Time to Reboot the USA...

motordavid · #1 12-24-2008, 04:12 PM

I was going to paste this in the PoliSci forum, but it's not really hugely
"politics" based, imo. I don't always agree with Friedman and he can
go off the deep end on occasion, but he is a smart guy and good writer.
BR,mD

Op-Ed Columnist
Time to Reboot America
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: December 23, 2008

I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America.

It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.

Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.

The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.

All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out — that’s the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted “lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job.”

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift.

Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.

John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.
Merry Christmas!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/op...ef=todayspaper

Sponsored Links

haigha · #2 12-24-2008, 04:30 PM

Good read, mD

Ctrl+Alt+Del

jigaro · #3 12-24-2008, 04:34 PM

Perfect

blondboinsd · #4 12-24-2008, 06:31 PM

I enjoyed it and agree, we need a re-boot!

BMW03X5 · #5 12-24-2008, 08:06 PM

Very well put! Thanks.mD

Eric5273 · #6 12-24-2008, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by motordavid

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

Fat chance of that happening. If this bit of government spending is like most in recent years, then most of those dollars will end up in the pocket's of some large corporations, and very little will actually get done.

I've been saying this for the longest time: PRODUCTIVITY does not mean that we each wash eachother's laundry. Yet that is what these expert economists tell us each and every day. If I pay the local neighborhood kid $20 to dig a ditch in the back yard, and then fill it in, apparently I've contributed to the productivity of our country as our GDP goes up by $20. And of course, those numbers are then used to calculate the well-being of our economy. It is just rediculous.

Productivity means "what do we get for our money?". If we are productive, then we get a lot. If Obama and Congress spend $1 billion, are we getting back $1 billion worth of infrastructure or useful services? Or are we getting back nothing? Regardless of what we get, the expert economists they wheel out in front of the camera will tell you that our GDP increased by $1 billion.

It's time that we started learning again what economic productivity really means. Unfortunately, I think far too many Americans have jobs today that serve absolutely no productive purpose whatsoever except to pad their bank account. That seems to have become the "American Way". We have tons of lawyers out there so that we can all sue eachother. We have tons of banks and investment companies out there all buying and selling eachother, breaking up companies, merging companies, etc -- but in most cases, they don't serve any actual purpose to society or to our economy except to pad the bank accounts of their owners or stockholders. And then there is advertising -- another industry that serves no useful purpose. The degree of advertising in our society has become sickening in recent years. Soon people will be tatooing a logo on their forhead for a few bucks. We need to get back to a place where we are providing useful services to people and producing useful products.

And as for our tax money, if we continue to flush our money down the toilet on things that result in nothing useful or productive for society (military hardware comes to mind), then we will never recover from this recession/depression.

jigaro · #7 12-24-2008, 08:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eric5273

Fat chance of that happening. If this bit of government spending is like most in recent years, then most of those dollars will end up in the pocket's of some large corporations, and very little will actually get done.

I've been saying this for the longest time: PRODUCTIVITY does not mean that we each wash eachother's laundry. Yet that is what these expert economists tell us each and every day. If I pay the local neighborhood kid $20 to dig a ditch in the back yard, and then fill it in, apparently I've contributed to the productivity of our country as our GDP goes up by $20. And of course, those numbers are then used to calculate the well-being of our economy. It is just rediculous.

Productivity means "what do we get for our money?". If we are productive, then we get a lot. If Obama and Congress spend $1 billion, are we getting back $1 billion worth of infrastructure or useful services? Or are we getting back nothing? Regardless of what we get, the expert economists they wheel out in front of the camera will tell you that our GDP increased by $1 billion.

It's time that we started learning again what economic productivity really means. If we don't and we continue to flush our money down the toilet on things that result in nothing useful or productive for society (military hardware comes to mind), then we will never recover from this recession/depression.

U'r right, i believe what Americans don't do is invest well, Don't get me wrong, there are some things in this country that no other has, but with the amount of taxes people pay, and with the Fed Reserve America has, investment should not mean giving billions of dollars to the car companies so they dont go broke, thats saving asses of iresponsible corporations which have put the government in a situation of not investing but, doing the necessery for the people not to loose their jobs.

This results in a low productivity, in other words, people go back to their jobs and keep building same so called trucks, and useless big engine not going anywhere pickups and meantime we are all going to keep sitting on this forum and keep talking about our x5's cause Americans are not even close to competeng with the rest.

Sure you might say as an argument that some BMW'S and BENZE'S are build in America but thats it. Who benefits? Europe does.

Its almost like when you are a 4 year-old kid and your parent gives you almost completed lego toy, and just because you put the last piece on the toy to call it complete it put a big smile on your face and everyone is happy.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

SuperGreg · #8 12-24-2008, 09:38 PM

Good read, I agree 100%

Sponsored Links