You just got to love rogue Brahmins, those members of the ruling elite who break decisively and irrevokably from their class. They know how the game is played, where the bodies are buried, and more often than not, can’t be bulldozed.
Check out this piece by a seriously rogue Brahmin on the SOTU address and where the US is going.
The US no longer earns enough from high tech to cover any part of its import bill for oil, autos, or clothing.
This is an astonishing development. The US “superpower” is dependent on China for advanced technology products and is dependent on Asia to finance its massive deficits and foreign wars. In view of the rapid collapse of US economic potential, my prediction in January 2004 that the US would be a third world economy in 20 years was optimistic. Another five years like the last, and little will be left. America’s capacity to export manufactured goods has been so reduced that some economists say that there is no exchange rate at which the US can balance its trade.
Globalization is wiping out the American middle class and terminating jobs for university graduates, who now serve as temps, waitresses and bartenders. But the whores among economists and the evil men and women in the Bush administration still sing globalization’s praises.
The state of the nation has never been worse. The Great Depression was an accident caused by the incompetence of the Federal Reserve, which was still new at its job. The new American job depression is the result of free trade ideology. The new job depression is creating a reserve army of the unemployed to serve as desperate recruits for neoconservative military adventures. Perhaps that explains the Bush administration’s enthusiasm for globalization.
By Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.