The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

Anybody wondering why the national discussion about our economy is so lame need look no further than yesterday's New York Times Sunday Magazine. Said the unsigned lead-in, "many of the worst excesses of the 90's can be traced to an obsesseion with corporate earnings growth."

Oh, is that what it was? A minor attitude problem vis-a-vis accounting practices.

Well, I'll admit that accounting isn't what it used to be. But have any of these Times writers actually gone outside Manhattan and looked at the way America functions these days?

It's called mis-investment. Our national wealth lies visible smeared all over the American landscape in the form of a drive-in utopia designed to last fewer years than the lifetime of the average house-cat.

Ask yourself: what do you think your local commercial strip will be like in fifteen years? Think we'll still be importing radios from China at five bucks a pop? Think the average family will still be making eleven car trips a day to buy groceries and shuttle the kids around to play-dates? Do you think Islam will still be selling us oil at the equivalent of $26-a-barrel? Do you think AIDS cases in Asia and Africa will stop doubling? Think we'll still be eating Happy Meals at the mall?

Perhaps the stupidest article was David Brooks's repulsive disquisition ("Why the US Will Always Be Rich") about how discount shopping makes us a great nation. The piece utterly lacked any sense of what a temporary situation we're in, nor of the horrendous diminishing returns produced by this national behavior -- the destruction of local economic communities in particular. Melanie Thernstrom's article ("The Inheritance That Got Away") about how her grandmother gave some family artwork to a museum, was very nicely written, but is it a serious national economic issue that Melanie will now not be able to buy a condo in the vicinity of Dean & Delucca?

The feel-good lead-in also declared, "Still, this is America, and we'll shake off the cobwebs and boom again,"

All we need to reach Nirvana is 2,314 more WalMarts.