Ken SchreinerLabor Day: Time to Change How America Works- Or Doesn’t
A new study shows that Americans are about the laziest workers in the world. Seems odd given that generations of us have grown up believing America is THE land of opportunity and the way you get ahead, especially in Utah, is by hard work, creativity and, above all, money. But in the decades following World War 2, Americans have taken advantage of their position as the world’s foremost power to sit on their butts, watch NASCAR on TV and fritter away their salaries and savings on big honkin’ cars, big honkin’ houses, and big honkin’ credit card charges. Consequently, we created a consumer economy that made China and Japan rich, our own economy weaker and, perhaps worst of all, fooled ourselves into believing that we’ve got it made.
But as we’ve seen dramatically in the last ten years, bankruptcy and staggering debt, reckless excess and pollution, and our pathologically unrestrained bravado are as American as- well- pathologically unrestrained bravado. And instead of having leaders who work hard to correct these social/economic crises, we have a plutocracy who’s coasting on their backs, manufacturing fear of change, believing everything will be OK as long as they’re in charge, and fooling us into believing it too. At least, until recently.
Oddly, it isn’t Iraq, the housing credit or stock market crises, or even 9/11 or China and India that are changing how Americans view their unsustainably extravagant lifestyles. It’s global warming that has rattled our filthy cages. Criticize Al Gore and the environmental movement all you want. The spector of human-induced climate change (I’m still not fully convinced it exists) is finally waking us up to the reality of the condition of not only our environmental problems, but the sorry state of American labor and business. We are falling farther behind our competitors, not developing new technologies, and rely on obsolete energy sources like coal and oil more than ever while our corrupt and obsolete political system appears incapable of doing anything to help save ourselves.
As the Crandall Canyon disaster demonstrates, the advantages coal, oil, the mantra of capitalism and our collective national will gave America for the last hundred years are gone. The damage done by the increasingly futile and costly quest for and use of these resources is much worse than we thought. In the past, the argument has been you can’t have jobs without pollution. That may have been true a few years ago but not now. The closing of Crandall Canyon signifies the end of Utah’s and America’s dependence on fossil fuels, both for power and jobs. It also signifies the chance and the need to get back in the new, green, and global economic game. Which first requires us to solve the mess we’ve made in Iraq.
The workers of America as well our government and business leaders all have to recognize this tremendous opportunity and move fast to make up the ground we’ve lost. If not, more Americans will spend their lives as they do now: sitting on the couch, dazed and deluded, watching the rest of world evolve economically, clean the planet, make money, and leave us wallowing in our own waste.
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Odd Ken; I was listening to NPR on Friday, and they claimed that Americans work more hours as families, than any other nation on Earth. Working hard, not smart, it would seem. By the fruits of their labors they may look lazy, but I don’t know many working folk that would agree with you.
Really Ken, as bad as it is, the 3rd world is more of a mess than here environmentally. All multi-nationals crap in other peoples countries, and will here if allowed, and it seems to be allowed. Any regulation crimps profit.
Germans still produce the bulk of their electricity with coal, clean state of the art burners, complete with carbon sequestration technology. Costs money. They know renewable energy can only adjunct their needs for now. We all in the paint. France produces 90% from nuclear plants. If the renewable options were viable for all energy they would use them, and to the extent they can, they do.
Degradation is so much more visible in Utah, where the environment is amongst the weakest in renewing itself on the planet. It’s HOT, hot enough to dry up a lake that drained into the Snake over Sweetzer summit in 10k years. Not much rain to flush, native trees grow very slowly, or not at all…nothing like WA. Trees growing through abandoned vehicles in 15 years is very common. Highlights why Utah is not really viable as a highly populated place. Renewal happens where there is water.
The area where you live has always had a pie in the sky future. Rain follows the plow and all. Make the desert bloom. Manifest destiny…and such other myths that have become reality. Though our misleaders fed us this bullshit, it is We the People, that swallowed it. Time for some social IPICAC!
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:24 pm
“Time to take this information and shove it in the shredder”
From B-52s “Channel Z” 20 odd years ago, so way ahead of their time. The line above doesn’t show in the lyric and was at the end of the song.
http://www.asklyrics.com/display/B-52s/Channel_Z_Lyrics/67688.htm
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:33 pm
It’s been said many times, America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. Coal accounts for half of the electricity supply. IMHO the problems of coal are political, for example the way old coal-fired power plants have been “grandfathered” in pollution laws. We’re in effect offering incentives to keep obsolete technology on line, which discourages the use of available pollution reduction methods.
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Hard to believe that I’m old enough to remember when a “Made In Japan” sticker was synonymous with the word crappy. Remember those finger traps we used to play with.
I may be a traitor, but of the four cars I’ve owned in my life, three of them are Toyota and I understand my first car, the Chevy Nova, was based on the Toyota and was marketed to people who wanted a smaller car that didn’t burn as much fuel.
Of course, we know what happened when gas prices went way up back in the seventies. Everybody wanted a smaller car and Toyota made a killing. What is the possible reason American car companies would ignore what happened just a decade earlier and push these comically large vehicles all through the 80’s and 90’s?. There is no reason they couldn’t have made just as much money selling something smarter and far less conspicuous.
Ken is right when he says we “fooled ourselves into believing that we’ve got it made.”
Maybe another way to put it would be “I consume, therefore I am.”
glenn is right. We do work harder as opposed to smarter.
September 2nd, 2007 at 1:07 pm
The sad fact is that environmentally, diplomatically, and everythingally, the U.S. has, over the last fifty years and particularly under the current plutocracy, surrendered virtually all claims to superiority in anything important, except maybe exporting violence and Hollywood. That’s never happened in my lifetime. We used to make the best cars, the best products, the best television, the best everything. The question: is surrendering our superiority a problem or should we be satisfied watching the Chinese, India, Germany, et al risk, fail and/or succeed while we languish, go bankrupt and choke ourselves to death on Cheetos and PM2.5?
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Look into carbon sequestration with regards to coal fired energy production. It’s really a very simple concept, and doable, despite what enviros say. If they want change, and less pollution, they can regulate themselves at a personal level freely, if they won’t support the possibilities. Coal is black, not green. It really is political.
http://www.gcrio.org/OnLnDoc/pdf/doe_co2_storage.pdf
Right now you could be pumping and allowing carbon to condense in the mine that has just been abandoned. Someday, it would be full of carbon again. Ah, what the heck, never mind.
As for the why of big gas guzzlers? People want them, they are available, and the government and states hardly want a vehicle that would cut into their precious gas taxes, a lesser, but by no means unimportant reason. Then of course the lobbies for steel, plastic, and all the particulars giant humongous 6000 lbs vehicles require in construction. Not to mention special tires. With special rims. For the dims.
The 6000 lb. vehicle is safer, and there is no price America isn’t willing to pay to keep their families safe, even sending the poor committed brainwashed to foreign countries to secure our security with guns. What next? It soooo crazy by now.
Be certain that other countries will live in the chinese/american, name the nations’ stink as well as we will, there is no escape. The Fornicating Fruit Flies tell me so. What comes around goes around, and if we refuse to change, and the crisis becomes life threatening, then the entire world will react to the threat with violence.
We in our inability or unwillingness to change, are digging our own grave with the rest of the world. The “unbelievers” have proven themselves willing to kill any who disagree. That includes military barracks o’bomber, and nuclear(not off the table)nut hillary. She’ll nuke Iran, using albright the psycho as her guide.
GENERAL STRIKE. Destroy all their profits in a month, and watch them react. The elites will either terrorize the innocent, in this they will reveal themselves for what they are, or they will see their own end and relent. One way or another, a peaceful transition with these psychos is unlikely. Prepare, or be slaves.
October 30th, 2007 at 1:49 am
New and Used Car Reviews…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…