even close. And all my friends and children are tired of hearing me talk about the fact that although the media and Hollywood constantly bang on about the “sacrifices” we’ve made for this war, never have we been involved in a conflict that cost us less in lives and daily differences in the way we do things. If the wives and families that sent a soldier over want to tell me about sacrifice, I will listen, cry, and pray with them. Everyone else needs to shut their yap.
I’m interested in reading about the war on boys. As a mom of quite a few of them, I do see this cultures sometimes extreme dislike of all male creatures. Go through a girls apparel department. You will see things about how girls rule and boys drool and boys are stupid. If a boy wore that kind of thing he’d be drawn and quartered. Girls are told they can do everything, boys are told how they will barely survive unless a good woman takes them in hand. Bah. It will be funny if that’s not what he’s talking about.
It is good to know not everyone thinks we are going to hell in a handbasket. I got a lot of little people who rely on me.
“high-schoolers are actually scoring less”
Well, Roman Polanski has been on the lam in Europe.
Hi-yooooooo!!!
Many things are going nuts, but a big part of this continual ramp’ing up of panic we all perceive is due to all pervasive, 24/7 news. Bad news draws eyeballs. Awful news draws even more. I doubt many of us spend much time on http://www.cute_fluffy_kittens.com.
When you live in small, local tribes, or civilized cities without the ability to travel faster than 15 mph, and no access to instant communications it’s a great advantage to be able to notice dangerous things and discern patterns from them. If you live on the coast of present day Massachusetts in a small village of a few thousand natives, and you notice an otherwise healthy person turns up dead the next morning it can greatly increase your chances of survival to pay attention. Maybe there are some poisonous shellfish that person ate. Is anyone else sick? Dead? If so, find common patterns among the dead. Did they all do the same thing yesterday? Walk in the same area? Eat the same food?
When you live in modern day Boston and you turn on the TV and learn that people are dying in Thailand from eating bad clams… Well, you don’t really have to worry if you ate seafood the previous night.
So, our brains are wired to notice danger, and pay close attention to it; obsess about it, yet modern communications make us privvy to all kinds of danger that has almost no chance of affecting us. But still we panic. And, everytime one danger subsides a new one surfaces (CNN, FoxNews and MSNBC have got to pay the bills). So it begins to feel like we’re on this roller-coaster and danger is accellerating ever faster.
Talk a look around. Determine what you really can impact, of that list determine what you want to impact, of that list determine what you have time to impact, and focus your efforts there and tune the rest out.
This recent U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen is the perfect microcosm of this affect writ large, on the world stage. At the end of the day, even if all the science they claim is true, there is no way to stop the change, even by their own models. Only severe, drastic cessation of all industry (back to stone age technology) could have any impact, and how many billions would die if we did that? The cure would be much worse than the disease. But folks saw a 2 hour movie with animated polar bears drowning. Something has to be done! They are not able to use logic and reason to over-ride that switch in their brains, and they’ll only lose focus when another, bigger danger rears its head.
And TV and movies are all seemingly geared to make documentaries and produce films about non existant asteroids on collision course with earth, mega disasters caused by non existant global flooding due to the now refuted(thanks to truzpr’s fine melting ice in water explanation, which was so simple that even a caveman could understand it) global warming fib, and the prospect of the alleged huge volcanic crater that is Yellowstone, poised to totally level all of North America.
It’s no wonder the non thinking, common sense lacking masses, are looking for peace and quiet, and a
commie, pinko, faggot, socialistcommunity organizer to lead as in the new world order, one world government mold, to take away all their need to think or act like adults instead of scared children.