Tuesday, February 10, 2009

We'll Never Be Happy Consumers Again -- No Stimulus Package Can Bring That Back

By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com
Posted on February 10, 2009, Printed on February 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/126104/

Venturing out each day into this land of strip malls, freeways, office parks, and McHousing pods, one can't help but be impressed at how America looks the same as it did a few years ago, while seemingly overnight we have become another country. All the old mechanisms that enabled our way of life are broken, especially endless revolving credit, at every level, from household to business to the banks to the US Treasury.

Peak energy has combined with the diminishing returns of over-investments in complexity to pull the "kill switch" on our vaunted "way of life" -- the set of arrangements that we won't apologize for or negotiate. So, the big question before the nation is: do we try to re-start the whole smoking, creaking hopeless, futureless machine? Or do we start behaving differently?

No comments: