DR:
"But the grim reality is that market fundamentalism has self-destructed... our industrial base is near death"
JG:
Dennis, by no means am I singling you out here -- in fact I wouldn't bother making the following case if you were the sole purveyor of this half-truth -- but I think to say that the US industrial base is on its last legs is a substantial exaggeration. I've heard usually trusty sources like David Harvey and Mike Davis offer the same faulty diagnosis in recent interviews. Even considering the mighty rise of China, the US share of global manufacturing output has barely fallen across the span of the 21st Century. And now amid the worldwide contraction manufacturing capacity is being idled more rapidly in East Asia -- and at the same rate in the EU -- as in the US. The US mini-export boom in 2007-2008 proved that firms can still produce competitively on US soil in key sectors like construction machinery, high-tech equipment, aircraft, and bioengineering, as long as the dollar is not "overvalued" (which of course is a political constrcut, not a technical realuty).
Yeah, a big part of the industrial base is propped up by Pentagon procurement, but that's just the US' warped version of industrial policy practiced through other modalities in other capitalist states. Yes, the Big Three are on life support, but Toyota and Honda aren't faring too well either. Sure, there's more than a grain of truth in what you say, but the political problem with the fuller-blown version of what you are saying is it tends to encourage the wrongheaded notion that TNC offshoring and international competition are killing US manufacturing employment, when in fact US industrial jobs are (or were before the recession/depression) being gutted by the run-of-the-mill technological upgrading and lean production.
Like I said, there's more than a hint of accuracy in your claim, but phrased and framed in the incorrect manner, the political answer is right-wing anti-globalization (as opposed to left-wing anti-globalism)... although I must confess, I am somewhat surprised that the Buchanan-Dobbs forces haven't galvanized their forces to the extent I expected, especially given the kind of verbiage one sees spewed on interent message boards.
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