While I hold in America in high regard, I am, it seems, a piker compared to Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson. He thinks America is so special that it has created the perpetual motion machine, it has made alchemy work, it really has made magic of myth and created a Cinderella coach and horses from nothing but a pumpkin and a few mice. Except that in Meyerson's telling, America has created Cinderella's coach and horses without even bothering with the pumpkin and the mice.
In the 20th century, American production was the marvel of the world. In the 21st century, American consumption is the marvel of the world. . . .
If 19th-century England was a nation of shopkeepers, the United States today is a nation of shoppers, and our role in the world economy is to buy what other countries -- or U.S.-based corporations with factories in other countries -- make.
Normally, in order to buy things, you have to income, which you get from selling things to other people. But, says Meyerson, Americans are not making things, they are just buying. America has figured out how to buy without income. Talk about amazing. Meyerson seems to have some doubts about this extraordinary alchemy, wondering if that income comes from somewhere.
The only way such a nation can get along is to go into debt, which is precisely what Americans have done.
Now, it is true that the ratio of debt (mortgage plus consumer debt) to disposable personal income has risen, as this nifty graph from the St. Louis Fed shows.
The graph, however, is irrelevant. (I included it partly to be fair to Meyerson, but mostly because it is fun putting up a graph, with a link right from the graph.) It is irrelevant because the denominator is disposable person income, which Meyerson thinks does not exist because America does not produce anything.
I am, of course, kidding, but you already knew that, didn't you? Meyerson is playing a game about production.
The Democrats' incomes-and-industrial policy won't bring back, say, Big Steel, but it will raise wages and put more Americans to work actually making things.
Now who would miss smelly steel plants, other than the unions who worked there? Meyerson wants to pretend that we are all getting poorer, which is tripe. Real gross domestic product keeps going up.
Meyerson wants us to ignore everything but the output of the trade unionists he shills for.
