I Never Thought I'd Say This, But Tom Friedman Nailed It

[FourScore]

The Inflection Is Near?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: March 7, 2009

...Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...

We can’t do this anymore.

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows.

“You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” added Romm. “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate ...’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.”

Over a billion people today suffer from water scarcity; deforestation in the tropics destroys an area the size of Greece every year — more than 25 million acres; more than half of the world’s fisheries are over-fished or fished at their limit...

SNIP

...In the meantime, says Gilding, take notes: “When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us, ‘What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? What did you think? What did you do?’ ” Often in the middle of something momentous, we can’t see its significance. But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the marker — the year when ‘The Great Disruption’ began.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html?_r=2

[Uzybone]

1. No Tom and Gilding, 2000 was when it began to fall apart

when a US presidential election was stolen right before our noses, we should have known things would be bad. Follow that up with 9/11 the very next year and 8 years of Bush. I think its pretty clear where the first chapter of the US decline will start.

[BrklynLiberal]

13. Excellent point!!

[PM Martin]

2. Has Friedman had a "change of heart"

Is he looking to be on the side that is right?

"We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China"

Suddenly, he does not like outsourcing and cheap goods?
:shrug:

[elleng]

6. He used to be on the side that is right much of the time.

.

[PM Martin]

8. The side that was accepted.

Offshoring good paying jobs and importing cheap plastic junk from China .
Supply Side nonsense, giving tax breaks to the wealthiest.

Things have changed.

[elleng]

9. MUCH EARLIER,

friedman was good.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_L._Friedman

[Truth2Tell]

3. No kidding Friedman, you jackass, thanks for

acting as the number one pimp for this system for the last 15 years. World's biggest asshat.

[elleng]

4. What IS 'real wealth?'

"Wealth is an abundance of valuable material possessions or resources. The word is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem. <1> An individual, community, region or country that has an abundance of such possessions or resources is called wealthy.

The concept of wealth is of great importance in economics, especially development economics, yet the definition of wealth is not straightforward and there is no universally agreed-upon definition. Different definitions and concepts of wealth have been put forth by different authors and in different contexts.<2> The choice of a definition of wealth can be normative and have ethical implications, since wealth maximization is often seen as a goal or put forth as a normative principle of its own.<3>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth

Watch the repugs fight about THIS!

[amandabeech]

5. This isn't news to a lot of us.

It's great that Friedman is putting his in his column, but this has been out there since the Club of Rome in the 1970s.

I'm glad that you have more of a life than I do--some of us have too much time on our hands.

[otohara]

7. "Thomas Friedman’s Five Worst Predictions"...

This was posted earlier - be careful - Friedman is like many others in this business of punditry - wrong, wrong, wrong.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/03/friedmans-follies.html

In this morning’s New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman makes a grave prediction regarding Obama and the ongoing financial crisis: “I fear that his whole first term could be eaten by Citigroup, A.I.G., Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and the whole housing/subprime credit bubble we inflated these past 20 years.” Friedman is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, a staple of The New York Times, and a bestselling author, and thus this prediction should be taken very seriously—in some alternate universe where the news media is a meritocracy and Thomas Friedman is a competent observer of the world and its workings. The rest of us can probably relax.

In October of 2000, Friedman decided that the Chinese regime would soon find itself threatened by a major unemployment crisis caused by an influx of American wheat and sugar into that country. In fact, American wheat and sugar failed to make any inroads whatsoever, while Chinese unemployment figures (however unreliable they may be) remained at low levels for a period of seven years.
After the announcement of Colin Powell’s Secretary of State nomination in December 2000, a clearly impressed Friedman related to his readers that “it was impossible to imagine Mr. Bush ever challenging or overruling Mr. Powell on any issue,” that Powell “can never be fired,” and that “Mr. Bush can never allow him to resign in protest over anything.” Five years later, Powell was out via “resignation” after having been consistently challenged and overruled by Bush, who must have missed Friedman's column.

[leftstreet]

10. I think history will record the Axis of Evil: Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney

as a pretty significant turning point, not 2008.

In global terms of massive transfers of wealth, gutting social programs, and essentially destroying what was left of The Left.

[BlooInBloo]

11. O gawd. Just shoot me now.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5209220&mesg_id=5209220


People truly NEVER learn.

(facepalm)

[BrklynLiberal]

12. Does Thomas Friedman suffer from multiple personality disorder?

He has changed sides of the fence so many times, I have lost track.

[Hamlette]

14. he just realized his flat world is on a flood plane

why do people like him have jobs?

He's speaking in my city this week or next and people ask if I'm going to see him. They of course are. And I blast them.

Tom is a no talent. I admit he might have been a decent journalist but how and why he got to the top is beyond me.

[HughBeaumont]

15. Freidman is a neo-lib outsourcing SHILL.

At the same time he says all of this, he'd have no problem bringing thousands . .. nay, MILLIONS of them HERE to swipe American citizen's jobs for pennies on the dollar. Insufferable to the core, that one.

[Fumesucker]

16. The Mustache of Understanding has a firm grasp of the blatantly obvious..

Perhaps brought on by the fact that his heiress wife's fortune has declined by something like 90 percent or more in the last couple of years or so.