I further pointed out that
Therefore the problem the country is facing is that money from the productivity gains is not being used to fuel growth in GDP due to a lack of demand. The government’s response is
1. increased defense spending;
2. massive tax relief for the rich;
3. low interest rates on loans; and
4. high deficit spending
I pointed out how each of the above contributed to our problems. In 2007, four years later, the bubble burst. The problems due to high deficit spending are coming to pass with people again proposing ways to cut social security. The worst problems, that the deficit is being used to pay for day to day expenses as opposed to one time charges, such as improvements to infrastructure, has yet to be seen. Looking backwards, I realize how prescient my writing was
Also back in 2003 I wrote Some Thoughts on Creating Wealth. I recommend that the US modify the tax cuts of the Bush administration and raise taxes on the wealthy. I recommended that the US needs to develop new energy sources and new industry / government covenants for managing energy. I also recommended that the nation needs to revisit our social programs and build new more comprehensive collection of social programs. Finally, I recommended that the nation needed to jump start the economy through pump priming. Guess what? The same is still true today. The only thing that has changed in seven years is that the economy has gotten much worse.
Looking Backward gives me little hope for the bright future that Edward Bellamy saw. Instead we appear once again to be headed towards the image of society as a
prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach along so hard a road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in live to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them, where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on which they before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one’s seat, and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who rode
Is this return to the past of 1887 of Edward Bellamy our fate? I wonder.
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