Reply #32: I hope you are joking.

[JDPriestly]

Our economic crisis is different from those in the past. Our problems were not caused by anti-capitalists, but by an immoral selfishness that infected our capitalism.

Capitalism is pretty much a given. The issue is not whether we have capitalism but whether we have a capitalism in which the rewards for work and for capital are balanced so as to provide not only an incentive to invest but also an incentive to work. When the incentive to invest is greater than the incentive to work, people chase "easy money," and we end up with a lot of Ponzi schemes. That's why cheap labor is actually detrimental to healthy capitalism. Value is produced by work. Capital is necessary to provide an environment in which to work. Over the past 30 years, the swan song of "easy money" has lured too many Americans into get rich schemes that involve no work. As a result:

a) We import virtually everything (at cheap prices) and export very little (our goods are too expensive). The resulting trade deficit dooms us to poverty and indenture. Already, the high value of our dollar is supported mostly by fear on the part of the nations with which we trade to let it free-fall. It's just a matter of time until something triggers a readjustment in our currency's value. And when that happens we will import far less. Theoretically, we will export more. But can we?

b) We have virtually no manufacturing base and therefore little of value to export. Over the past 30 years, investors in the United States chased easy profit. Rather than invest here, they gutted our factories and shipped the innards to Mexico, China and other cheap-labor countries. No one dared to say the awful truth -- that by investing in other countries, these greedy people were destroying their own. The investing class in this country, the ownership class has done more damage to our nation by outsourcing our jobs, equipment, know-how and even brand names than any terrorist in our history since the Civil War. American investors will be viewed by historians as selfish traitors. But, of course, at this time, those same investors control our media, so we never hear about that treason.

c) Thanks to a) and b), our government and the middle class are gagged and tied down, rendered immobile -- by debt. We hear a lot about government debt. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. The real problem is the debt of individual middle class Americans. We are not earning enough to support the standard of living that we have been led to believe is our birthright. When Americans wake up to discover that they can no longer afford to drive a car and that their towns, cities or communities can no longer afford to provide basic services like police protection, a fire department, regular garbage pick-up, a working sewage system, or even clean water, they will enter a state of shock such as we have not seen.

So what is different from the past. In the 1920s and 1930s, we were an exporting nation. International trade was less developed than today, but even impoverished Germany and other European countries imported our manufactured goods. When we needed to tool-up for WWII, we were able to do so because we had factories. A factory that had produced tractors or cars could be converted to produce tanks or military equipment. We don't have that reserve capacity any more.

We have great electronic technology, but I don't know that we still produce large quantities of computer chips for ourselves, much less the rest of our computers. Certainly, if we do, our capacity is very, very limited.

I don't think that the problems America faces have been caused by anti-capitalists. They have been caused by a lack of anti-capitalists, by a lack of criticism of the excessive exuberance of the investing and middle classes, by a lack of loyalty to country, by a lack of love for fellow countrymen and women, by ignorance about how our national market really works and by disrespect for hard work.

It will be a long, long, miserable time before we recover. And a lot of Americans will become very frustrated long before any recovery takes place. Many desperate Americans will reach to extremist ideas of various kinds.

Obama has stayed calm, and that is good. But Obama has not been able to inspire Americans to reach out and help each other. His economic team seems to have ignored that key to FDR's success.

It wasn't so much the details of FDR's economic programs that brought the U.S. out of the Depression. Our country survived intact because he and Eleanor brought the nation together through their commitment to equality, to their firm belief that Americans should work together to overcome the difficult challenges of their time. They demonstrated how they cared about each and every American, rich or poor.

As we all know, FDR practiced determination and humility in order to overcome great personal limitations. His shared his strength with the nation. I read books by Eleanor Roosevelt when I was in college. She was so wise, so patient, so dedicated to furthering human rights. Together, the Roosevelts were able to inspire Americans to act in a morally correct way in spite of economic difficulties. They were not anti-capitalists. In fact, they were capitalists. They were wealthy. They understood that the real problem was moral, not economic. Obama just has not spoken to Americans about the moral implications of greed and the need to sacrifice and work together.

My pessimism about the future isn't about capitalism or not capitalism. Capitalism is pretty much a given in the real world. But excessive selfishness and failure to respect work are not. Excessive selfishness and the belief in easy money are what brought us to this disaster. Reorienting ourselves to look to moral values of sharing, working hard, caring for others in our capitalist society is what will help our economy and our society recover.