Skidding Toward Fall (James Howard Kunstler)

[Tace]

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

Aug. 2, 2010 -- This economy has a destination for sure, but it's not in the direction where all eyes are trained in moist hopefulness: that glimmering horizon of longed-for growth. You will not get that kind of growth -- the kind that increases the overall wealth of the organism in question. A few people will make more money than they did before, but overall we are in an epic contraction. More people and organizations will go broke than will thrive. It will seem very unfair.

The true destination of the U.S. economy is to get smaller and for two reasons mainly: 1.) Capital ("money") is vanishing out of our system steadily and rapidly due to a massive collective failure to repay money owed on loans, mortgages, debts, and assorted obligations. 2.) Access to the primary resource we depend on for powering the economy (oil) is increasingly beyond our control -- even worse, under the control of people who would like us to eat shit and die.

We really have a choice between two ways of dealing with this. We can downsize and re-scale consciously and coherently, or we can continue to chase after the phantom of growth and allow the nation to fall into a shambles of desperation. So far into this long emergency of an economic fiasco, we seem to have chosen the pursuit of a phantom. That's what President Obama was doing last week in Detroit, shilling for a new electric automobile which, he said, will make us "energy independent." If Mr. Obama believes this, then it isn't a very good advertisement for an Ivy League education.

I'd like to know how many Americans believe that electric cars run on virtually free energy (but I don't have pollsters on my payroll). I'd bet a lot of them do, including President Obama. Sorry to rain on this uplifting parade. At best, such a car fleet would run on coal -- that is coal-fired electric power plants -- but even that is a ridiculous fantasy when you actually pencil-out the details. Not to mention that a nation full of people with dwindling or vanishing incomes won't be in a position to fork over forty-grand for one of those new pseudo "green" vehicles. Also not to mention -- wait for it -- that due to rapidly vanishing capital there will be far fewer car loans available. The only thing growing in this part of the picture is the number of Americans who cannot possibly qualify for a car loan under normal terms that would require regular repayment of interest-and-principal. (Plenty of Americans qualify for the new "innovative" kind of loan -- the kind that you never have to make payments on, but for the moment, the banks are choking to death on them, so additional approvals may lag for a time.)

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[KoKo]

1. Electric Car Hype reminds me of Bush II going on and on about "Switch Grass" for energy independence

:eyes:

[yurbud]

5. they're only hype if they aren't done, and they aren't being done fast enough

and the renewable infrastructure isn't built fast enough to replace the oil infrastructure.

Obama has put a lot of money into it, but not enough for the great leap forward we need.

[Demeter]

2. Based on the Fact that The Recs Are Still Zero After Mine

the truth hurts, doesn't it?

Not half as much as reality will hurt when you've been addicted to the Koolaid!

Consider rebuilding the economy, the government and the society as a great pioneering adventure! It doesn't have to be all grim; all we have to do is live by the principles that we swear we uphold. For the first time in a long time, if ever, America can fulfill the real dream of its founders. If it wants to give up dreams of unlimited hoarding by a few.

[Chan790]

3. Kunstler's been demonstrably and measurably wrong so many times...

that he should be added to the "not allowed on DU" list next to all the other crazy conspiracy histrionic non-credible sources. The guy wouldn't know reality if it jumped out of a 15 foot tall birthday cake naked with strobes and fireworks and bit him on the pecker.

[marmar]

4. If you're going to make such a strident statement, you could at least make it funny.

nt

[Demeter]

6. She Who Laughs Last, Laughs Best

I thought it was an hysterical response....