Do we really WANT the economy to be "how it used to be"?

i don't mean to be insensitive to the personal tragedies caused by this economic depression, but do we really want to return to the credit card, consumerist era of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s?

or should we strive for a "new normal" - when the economy doesn't fall apart when it can't grow 2% a year or whatever. where not every fun thing to do cost a load of money.

reply to post by Donnie Darko


No, most sane people and economist agree that trying to get back to status quo is the absolute wrong way to go.... and is one of the biggest reasons the governments efforts will fail miserably.. We will probably never again see the 1995-2007 era.

To go back to those days would mean we would all go out and spend money like crazy, buying properties and pointless consumer items, doing more harm to the environment in an endless drive for growth. we are gonna have to prepare for very low or no growth economies.

fundamentally there is no way we can go back to the economy we saw since the 80's to 2007... that was shown by the commod spike last year/2007... the earth just cannot support that level of 'growth'/consumption. We have to totally re-think our raison d'etre because the old capitalist ideal of seeling # to people they don't want and indeed cannot afford or selling 2x the # to people than the amount they want just cannot be supported... credit has been proven to be a drug every bit as addictive and ruinous as heroin

so... don't get puffed into what's going on at the moment, it's doomed to failure and until we have the sense and the balls to admit this and come up with a different model, they'll just be puffing air into a broken balloon

Give it time. We'll be back there.
When everybody makes tons of money off the new bull market we'll be sure to save the planet and not buy anything. NOT!
We'll be right back where we started.
The clock is ticking.
We've got to pump and pump and get into space as soon as we can.
Ol' Sol isn't going to stop for us ya know.
It is the biggest pump and dump (the Earth that is) in the universe!

Dontchaknow we're going to build a shell around the Moon and then milk it to the next star?
The offworld colonies await!

Or do you want to save the Earth? Save it from Sol and his gaping maw?
Dude, it's getting warm in here... and... oh no!.... my skin is boiling!!!!!


[edit on 16-7-2009 by THX-1138]

If we would go back to the economy it was, we would be inflating the same bubble again. Which would then collapse in .. years. I think there should be a whole new system, but yeah hard to replace the biggest artificial system on earth..

No i wouldn't want to,but alot of people probably would because they only look at the short term and have become used to taking out huge loans in any other circumstance they would not get,having multiple credit cards etc sounds silly,but alot of people have become used to such a lifestyle and would have no problem with us reverting back to it again.

Hmm, well considering how it looks right now like the only two choices the PTB give us are "personal debt out the wazoo" vs "try to save money and keep your personal debt low and we'll run up a cripling national debt in your and your future decendants' names" , I'll gladly take what we had. Hell, at least under the first scenario we saw a personal return on our debt through possessions and such. Under this wonderful national debt system, I have yet to see jack squat return-wise.

I could give two damns about the environmental rhetoric. Earth's a big, strong ox of a girl. The whole fragile Earth concept is horse crap.

reply to post by Donnie Darko


do we really want a system that has everyone in different tiers?
It's basically a caste system. The rich and powerful at the top, the working blue collars in the middle and the have not's at the bottom.

A system that is beneficial and equal to all is what is required.

Time for a new economic model - Participatory economics
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by warrenb
reply to post by Donnie Darko

 

do we really want a system that has everyone in different tiers?
It's basically a caste system. The rich and powerful at the top, the working blue collars in the middle and the have not's at the bottom.

A system that is beneficial and equal to all is what is required.

Time for a new economic model - Participatory economics
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Yes! Not totally, forcefully equal, like communism, because then the only equality is equality in misery, but a system in which people don't starve because they don't have enough money, and a system in which it is meaningless to be absurdly rich.

What happened was somebody won the game of Monopoly we were playing, collected all the money, and they're extending the game with credits to the other players (us). What it turned into is an Effed-Up game that no one enjoys because we're realizing that we've become more and more enslaved by the cycle of salary, taxes, and debt. The returns on playing the game are decreasing. It's dawning on us that we're no longer free men, it's hard to win independence from the game, and anything that enslaves us more to the game ticks us the Eff off.