> Considering what happened to living standards in the USSR post-1991, I
> wouldn't be so sanguine about wishing for a repeat in the US.
Oh, I don't wish for a repeat at all. Unlike some self-proclaimed Leftists, I have never, ever thought of hard times as a boon for humanity. Economic crashes bring out the worst in people, not the best.
But the grim reality is that market fundamentalism has self-destructed, some nineteen years after the suicide of bureaucratic fundamentalism. It's not just the financial markets -- our health care system is busted, our industrial base is near death, our energy economy is broken, our pension system is broken, our political system is broken, our mass media is broken. The US urgently needs an entire galaxy of social movements, feisty unions and organized trouble-making to turn things around.
-- DRR