"This is not a test" Thomas L. Friedman said this on PBS last night.

[Swede]

The convergence is changing the world and you can't go back to the old one.

"The third convergence — I said there were three — is that right when the world was flattened, what accidentally happened was that 3 billion people who were out of the game walked onto the playing field, from India, China, and the former Soviet empire. When do they walk onto the playing field, friends? Just when it has been flattened. Just when they can plug and play, connect and collaborate, more directly with your kids and mine than ever before in the history of the planet."

http://www.cceia.org/viewMedia.php/prmTemplateID/9/prmID/5134

[Toots]

1. What is that great sucking sound we hear anyway???

I wish we had another Ross Perot.

[Roland99]

2. Thrid party candidates have one helluva hill to climb right now, though.

[northzax]

3. it's not about the migration of jobs

get used to that, there will always be someone who can do it cheaper, unless you can add some sort of value to it that they can't.

it's about the interconnection of the world, and how it tighetens everything together across global supply chains. We're losing, cause we don't get it. The US economy is a dinosaur (but better than Europe at least) change is ongoing, and it will continue to be painful.

[Nederland]

4. Awesome article

There the two parts I like:

We just had an election where the Democrats were debating whether NAFTA was a good idea and the Republicans put duct tape over the mouth of chief White House economist Greg Mankiw when he said outsourcing made sense and stashed him in Dick Cheney's basement, never to be heard from since.

So we have a problem. I think we are at a moment of colossal stupidity right now in this country. We have a President who is trying to basically take apart the New Deal at a time when we need a whole new New Deal around the flattening of the world and what we need to empower our people, our young people and our older people, with the right health care, the right pension, the right safety nets, the right education, to get ready for the flat world.


Clearly neither party is ready to do what is necessary for the good of the people. Democrats are pretending that we can turn the clock back to the way things were. Republicans are shutting up the people that are telling us the straight truth. What we need are politicians that recognize that a huge momentous shift is occurring and that we need to shift our thinking and our institutions to prepare for it. We need to prepare for it, not fight it, because nothing can be done to stop it--indeed it has already happened and its too late.

I have yet to hear a Democrat politician talk this way. Whoever does first stands to be the next FDR.