The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Stating the Obvious: Obama wants to gut social security

Let me state the obvious, which we all know, one more time.

Obama intends to gut social security.  Republicans failed, it requires Democrats.  If Obama did not intend to gut social security he would not have set up the SS comission with the members it has.

Nancy Pelosi is onside with this (or she wouldn’t have forcefully scheduled a vote for the lame duck session.)

The Democrats most of us supported in 08 intend to gut Social Security.

Betrayal: the most bitter sauce.

But why shouldn’t they betray us?  No matter what they do, most folks say “well, the Republicans are worse”.  All it requires is that Democrats beat ordinary people with canes instead of chains.

They’re not the suckers.

Previous

Netroots Schizo

Next

Go Read Stirling on Japanification

59 Comments

  1. Tom Hickey

    The answer is clear and obvious. The Democrats since Clinton are a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street and Wall Street needs the proceeds of SS to pull it out of it present debacle. They’ve had their eyes on this prize for a long time, but now they have persuaded Obama (read promised lots of $) that the time is now.

    I said from the very beginning of the primaries, and I’ll say it again for anyone who hasn’t gotten it yet: Obama is a snake in the grass. He is Wall Street’s plant. The progressive Dems through they could avoid Clinton II with Obama, but he pulled the wool over their eyes. He is in the pocket of FIRE, whose raison d’etre is extracting economic rent.

    Read Michael Hudson (chief economic advisor to Kucinich’s campaign) on this hereand here.

  2. anon2525

    Obama intends to gut social security.

    Will it be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for someone to launch a challenge to Obama in January? Or, will the deteriorating economy and democratic party losses in November have already decided that? “No point in backing a loser…”

  3. David H

    Primary challenge? Ha! Markos & his cohorts will bend over backwards explaining how SS “reform” is necessary, and how we’d rather have O doing it, looking out for our best interests, rather than those evil Republicans who’d do away with it altogether.

    President Rick Perry has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

  4. anon2525

    President Rick Perry has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

    President of the Republic of Texas?

  5. Formerly T-Bear

    Certainly these [insert expletive here] are going to liquidate social security assets. The government has borrowed the excess funds generated by paid insurance premiums and now refuses to repay their bonded debt. What is required is a tree, some rope, and any federal politician, president, senators, congressmen, or supreme court justices agreeing to this scheme, some assembly required. Otherwise exile the lot with only the clothes on their backs and void their passports and cancel their citizenship. Be careful of any answer they may give, it will be a lie and should not be believed.

  6. BDBlue

    This has been apparent since Obama put Social Security on the table in 2007 before the first caucus.* Why else would he do that? It’s kind of an odd thing to attack another Democrat over in a Democratic primary isn’t it? What is she going to do to solve the Social Security crisis? Sure, he backpedaled, but that was the tell – he put it on the table because his backers wanted it on the table.

    * Atrios was right to pick up on the bat signal, he just apparently didn’t realize what Obama was signaling.

  7. I haven’t been paying attention to the career “progressives” lately, but are they still debating whether Obama’s really a liberal at heart?

  8. BDBlue, yes, that post by Atrios was noticed by some, who turned out to be prematurely correct. Unfortunately. Thanks, “progressives”!

  9. But why shouldn’t they betray us? No matter what they do, most folks say “well, the Republicans are worse”. All it requires is that Democrats beat ordinary people with canes instead of chains.

    But the problem is that: it’s correct. In the American political system, particularly given the predilections of American society, it remains true that if the lesser evil doesn’t get elected, then the greater evil will.

    So, how many iterations of electing the greater evil are required for the lesser evil to be even less evil? I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.

  10. Ian Welsh

    Yes Mandos. You want to beaten by sticks, not chains. We get it. In the end you’ll be a broken slave, all the same, however.

  11. Yes, sure, whatever, but the point is that no one has articulated a process by which that doesn’t happen, except maybe to trust in the purgative or salutary effects of collapse. As far as I can tell, either way, it happens, if we assume that all your premises and your particular analysis of American politics are true.

  12. auntifashism

    Personally, I’d like to see the actually still progressive wing of the netroots and the Democratic party and non-Republican wing of the Green Party all agree to vote for one candidate in the 2012 primaries. I’d like to see that we send a strong message that we won’t vote for the hardly lesser evil. That’s my suggestion for the primaries and the general. I don’t think that person would win, but the message would be clear that progressives can only be ignored at cost and with consequences. I’d vote for anyone with truly progressive politics that was put forward who was the agreed-upon candidate, e.g. Ian Welsh, Marcy Wheeler, Jim Hightower. There are many others who could be the agreed-upon candidate.

    I’d get strongly behind promoting this if someone with a well-read blog wants to start the organizing ball rolling.

  13. Ian Welsh

    Marcy Wheeler has suggested that she may get behind Elizabeth Warren in the new year if Obama does not appoint her to lead the new Consumer Protection Agency.

    I imagine I could get behind that.

  14. S Brennan

    A third party Candidate I believe is impossible for 2012, but an independent run could win if…a ticket were chosen that had big name draw [media coverage] competence Foreign, Domestic & Military, a short platform of carefully prioritized the fed into AND relieved discontent.

    For an independent run…you need to start with a ticket.

    Perot won 19 percent [don’t laugh 33.3 is a winning number] of the vote in the 1992, with a squeaky voice, short stature, butt ugly profile and a questionable past.

    Republicans get 29% to start, Obama gets about 40% of Democrats, peel the independents, woman voters and you are at 24%, figure who could get you to 33.3

  15. Considering that a lot of our Republican candidates in this states are tea partiers, I think there’s a difference. There is a lot of different between a brutal master and an indifferent one. But, personally, I would rather not have a master, or at least have a choice of masters.

  16. I also do think that time is ripe for a new party. Especially, women and adults 20-3o are very unhappy. But forming that party will take years, and it will not be the progressive saints party.

  17. S Brennan

    Raven,

    This is surely true, “Adults 20-3o are very unhappy”, but it was EXACTLY this demographic that shoved the Obama’s extremist right wing policies down our collective throats.

    I have yet to hear one Obama nut that I know apologize for being an ignorant political neophyte. The closest I’ve heard is, “well sure, everybody knew Obama was crappy, but Hillary would have been bitch slapped by McCain”.

    I’m not ready to make nice with the Obam idiots, particularly since they are still mouthing Axelrod’s misogyny

  18. Formerly T-Bear

    When did the ossification of reason happen? It is incredible there are still references to the Obama/Clinton primaries, as if years have not passed. Those still there, some advice, get a life!

    The big tent that was the FDR coalition has, unbeknownst to those of that coalition, been taken over by what remains of centrist, semi-sane Republicans after the Republican party was overwhelmed and ideologically cleansed by the conservative/John Birch movements. These DINO’s have gained the leavers of power of the Democratic party by stealth and have marginalized the traditional democratic coalition into an ineffective fringe of their own party, their voice in council has been silenced. There is no way the liberal/progressive will be able to recapture control of the party, it has been sold to the highest bidders by the DINO’s. To believe there is any hope of recovery of the party is a delusion.

    If you ever wish to find who actually controls any political party, look carefully at who owns the members of the board of finance for that party. It is there you will find the real owners, shakers and movers of that party. Always, follow the money.

  19. I’ve been admonished not to interact with commenters who have a history of trolling, so I will only point out that there’s a lot we can personally do, right away, even in the absence of a blueprint, or a revolutionary vanguard, or whatever. We are not helpless. But as with so many things, “the way out is the door.” It’s unfortunate that we can’t know what’s on the other side of the door that leads away from the legacy party system, but that’s the nature of our condition. And the opportunity cost of engaging with the legacy party system is, precisely, finding out what lies beyond them. For many of us, it could hardly be worse, and it might be better.

    * * *

    Shorter Formerly T-Bear, paragraph one: “Get over it.” No.

  20. Formerly T-Bear

    @ lambert strether

    Yes lambert, you and mandos make a fine pair of asses.

  21. S Brennan

    “incredible there are still references to the Obama/Clinton primaries, as if years have not passed. ”

    The results are still actively with us. FYI, history is like that.

    The only ossification that has taken place is…Obama attempting to “ossify” the regressive policies of Bush [the 2nd]. Calls to forget the past and live in a world where ignorance of the “fascist youth movement” unleashed by Obama inc. are premature…

    …and they will be in 100 years. Obama fanatics who supported the stealing of the nomination have [unless a miracle happens] probably driven the last nail into our nations coffin.

  22. Mike in SLO

    Call Lambert an ass all you like.

    I’ve been reading both your comments for years and Lambert is the one who has been proved right again and again.

  23. Thanks, T-Bear. Proving my point, since you have no analytical response. Well done.

  24. nihil obstet

    On getting over the primaries — I have trouble doing it, but then I haven’t gotten over the 1980 election in which the challenger negotiated with our designated enemy to hold hostages to help him electorally, or continuation in Iran-contra, or the 2000 and 2004 elections with their magic disappearing votes. Guess I just don’t listen when I tell myself I ought to forget what’s happened, look forward instead of backward, and practice the great consumer skill of distinguishing between indistinguishable products regardless of their past performances.

  25. pdgrey

    Some advise, Formerly T-Bear, Stop kicking democrats out of the party, or you will lose elections of your chosen candidates, too. You do realize 18 million voters were called racist not by republicans, but fellow democrats.

  26. Proved right again and again? About what, exactly? That the Democrats are right-wing chundernozzles? Exactly one gazillion people could have told you that twenty years ago, and many of them actually did.

    But this is where Lambert is very, very wrong:

    For many of us, it could hardly be worse, and it might be better.

    In fact, it could be worse. It could be much, much worse. I’d think I might even be willing to agree with everything Lambert says if it were not for that.

  27. tatere

    The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People’s Front!” “Splitters!”

  28. anon2525

    Marcy Wheeler has suggested that she may get behind Elizabeth Warren in the new year if Obama does not appoint her to lead the new Consumer Protection Agency.

    Unfortunately, MW made it contingent on EW being appointed by the end of the year. What if EW is appointed, but Obama&Pelosi go forward with gutting Social Security and Medicare? Will Elizabeth Warren resign if that happens, and if not, then would there be any point in bothering to recruit her to resign and run?

    My point is that Social Security & Medicare are far more important than the new CFPA, and if MW is willing to recruit a challenger to Obama over the CFPA, then she should be even more intent on recruiting someone if Obama&Pelosi bring forward proposals to cut Social Security & Medicare (whether they pass or not), not on the availability of EW. In fact I would expect both Wheeler and Hamsher to be recruiting someone.

    Odd that Eve, Marcy, and the host did not bring up the plans to cut Social Security & Medicare during their discussion.

  29. Ian posits that great powers in senesence face three possible outcomes: Revolution, reform, or collapse. I don’t find the prospect of collapse the most desirable outcome, but I do think it’s the most likely. And treating the possibility of collapse and preparing for it (by, for example, getting serious about growing one’s own food) is certainly the safest play, especially if you’re on the margins, like I am. Since collapse is, by definition, chaotic, it doesn’t seem to be possible to plan for it, except by setting up ways to save yourself and your neighbors (unless you’re in the elite, and have the money to set up a redoubt of some sort). That said, reform would certainly be nice, like ponies are nice, and step one toward achieving it would be — here let me issue a known troll prophylactic — to break the legacy party system and/or cause it immense pain (the only thing politicians understand besides money). Here, again, the “plan” can only be “bold, persistent experimentation,” as FDR has it. The way out is the door!

  30. jcapan

    Robert Reich had a good column in TAP the other day:

    http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=fire_on_the_left

    Speaking of liberal advocacy groups:

    “Each has a narrow bandwidth (health, environment, labor, women’s rights) with a national constituency that donates money and sends members of Congress e-mails as requested about particular initiatives.

    These groups are staffed by overworked 20-somethings and headed by people who enjoy being minor celebrities at Washington fundraisers and occasional visitors to the White House. But these groups don’t mobilize people back where they live, and they’re no substitute for a broad progressive movement.

    A movement connects the dots across issues and reveals a larger wrong that must be righted. When it comes to misuse of power, Americans carry two deep-seated fears — of big government taking over and of big business and Wall Street running amok. Both are sometimes justified, but the political response is lopsided. The conservative movement adeptly fits almost every morsel of news to the first fear, giving its members an animating cause: Reduce government.

    A progressive movement would focus on the second fear, seeking to protect average working people from the depredations of big business and Wall Street. Given what has occurred in recent years — from Enron and WorldCom through the devastation brought on by Wall Street, to the price-gouging by health insurers like WellPoint and Big Pharma, right through BP — there is no absence of dots to be connected.”

    He’s hardly pushing for a 3rd party/primary opponent, but this is a largely accurate read of the present landscape. I read a piece by Chris Hedges about Howard Zinn’s FBI file yesterday and realized that if “the left” used their language, we’d be getting somewhere.

  31. anon2525

    The conservative movement adeptly fits almost every morsel of news to the first fear, giving its members an animating cause: Reduce government.

    The HuffPo reporter Ryan Grim was being interviewed a few weeks ago, and he demonstrated his naiveté and incompetence when he said that the republicans in Congress weren’t concerned about what the best economic approach would be to respond to the economy — they (the right-wing) were fighting an idealogical battle, that is, (Grim said) the republicans wanted to reduce the size of gov’t.

    1) Reporters should not be taking politicians at their word. Just because a politician says he/she is doing something for some reason does not mean that they, in fact, are doing it for that reason. The reporter should instead report what the politician says and not claim some mind-reading ability about what the politician believes.

    2) (Good) reporters will compare and contrast what the politician says with what the politician has done, especially with regard to how the politician has voted.

    Of course, there is no stopping the right-wing from repeating the lie that their cause is to reduce the size of gov’t. But the left-wing should at least call it out for the lie that it is. Republicans do not care about the size of gov’t. Their actions have been that they will continuously increase the size of gov’t. so long as it serves their interests. Their hero, reagan, used to repeatedly claim that if he was given the line-item veto he would balance the federal gov’t.’s budget, and yet he never proposed a budget beforehand that would in fact have balanced it. bush&cheney put the lie to the right-wing propaganda when they and their majorities in the house & senate increased the size of gov’t., including the deficit, every year that they held power, all of it (tax cuts & military spending & drug payments) to the benefit of their supporters.

  32. Except if, one were *really* betting on collapse, one would be writing about fortifications, ammo, etc, etc, and then maybe gardening and self-sufficiency at the end of the list. When mass starvation arrives, no amount of squash-growing is going to save anyone from the mobs. Or the government, or whatever. It’s just another variant on gold-fetishism. A more fun variant, I’ll grant you that, but a variant.

    (“Prophylactic”?)

  33. Ian Welsh

    I have specifically noted that by collapse I mean either a Russian style collapse or something like Spain’s. In neither case are we talking Mad Max and yes, food will matter.

  34. See, I don’t think that collapse is going to look like a Russian-style collapse, because unlike Russia (which has oil) we are looking at what may well be a resource-depleted future, at least in terms of energy available to the USA for recovery. I think *real* collapse is going to look at least a few smidgens more like Mad Max than like Russia.

  35. Ian:

    I don’t think we can predict the nature of the collapse. How could we? That’s the nature of chaos. That said, I’d pick Russia rather than Mad Max (or Weimar) because I think our sclerotic political economy is a lot like the USSR’s (especially in actually subtracting value from its inputs, like the USSR’s automobile industry). And not like a movie, eh?

    I’m glad you understand that growing food is important. If my neighbor is good at guns (which I am not and cannot be), and given that knowledge is difficult extract using the coarser modes of coercion, then no doubt an adaptive social structure will emerge to protect us from whatever comes up the road after the trucks stop (and from the drones).

    It’s not really a matter of “If we think hard enough, maybe we can stop this stuff,” let alone “Collapse bad/not collapse good,” but of trying to prepare for what is to come so as to salvage a degree of happiness and some merit.

  36. anon2525

    That said, I’d pick Russia rather than Mad Max (or Weimar) because I think our sclerotic political economy is a lot like the USSR’s (especially in actually subtracting value from its inputs, like the USSR’s automobile industry)

    Or, maybe like occupied Iraq: a few hours of intermittent electricity each day, long, dark nights with too much heat or too much cold, decaying infrastructure, random violence and roaming bands of men with guns, no more garbage collection. But worse, since there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

  37. anon2525: Could be. I think there will be great local and regional variation.

  38. I think anon2525’s version of collapse is more what I was thinking of, especially the roaming bands of men with guns. Or maybe—to carry the Russia theme forward—more like a giant Chechnya.

    But Russia and the USA are not really comparable. On the political surface, it may seem to some people that the sclerosis of the USSR and the USA have some similarities, but US political culture, mass movements, history, self-image, etc, are completely different. The USSR grew out of a socialist-ish revolution following the Romanov dynasty which was completely annihilated. It’s leaders spoke socialist-ish rhetoric, and people had a particular, USSR-specific way of relating to the state.

    None of this really applies to the USA. The USA revolution happened too far in the past, and was justified by a different set of philosophical premises. At its fringes, its political culture produces weird survivalist/individualist phenomena with weapons-hoarding and so on. And by their fringes, ye shall know them. The difference in political langauge and public culture, plus matters physical/geological/geographic would likely lead to a kind of collapse that’s quite different from that of Russia.

  39. anon2525

    I think there will be great local and regional variation.

    Other examples of countries living with through collapse: North Korea & Cuba

  40. anon2525

    Perhaps Dave Anderson would have some views on whether Mexico is living through collapse, or only on the verge of doing so.

  41. anon2525

    Yes, some of the sustainability people take Cuba as a model, and it seems reasonable to believe that they’ve done good things with agriculture — having their oil cut off. (Needless to say, the media coverage is, to say the least, contested). Then again, there’s, er, Castro. FWIW, I can’t help but think that their islands/peninsul nature, and their more homogenous ethnicity/culture, would render their experience different from the Russian and United States empires, which are continental, and even transnational in scope (three very obvious similarities between them).

  42. anon2525

    …their more homogenous ethnicity/culture, would render their experience different from the Russian and United States empires…

    Agreed. That is why I listed both North Korea and Cuba. We can expect Alaskans to experience different problems from Floridians, who will experience different problems from Ohioans, who will experience different problems from Arizonans, and so on.

    When Obama came into office it was not unreasonable to expect that he would address the problems of climate change, ecological destruction, and resource depletion differently than bush&cheney had. Unfortunately for us all, he hasn’t addressed them differently. He hasn’t addressed them at all. They’re not “political” problems that have lobbyists paying money to get them addressed. He should have pointed out to the country that these are the highest-priority and most severe problems the country and the planet faces, instead of the economy, the financial system, the medical services industry (AKA, “health care reform”), the weapons and military services industries (AKA, the “wars”). With the exception of ending the immediate killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no higher priority than these problems, either in gravity or urgency.

  43. cenobite

    Okay, I need to put in my standard objection here.

    Lambert specifically means a Jared Diamond-type Collapse, and let’s see what Diamond says he means:

    “By collapse, I mean a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time. The phenomenon of collapses is thus an extreme form of several milder types of decline …”

    Milder types of decline is all we’ve seen anywhere in the modern world, including Russia, North Korea, Cuba, etc. Certainly what’s happening in Mexico is nowhere near what happened to the Mayan civilization or Rapa Nui and that’s what Diamond means.

    This isn’t going to happen in my lifetime. Poorer, more exploited, less energy-intensive, more desperate year on year: you bet. US population decline to a few million? No.

  44. Ian Welsh

    Well Cen, that depends on how old you are, really. But yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised by a population decline, but not by a factor of 10. At least, not in my lifetime. Maybe in that of the generation after mine.

  45. Cenobite, what really struck me the most powerfully about the “collapse” of Iceland was this gruesome detail: Diamond writes that as the Viking’s Greenland colony collapsed, the colony starved to death — IIRC, they ate the leather of their shoes and belts, and they even ate the hooves of their horses. This despite the fact that Greenland is located near some of the richest fishing grounds in the world (which is what the Inuit ate). But no! “We are Vikings! We don’t eat fish!” And so they died, rather than change. I think the parallel to our own behaviors around oil and the automobile are pretty close. Don’t you?

    (Incidentally, one way to do one’s own bit on a daily basis to avoid the “die rather than change” mentality is to perform visible actions that show a different way of being in the world; to eat the fish, and teach others to fish, as it were. Things like growing your own food, supporting what’s local, so often derided by people who identify politics and the political with investment in the legacy party system…)

    I think that the process of collapse will take us longer than it did Greenland, simply because we’re a continental and transnational empire, and not a small isolated colony. But the direction is the same, at least, right now. Who knows? It’s interesting to see how long the Roman Empire was able to stagger along…

    http://www.roman-emperors.org/impindex.htm

  46. Sorry to be late to the party, but I need to put in my two cents worth.

    Social Security is the only safety net for a majority of people when they are past the time when they can work. For many (too many) it is all keeps them from being Medicaid beneficiaries. “Gutting Social Security” would only shift an already indigent population into being certifiably destitute. Policy makers may lack principles but they are not that stupid.

    People with additional retirement income are indifferent to the fact that there is a difference between SOCIAL security and INDIVIDUAL security. Those for whom Social Security is their sole source of income know better.

    The big shift is not happening in Social Security but in supplemental retirement income. Company paid plans (pensions) are being replaced by employee paid plans (IRA’s, 401-k’s, etc). The next generation may find themselves more impoverished in their retirement years than those of us now in retirement, not because their Social Security benefits have vanished but because for many a lifetime of personal negligence has left them worse off than the old-fashioned pension plans (now a vanishing species).

    The Diamond-Orszag Plan is a model for transition which may or may not survive the political sausage grinder if it ever gets considered.
    http://bit.ly/bcsdgE (9 pages pdf)

  47. John Ballard: I don’t equate not wanting to put my money into the hands of thieves with “personal negligence.” YMMV.

  48. anon2525

    I think that the process of collapse will take us longer than it did Greenland, simply because we’re a continental and transnational empire, and not a small isolated colony. But the direction is the same, at least, right now. Who knows? It’s interesting to see how long the Roman Empire was able to stagger along…

    “will take us longer”? Interconnected and hierarchical systems are the order of the day. I don’t know that it will take us longer. These interdependent systems may collapse faster.

    Keep in mind that 1) we now have a world economy that has been built on 150 years of fossil fuel use and that this foundation is disappearing with nothing comparable to replace it; 2) we have a world population of nearly seven billion people (“mass panic” can take on new meaning); 3) there are countries that have nuclear weapons (what did north korea do when its supply of oil collapsed? threaten to develop nuclear weapons until clinton negotiated with them to send them fuel. when bush didn’t deliver, north korea went ahead with its threat); 4) we’re disrupting (ending) ecosystems that have been stable throughout human history (for example, the warming and acidification of the oceans, which have been stable for millions of years).

    To people who are saying they know how this will play out, I ask, “based on what historical precedent?” There is none, not even the ones that Diamond describes have three of the four factors listed above, although exhausting a natural resource that the economy crucially depends on has occurred many times before.

  49. @lambert strether
    Please read what I wrote more closely. The negligence to which I referred was not on the part of the Social Security Administration but the personally owned and self-directed plans now accruing in Roths, Keoghs, 401k’s, 403b’s and whatever products will be forthcoming in the future.
    Social Security, as I pointed out, is just that: a SOCIAL safety net.
    INDIVIDUAL security is an altogether different concept.
    The “negligence” to which I refer is nothing more than a wholesale failure on the part of wage earners to set aside for retirement about eight or ten cents on every earned dollar.

    I presume you didn’t look at the Diamond-Orszag link.
    Company-paid pensions are vanishing. (Of course if and when PBGC withers away some better plan may take its place, another safety net for those who used their retirement money for ATMs, producing reduced assets when the need came.)

  50. John: I understand exactly what you meant by “negligence.” That is why I wrote I don’t equate not wanting to put my money into the hands of thieves with “personal negligence.” If any of the SS reform plans were honest, they’d have an option simply to increase my Social Security contribution. Of course, that’s not on, since one of the main purposes of the “reforms” is to generate fees for the money managers.

    I don’t support tiny urls by clicking on them.

  51. anon2525:

    All good points. No, we don’t know how collapse will play out; I’ve never claimed to know. Making the planning that some demand hard to do, eh? I think being able to grow your own food makes sense in most of the scenarios I can think of, so it’s a good thing to know. Probably the ability to repair broken stuff will be useful, too.

  52. anon2525

    I think being able to grow your own food makes sense in most of the scenarios I can think of, so it’s a good thing to know. Probably the ability to repair broken stuff will be useful, too.

    Anything that moves you in the direction of lower fossil-fuel use (direct or indirect use, such as coal-powered electricity) and less complexity and interconnectedness to non-redundant systems surely cannot hurt. But it does assume that any economic decline will be gentle. If it isn’t, then you’ll likely be overwhelmed.

    The country is not responding well to the signals:

    1) In the winter of 2005, we had a significant price spike in natural gas. There were horror stories which people told of monthly bills over $1000. There’s been no significant move to make buildings more energy efficient since then.

    2) In the spring/summer of 2008, we had a significant price spike in gasoline ($4/gal, $150/bbl). Since then there has been no significant move to rebuild the energy-efficient mass transportation that the country had up until the ’50s.

    3) In Sept. 2008, the financial system was shown to be a highly-interdependent house of cards that could not be relied on as a foundational element for a modern economy (we literally cannot function without the millions (billions?) of electronic transfers that the system built up over the past thirty years now makes possible). Any responsible group of adults should have responded to this by restructuring the system that we have to rely on so that it is one that we can rely on.

  53. 0ut of all of it that yall are talking about, i tend to worry most about the environmental element of the ongoing collapse. reality is nasty like that, and watching the “response” to the gulf disaster has been depressing and eye opening. chaotic math is funny and difficult, and super complex systems like our environment leave the door open for some serious fuckery. i like to think, perhaps wrongly, that i’m smart and lucky enough to live thru a war, depression, the end of oil, and a lot of angry mob stuff (been there, done that) but what i can’t do is change the temperature or amount of water there is where i live. it’s “interesting, in the chinese curse way, to live in perhaps the only era of human history where we really could pass a tipping point that would effectively wipe out most life on earth for millions or even billions of years. people are arrogant and stupid, as i am probably demonstrating, and we’re always capable of making the completely wrong choice at a critical time.

  54. Diamond Orszag Plan is easily accessed via Google.
    First screen, first item.

  55. Well, the signals disappeared. Price signals only work if they’re sustained long enough to effect the change. Gas went to $2.50-3 again, and that’s low enough that what remains of the US middle class can afford it.

  56. Anyway, whatever the postdiluvium looks like, the point is that only in the rosiest scenarios does such a putative collapse look like one where most of us can sigh resignedly and bend over to plant our potatoes.

    The point of calling something a rentier class is that it demands rent, or whatever you want to call it. In the case where collapse threatens the ability to collect rent, the next step is to collect peons. In that case, hoarding gold or growing vegetables will only help a lucky few.

    Whatever the environmental roots, the initial manifestations of collapse will be social, so sustaining any sort of large-scale social organization is going to be important.

  57. anon2525

    Well, the signals disappeared. Price signals only work if they’re sustained long enough to effect the change.

    They are signals to adults about danger, not “price signals” to consumers. Try to climb out of the pool of Friedmanite thinking that the country has been immersed in for the past thirty years. People are ignoring these signals because they are ignoring their adult responsibilities, not merely because they are being “rational economic actors.”

    Notice that you did not mention the example of the response to the financial crisis. Look through the examples for the common factor — it is irresponsibility. This is a common response in the U.S. since reagan first claimed that through the miracle of the Laffer curve, we could cut taxes on the wealthy, increase military spending, and reduce the federal deficit, AKA, bush’s “voodoo economics.” Both the “greatest generation” (TM) and the post-war generation participated in this flight to irresponsibility (dressed up as economic sophistication) and we’ve been living with the consequences of this “revolution” ever since.

  58. They are signals to adults about danger, not “price signals” to consumers. Try to climb out of the pool of Friedmanite thinking that the country has been immersed in for the past thirty years. People are ignoring these signals because they are ignoring their adult responsibilities, not merely because they are being “rational economic actors.”

    Well, in that sense we shouldn’t need prices to tell us anything in the first place. Not like any number of other warning signs haven’t been reported on for the last n years…

  59. anon2525

    Not like any number of other warning signs haven’t been reported on for the last n years.

    So reported warnings are to be expected to have the same effect on people as their own experience?

    Scenario: As you’re preparing to drive to the grocery story, you hear a report on the radio that drivers should be aware of icy conditions on the roads. The road seems fine to you and besides you’re very busy and have lots that needs to be done today, so you drive as you normally would. You hit a patch of black ice and your car spins out of control and you narrowly escape crashing into a tree.

    Now, what do you expect this driver to do? Resume driving normally or drive much more cautiously? I expect that for most people they will respond to their experience more than they would to a report, although they will likely take the report more seriously in the future.

    This is why we ought to be able to expect adults to demand that the problems of resource depletion and fragility of the interconnected financial system (among others) be seriously and responsibly addressed — people have lived through the consequences of not addressing them.

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén