|
|
The Global Blame Game Against America
I'm not a fan of the news. That's not to say I don't appreciate the media providing us information for just the price of watching a few commercials (I really should check out my credit report if for no other reason than to get that guy to stop singing about it), but I'm not particularly fond of the kind of news we get lately. It's almost all bad or depressing.
Still, I flip over to NPR while driving to work when the music gets repetitive. When I come home, I do what all too many of us are doing lately and catch a quick injection of satyr-laden news courtesy of Stewart and Colbert. When I allow myself to realize the real worth of those offerings from an informed-consumer perspective, I'll give Fox's fair and balanced (yeah, right) offerings a chance and then dilute that with some unbiased (yeah, right) MSNBC. And, of course, throughout the day, I browse the online news offerings.
The end result of all that channel flipping, station changing and internet browsing is, at the very least, discouraging. Depending on what story has the most legs at any given time, the message appears to be that we Americans are a bunch of moronic, boot-licking, celebrity-chasing, gun-totting cowboys who are to blame for all the world's ills. That's right, it's all our fault. Everything.
For example, if you want to get granular, our educators are to blame for our poor math and science skills. But, our politicians are to blame for the lacking quality of the overall education system. And to top off the cake, we are to blame for having put those politicians in office. It all comes back to us. More recently, it's the economy we're all to blame for.
The sub-prime meltdown? Our fault for buying homes we couldn't afford. Yep, even those of you who stayed out of the market aren't excused as politician after politician and journalist after journalist tells us "everybody" is to blame.
The credit crisis? Our fault for spending money we don't have on homes and appliances and everything else that we can't actually afford. Doesn't matter that statistics imply American consumers on average are actually far more fiscally intelligent than you'd think and that it is actually the irresponsible few who caused problems for everyone else. Nope. The blame belongs to "everybody," if you are to believe the financial news outlets and your congressmen.
Even the failure of economic stimulus to, well, stimulate, is our fault. Why? Because we're apparently guilty of saving our money. Think about that. Jobs are vanishing faster than integrity on Wall Street, but we're somehow at fault for wanting to protect ourselves by saving money just in case. The economy tanks and we're blamed for not saving our money. The economy fails to recover and we're blamed for saving our money. Confused?
At least I can live with the blame game when it's played by our representatives and our media. We're one big happy American family, after all, and families spat. So when Uncle Sam says I'm a bad boy for not having been careful with my money (I was) and Big Brother tells me that it wasn't his fault for falling asleep at the financial oversight wheel but mine for assuming a mortgage I couldn't afford (I didn't), I can shrug it off. What I can't shrug off and what I'm really beginning to get tired of is the rest of the neighborhood jumping in on the blame game and pointing their fingers at me. By neighborhood, I mean the rest of the world. By me, I mean America.
Time and again I hear foreign broadcasters planting the fault flag firmly on American soil. Time and again, representatives of foreign nations look demandingly to us to fix the mess we (according to them) created. Time and again, the worldwide economic crisis is tossed at our feet and the resounding cry is that we should somehow make it right. What really pains me is that our own politicians, apologists all, seem to agree!
Now I'm not an economist so I'm probably in no position to argue for or against the claim that all of this is somehow our fault. What I am, though, is informed enough to ask a few questions starting with this; if the rest of the world is so quick to blame us for the crisis, where were the heaps of praise and kudos they should have been lavishing on us during the boom times?
I don't doubt for a moment that an unpopular president in office spent what little political capital we might have had with the world but, as we spent and spent and the rest of the world sold and sold, you'd think they would have been waving our flag with glee over our loose purse strings rather than burning it (the flag, not the purse) in one country after another.
As manufacturing plants here in the US closed, one after another, in favor of cheap overseas options and Americans found themselves jobless, where were the protests against their own nations for depriving us of jobs? Where were the accolades for the sacrifices we were making in the interest of globalization? Where was the logical thinking that should have warned the rest of the world that less jobs for Americans would mean less money for us to spend on their products? Where was the next logical leap that fewer jobs and less money would increase our dependency on credit?
As we, notoriously the greatest consumers on Earth, gobbled up the cheap, sometimes-poisoned, products our world neighbors produced, where was the lavish praise and gratitude for our consumer hunger?
As our credit-driven consumerism far outstripped our financial reach, where were the warnings? Where were the precautionary statements in the foreign media? And while we're at it, how can you smugly be armchair quarterbacking when you don't even follow the sport that birthed the concept?
As you illegally stole across our borders, strapped our healthcare system, pillaged our social programs and deprived us of our jobs, where was your concern for the long-term affect of that on our ability to buy?
As oil prices soared last summer to obscene and utterly unnecessary levels with no real motive other than to line the pockets of the nations who serve up that bubbly brew, you had nothing to say, did you? No, you just kept it coming as long as the dollar bills kept flowing, didn't you? Cash, credit, doesn't matter. Just SPEND America, SPEND!
No, world, you hungrily dined at the American consumer's table without hesitation or pause. You did so without batting an eye as our factories moved overseas, as our tech jobs were outsourced to your cheap and barely adequate call centers. You enjoyed our boom times and never stopped to think it might end. Now that it has, you want the pleasure of also blaming us for the fallout? I beg to differ.
A global economy is a two way street. You don't get to reap the rewards when the champagne is flowing and then condemn the bartender when you've drunk his supplies dry. It's time all of us stood up and accepted that America as a nation is no more to blame for this economic crisis than is Saudi Arabia with its choke-hold on oil prices. Culpability is as much China's with its obscenely cheap labor paid for with the blood and low quality of life of its working poor. Every nation on this planet that has benefited from America's spending habits has a dog in this fight and every one of them has their own greed to thank for the outcome as much as we are to blame for our failure to curb our own appetites.
So before anybody out there points a finger our way again, consider this; there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who would be perfectly content to have our jobs and our factories back despite our politician's continued support of globalization. There are plenty of us who realize that we could afford to spend a little more on made-in-America TVs and appliances if manufacturing them meant more jobs for us on our own soil. And there are plenty of us who would be perfectly content to point our own fingers at the call-center or electronics assembly line sitting on your soil and manufacturing products we want (and probably invented, too) and saying, "I'll take the whole factory, please, and will staff it with Americans." See how well you do when your only buyers are your own people rather than us.
Globalization did more for the rest of the world than it did for America. Sure, some CEOs and already wealthy shareholders became wealthier by cutting their manufacturing expenses but the average American has lost out thanks to globalization. Doubt me? From 1990 to 2005, CEO pay rose 298%. Corporate profits rose 106%. Production worker's pay only rose 4.3%. Those 3 figures alone are proof positive that globalization has only benefited the wealthy in America and the rest of the world, not the +90% of us who do all the work. Pray we don't catch on, world. Pray we never realize just how little globalization has done for real Americans.
If nothing else, the distraction of prayer might help you quit your griping long enough to own up to the fact that you take the good with the bad. We can all grow up and accept our blame for this mess together or we can continue breeding resentment by denying our own very real responsibility and blaming the other guy. For my part, I'd rather we clean this mess up, learn from it and move on. We (all of us as nations) got greedy and we (all of us as nations) are now paying for that greed. And while you're praying, a thank you for the last decade or more of your economic prosperity might be nice, too.
|
 |
Please Rate: |
|
Rating: |
 Processing ... |
(Average: Not rated) |
| Views: | 53 | |
|
| More Articles from World Affairs | | |
| Top Articles in World Affairs | | |
|
