Spend on Shite

Watching Krugman on Charlie Rose right now. He's saying people aren't spending enough, on replacement consumer goods, he's implying through his responses to Rose's follow-up.

This is how pathetic our economy is. The only way to spur ourselves out of a recession is to spend money on shit we don't need, and which we don't produce in this country. We are purely mercantile and service-based. We have no industry or technological innovation creating economic value anymore.

Our shopping mall patriotism is the final house of cards that will make this country collapse. We need to do two major things in the next 10 years:

1. Tax Big Oil in Iraq, after Iraq gets its share. Perhaps Iraq could license out its oil (like the Alaska Territory), and we could impose such high taxes that Big Oil would basically be contracting for our Department of Energy.

We need to do this in order to sap Big Oil profits that will be used to kill Americans' will to crush their technological monopoly on energy, to repay our Iraq-incurred debt, and to offset major government spending on new energy development.

2. Major New Energy Development. This will produce jobs, value, patents, and competitive advantage in the most important economic sector on the planet. We need a Manhattan Project for renewable energy; massive wind and solar building projects; and aggressive trade policy for our energy-efficient cars, including, if need be, the threat of tariffs on foreign cars; and more.

I can't believe Krugman, the Great White Hope of progressive economists, is telling us to buy a new fucking TV. When will we ever start to actually produce in this country? Every Democrat should be saying New Deal in public or to the press at least once every day for the rest of their political careers. Make that a memo, Schumanuel.