A Symptom – Moon of Alabama

August 19, 2006

A Symptom

This is not the ailment, but a symptom of a sinking empire:

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s second-largest carmaker, said first-quarter profit rose 39 percent on increased sales of fuel-efficient Corolla and RAV4 vehicles in the U.S. and a weaker yen.
…
Toyota is spending a record 1.55 trillion yen in the year
ending in March to expand production in North America, Europe
and Asia, and plans a Texas factory this year and a factory in
Russia in 2007.
Toyota’s Profit Rises 39% on Higher U.S. Sales, Yen – Aug 4, 2006

—

The Ford Motor Company, which is struggling to keep its grip on second place in the American car market, said Friday that it would cut by one-fifth the number of vehicles it plans to build in the final three months of the year.
…
Together, Ford and General Motors are shedding tens of thousands of jobs, closing more than two dozen plants and cutting billions of dollars of costs. But those measures are effectively canceled out when automakers cannot sell the vehicles already on the showroom floors.
Ford Is Slashing Production 20% for 4th Quarter – Aug 18, 2006

Posted by b on August 19, 2006 at 06:49 UTC | Permalink

Comments

I personally met the inefficient arrogance of GM when working with marketing one of their brands in the mid-90s onwards. Outside of Pietist congregations in my home country, I have never met people so oblivious to anyone’s opinions but their own – and damn the facts.
It should be remembered that GM lobbied against Hybrids. It lobbied against letting Hybrids and electric cars get special privileges on roads. It marketed against Hybrids, seeking to create consumer doubt as to whether Hydrogen cars weren’t just around the corner. It marketed the coming of Hydrogen cars when the concept wasn’t even off the drawing board.
GM then launched a series of humongous gas guzzlers. Cars so large they had to be named after geographic territories. Pick-Ups, Trucks and 4x4s. They stuffed these cars full of horsepower and weight.
GM ridiculed Honda’s decision to go for creating the most fuel efficient car in every car category.
Bob Lutz, GM Czar non-pareil, then launched his wishful thinking campaign where he stated that gas prices were not going to rise significantly. When that was followed by a steep rise in gas prices, he declared that they were bound to come down. When they didn’t, GM offered gas-rebate incentives in order to get rid of their gigantic, heavy and ridiculous cars.
GM also was the first to ditch its electric vehicle concept and car, when California was massaged into dropping the requirement that you had to have en e-car in your stable, if you were to be allowed to sell cars in CA. Once Bush was in power, getting that requirement dropped was apparently simple, and all the big carmakers dropped their e-cars. (Do you think they regret that now?)
GM management deserves everything that is coming to it. (And you can substitute Ford in that sentence and almost for every appearance of the word GM above). Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of GM and Ford workers will be affected, as will those who supply to these gone mad car behemoths.
Toyota is actually embarrassed by its success, and worried that it will backfire on them when Americans become aware of the destruction to the nation’s economy that inept Detroit managers have unleashed.
Toyota’s embarrassment is due to the fact that they find it inexplicable that Detroit hasn’t seen what’s coming, and hasn’t acted accordingly. What’s happening is comparable to an NFL linebacker (Toyota) mauling kids in kindergarten – it’s that disproportionate.
Bob Lutz was convinced that people wanted their cars big, and that marketing could get people to keep buying uselessly huge cars.
From my personal experience with GM-executives, I can state that they simply didn’t find it sexy to build small, efficient cars. And the coming destruction of the U.S. auto industry comes down to that – it wasn’t cool to be in top management and responsible for the small cars that everyone wants. It was cool the be responsible for huge, ridiculous and insanely inefficient cars that nobody wants.
Go figure.

Posted by: SteinL | Aug 19 2006 8:07 utc | 1

This here Wal-Mart Nation of ours is going to go big time for those nifty little Chinese cars coming over starting in January.
When working folks find out how far a Chinese car will go on $3.00 worth of regular, well now —
you’ll see Confederate flags inthe back window of little tiny cars.
More every year.

Posted by: Antifa | Aug 19 2006 9:08 utc | 2

It is not the sign of a declining empire. It is a sign of arrogant, stupid businesses run by morons.
The US automakers had TWO warning bells. The first came in the Seventies with the first gas crunch and the rise in popularity of Japanese cars (My first was a 1978 Honda Civic and I also converted my father to switch from Volvos to Hondas later that year. We have not owned American cars since 1959–the quality was declining even them.)
The saying is: Insanity is repeating the same mistake and expecting different results. I would like to post an addendum: So is arrogance.
GM and Ford’s executives should be made to pay for their stupid decisions. Unfortunately the workers are as usual getting hit first.
I’d recommend putting in a government order for light rail cars, on condition that the management was replaced.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 19 2006 9:58 utc | 3

I remember when the first Japanese cars hit the Irish market in the early seventies, they had radios as standard equipment, it sure woke up the European makers, except for the Brits that is.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 19 2006 12:23 utc | 4

It is a well-known fact that a substantial proportion of the American people suffer from self-inflicted obesity. The incidence of obesity is highest in the Midwest and South, and more generally the poor rural areas. These are the market for large cars. The other market are suburban families who grew up with SUV’s. The SUV is the product of an exemption supposedly to benefit farmers and small haulers that exempted light trucks from the late 1970s regulations which set maximum miles-per-gallon limits on the automobile industry. Almost immediately some of the trucks were transformed into what amounts to large station wagons. We are now well over a generation into that era, and many people can’t conceive of driving anything smaller. They think it is unsafe.
The bottom line is that there is a market for large vehicles that re-emerges in strength everytime gasoline prices drop. The GM/Ford execs have in effect been betting the farm on continued low gas prices. They lost.

Posted by: Knut Wicksell | Aug 19 2006 12:42 utc | 5

There is indeed a certain arrogance by US car companies. In Canada they would run the same car advertisements as they would run in the US – fun and excitement. Toyota did market research. They advertised reliability, and safety. Toyota, if I remember rightly, offered longer warrantees in Canada than in the US. US companies complained that Canadians weren’t buying US cars. The answer was simple – Canadians wanted reliability and safety, you are offering fun and excitement. Unfortunately for US automakers we are a dour, dour bunch. 🙂 It would be surprising if that same arrogance did not impede US car companies inside the US as well.
I think that it is not only bad management that is causing problems for Ford and Chrysler. The US social system has some distinct disadvantages. Cars produced outside the US, and by companies that are familiar with social systems outside the US may have distinct advantages.

Toyota to build 100,000 vehicles per year in Woodstock, Ont., starting 2008
09:17 AM EDT Aug 19
New President of Toyota Motor Corp. Katsuaki Watanabe said that the automaker plans to build a new plant in Canada. (AP/Shizuo Kambayashi)
STEVE ERWIN
WOODSTOCK, Ont. (CP) – Ontario workers are well-trained.
That simple explanation was cited as a main reason why Toyota turned its back on hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies offered from several American states in favour of building a second Ontario plant.
[…]
Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.
He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained – and often illiterate – workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use “pictorials” to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
“The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario,” Fedchun said.
In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/050630/b0630102.html

Posted by: edwin | Aug 19 2006 13:42 utc | 6

One of the main selling factors of these imports from Asia in general is the length of the warranty. No American car can even come close. To me, if a manufacturer is willing to warrant the performance of that car for such a long period of time, they must have real faith in their product — and so will I. And vice-versa with the American cars.

Posted by: Ensley | Aug 19 2006 13:42 utc | 7

I like to ask my neo-classical economics friends about what market mechanism justifies the high profits of the banks that didn’t notice problems with GM bonds until recently.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 19 2006 13:52 utc | 8

Note that Honda and Toyota build factories in North America as part of their strategy to avoid political backlash in the States. So, actually, auto workers will still be employed in the States as long as we keep buying American – which now means Japanese-badged cars.
This exploration of how to approach buying domestic isn’t bad. One problem, though, nobody wants to explain why “domestic” only includes Canada/USA despite NAFTA legally defining that to include Mexico as well. I suspect leaving out Mexico benefits Ford and GM because the Japanese makers use legal definitions to get their domestic numbers high, but the U.S. firms seem to use a more cultural definition that leaves out Mexico.
If I find numbers on content that include Mexico, I’ll get provide them.

Posted by: citizen | Aug 19 2006 13:53 utc | 9

@Antifa,
I live in a suburb or Birmingham, Alabama so I know from rednecks, and I can assure you gas will have to get to $10/gallon before they’ll be caught dead in tiny cars made by anyone.
Even then they’d probably rather walk.
Of course, once the bombing of Iran you’ve been relentlessly predicting starts, we may well see $10/gallon gas.

Posted by: ran | Aug 19 2006 13:57 utc | 10

Not only have the GM/Ford execs lost — and deservedly so — but we’ve all lost… If we did have electric cars or hydrogen-cell fueled cars or whatever — imagine how much less we’d care about ME oil… I would say it’s a profound, gigantic arrogance and lack of foresight on the part of all North Americans and their governments not to have supported and demanded low-cost, fuel effecient or fuel-unnecessary cars.
I was a kid in the 70’s and watched my parents anxiety at rising fuel prices and interest rates — and decided right then that a gas guzzeler was a stupid waste and how can that be called “sexy”? I drive a Toyota.

Posted by: Dena | Aug 19 2006 14:02 utc | 11

A good 6 page article starting here on domestic content in the automobile industry.

So what if that car was put together here, how much of it is American? Just like assembly plants, a car that’s made up of US-sourced parts helps in job creation. Consider the amount of work and investment that goes into, say an engine plant, and you get the picture. Thanks to the Government, we have a way of gauging that content, though its usefulness is a bit questionable. Passed into law in the early nineties, the American Automobile Labeling Act (AALA) was an attempt to regulate what was called “Made in the USA,” by requiring that 75 percent of the parts content be from the US or Canada. That’s one of the many curious things about it: why Canada? Probably because, with plants open and operating up north, domestic automakers wanted to get credit for the parts built there, and perhaps felt that, due to the proximity of Ontario, Canada, to Detroit, Michigan, the definition should be grouped. Another quirk of the AALA is the way it defines its parts content percentage: it’s by value, which, according to foreign automakers, penalizes them. If the value of one part of a transmission is more than the rest, such as the gear set, and that’s imported, then the percentage of “Made in the USA” content goes down – even though the rest of the transmission is built in the US. Even according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the effectiveness of the AALA is questionable. Today, in fact, the AALA may actually do the opposite of its intent, as foreign automakers boost their commitments in the US, and domestic automakers look elsewhere for cheaper parts and labor. According to CSM Worldwide, there has been a steady growth of foreign parts production since 1997, the year before AALA was enacted, while at the same time, domestic automakers have just as steadily decreased their US parts production.

No, it never explains how AALA doesn’t violate NAFTA.

Posted by: citizen | Aug 19 2006 14:10 utc | 12

This is not the ailment, but a symptom of a sinking empire.
Here we go again. Let’s all repeat: the End of Days is upon us, the Rapture is imminent, horrible Tribulations await. This Catastrophism of the Economy on the left is quite a phenomenon I will readily admit. However its adherents face the same nagging problem as the Southern Baptists: the empirical evidence is missing.
What sinking empire? Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP in the US are at levels not seen since the early sixties. The Empire of the Dollar is doing just fine: In 2006 40 out of 52 states are projecting budget surpluses, the federal budget deficit is now projected at 2.4% of GDP. Guess which country would easily pass under the rules of the Euro stability pact, in spite of a giant military, a giant tax cut, and an absurd war in Iraq: the supposedly sinking US of A.
The neo-conservative full-spectrum-dominance push is failing yes. But that isn’t the US empire. It is oligarchs like Lamont who really represent its hard core, and that hard core is in excellent health, thank you, in spite of $70 oil. Profit margins remain stupendous.
This is not the End of Days. For every Ford there are ten General Electrics drowning in cash. Schumpeterian creative destruction is alive and well. GM and Ford plants are closing, other car-makers are opening plants. Perhaps GM and Ford will even fall into “foreign” (shudder!) hands. But guess what: the flexibility of the Dollar empire is such that it effortlessly absorbs these new owners. After all, when a German carmaker bought Chrysler, what did that mean? It meant that the Dollar empire had extended its reach and was now absorbing a German car maker.
Life is not a morality play, sorry Doc.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 19 2006 14:23 utc | 13

@Antifa

What’s more, foreign brands use their American presence to convince even loyalist American-only buyers that the car they are buying is American-made. Honda, with plants in Ohio and Alabama, is convincing Americans that “even though it’s a foreign brand, it’s a domestic vehicle,” said Mike Chung, an analyst for the automotive website Edmunds.com.
Some Honda advertisements, for instance, proclaim: “After decades of investing in America, it’s starting to feel like home. Oh, wait, it is home.”
Toyota said one reason it is building its near-billion-dollar pickup truck plant, capable of producing 200,000 Tundras per year, in San Antonio is that it goes right to the heart of the American vision of trucking — big, wide open, and rugged.
“It’s the first time we chose a location for marketing reasons,” said Dan Sieger, spokesman for Toyota Motors North America. “Texas is the biggest pickup market in the country, probably making it the biggest in the world, and to have a truck built by Texans can only make it better.”

source

n Alabama, where German, Japanese and Korean automakers have spent a combined $3.5 billion to build modern assembly plants that employ 12,000 people, the message might fail to strike a chord. No member of the traditional Big Three has ever operated an auto assembly plant in the state.

source
When Jedediah’s brother works at Huntsville or Anytown, AL he’ll buy that ‘foreign’ car.

Posted by: citizen | Aug 19 2006 14:56 utc | 14

i can account for one of those first-quarter corolla sales right here. ignored a 3k earned rebate balance on a GM card to do it, too.

Posted by: b real | Aug 19 2006 15:03 utc | 15

The only hope for the US is if some way were found to package arrogance, ignorance and stupidity, and sell it to other countries, and hope that they will buy it.
We don’t have anything else…
Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, they’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We are just enjoying the final music of the band, vainly hoping that the Carpathia will get to us in time.
Our time has come…

Posted by: PD | Aug 19 2006 16:03 utc | 16

I agree with Guthman Bey that this shouldn’t be read as part of a larger narrative about the decline of the US. If anything, it might be a reflection of the increasing affluence of the American consumer. It seems to me that a consumer perception has been building for years that the only people who buy domestics are people who can’t afford anything better (with the exceptions of SUVs and pickups). At the office, I frequently hear comments of “I’ll never buy another domestic… never again” spoken almost as a status symbol. Part of that is obviously due to the low relative quality of domestic vehicles for decades, though in the last 10 years the Consumer Reports ratings indicate that domestics have almost closed the gap, but I don’t see quality or long-term reliability as the whole story. People still buy VW and other Euro makes even though their Consumer Reports ratings are much worse than both Asian and domestic manufacturers. I think the generally lower price tags of domestics have contributed as much or more to the problem, giving them the perception that they’re the low-end brands. Vehicles are seen as status symbols, and the class of people flush with credit, inflated home equity, and large tax cuts don’t want to be perceived as buyers of low end brands. This is a perception that the domestics may have a real problem turning around.

Posted by: Alan | Aug 19 2006 16:14 utc | 17

There is a widespread misperception that somehow the interests of multinational corporations are somehow aligned with the original country they were founded in. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ford and GM are huge investors in China; if they had a way to get out of their union and healthcare contracts in the US, they would shut down _all_ of their US production and move it all to China. After all, they would make more money by making their gas guzzlers in China and exporting them to the US. (I’m sure that the Chinese government would welcome this move, while not permitting Chinese to buy those vehicles domestically because they don’t meet Chinese mileage requirements.) They are both originally US companies, but they get no benefit at all from manufacturing in the US. It is all a cost.
What is getting hammered in the US is the middle class which is in hock up to their unborn grandchildren’s eyeballs and is quickly shrinking. This is happening just as China’s urban middle class is growing by leaps and bounds.
If you don’t see any irony in a nominally Communist country building a consumer middle class, while an originally capitalist country where the middle class has gone so deeply into debt that its existence is threatened, and its He-Man President thinks that he can maintain US supremacy by threatening and bombing anyone he doesn’t like, then I can’t help you.
The next thing you are going to see is less demand for the US dollar as a reserve currency. This is because when a country goes into debt as heavily as the US, it has no choice except to devalue its currency. Of course the US doesn’t want to openly admit this, so it pushes the Chinese to revalue the yuan upwards. The Chinese don’t like to do this because their own financial sector has been inefficient for the past fifty years, which forced them to put much of their reserves into dollars. Now, they see that the US emperor has no clothes, so they want to diversify, but not too fast as to pull the rug out from under the dollar. This will take five years or so to do; you will know the Chinese are out OK when they make the yuan a convertible currency.
When that happens, you will have several major reserve currencies, the dollar, euro, yen and yuan. In order to chase investment money, US interest rates will have to go up more, since more competition means higher interest rates.
Bankruptcies and foreclosures in the US are already up this year; this shows that Americans are very sensitive to changes in interest rates and have no savings. What do you think is going to happen when China is stepping up oil imports and OPEC decides it’s OK to take payment in euros and yuan? Will the US be reduced to a Mad Max world where people fight over gasoline? It is not an impossible scenario.
This is where current policies and fantasies of empire have brought the US.
And hope is not a strategy…

Posted by: PD | Aug 19 2006 16:47 utc | 18

PD, why you are describing the coming Tribulations! Clearly the Lord has chosen you as a medium and speaks through you. Consider yourself blessed. The only thing you forgot to mention are the frogs that will be raining from the sky.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 19 2006 16:56 utc | 19

Guthman–I am not a reborn Christian; everything they say is bullshit. It is not the end of the world, just the end of the US.
With a name like Guthman Bey, you should know that the US is not the world!

Posted by: PD | Aug 19 2006 16:58 utc | 20

Guthman–Isn’t it annoying when people don’t fit into your neat little stereotypes? Makes life complicated, doesn’t it? Well, that’s what most intelligent human beings are.
You don’t have to be a Christian or Islamic fundamentalist to see the writing on the wall in politics or economics, you just need to be reasonably intelligent.
And no, I don’t believe in an afterlife. I believe that we, as human beings, are ultimately responsible. So don’t stick me into that peghole.
I hope that isn’t too far beyond you.

Posted by: PD | Aug 19 2006 17:18 utc | 21

Aside from those ironics, I do regard manufacturing as THE piece that defines an empire. After Britain had lost its quasi monopoly on steam engines and cotton mills and the French and Prussian grew into industrialized countries, the empire started to weaken.
In the longterm conflicts, military hot or cold, the ability to make something is important. Japanese don´t put fasten the screws on the Japanese cars the US folks buy. Japanese make the car factories.

Posted by: b | Aug 19 2006 17:55 utc | 22

The problem with the US is that it was built at a time when the rest of the world was relatively backward in the manufacturing field. This system has not been able to adapt to the effects of globalization.
Then the multinationals took over and saw that they could build more modern, cheaper factories in China, India and Brazil, and could man it with cheaper labor. These were combined with entrepreneurs in East Asia who became very good at contract manufacturing and exporting and selling to Europe and North America.
Americans have yet to find their place in this new world.

Posted by: PD | Aug 19 2006 18:02 utc | 23

Guthman’s point, as I understand it, is that apocolyptic predictions based on empty ideology are no more persuasive from the “left” than they are from the Left Behind group. Lefties have confidently been announcing the ~~last throes~~ final crisis of capitalism for quite some time but it continues to rationalize, destroy, create, and spin us all into a more and more tied together world economy without more than a few hiccups. We will all personally die at some point, the Onion pointed out that the death rate remains 100%. The US will likely decline and it has already damaged its own manufacturing base. But while ecological or nuclear disasters are not unlikely, nobody seems to have a good idea of what will happen next.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 19 2006 18:15 utc | 24

@b:
Japan isn’t an empire anymore. Don’t confuse industrial might with empire.
Empire is a complex concept consisting of many attributes. But, simply put, empires are systems which seek to centralize the accumulation of capital from, and direct the development of, large groups of disparate peoples. Generally this is done by some form of coercion, usually military force, but not always. Since we have never had a true unipolar world, the other essential of empire is that it is always defined in contrast to opposing groups or forces, and hence the identity and internal security characteristics which we watch so closely here at Moon.
The plan is NOT for the centers of empire to manufacture SUVs or transistor radios — that can be done at the periphery. It IS for central control of knowledge, through intellectual property right laws, paying ever-increasing royalties by third world manufacturers, backed by the threat of military force. (This is a simplification. The modern plan calls for a three tiered world: The central core, which directs and controls; the value added band, which manufactures and grows; and the periphery, which provides raw materials, resources, and waste disposal.)
This is why unquestioned leadership in military force is so essential, and why the string of debacles in the Middle East are so damaging to Empire. Remember, the PNAC and National Security documents do not talk about Ford manufacturing plants — they do talk about military domination of the entire planet from space.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 19 2006 18:26 utc | 25

peter dicken’s gigantic guide to globalism shows how tncs continue to recycle the biggest chunk of profits through the core/metropolitan “home” countries. this is true of r&d and knowledge tranfer which infrequently enjoy diffusion among peripheral “industrializing” economies. also, “reproletarinization” of the global workforce, achieved by reduction in socially necessary labor time, occurs globally–there is a leveling of wages everywhere, so that one can expect the exploitation of industrial jobs to revived at some point in the future in the deindustrialized core. this could go on indefinitely.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 19 2006 18:29 utc | 26

the contradictions of accumulation still exist. there is always crisis, and it would be foolish to say none of the is predictable. of course it is. and it still will always require the intervention of the opppressed to change the circumstances of the reproduction of this reality.
an inspiring account of this paradox is given by Wang, Hui
China’s new order : society, politics, and economy in transition. anyone here interested in globalism should read this.

Posted by: slothrop | Aug 19 2006 18:36 utc | 27

“The plan is NOT for the centers of empire to manufacture SUVs or transistor radios — that can be done at the periphery. ”
I dunno if this is a plan or just more stupidity. Clearly, the Wizards of PNAC have as much grasp of industrial processes as they do of 4G warfare and military logistics. They believe that raw application of power solves all problems – a theory that our kiwi friend will no doubt explain is due to Talmudic studies.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 19 2006 18:51 utc | 28

This model for world development has nothing to do with the PNAC gallery. It dates back to the 16th century, and has been followed by all empires since. Fuller, Wallerstein, and Frank, are best for understanding this.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 19 2006 19:16 utc | 29

@citizen K – What Guthman said was obvious and agree that there may be a few that the US demise as “religion”. I don´t.
Looking at the numbers the US was at its biggest after WWII.
But the point here is production and manufacturing, not believe. There are and will be global conflicts around resources, where “interlectual property” will not buy you a bullet, i.e. a negotiation point. The US has had problems to manufacture enough bullets for its war on Iraq.
It is not a critizism, just an observation.
There are many other symptons. Emmanuel Todd has a decent list.
Empire is complex as Malooga says. It depends on many variables. I for one suggest that manufacturing is one of them and the US today would have huge difficulties to get back to level of manufacturing it needed and achieved throughout WWII.

Posted by: b | Aug 19 2006 19:20 utc | 30

Malooga:
The Dutch, for example, tried very hard to keep their naval manufacturing base going as destroying other people’s navies and bombarding them from off shore was a critical part of their trading power. Whether that prolonged their empire or not, the fact that the current US government/corporate elite seems to have no idea that military superiority cannot be conjured out of a power-point slide presentation is at least different. I doubt you will find evidence in Wallerstien et al that shows what parts of a modern industrial ecosystem can be let collapse without undermining the military base of the current US empire.
So I agree somewhat with B, but not totally – and this is where I join Guthman in skepticism about the proclaimed inevitible collapse.
The dominance of finance in the US now is generally a symptom of declining power, but it is not at all clear that the mechanisms that humbled 18th century netherlands or 20th century UK apply to 21st century US or that globalism is not even more powerful today than then. The fall of Dutch power in the face of British Empire did not mean that Holland became poor or that Dutch capitalists were reduced to selling chiclets on the street. Shell, Phillips, Unilever, and ABNAMRO don’t require Dutch naval supremacy as long as the world system continues. The US has lost a great deal of manufacturing capability, but it is different from the tiny UK/Netherlands in that it has a huge internal market and many raw materials and is not dominated by a small number of finance/manufacturing centers in the same way that those empires were. It seems plausible that the replacement of US bodies/bullets by Chinese ones and/or some combination of world mercenaries will not damage the House of Morgan, or that some regional centers in the US will have manufacturing revivals (if detroit dies but Seattle thrives what happens?). The pattern since the 1500s is that the capitol of capital and the military dominance of the world changes, but Rotterdam and Amsterdam and London and Edinburough are richer than they were at the height of national empire and they exercise vast power around the world still.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 19 2006 20:03 utc | 31

US car makers are locked into Gvmt. and the Oil lobby. The lock is historical, and ideological (the US is built on oil and can continue with military might to pursue that line), sociological (Americans will win out, do as they please, and drive SUVs if they wish to, so it must be possible to sell them), and feebly tactical. Abandoning their true-blue line would cost them big, death probably. Death which will come in any case, but they staved it off for a while.
The US Gvmt. efforts (besides, or in conjunction with, its demented foreign adventures) seem to be more directed to subsidising heartland farmers (ethanol from corn, an energy sink) and generally keeping up the status quo ante, -eh to quote Condosleeza out of context-, when the US was oil rich, winning the great game, and became a devastating military power, perpetually feeding on (as the USSR did) a kind of low-key war economy.
Could GM build and promote an electric bicyle, or a tiny fossil fuel driven car? Or build buses that run on electricity? Light rail? Or whatever?
Can one imagine that? No. To finance, build, and sell them, they would have to implicitly admit that cheap gas and American hegemony are dead. That they cannot do.

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 19 2006 20:19 utc | 32

“The plan is NOT for the centers of empire to manufacture SUVs or transistor radios — that can be done at the periphery. It IS for central control of knowledge, through intellectual property right laws, paying ever-increasing royalties by third world manufacturers, backed by the threat of military force.”

That is exactly right. It is all about building one big global system as opposed to building large self-sufficient mercantilistic units. For example, I recently read that something like 90% of all socks used on our planet are now manufactured in one province in China.
There is a fundamental conflict between the Neo-Con/Full-Spectrum-Dominance/USrael-First ideology and globalism. Under globalism the military exists to uphold order and to enforce contracts, which is multi-lateral and supra-national by definition — that’s the abstract. The concrete reality however is that the US sits at the core of this system, which it shaped at inception and which is largely based on its currency and financial markets. The US also happens to have a global empire of bases and the most powerful military. The utter foolishness of the neo-cons lies precisely in their honesty: instead of having the US defend “the system” they postulate a “US First” policy and thus create opponents right and left. That’s why the more intelligent oligarchs are dead-opposed to this policy: they understand that defending the Global Order is defending its center and prime beneficiary: the United States of America. And in a way that is continually neutralizing opposition rather than generating it.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 19 2006 20:21 utc | 33

PD,
I jerked your chain, sorry. My point was simply this: you are against the “system” fine, that’s one thing. Quite another however is psyching yourself into a belief that the “system” you oppose is perennially on the verge of collapse. That’s where the parallel lies with religious fundamentalism.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 19 2006 20:41 utc | 34

As far as I’m concerned my personal situation, and the situations of just about everyone I know support the belief that the system is the verge of collapse.
I’d hazard a guess that the American firms that are doing well are basically marketing firms that have a charter from the King, I mean US government/business system, to sell Chinese and other foreign goods in the US.
This is the worst I’ve ever seen it. I remember the 70’s. I wish I had understood how good that decade was compared to now.

Posted by: anonymous | Aug 19 2006 21:27 utc | 35

Yes, ck, things do change over time. And, yes, GB, you put your finger on the nature of the error being committed. But one must also differentiate between an empire and a world system. The empire is part of the world system, and if it is successful, it directs the system’s progress; but it does not consist of the entire system. There are ther countries which are more or less effected by the empire that interact within the system. So, an empire can diminish in power without greatly affecting the entire system. And there is no need for absolutes here. Change can be slow and gradual, especially if it is managed successfully, which it currently is not.
@b:
The US controlled 60% of gross world domestic product after WWII!!!!!!!!!!! That was clearly not sustainable, nor should we ever want it to be. It was a singularity in world history, which barring the devastation of much of the earth, will not happen again. The US was on top of the world simply because the rest of the developed world (impute your own pet theory of causation here) was in ruins. This should be patently obvious to anyone, just as it should be equally obvious that such a condition is both unsustainable and unwanted.
Look, this is the path that all empires have taken. As empires have grown, historically, their horizons stretch out further, and the interests between the elite and the citizens of the core diverge ever more strongly. Middle-class Americans want a strong manufacturing base. The corporate elite do not. Their interests have diverged. Capital is highly mobile, as are the elite. The hoi-polloi are not. You can’t conflate the two of them into an artificial construct called “America,” without turning your arguments into gobbly-gook.
I’m sorry I haven’t read Todd’s book, but I feel that I’ve read enough of what he is written to accurately characterize his ideological biases. Personally, I don’t have too much respect for him. His prognostications are about half right, but since he starts from faulty, or skewed, premises, I’m not sure what value his work holds.
Todd analyzes this artificial conflation called “America.” He takes the extant method of mind control, which most of us at Moon understand pretty well, which is called by the media “Democracy,” to really mean Democracy, and then makes projections about its viability for the rest of the world. For a Political Scientist, where is the intellectual rigor?
Kissenger, and Brzezinski are intellectually rigorous — you just have to translate their terms, like “Democracy” and “Free Trade,” into what they really mean, then you can understand what they are saying and agree or disagree. But guys like Todd, and even more so, Fukuyama, combine rigorous terminology with propaganda meanings like a mix-and-match wardrobe. The result is gibberish. You can’t critique it because nothing “means” anything. Or more accurately, it can mean whatever they want it to mean — which is always convenient for the public intellectual, both beheld and beholden.
The same de-industrialization and leveling processes that are going on in the US, and Todd objects to, are going on throughout Europe, just at a slower pace. Let’s look at Germany, for instance:
German company profits explode

The semi-annual balance sheets of some of the largest companies listed on the DAX (the Deutsche Aktienindex—Germany’s leading stock market index), released in August, reveal the extent of the profits bonanza currently being enjoyed by German big business. The huge increases in profit levels characteristic of the last several years have continued in the first half of 2006, despite a dramatic jump in oil and energy prices.
The figures released exceeded the expectations of many financial analysts. Champagne flowed in the bars near the stock exchanges and in the corporate boardrooms, while at the same, companies announced plans for further mass redundancies that will deprive hundreds of thousands of workers of any future.
Analysts attribute the booming profits not only to an improved world economic situation, but also to the ongoing stagnation of wages and salaries in Germany.
BMW scored a record increase in pre-tax profits of 2.5 billion euros (US$3.2 billion) for the first six months of this year. This amounts to an increase of 44.5 percent for one of the most profitable auto companies worldwide.
The giant steel concern ThyssenKrupp was able to record the best quarterly result in its history. In the second quarter, its pre-tax profit rose to 806 million euros (US$1.03 billion). This amounted to an increase of some 39.7 percent over the same quarter last year and is being attributed to strong demand and high prices for steel.
During the same period, the steel firm’s net profits rose by 81 percent to 468 million euros (US$600 million)—a clear result of drastic rationalisation measures. ThyssenKrupp, which completed its merger eight years ago, has dismissed several thousand workers and has now increased its turnover by 8 percent to a total of 12.1 billion euros (US$15.5 billion).
The world’s largest chemical enterprise, BASF, also racked up unexpectedly large profits and improved its balance-sheet by 1.91 billion euros (US$2.45 billion) over the half-year.
Germany’s largest pharmaceutical company, Boehringer Ingelheim, increased its turnover by 17 percent to a total of 5.5 billion euros (US$7.1 billion)—principally through the sales of new, expensive prescription medicines. Its earnings before interest payments and taxes rose by more than 34 percent to 1 billion euros (US$1.28 billion).
The financial data specialist Factset JCF is predicting that companies listed on the DAX will increase their net margins by 12.6 percent, and that for companies on the M-DAX (medium-sized enterprises), an increase of 34 percent in profits is forecast.
Producing this orgy of profits—or as it is officially called, the rising “competitiveness of Germany”—are, of course, the companies’ employees whose daily effort generates these immense values. However, there is also a political reason for the massive increase in profits and bonuses for managers.
Despite widespread propaganda over allegedly high wages in Germany, the economy has now witnessed stagnating wages for a number of years. Labour costs are currently increasing in Germany at the lowest rate in Europe. In 2006, wages and salaries in Europe are expected to rise by an average of nearly 3 percent; in Germany, however, they will increase by only 0.8 percent.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, the German trade unions have negotiated cuts in real wages on an annual basis, while agreeing to increased hours (unpaid) and generally opening the door for ever more intolerable conditions of work—all in the name of “defending Germany as an industrial location.” For years, the trade unions have argued that only by accepting such concessions is it possible to prevent even sharper attacks on wages and working conditions.
In close co-operation with the trade unions, Germany’s major companies have wiped out hundreds of thousands of jobs. These mass redundancies are currently taking place in the auto industry—at Opel, Volkswagen, DaimlerChrysler—and at telecommunications giant Telekom, and the trade unions have done nothing to oppose them.
The Allianz Company is the best example of the extreme forms this development has taken. The insurance company based in Munich increased its profit prognosis for 2006 from an original 4.9 billion euros (US$6.3 billion) to 5.5-6.0 billion euros (US$7.1-$7.7 billion). Company executive chairman Helmut Perlet proudly announced last week that the corrected estimate took into consideration redundancy payments to the 5,700 workers due to be axed in the insurance division and the 2,500 in its banking subsidiary.
The consequences of trade union subordination to the profit sheets of big business are now very evident. While many large companies have racked up gigantic profits, the constant cuts in wages have done nothing to secure jobs, nor have they led to a let-up in the drive by companies for even greater profit maximisation, which has reached new dimensions in line with the globalisation of production.
Business and industry have not only relied on the reformist trade unions. Germany’s former Social Democratic Party (SPD)-Green Party government faithfully obeyed the commands of the big business lobby during its seven years in power. Those included drastic cuts in company taxation, the creation of an extensive low-wage sector, which now embraces nearly 5 million workers, and the punitive Hartz IV laws, involving sweeping cuts in welfare and unemployment assistance.
In the face of popular discontent and growing resistance to its antisocial policies, the Gerhard Schröder-led SPD-Green government responded to a further demand from the business elite and cleared the way for early elections and the assumption of power by the current “grand coalition” (Christian Democratic Union—CDU, Christian Social Union—CSU and SPD).
The regime headed by Angela Merkel of the CDU is now pushing ahead with the work of her predecessor in an intensified fashion. She relies on SPD ministers such as Franz Müntefering (labour) and Peer Steinbrück (finance) to play leading roles in enforcing further cuts in social spending.
The government is planning a new tax gift for business estimated to be worth 5 billion euros (US$6.4 billion), which, taking into consideration a recently published report, can only be described as perverse.
The federal finance ministry undertook its own investigation into company profits, and the results have just been made known. A ministry spokesperson confirmed a report published in Die Welt that, based on an internal government document, revealed that German companies are evading paying taxes to the tune of some 65 billion euros (US$83 billion) a year.
Companies use entirely legal loopholes to avoid paying corporate tax in Germany by shifting their profits abroad. This transfer of profits has been an accepted practice for years and was tolerated by the SPD-Green government.
According to figures from the Commerzbank, private households in Germany will be expected to pay out an additional 40 billion euros (US$51 billion) in taxes over the next three years. Eckhart Tuchtfeld, leading political economist for Commerzbank, explained with evident pleasure: “Unlike private households, Germany’s companies will have nothing to complain about under the grand coalition.”

How is what is happening in Europe any different than what is happening in the US, except that the US is further along because of a more ignorant public with fewer expectations? Does Todd address this in any substantial way, besides mere platitudes about European values?
Todd is very concerned with the US trade deficit. And yet, for whatever reason, the US elite is clearly NOT worried by the trade deficit — Bush has done everything possible to maximize it, to the plaudits of the business class. I have some theories about this, but not for this post. Is this the single criterion that will bring down the US empire?
But, more importantly, yes — we can learn from the past, but in many ways the future is different from the past; the challenges faced are unique. In this case, what differentiates the US empire, and the world today, from the British or Dutch or Spanish empires, and their worlds, is that we are reaching, if we have not already surpassed, the ecological limits of planetary stability. Assuming what I just said is true, and not some lefty enviromentalist nutcase wacked-out crap, how can you critique an empire, without this being the central focus of your analysis? This is why Bookchin is so important — he was the first to say this. But there are many, many others — he is not unique — they just don’t get much media play like Todd does; they, and their ideas, aren’t “sexy” enough. Hazel Henderson, who I worked with in the late seventies, was saying the very same things back then.
Other equally amorphous Todd premises:
The ideological level: the USA doesn’t believe anymore that all humans are equal. Who does? The Europeans? The Chinese? Again, we have a premise that sounds good but is never examined by evidence against competing theories.
The military level: the USA can only terrorize weak nations. Thank god the Russians, Chinese, and Europeans don’t terrorize weak nations, or populations. How can anyone take this type of thinking as coming from a serious intellectual?
But here, Todd, speaking for many Europeans, annoys me to no end. Just as I believe that liberal illusions are MORE dangerous than conservative in domestic politics, which is why I was so purposefully derisive about Lamont (who looks like he will lose, in any event), I also believe that liberal illusions are far more dangerous in international politics. And there are no better liberals than the Europeans. (Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate Europe. On the contrary, I love it, and would much rather be living there than here. I’ve lived in Spain, and spent many months in Germany, Denmark, and Ireland, as well as traveling all over. I was married to a Dane for five years and was very sorry when it, and my annual trips, ended.) But, to quote a puzzled American troglodyte I met while traveling through Europe, “Europeans think that their shit don’t smell.”
Starting close to home, the bombing of Serbia could not have been done without German complicity; indeed, many believe that it was done at the behest of Germany, and for the benefit of competing German industries. After all, when Serbia finally capitulated, even the media was surprised to note that their military capability was barely touched, but their industrial capacity, their independent car manufacturers not beholden to German capital for instance, were bombed to smithereens.
Europeans ignore their past history colonizing Africa, as if that was the “old Europe,” and some sort of newer, more humane, mode of extracting resources has been developed.
If so, no one seems to have informed the French military, who have been involved all over the place, from Ivory Coast to Rwanda, from Chad to even Haiti in the US’s hemisphere.
What are the Trans-National industries of Europe, and how are they better accepted by the rest of the world; how is their development model more sustainable?
Airbus, is a success, having just passed Boeing as the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer. But within twenty years, a Soviet/Chinese consortium will undercut and surpass them, and then where will Todd’s remonstrances against the US be? In any event, air travel is the single greatest cause of global warming in the world. How about French nuclear power — surely it is responsible for less CO2 emmisions than air travel? Well yes, except that it is highly unlikely that the French have much better solutions for their nuclear waste then the Americans have, namely, let it slowly leach out into the evironment and hope that no one notices — after all how many recall the huge cloud of nuclear fallout from Chernobyl which settled across Europe, especially Sweden? Then we have the German and Swiss drug companies, devising ever more expensive interventions for the ever increasing ills of wealthy industrialized society, virtually ignoring the indigent of the world. How about French water companies, privatising the water in every corner of the earth where they can hide behind the strongmen imposed on small nations under the threat of US military intervention. Or oil, where the stellar environmental standards of BP, with its colorful sunflower logo and a large supporter of PBS, has just resulted in a devastating oil spill in the virgin Alaska tundra.
This is not meant to be a corporate blame game. The point is in trying to find out exactly how Europe is different from America in any fundamental and substantive way. Do they act with higher ethical standards? Do they live more sustainably? (A glance at a list of global ecological footprints might be enlightening: While the US commands the first tier, along with such “green” nations as OZ & NZ, topped only by that capitalistic wonder of modern Arab development, the Emirates, Europe commands the entire second tier, almost all of them exceeding their land capacities.) Where do they actually differ from the US, substantively, in how they treat the rest of the world? Or, are they just playing the role of good cop to America’s bad cop?
Maybe we, and Todd should ask if America and Europe are really even two separate entities? Perhaps they are more like a pair of inseparably conjoined twins, sharing more vital organs then each would like to admit. After all, they eat mostly the same food from the same corporations, they use mostly the same products from the same companies, they consume the same resources from most of the same countries, they ignore the same laws, they transgress against the same gods, they dream the same dreams, they have the same hopes and expectations for the future, and, inevitably, they will ultimately confront the same fate.
But, if this is really true, if we understood world systems for what they really are, and not what they appear to be, then it might be hard for Mr. Todd to sell us his stories.
If anyone gets New Left Review, this new article by Wallerstein looks interesting, and probably more informative than the fables of Mr. Todd:

Since the end of the Second World War, the geopolitics of the world-system has traversed three different phases. From 1945 until around 1970 the us exercised unquestioned hegemony in the world-system. This began to decline during the period between 1970 and 2001, but the extent of the decline was limited by the strategy that the us evolved to delay and minimize the effects of its loss of ascendancy. Since 2001 the us has sought to recuperate its standing by more unilateralist policies, which have, however, boomeranged—indeed actually accelerating the speed and depth of its decline.

_____________________
*Chernobyl caused Sweden an initial 150M in economic damages and caused them to vow, at the time, 1986, to do away with nuclear power by 2010. Well, we are less than four years away from 2010, and, in one of nature’s crueler jokes, after the misinformed public had decided not to do away with nuclear power because of global warming, just two weeks ago, Sweden suffered what was termed “worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl,” only saved from complete catastrophe by two backup diesel generators. And tragically, all of this comes some 800+ cancer cases later, despite the fact that most cancers take 20-50 years to develop.
All of this begs the question, “Is mankind learning from his experience. Are we following the precautionary principle, Vorsorgeprinzip, or are we following what I term, the ‘catastrophic principle.'” Does Todd address this, and how Europe is supposedly fundamentally different from the US in this regard, or are such considerations irrelevant, or merely sentimental, when discussing such hard-headed concepts as the fates of empires, and the fate of the world?

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 19 2006 23:25 utc | 36

Buthman Gey–
The economic End Times are indeed upon us. Unlike the ever-sought return of Jesus, they not only are about to occur, but have occurred several times already–most famously in October 1927. In the previous century, the 1890s and the 1870s were both noteworthy, also there was a “downturn” about a decade before the Civil War. But hey! Who remembers? History is like, so yesterday!
Crashes are a natural part of Capitalism just like hang-overs a natural part of drunken binges. Both alcoholism and Capitalism have the same etiology of addiction. Both can kill you.

Posted by: Gaianne | Aug 19 2006 23:42 utc | 37

“But one must also differentiate between an empire and a world system.”
One mascarading as the other. The system as servant of the haves of the existing order. The term empire is itself vulgar and so 19th century: only troglodytes like Cheney still think in those terms. The Millner group already planned the Commonwealth that way, as a post-Empire world, serving everyone, but especially its head. See Quigley.

Posted by: Guthman Bey | Aug 19 2006 23:54 utc | 38

Malooga:
Europeans and White American Southerners are fond of the same story about how the distant misty past means nothing and besides they are sick and tired of all the whining from blacks/jews/congolese/whatever. Even in the “Europe against populism” as the EU officials recently characterized Europe, “imperialism” is an American invention.
The Wallerstein article appears to lean too much on Kondratieff cycles which appear to me to have none of the virtues of the theory of reincarnation and all of the drawbacks (no supporting evidence) as Ed Abbey might have said.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 19 2006 23:56 utc | 39

GBey: But the Cheney group is a very odd one indeed. Somehow the upper echelons got under the control of a bunch of unsophisticated fourth raters. Whatever you say about Macnamera, he was a competent manager. Zbig and Henry were maybe revolting people, but not stupid. The US is now more in the situation of end-empire Spain where the moron faction gains power and operates on pride, arrogance, and sheer brutality. That can lead to a rapid and severe change. 100 years after dominating the world, Spain was a basket case and all its valuable possessions were parcelled out among the winners. That’s certainly where Cheney is taking us. The real anti-imperialists should follow Al Queda’s example and support Cheney.
Of course, Dutch imperialism was not actually any nicer than Spanish imperialism, so the replacement of the US by say the EU and China might not be too pleasant.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 20 2006 1:59 utc | 40

First, a round of appreciation to all the posters at the top of the thread who stayed on topic and made some fine points about the auto industry. One point I’d like to add: The global “free-trade” laws being enacted apply very directly to the auto industry. A very sizeable amount of what is termed global trade is actually inter-company international trade. The new laws encourage and protect this type of game. So we have shenanigans like parts going back and forth across the border as value is added to them by assembling them into progressively larger components of a car. The final assembly is now a mere tinkertoy plugging in of components. In this manner content laws can be easily bypassed.
The Dutch are reponsible for bequeathing to us the legal vehicle know as the limited corporation. Of course, the LC was a rather more harmless version of its pathological progeny: The modern corporation, accorded all the rights of a person with none of the responsibilities.
To clarify, there is a huge difference between an empire and a world system. North Korea is part of the world system, but it is not (yet) part of the American empire.
The crucial determinant in separating present times from past cycles is the environmental and ecological crises affecting the planet today.
I don’t see Europe as an alternative to the US empire; I see it as a significant part of a larger empire, or system of domination.
I think that manufacturing ability is essential, but that it does not have to take place in the core, it can take place in an extension belt. During Marx’s day, the Germans dominated the market for essential goods, while the French dominated the market in luxory goods. Both were essential. They can make cars in Chech Republic or Yugoslavia, or whereever, but the new technologies must come from the center. Luxury goods (BMWs, Rolls, Hummers) can still be made in the core.
I don’t even pretend to understand Kondratieff cycles in any but the most superficial intuitive way. I agree that theory could be driving data. Wallerstein has been minorly involved with cycle work, but in essays of this type he usually plays it pretty straight and simple. Have you read the piece?
EVERYONE studiously ignores their distant misty past. How else could we have history starting the moment Hezbollah killed three soldiers and kidnapped two, and not during Israel’s thousand or so illegal border incursions over the past decade, its kidnapping of Lebanese citizens, its murders and kidnappings in Gaza during the prior month.
He who causes others to forget history, has the luxury of re-writing it to suit his whims.
The real anti-imperialists should follow Al Queda’s example and support Cheney.
Yes. This is a hard one for many to swallow, and we do run the distinct risk of the US just blowing up the entire world as its ship sinks, but if one is against empire, then one couldn’t be happier by events. I doubt that a Chinese global empire would be very peasant for us in the West.
In any event, I believe that an environmental emergency, sometime within the next twenty to thirty years, will short circuit linear predictions.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 20 2006 3:34 utc | 41

GB and PD are both right, both from their own perspectives, like the three blind Indian fakirs and the elephant, only GB is stroking the elephant’s dong, and PD has his arm up to the elbow in elephant dung.
My contacts are at GB’s level. They are all multi-$M’s or in some cases $B’s. Everything for them is cell phone execution. They live in elite gated communities becoming even more lavish day by day, driving $250,000+ cars, flying $10M jets, world travelers. My buddy was invited to one $B’s wedding in Baha. They flew everyone down, rented out the entire hotel for three days with catering included, bought everyone tuxedos, designer dresses and cocktail rings, $100,000 worth of Moet champagne, $100,000 of prawns and caviar, the bride got a $10M diamond.
My neighbors and I are at PD’s level. Everyone has their SUV and 350 4×4 up for sale. You can get a newer model Lariat or S71 for under $3500, used car lots are jammed to overflowing. Everyone shops at Dollar Store and WalMart. Nobody travels on the weekends anymore. Nobody pays $70 for sports tickets now. Everyone’s kids are working part time. Everyone is scrounging, redo-ing fixer-uppers. This Friday a major local plant laid off all it’s workers in the face of the housing “crash”. Last year a major international company closed their plant in town. Everyone is rolling their bets towards cash-out summer 2008,
with no idea how to weather another 2001-to-2003 flat-line.
Then there are homeless everywhere all over town, and lots of businesses boarded up, whole streets emptied with ‘For Lease’.
But in gated communities nearby, an acre of raw land is $1M!
GB is right, US profits will go astronomical, for the top 5%.
And PD is right, “living” will be slavery for the rest of US.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 20 2006 6:47 utc | 42

“The soul should not die ungodly in an armed madhouse”, said Allen Ginsberg.
America seems to be running into history head on, and it looks to me like there could be a crash. If all we have is resignation, and our philosophy boils down to “let all the vipers which are in the mud hatch out”, then I would be afraid on that account that we might be finished in this country.
Americans could reject their empire, it’s true; and then society could experience some kind of catharsis or cleansing. The empire might be pried from our cold, dead hands. Or we could finally be seen by the rest of the world, as having outlived our usefulness. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union went on an absolutely colosal upbuilding of biological weapons stocks. They even succeeded in packing multiple pathogens inside certain bacteria. This was a highpoint in the death’s head paranoia that had gripped their military planners, vis-a-vis what badasses they considered us to be.
Lucky for us they didn’t decide on Cheney’s kind of preemptive strategy.
I don’t think the passing of Imperial America is very significant, in and of itself. A multi-polar world would probably be much more stable. The tragic thing is that millions of Americans are still willing to cling to the benefits of empire, without regard to the hazards it imposes on privacy, free speech, due process of law, and the self-government that can add something to the common good.
The “armed madhouse” that rises up around us, truly threatens to eradicate what is decent in this country. There will be no soft landing for America; and if material privations are the worst thing we are to face, then we might as well face that sooner, rather than later. There are worse fates that have overtaken nations from within: vulgarity and the loss of appreciation for human rights, corruption, racism, and perhaps worst of all, having a government that is no longer about people at all, but only serves the interest of money.

Posted by: Copeland | Aug 20 2006 7:02 utc | 43

Unca’s PSA
Heads up for all you Cable Subscribers:
An American Tragedy
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

A year after Hurricane Katrina, director Spike Lee presents a four-hour chronicle recounting, through words and images, one of our country’s most profound natural disasters.
An HBO Documentary Films Event

I myself don’t even own a TV, let alone cable…
so get your recorders ready and torrent,torrent,torrent.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 20 2006 8:00 utc | 44

opps, Grrr damn, sorry, that should have been on the OT…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 20 2006 9:44 utc | 45

“I doubt that a Chinese global empire would be very peasant for us in the West.”
On the contrary, it would be very peasant. Not pleasant though.

Posted by: citizen k | Aug 20 2006 16:54 utc | 46

Good catch!

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 21 2006 14:32 utc | 47

Insert somewhere in the auto discussion:
Lick My Silent Sports Car

How much has Big Auto lied? Take a drive in this four-wheel electric orgasm, and find out.

Ahhhh.

Posted by: beq | Aug 21 2006 15:10 utc | 48

Malooga:

EVERYONE studiously ignores their distant misty past. How else could we have history starting the moment Hezbollah killed three soldiers and kidnapped two, and not during Israel’s thousand or so illegal border incursions over the past decade,

Read Haaretz and you will find Gideon Levy saying exactly that. Read Liberation (Paris) and find Emanuel Todd explaining why America is so nasty.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 21 2006 15:31 utc | 49

I’m currently looking for a smaller version of my minivan, and simply not finding one. I am well aware small minivans exist in Europe and Asia, but are not available here.
I’m tired of having to drive something bigger and less fuel efficient than what I want simply to haul my big golden retrievers around. Can’t we have “right sized” vehicles instead of these huge monstrosities we see all over?
My choice now is to switch to a mid-size wagon, which won’t be quite big enough but will do, I suppose.
Or move to Canada….

Posted by: donna | Aug 21 2006 16:17 utc | 50

…or get a little dog?
[just kidding] 😉

Posted by: beq | Aug 21 2006 16:58 utc | 51

@ anonamo #49:
Hoisted by my own hyperbole!
As I said above, while I do not detest Todd (ET), I am not a huge fan of his, or his ‘Europe uber alles’ ideology.

Posted by: Malooga | Aug 21 2006 17:56 utc | 52

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