Failure to Imagine?

[GoodWitch58]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/opinion/12herbert.html?_r=1&hp

The United States is not racked with the turmoil that is shaking the Arab world, or the tragic devastation that has hit Japan. We are not in a state of emergency. We?re in a moment when it is possible to look thoughtfully at the American landscape and take rational steps to ensure a better, more sustainable future.

But we?re not doing that. The big news out of Washington this week was Representative Peter King?s Muslim witch hunt. Policy makers at all levels of government are talking austerity ? sometimes sensibly, but most often mindlessly. Creative ideas regarding energy, education, jobs and so forth have trouble even getting a hearing.

I sometimes try to imagine New York City without its subways, or the United States without the interstate highway system. Those kinds of projects could not be built today. Try to imagine life in the 21st century without the Internet. Imagine if we had never gone to the moon.

Maybe that?s what?s missing today. The ability to imagine.

okay, folks, those of you who subscribe to the Tea Party/Conservative/Republican/points of view, where is your vision?

Everything I read or see is that the conservative point of view says that the U.S. needs to stop spending money and go back to some time in our past...usually the 50s...is there any portion of the "conservative" arena that is imagining a way forward that is proactive and positive about actually doing something to make things better for everyone? Or is "going forward" not a option to the conservative point of view?

 

[30ashopper]

If eliminating our debt and freeing up our debt service (400+ billion in the 2010 fiscal year!) isn't "going forward" I don't know what is.

 

[Bob]

sos, code for lower taxes for the wealthy, corporate welfare.

 

[30ashopper]

sos, code for lower taxes for the wealthy, corporate welfare.

I don't doubt the sincerity of those Americans who want to copy the European model. A few may be snobs who wear their euro-enthusiasm as a badge of sophistication. But most genuinely believe that making their country less American and more like the rest of the world would make it more comfortable and peaceable.


All right, growth would be slower, but the quality of life might improve. All right, taxes would be higher, but workers need no longer fear sickness or unemployment. All right, the U.S. would no longer be the world's superpower, but perhaps that would make it more popular. Is a European future truly so terrible?


Yes.

We can now see where that road leads: to burgeoning bureaucracy, more spending, higher taxes, slower growth and rising unemployment. But an entire political class has grown up believing not just in the economic superiority of euro-corporatism but in its moral superiority. After all, if the American system were better?if people could thrive without government supervision?there would be less need for politicians. As Upton Sinclair once observed, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."


Nonetheless, the economic data are pitilessly clear. For the past 40 years, Europeans have fallen further and further behind Americans in their standard of living. Europe also has become accustomed to a high level of structural unemployment. Only now, as the U.S. applies a European-style economic strategy based on fiscal stimulus, nationalization, bailouts, quantitative easing and the regulation of private-sector remuneration, has the rate of unemployment in the U.S. leaped to European levels.

Daniel Hannan: A European's Warning to America - WSJ.com

From a Brit who knows a thing or two about the model progressives want to apply here in the states.

 

[Lake View Too]

If eliminating our debt and freeing up our debt service (400+ billion in the 2010 fiscal year!) isn't "going forward" I don't know what is.

How come conservatives keep going on and on about cutting spending, but never once ever talk about cutting military spending? This is, by far, the biggest, fattest, white elephant in the room, and yet everybody ignores it.

 

[Lake View Too]

The Afghan War and the Irag War were the first wars in our history to be waged without an increase in taxes. In fact, they were initiated while Bush was implemented a tax cut. This is fiscal sanity?

 

[GoodWitch58]

If eliminating our debt and freeing up our debt service (400+ billion in the 2010 fiscal year!) isn't "going forward" I don't know what is.

Okay, so you make the cuts and eliminate the debt...then, what do you do? You can not cut your way forward...at some point in time, we must have some revenue... we must have something to export that is tangible...our young people need jobs...and we as a country need to get into the game of a global economy with something other than hedge funds...

what do conservatives imagine our economy to look like in 20 years?

In Florida if our environment is not protected; our infrastructure not maintained, then our main source of revenue in Florida -- tourism and retired people moving here -- will go away...and along with it all the service jobs we have come to depend upon.
That appears to be where we are heading with this Governor.

So, if the debt disappeared tomorrow--what would you do to bring in revenue and provide jobs for all the students who are graduating and wanting to find work in our state?

 

[AlphaCrab]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/opinion/12herbert.html?_r=1&hp

okay, folks, those of you who subscribe to the Tea Party/Conservative/Republican/points of view, where is your vision?

Everything I read or see is that the conservative point of view says that the U.S. needs to stop spending money and go back to some time in our past...usually the 50s...is there any portion of the "conservative" arena that is imagining a way forward that is proactive and positive about actually doing something to make things better for everyone? Or is "going forward" not a option to the conservative point of view?

There is no "vision" of the future for this group. There is an over abundance of "No", or always believing that something is not possible, or what specifically is in it for me VS. the "other" guy. Kind of "the old ways are the best ways" mentality. There is no originality, no humor, a great deal of xenophobia, a tinge of homophobia, and an abundance racism. The Tea Party longs for the early Eisenhower era, the perfect white, nuclear family a la the 1950's sitcom Father Knows Best.

There always has to be an internal enemy of some type for these people...back in the 1950's it was McCarthy scaring Americans about the internal Red Menace--today we have Peter King, repeating the same type idiosy with trying to search out radical American "Muslims."

Fear, and a total disdain for the "new" is the only thing a Tea Partier knows. It is very sad. The only thing really worse than a Tea Partier is a true Libertarian--they are Tea Partiers in wolf's clothing.

 

[30ashopper]

Okay, so you make the cuts and eliminate the debt...then, what do you do? You can not cut your way forward...at some point in time, we must have some revenue... we must have something to export that is tangible...our young people need jobs...and we as a country need to get into the game of a global economy with something other than hedge funds...

what do conservatives imagine our economy to look like in 20 years?

In Florida if our environment is not protected; our infrastructure not maintained, then our main source of revenue in Florida -- tourism and retired people moving here -- will go away...and along with it all the service jobs we have come to depend upon.
That appears to be where we are heading with this Governor.

So, if the debt disappeared tomorrow--what would you do to bring in revenue and provide jobs for all the students who are graduating and wanting to find work in our state?

If our deficit disappeared tomorrow, the american people would finally be able to make an honest assessment as to whether they want more government involvement or less. They can't do that presently.


As far as what would I do? I'd just get out of the way and let our form of capitalism work it's magic. It's served us well for 250 years so I see no reason why we should abandon it now and embrace some other form of commerce.