One of the biggest core assumptions they share is regarding growth. They both agree that Sustained Growth is the desired state of the economy, and while they disagree on which particular levers to pull to make sure Growth Returns, and maybe some aspects of the fine detailing on the lever handles, they don't dare question the Almighty Sustained Growth core of their beliefs.
What if growth is over or nearly over? Calling THEM dirty names only accomplishes so much (none of it useful). It would be very useful to have a political party exploring the concept, and proposing solutions that, while perhaps not along the lines everyone would like to see, are much more useful and match what people are actually dealing with in their everyday lives.
I'm calling this political party the Backsideist Party. Because, well, I get to name the things I come up with.
Why Backsideist?
Easy. If I'm right, we're on the backside of the story arc of western industrial civilization. We should do something productive about this instead of insisting at the top of our collective lungs that we're still up the upswing and prosperity will return to every household if we just {whatever your preferred political party thinks the way to stimulate growth is}.
The reality in America is that the lower class is toast, the middle class is getting gutted, actual unemployment (not the gamed numbers announced on the news occasionally to great fanfare) is quite unpleasantly high, the state of infrastructure is quite sad (when was the last bridge collapse?), and if you don't count financial games played on Wall Street, there's not a huge amount of good stuff happening with regards to the GDP. The American Consumer is out of credit, and there's not a huge amount of actual physical wealth being produced in the country right now compared to the ongoing decay.
We may as well state the facts of our current reality out in the open and do something useful, instead of pretending it's not happening.
Interested? Read on! This is a high level glossing over the concepts I'd like to work with, and will absolutely be expanded in many future posts.
Interested? Read on! This is a high level glossing over the concepts I'd like to work with, and will absolutely be expanded in many future posts.