"GM is us" : Great Article

[Sub Atomic]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/opinion/24friedman.html?_r=1&em


Time to Reboot America

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: December 23, 2008

I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America.

It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.

Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.

The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.

All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out — that’s the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted “lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job.”

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.


More at link.

[screembloodymurder]

1. He's 100% right.

Bush was 100% wrong. He told us to go out and shop while our young men and women were sacrificing their lives. The first thing we must do is jail Bush and everyone who served with him. We must renounce his policies and overturn everyone of his signing initiatives. Only then can we start to rebuild.

[ellenfl]

2. yup. will read the rest later. k&r eom

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. I was with him until the last fucking sentence.

Fuck you Tom. Maybe, just maybe, those colleges should train US citizens to be the worlds best scientists and engineers.

[still_one]

4. friedman is a pompous ASS. He goes to a country, and suddenly appoints himself an expert

Why doesn't he mention the pollution in China, or the less than adequate health care, or other MAJOR infrastructure problems

Why doesn't he mention how we are NOT in equal competition with Asia. We don't require they have safety, health, or environmental protections? In fact because of lack of oversight and protections, harmful products have been allowed to be imported into the U.S. Remember the dog food, toys, baby formula?

Remind me again, what was friedman's position on the Iraq war initially?

[starroute]

5. Friedman *is* an ass -- but that doesn't mean he's wrong

We don't have aging infrastructure and crappy cellphone service because our air is so clean and health care so great. The point is that we're falling behind by almost every standard. China may be doing better at this point with its public face than its private face -- but China is upgrading and we're not.

Americans are living in increasingly grubby 20th century cities, with increasingly run-down 20th century technology, when the rest of the world is doing its best to move into the 21st century. And unless we start by getting over this weird "we're number one" hangup and start to recognize reality, that's never going to change.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. China has a good gig.

They lend us money to buy their shit, the profit from which they lend to us...

As long as we remain consumerville, they'll have more resources to build infrastructure.

[Sub Atomic]

7. And he's now much, much poorer.

Thomas Friedman’s World Is Flat Broke

http://normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=2256

It would be easy to dismiss today’s rant (however spot-on it might be) by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as yet another ideological tirade against the U.S. automobile industry. But based on the bad news coming out of shopping-mall owner General Growth Properties , it is no wonder Friedman is feeling crankier than usual. That’s because the author’s wife, Ann (nee Bucksbaum), is an heir to the General Growth fortune. In the past year, the couple—who live in an 11,400-square-foot mansion in Bethesda, Maryland—have watched helplessly as General Growth stock has fallen 99 percent, from a high of $51 to a recent 35 cents a share. The assorted Bucksbaum family trusts, once worth a combined $3.6 billion, are now worth less than $25 million.

But don’t expect Friedman to go from Beirut to Jerusalem begging for money. The distinguished columnist (and former New Establishment member) is still said to get at least $50,000 per speaking engagement on top of the millions he makes writing best-sellers.