On Sun, 12 Oct 2003 18:01:23 -0400, Gary Coffman
wrote:

On Sun, 12 Oct 2003 20:14:25 GMT, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
The US economy since WWII has been built on an
underworked, overpaid middle class. May they rise again.

The reason for that was that at the end of WWII the US was the only
major industrialized nation left with an intact infrastructure. The rest of
the world was either smashed flat, or was made up of remnants of a
colonial infrastructure which held them to peasant level. So the US
could allocate resources profligately without enduring any negative
consequences.

But that day is over, and it won't come back barring a WWIII that
again smashes the world while leaving the US largely intact (unlikely).
Like it or not, the rest of the world either rebuilt, or is building up for
the first time. The US is no longer in such a privileged economic position
that it can dictate that the world's economy must be shaped solely for
the benefit of its fat lazy overpaid and underworked middle class.

In other words, the peculiar circumstances of Eisenhower America
that you dream about have come and gone. They won't be back. There
are six billion people working very hard to see that they won't be back.
We have to adapt to that reality.

Short of an imperialism that any civilized person would decry, 300 million
people consuming 30% of the world's resources cannot be sustained in
the face of 6 billion others who want to live and raise families too.

Gary

That's exactly right.

-Carl