New York Times Editorial is Right Handed and Left Handed

It’s right handedness comes from the statement about China asserting itself, at least for domestic consumption, in the news lately;

Rather than berate Washington, it should abandon its currency manipulation. NY TIMES EDITORIAL 8/11/11

Perhaps a single policy mistake, allowing the Chinese to peg the Yuan to the Dollar, over the last 3o years has been committed by our bipartisan cabal of overpaid under knowledgeable politicos and various wingnuts resulting in circumstances that pit our best interests against ourselves, sort of like an autoimmune disease.

In our messy representational democracy, state of the art organizing leveraged by the internet and increased public as well as private money funding “politics” has become a toxic keystone maintaining a not very insightful bridge of state, blurred by ideology and lust for more power.

This mistake has resulted in ineffective finger pointing, emotionalism with invectives amid charges such as, among dozens of sound bits, those bad greedy unpatriotic corporations are “shipping jobs overseas,” when in another breathe many will acknowledge that in a massive, growing interconnected global economy which we have increasingly had for 30 years, growth and profits are dependent on a number of simple long accepted capitalistic concepts. Most foreign countries, at least their politicians, know that the wealth their corporations are creating also creates their security and influence. We have had it so long, we forgot where it came from.

Those fiscal concepts rooted in competition and tight financial management, are pretty well understood and implemented in much of the world today thanks to the ubiquity of American influence, it’s products and brands, it’s entertainment, it’s military, a country everyone knows something about, many love to hate it and hate to love it, many want to live in it or destroy it or both.

No standing, erstwhile communist country today deserves it name, but it is maintained in China and Vietnam because that is where the ruling class’s authoritarian power came from and remains the structural source of their single party power that has nothing to do with communism other than government trying to make plans for businesses and citizens,  with success fueled by letting them seek some freedom and wealth, incentives that were virtually illegal.

These capitalistic concepts are not as well understood by the masses in the US today by the public or the over enabled elected class. Today we are in downstream generations and are the most benefited of other beneficiaries for close to a century due to our freedoms, modified capitalism and the innovations that result. We also enjoy a bountiful part of the earth and are separated by oceans from any powerful, aggressive enemy so most attacks on our land have been limited. All this is the good news and why we are so exceptional in our economics and freedoms.

The flip side is, we have taught the world the truth that there is no limit to wealth, it is not a limited natural resource, it is a construct of mankind that can grow for everybody, yes to varying degrees, without political interference. Net wealth is being created everyday by capitalism, with today’s speculative stock markets hoping for more bailouts not withstanding.

The is no lack in the world, there is only political impediments. If there really is a lack of something, freedom, incentives in capitalism and resultant innovation will find a replacement, once politics gets out of the way.

So there you have the Left Handedness in the 8/11/11 New York Time editorial. Their position can be seen in this second sentence:

A misguided focus on budget cutting has plunged the European Union and the United States down paths that will prolong their economic stagnation and perhaps tip them into another recession.

They think that the US can continue to have it’s cake and eat it too. The government just needs to continue to fix things. That might or might not be true and even if it can be true for a little while longer, I submit that we are so far down the slippery slope that we are probably also past the point where we will eventually have to throw up regardless of how the overused medicine might temporarily make some of us feel for a short while.

Our arrogance and in-satiety and misunderstanding of the limits of power and the changing circumstances in the rest of the world will be obvious for future generations to see.

In the meantime, my advice is to shake hands and do sustainable business witout ignoring gravity with your Right hand, and do your best to keep the inevitable vomit from too much cake off your clothes with your Left hand.