Expatriate-hood and the Idea of America
I seem to be well on my way to expatriate-hood. It's not something I've thought through particularly or sought-out in some reactionary, Paul Auster-ish way (though neither he nor his wife seem to have followed through on their threats to leave Park Slope). It's just . . . well, sort-of happened.
It does put me in an odd and ambivalent position though. On the one hand, I feel a lot of patriotism toward the US - more than I'd probably express back in the US. I continually assert the ingenuity, inventiveness and resilience that I honestly believe are the backbone of the American character. "Don't underestimate the American resolve and entrepreneurial spirit," I hear myself saying to would-be anti-imperialists. Yet, even as I say these things, I'm nagged by a suspicion that my idea of what American is (indeed, what it represents), is not what America has become. I worry that corporate interest and mass-media consolidation have conspired to usurp what passes for "public interest" in this alternate America. I worry that it has increasingly become a nation of consumers rather than citizens, and indeed, that these two concepts are increasingly at odds with one another.
While I know that there are a lot of good and resolute people fighting hard to prevent the encroachment of this alternate American, working tirelessly to prevent it from completely overwhelming the ideals we share, it seems a thankless, Sisyphean task. In fact, I think it's much worse. It's more like playing whack-a-mole with a single hammer . . . and the moles are multiplying.
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A nation lives on foreign debt
A nation lives on foreign debt, a nation where all the people live on loans...... enormous wealth from outside where people work hard only to earn dollar bonds......
Be damn proud of it!
US foreign debt - good, bad, ugly?
Hi 'Anonymous,'
I'm not an economist; not even close. I think you raise some interesting issues and questions though - most of which I don't feel expert enough to answer - but I'm interested enough that I'm willing to pursue them in any case. Perhaps you can help me wade through it.
I'm with you in thinking that carrying debt is by-and-large a bad thing. However, it's not always necessarily bad.
A lot depends on what you do with the money you borrow. If you get a return of 15% on an investment and pay 8% in interest on a loan, then you'd clearly want to borrow and benefit from the 7% difference. Businesses do this sort of borrowing all the time. One could think of it in terms of 'good debt' and 'bad debt.' An important question regarding national debt then might be, 'Where is the bulk of the capital flowing into the country going?' i.e. 'how's it being spent?' Is the bulk of the capital entering the US being spent on SUVs and televisions? or is it being invested in capital growth (infrastructure for example)? and, to what extent does that even matter? There are some people out there who argue that the US economy hasn't even come close to the sort of debt that would be problematic (see this Forbes article, for example).
There are also a lot of interesting aspects of debt when it grows obscenely large. There may, for example, be a threshold of debt above which the lender's fortunes become intimately tied to the borrower's: they become more like partners who are equally bound to seeing the flow of capital continue . . . the worst case scenario for such 'partners' would be a cessation of capital flows, in which case both suffer.
Ultimately, I think criticizing the US for incurring tremendous foreign debt is not particularly effective. If you really want to criticize US economic policy - and I think you do - a better way is attacking its hypocritical attitude toward free-market economics, in which it expounds the need for greater liberalization while simultaneously protecting domestic agriculture, inhibiting development of a global labor market (look at the wall being built at the Mexican border!), and attempting to impose stronger and wider international intellectual property laws (effectively inhibiting the global development of ideas by thumbing the scales in favor of domestic producers over the - global - public domain). (This is a lot of what William Melody was speaking about at the LSE the other night . . . it was a great talk).
I'll have to look into the whole US debt issue more. But, at the very least, it's not clear to me that it is itself a problem. That said, I can certainly buy the idea that it may be a symptom of a genuine problem . . . likely trade related. At least, that's my feeling at the moment.
Question: Mightn't the development of a global, information-based economy significantly undermine the ability of national governments to impose the sorts of barriers currently encountered?
Dunno . . . just a thought. Let's call it 'Hackonomics.'
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