The Collective US [2008]
I’ve been glued to the election campaign for weeks now. Fascinated by its twists and turns. I have an enormous vested interest in the outcome – because it feels like this time it will really make a difference.
And I’m loving all the great commentary, the innovative campaigning and the riveting television as this titanic clash of values unfolds.
Oh I don’t mean our election. I mean the American one. Compared to Barack Obama’s heroic quest, ours seems dead pedestrian. Dead. Pedestrian.
To be fair – in terms of government-provided social services, the US is playing catch-up with the rest of the developed world. When I hear republicans railing on and on about the scourge of socialism I want to shout at them “What you call socialism is what we call democracy”.
They seem to have such a bee in their bonnet in the US about individuality – it’s a classic case of your greatest strength being your greatest weakness. Many Americans fear collectiveness so much they totally overlook their ultimate interdependence with each other.
I saw someone from the Republican side the other day claiming in horrified tones that Obama would turn the US into Sweden. What does he think Sweden is?
According to the World Values Survey Sweden has one of the highest levels of reported personal well-being in the world.
It is near Russia though. In defining itself the US seems to have leapt straight from the War of Independence to the Cold War. Freedom uber alles!
Of course Sweden's social and economic configuration probably does suit Swedes better than it might suit others, but at least it produces satisfied citizens. As social democracies generally do.
Even New Zealand ranks higher than the USA in terms of perceived happiness and we weren’t even aiming to pursue it.
In 8 tribes terms, the US generally presents as North Shore on steroids. That's an optical illusion. All the tribes are there. But the preferred collective identity seems to be development focused, materialist, upwardly mobile, individualist, opportunistic.
The American Dream – quoting Wikipedia – is belief in the freedom that allows all citizens and residents of the United States to pursue their goals in life through hard work. That ideal may retain the flavour of the American revolution, but it’s not the same.
Poor migrants to the US still dream of escaping poverty through hard work. For the various strands of middle class America it’s a dream of education and opportunity. Just like Barack and Michelle.
The US is supposed to be the ultimate social mobility engine. Except that for the last eight years it apparently hasn’t been – for any but migrants from poorer countries and people on the top incomes.
Oh and the growing economies of Asia and South America who now make a lot of the stuff American workers used to make and sell it back to places like the US.
You kind of want to say to them – dudes – the revolution was over 200 years ago – it’s time to move on. A founding document that says more about the right to have a gun than the right to a decent education or health care is just not so relevant in 2008.
Interpreting freedom as the self-regulation of complex financial markets is almost always a mistake. In retrospect.
Did you see Alan Greenspan on TV saying that unfortunately his model of reality was wrong and banks didn’t necessarily act to protect the interests of their shareholders and customers? Economists! Such idealistic dreamers.
Ironically, he is his own best example of the limitations of oversight.
Blind oversight is as bad as none. And freedom is anarchy if you don’t have common interests. Not being able to evacuate a flooded city is more an anarchy thing than a freedom thing.
The general feeling around the world now is that there will be a long and serious recession in the US because their social and economic infrastructure is seriously fragile. And that will affect us.
We sometimes forget just how dominant the US economy is in the world – here’s a map that purports to quantify that dominance.
Like the website I got it from I can’t vouch for the reliability of the comparative figures but the idea’s interesting and New Zealand’s in it so hey. ! I think we might be Delaware.
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So anyway the US is big and it’s hurting. Jobs are going – the rough equivalent of half our workforce this year – and unemployment’s rising. Their retirement savings are typically invested in financial markets that have suddenly turned volatile.
They typically don’t offer long term welfare and until recently governments have not intervened in home foreclosures. Survival of the fittest can get ugly.
I saw an oddly moving news story of abandoned homes in Sthn California - following people who "trash out" abandoned houses so they can be sold by banks. So much stuff left behind.
One cul de sac of eight nice middle class looking homes which only had one resident remaining. And they were struggling.
Though there’s obviously enormous social and economic diversity within the different states, the US overall begins to look like a country that went to Vegas to play roulette and bet all its money on red – based everything on the assumption that high GDP growth was permanent.
I think it’s wrong to just see this downturn as the result of a typical top of the economic cycle bubble. I think this is a gas guzzler suddenly realising it’s been running on empty. Wile E. Coyote over the cliff, wondering what’s gone wrong.
You have to think about how households make their economic judgments and what causes growth. Ultimately it’s people buying more and producing more – because they can. In the wider world it’s driven as much by education as by innovation and investment.
In China and India there's enormous social mobility – people with higher skills than their parents generation being able to earn more money and buy more stuff.
In the US the middle class’s ability to grow by buying and producing more peaked some time ago so you can see the sub-prime crisis and the way people kept borrowing on the growing value of their homes as being an increasingly risky gamble to keep the engine running.
I’m sure they will rebound eventually but Osama bin Laden must be rolling on the floor of his cave laughing hysterically at the hubris of it all. Fancy the US doing to itself what Communist Russia did in the 80’s.
Wasn’t Afghanistan involved in that too? And by the way - who did push up the price of gas so high so fast and make all that money available to be borrowed? Was that them? Or was it us?
Cheers
Jill
PS - 31 Oct. OMG I feel so credible - a day after I published this, I read what Michael Porter had to say. I'm not saying he gets my newsletter but I believe we have pretty much the same analysis going here.
And Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman seems to have caught up with the Time of the Hunter
Jill Caldwell is Director of Windshift Communications Ltd.
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