[cpher]

I'm not GP, but I probably agree with his entire list. I think the home ownership incentives over the past decade may have been well-intentioned from an emotional standpoint, but they were the siren song of Lorelei for many people. "The spirit of America is expressed through owning a piece of property." That sounds awesome.

Who wouldn't want to help our food producers <cue a rugged farmer wiping the sweat off his brow>? I worked for years with farmers who got subsidies for completely spurious reasons. Even then, some were so bad at managing their operations they failed. Working your butt off during spring and fall should qualify you for that $100k combine (with corn and bean heads), right?

I think we may have gotten lucky because we were the only WWII country without a destroyed everything. So, we took advantage of our strategic position, played the odds in our favor, and didn't think 75 years into the future.

[waps]

Alternate view : the economy has collapsed for most people simply because we no longer have any (economically) reasonable thing to do for most people.

In the US 30-40% of people are economically useless. In Europe 40-50% (not counting government employees who arguably have a net-negative economic contribution. Note I'm not saying they're useless, but they're not producing stuff). In the middle east 95%+, In Africa 80% or so, In most of Asia it's also 30-40%.

The problem is simply that the economy no longer requires large amounts of human input, yet that is what keeps it going :

1) people work

2) which produces "stuff"

3) then you buy, which enables big firms' existence and profits

4) which provides jobs

repeat

3->4 has broken down a little bit. Only a little bit.

The big puzzle of the 20th century was how to get to 1) to get the cycle started, printing money was the answer : we had lots of things we wanted to do (like highways, hoover dam, the military, fix Europe during WWII, fix what we blew up in Europe after WWII, ...). The big puzzle of the 21th century will be the same. What can we do with people that is economically useful.

There have been periods of history where the same puzzle played : the end of the Roman Empire. Their answer is plain to see in pretty much every European city today : churches. Lots of them. Bigger and huger and heavier and prettyer and bigger still. To the point where the ground could not hold them (a problem for a lot of Cathedrals). Then wars started that would last a millenia and the answer to the question : what are we going to do with this massive population became a very easy one, and then quickly became "how do we get this population more massive ?". But I doubt you'd like the methods, especially the methods of these newfangled "believers" (7th century, and if that doesn't make clear what party I'm referring to, nothing will).